What does it take for couples to stay in love? How can you deepen your relationship even when you and your partner disagree, or let each other down? In Couples’ Therapy, Clare Mézes, MSc, RP offers a way for you to cherish your partner, yourself, and your relationship.
When things are not going well in your relationship, do you ask yourself, “How did we get here?” What was once a loving and close relationship now feels distant and alienated.
Are you angry and fighting or is one of you having an affair or struggling with an addiction? What about your sex life? Have you lost some desire for each other? Couples' therapy provides insights and tools to feel more connected, tender and passionate again, leading to a transformative, emotional experience.
Using psycho-education, discussions, role-plays, couple communication and sexuality exercises to build skills, Clare helps you to hold your relationship in loving regard. Most couples' sessions are two to two and a half hours in length, every other week.
Couples' Therapy focuses on the following four key components necessary to achieve a happier and more fulfilling relationship.
The first step in understanding your relationship dynamics is to identify the style and pattern of communication that keeps you in a vicious cycle—your relationship dance. RLT calls this “your bad deal”. For example, one person expresses herself/himself as an angry pursuer, and the other person expresses herself/himself as a helpless withdrawer.
Another dynamic of the dance is understanding which version of you shows up in the relationship. Is it coming from that wounded part of you from childhood, or the part that had to adapt to the wounding, or are you speaking from the adult, mature part of you in the present? It will most likely mean that one of the partners needs to express themselves with more vulnerability and the other with increased sharing. It will also involve learning how to re-parent the wounded parts of yourself with love and compassion, so that your relationship can heal and grow.
I do this work to break the unhealthy cycle and create transformation, which leads to greater intimacy.
Our culture claims that good relationships mean never fighting and always having awesome sex. In reality, a relationship goes through stages of closeness, distance, and repair. Learn new skills to repair the distance in your relationship, in order to achieve a deeper and more intimate connection.
Learn to communicate more clearly by listening more intentionally, by speaking out with love and savvy, shifting from complaint to request, and by responding with generosity,
Become more sexually connected by being attuned to each other's physical needs, without judgement, using healthy boundaries, being respectful and honest and by giving yourself permission to be vulnerable.