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The type of couple counselling I do assumes that:
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Both partners are good people who have somehow got caught up in a negative way of relating to one another and are stuck there.
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Each person wants a relationship in which they can experience their partner as a source of support and comfort, rather than cold, distant, critical, or blaming.
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Both partners have coherent and valid reasons for the negative interactions with their spouse, which are usually to protect themselves from negative and hurtful encounters.
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Both partners needs, desires, and emotional responses are generally healthy and adaptive.
The work in the couple counselling is to look at how the negative and hurtful interactions came to be, and to set about establishing a more positive way to relate. At the completion of the therapy work, each partner comes to experience an emotional bonding with the other, and a sense of secure connectedness within their relationship.
This type of couples therapy works best with:
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Couples who have become alienated by negative interactions and who wish to develop a more positive way of relating.
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Couples experiencing a lack of intimacy.
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Couples experiencing sexual difficulties.
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Couples whose circumstances have necessitated a change in the relationship, such as diagnosis of a chronic or life-threatening illness.
This type of couples work does not work well where the couple has already decided to separate or where violence is an issue.
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