Couples Counselling
Couples come into therapy for a variety of reasons. They may feel they have grown apart. There may have been a specific rupture like an affair. Sometimes couples just want to 'get on better' and have a more fulfilling and meaningful relationship.
The most common thread that runs through all of these scenarios is the way they make each other feel and this comes from the emotional connection between them, how they impact each other and how much they each feel heard and validated by their partner.
We all try hard at the beginning of a relationship and during that first 'symbiotic' phase, we only see the good in the other. The saying that 'love is blind' is true in this phase of relationship.
When we enter the second phase of relationship - differentiation - we start to see how our partner is different to us and may look on these as faults not just differences. We all have our own experience of 'normal' from the family we grew up in and this is our only real evidence for comparison with people we relate to and live with, and this will have given us an 'attachment style in relationship.
Previous partners may have left their marks, good and bad, and we will draw on this evidence too. What is really important is that we understand why we feel what we feel when we are in close relationship with another person. Do we really understand what triggers us and makes us behave the way we do?
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy can work through all of these things and help you to realise not just what you want for yourself, but what you want from each other.
