As a couple, if you aren’t perfect at your relationship, then you are normal.
All couples make mistakes. All couples have moments they would love to repeat, and all have moments they would love to forget.
For many couples, it’s friendship that first brings them together. Friendship is the foundation upon which a relationship is built. For couples experiencing repeated conflicts or an underlying lack of connection, the friendship fades and makes a relationship feel threatened or empty.
I work primarily from the Gottman approach to Couples Counseling and Marriage Therapy. John Gottman is the leading expert on relationships. His unique approach turned the tables on current therapies by focusing on what worked in marriages and couple relationships instead of what didn’t work.
In 1972, John Gottman began his research on relationships. Gottman studied more than 3,000 couples and followed those couples for up to 20 years.
Gottman’s research was multi-dimensional and extensive, and his thorough methods paid off. In seven studies, he was able to predict with over 90% accuracy which couples would divorce and which would stay married – and among those who did stay married, which couples would be happy and which would be unhappy.
Applying his numerous years of observation, Gottman eventually gleaned which behaviors predict divorce. But more importantly, he was able to also decipher what strengthens relationships; that is, what keeps a marriage stable and vibrant in the busy, stressful times in our lives. He learned that couples who are happily married have specific interactions with one another every day that are positive. Secondly, the couples who are happily married are far less negative and are gentle in the ways they handle conflict.
Gottman designed specific interventions to teach couples these habits that transform a relationship and help couples remember who they fell in love with in the first place.
If you would like to rekindle your friendship with your partner and experience intimacy and connection, call me.