Couples Therapy
Brave Knight or Fair Maiden?
Fairy tales – knights in shining armor – damsels in distress…
Or family stories – played out day by day…
What ideas and examples about love, romance, and marriage did you experience growing up?
Whether the stuff of fantasy, routine reality, or nightmare, you were learning strong messages about gender roles, strength, and power.
Rescuer or Victim?
Sometimes, life just doesn’t provide enough preparation for successful marriage. You carry all those ideas about roles, jobs, and duties in a marriage that you acquired as you were growing up, and they can sow seeds of discontent in your own relationship.
Stereotyped roles of the strong man and weak woman are stunting. The truth is that everyone is strong AND weak; it’s just a matter of circumstance and timing.
We must remember how we act in a relationship often comes from the messages and modeling we received growing up; from our families, our culture, society or you name it.
A Grand Laboratory Experiment
Relationships are the greatest lab experiment ever!!
Take two people, total strangers – each raised by a separate family. Every family has its rites, rituals and routines. Each family member has its roles, jobs and functions for the family.
Throw all these circumstances together and see what happens.
Some partners come together from the old adage, “opposites attract.” This approach can be challenging because this territory is very unfamiliar. There’s a lot of uncertainty about whether either has enough skills to be an effective partner.
The spontaneity that was, at first, exciting and fun may come to be characterized as impulsivity. What was charming when dating can be downright irksome in the life of a committed relationship.
That easy going, go-with-the-flow nature may turn into a source of friction when the other partner is “always doing everything.”
Shall We Dance?
For some, the coupling is easy and effortless.
The best relationships and most successful marriages are those in which there is lots of room for each partner.
In a strong relationship, each knows his or her own strengths and weaknesses. Each accepts himself or herself as a whole and complete individual, both alone and in the partnership.
Their commitment to the relationship is through desire – not need. Together, they are complementary, but neither needs to be completed by the other.
Over time, the couple’s life becomes like a well-rehearsed dance. Not because one overshadows the other – but because they are both true partners.
Committed Freedom
A solid relationship or marriage provides freedom for each partner to grow independently and return to share this growth.
This easy movement generates from each individual’s core security.
This is the foundation of a solid relationship or marriage.
Feel the Rhythm
My role as a marriage and family therapist is to help couples learn to listen to the music and feel the rhythm of the dance.
As we work together, you’ll learn new ways to listen, hear, and talk. You’ll practice paying close attention to your partner, making sure you understand, clearly, what your partner is saying.
No more assumptions.
You’ll both learn to use your voices to ask for what you want and need.
Then you’ll learn to say “Yes” and “No” in a healthy, respectful way.
Healthy relationships are like a well-choreographed ballet accompanied by a perfectly tuned symphony.
I’ll be your conductor; I’ll lead the way.
Put on your dancing shoes
Don’t waste any more time on the sidelines. Get on the floor. Find your rhythm and dance!
Reach out today by calling (862)432-6880 to get started!
“And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”