Relationship Therapy

Many couples come in thinking they're just incompatible or that their partner is selfish or uncaring. Understanding the ADHD/Autism piece reframes everything from moral failure to neurological difference—and that shift alone can be transformative.

Ethical non-monogamy, polyamory, and kink are distinct experiences that can raise important questions about desire, intimacy, and connection. As a trained sex therapist, Elizabeth offers an affirming, non-judgmental space to explore consensual relationships and sexual expression with attention to consent, boundaries, communication, and emotional safety.

Financial infidelity destroys trust like an affair while creating real financial consequences—hidden debt, ruined credit, power imbalances. It's usually a symptom of deeper issues like conflict avoidance, shame, feeling controlled, or unexamined money stories from childhood.

Couples counseling helps by creating safety for brutal conversations, rebuilding trust through radical transparency and new financial systems, untangling shame from accountability, and exploring whether the person who broke trust is willing to do the uncomfortable work required for repair.

Whether emotional, physical, or both—lack of intimacy usually means couples have become roommates managing logistics rather than partners who feel seen, desired, and emotionally safe with each other. This dynamic is often driven by unresolved resentment, conflict avoidance, or emotional disconnection that makes vulnerability feel too risky.

Couples counseling helps by addressing the root causes (not just "have more sex"), rebuilding emotional safety and attunement, and teaching partners how to reconnect through vulnerability rather than just coordinating schedules.

Premarital couples often seek counseling either to proactively build communication and conflict resolution skills before marriage. They may also seek counseling because they've identified concerning patterns—mismatched expectations about money, kids, sex, religion, career, or family roles—and want to address them before legally committing.

Couples counseling helps by surfacing and navigating these differences early, teaching healthy conflict tools, exploring family-of-origin patterns they don't want to repeat, and ensuring they're genuinely aligned on major life decisions rather than hoping things will work out later.

Postpartum depression and anxiety devastate relationships because the struggling parent is often overwhelmed, isolated, and unable to connect while the other partner feels helpless, shut out, resentful about carrying everything, or becomes so focused on caretaking that both partners' emotional needs disappear. Intimacy tanks, communication breaks down, and they become survival-mode roommates rather than partners.

Couples counseling helps by creating space for both partners to be honest about their struggles without shame or defensiveness, addressing the division of labor and resentment, coordinating additional support (therapy, medication, family help), and rebuilding emotional connection and partnership outside of just managing the baby.

Couples seek counseling after infidelity because the betrayed partner is traumatized and hypervigilant while the unfaithful partner is drowning in shame and defensiveness. They can't have the brutal, necessary conversations at home without exploding, and neither knows whether the relationship can or should survive.

Couples counseling provides structured safety for processing rage and grief, understanding what broke in the relationship that made the affair possible (not just "don't cheat again"), deciding if repair is genuinely feasible, and if so, rebuilding trust through radical honesty, accountability, and addressing the underlying disconnection that created vulnerability.

Couples seek counseling around parenting transitions because the division of labor becomes wildly unequal, intimacy disappears, they lose their identity as partners and become only co-parents, and different parenting philosophies create constant conflict. One parent may feel invisible and overwhelmed while the other feels criticized and shut out.

Couples counseling helps by renegotiating the division of labor and invisible mental load, addressing resentment before it calcifies, creating systems to maintain their couple identity alongside parenting roles, and navigating different parenting approaches without it becoming a power struggle or criticism fest.

We have specialized training that means we understand LGBTQIA+ relationship dynamics from the start, won't apply heteronormative assumptions to your relationship, and can help you navigate challenges specific to LGBTQIA+ partnerships without you having to explain why certain issues matter or defend your relationship's legitimacy.

Sexual issues may include mismatched desire, pain during sex, erectile or orgasm difficulties, sexual trauma recovery, navigating kink/BDSM, rebuilding intimacy after infidelity or childbirth, or communication breakdowns around sex. Most couples therapists aren't trained to address these issues beyond "talk about it more."

Seeing a trained sex therapist matters because we have specialized knowledge of sexual physiology, medical versus psychological factors, evidence-based interventions like sensate focus, comfort discussing explicit details without discomfort or judgment, and understanding of diverse sexualities and relationship structures—so you're not stuck with vague advice or a therapist who's clearly uncomfortable with what you actually need to discuss.