Premarital and Couples Counseling

Few of us are properly prepared to navigate the odyssey that is marriage. Premarital counseling is designed to identify the road blocks and detours most of us will encounter as we ride the roller coaster of connection and disconnection, joy and despair.

I work with you and your partner to learn about the stages of relationship and the struggles you will encounter at each stage. The purpose of this work is to help you realize that your struggles come to teach you about yourself, your partner, and your relationship. Conflict and misunderstanding are not necessarily about indictments of character or incompatibility. They are the way we are invited to learn things about ourselves, our partners or our relationships that we have not yet learned.

While we all take for granted our ability to speak and listen, few of us know how to speak so others will listen or how to listen in ways that encourage others to speak. You and your partner will learn a communication process intended to slow you down and soften you up, so that you can stop debating and start communicating. You will discover that safety in the space between partners is essential, if you want to promote and deepen your connection and intimacy.

As you acquire these new insights and skills, you will soon discover that what partners do to one another they do to themselves. That the best way to get the love you want from your partner is to first give that love to your partner. Learning to make your marriage and your partner your first priority requires a leap of faith, not in your partner or in your marriage, but rather, ironically, in yourself as someone worthy of both.