Therapy for Couples
NYC & VirtualThe argument isn't the problem.The argument is the symptom.
Most couples don't come to therapy because something catastrophic happened. They come because they've been having the same fight for three years and neither person can figure out why it never resolves.
This is about your mother. This is about the money. This is about your tone. This is about you always being late. Round after round, the subject keeps changing.
The words change. The feeling doesn't.
(The content of the argument is almost never the point.)
What's usually happening underneath: two people who care about each other, running patterns they didn't choose, in a dynamic that neither of them fully sees because they're both inside it.
Who comes to see me
The same wall
Couples who keep hitting it, round after round, and are tired of it.
After a rupture
A breach of trust, a major life transition, or a season of distance that settled in without anyone quite deciding to let it.
Lost the thread
People who love each other and have genuinely lost the thread of how to be with each other.
Getting ahead of it
Not in crisis at all. They sense something drifting before it becomes a problem, and they'd rather deal with it now.
How I work
Relational Life Therapy
My approach to couples work is grounded in Relational Life Therapy, a framework developed by Terry Real that takes seriously both the dynamic between two people and the individual histories each person brings into the room.
One idea from RLT worth knowing before you walk in: every close relationship runs the same loop. Closeness, rupture, repair, and back again. Couples don't get stuck because they hit rupture. Everyone hits rupture. They get stuck because nobody ever taught them repair. Repair is a skill, and skills can be learned.
Refereeing.
Deciding who's right.
Validating one person's position over the other's.
Slowing the pattern down enough that both people can see what's driving it. From there, something different becomes possible.
As an LMSW in NY State (License #131750), I am authorized to provide clinical psychotherapy services, assessments, and diagnosis under the supervision of an LCSW. All clinical services are provided under the supervision of Jacob Mergendoller, LCSW (License #098970) at Lightline Therapy.
Outside of New York? Therapy licensure stops at the state line, but the work doesn't have to. Let's talk about coaching.
Ready to stop having the same fight?
Let's TalkNot quite you? Individuals · Young Adults