Most couples wait on average seven years before reaching out for therapy. This is one* of the reasons why couples therapy has lower success rates that other forms of therapy. By the time couples reach out, the hurt and anger are big. Sometimes people have lost hope. Some couples only decide to go to therapy when they feel the relationship is actually over and they want to be able to say they’ve. Tried. Every. Thing. Sometimes one partner is willing to try therapy and the other one is not.

I get it. I really get it. A few years into my marriage, before I was a therapist, my husband and I were having problems. We’d heard about couples therapy. We had each done our own therapy. But something about actually starting the couples therapy process was so … embarrassing and scary. What would people think about us? (Not much because we didn’t tell many people.) What does this mean that we are already having problems just a few years in? (It meant we needed support.) Is this the beginning of the end for us? (Nope!) But luckily, we took a chance and signed up before the situation got too dire. We learned to hear what the other person was truly saying and began to believe that we did really love each other even when that didn’t feel true. And we learned how to reach for one another in way that meant the other one could reach back. I so grateful we took the chance. Not only because our relationship is now strong enough to weather all that life has given us but also because I truly understand the dread and distress that clients bring to my therapy office. I honor and acknowledge courage it takes to ask for help and I will meet your courage with empathy and expertise.

*Another reason is that there are a lot of therapists and others offering relationship counseling with no actual training in couples therapy. It is very different from individual therapy – ask for credentials!training in couples therapy. Ask for credentials!