Couples Therapy

Relationships are deeply rewarding and often complicated experiences.  I have worked with many couples over the past 20 years to help them understand the dynamics of their relationship and learn to communicate more effectively. While there are universal dynamics that apply to all relationships, there are also unique dynamics to gay relationships and relationships where there is a cultural difference.

Couples therapy focuses largely on communication. It has been my experience that helping couples understand the psychological and emotional dynamics between them is also helpful.   I work to provide the often missing legitimization of their relationship, which allows them to connect in a more meaningful way.

Infidelity, sex, values conflict, navigating polyamory and open relationships, starting a family, are often the catalysts that bring couples into treatment.

Using Imago Therapy techniques and a culturally competent, gay affirmative framework to couples therapy, couples are able to address sensitive or confusing dynamics in their relationship in a safe and controlled environment.

The tools learned in couples therapy translate outside of the counseling session and into their everyday lives, allowing couples to negotiate the many dynamics in any relationship.
​Our romantic and interpersonal relationships are one of the best ways that we can understand ourselves and how we relate to others. 

Empathy is a complicated concept, it is far more than “being nice”. It takes effort, patience and practice to empathize with our partners experience of life; then to support them in the way that they truly need. Often, it is easier to empathize with our partners if we can relate to their experience, many times, we cannot and must set aside our own internal biases and preconceived ideas and join with our partners in their sadness, their anger as well as in their joy.

We all are prone to want to fix things for the ones we love, when often, what our partners truly crave is to feel heard and understood and to have their emotional responses validated. Similarly, we are all guilty of assuming our partners know what we need (without communicating it clearly and directly) and then feeling very hurt and angry when they don’t respond in the way we would like.

Interpersonal relationships for gay men are often challenging because many gay men do not expect another man to be responsive and supportive emotionally, they often behave in distancing ways that make their expectations come true. Couples therapy from a gay affirmative framework provides the often missing legitimization and support of their relationship in addition to practical techniques on how to communicate thoughts, feelings and emotional needs to a partner. Gay affirmative therapy also provides my patients the opportunity to strike the balance between ones need for autonomy and the conflicting need for emotional closeness. Helping couples understand these dynamics and assisting couples remove shame and stigma from their relationship has proven to be most beneficial.

Psychological insight into the dynamics of the relationship, support, practical communication tools and education around empathy have been the strategies that I utilize most in my work with couples.

Being our partners emotional support in life, their closest ally, their partner in the mundane of life and their sexual companion is a constant balancing act and negotiation. Couples therapy from a psychodynamic, culturally competent, gay affirmative framework will help.