How our childhood can negatively affect our adult relationships

I delve deeper into understanding how traumatic childhood experiences can affect your relationships in later life. From who you find attractive to how you deal with conflict and show affection, your childhood environment can affect the relationships you make as an adult.

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How to know when to end a relationship

Falling in love is easy, staying in love is a challenge, letting go is hard, and moving on is the hardest. – unknown Deciding to end a relationship can be an emotionally painful experience and rarely taken likely, especially if the couple has children or beloved pets to consider. However, staying in an unhealthy relationship…

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Creating a balance of power in a relationship

If you were asked to describe the balance of power in your relationship, do thoughts of “Lord and Master” or “She who must be obeyed” spring to mind? Or would you answer ours is a relationship of equality, my partner is the yin to my yang, and we work in harmony – always. If you…

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Creating a New Year resolution together

Congratulations, you survived the sometimes stressful yuletide holiday intact. I hope you have been able to take a day or two to recover from the temporary changes to your daily routines and associations. If not, I do hope you get to take a break soon to unwind and recharge before your usual commitments of work,…

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Resentment in a relationship – aka hurting you, hurting me.

In my practice, I primarily use Gottman’s relationship tools and talk therapy to help couples navigate the ups and downs of living a life in partnership. In particular, I use their metaphor of the four horse-riders of the apocalypse to describe the actions primarily responsible for the demise of a relationship. In Gottman’s parable, the…

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What is “The Gottman Method?”

When you think about couple’s counseling, does it involve the following scenarios? You spend sixty minutes talking about how it was great in the beginning but now [insert long list of complaints], while the therapist nods their head. They then suggest a weekly appointment for the next six months. Your partner spends the entire session…

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8 tips on how to breathe life back into your relationship

Separation can be messy, especially if one of you is still in love with the other. So before you start severing ties, here are some tips on how to breathe life back into your relationship and rekindle the love you once had.

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Practical steps to heal from an affair

Working through an affair is tough. It takes tremendous energy and vulnerability on both sides. Drs. John and Julie Gottman have developed the Trust Revival Method, with three defined stages of treatment: Atonement, Attunement, and Attachment. The effectiveness of this model is being studied in a randomized clinical trial. I’ve watched hundreds of couples try…

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