Is The Spark In Your Relationship Just Not There Anymore?
Are you struggling to get your needs met or make your voice heard in your marriage or relationship? Do you and your partner find yourselves:
- Feeling like you’re just going through the motions together?
- Arguing in circles and unable to find a resolution to your problems?
- Struggling to make quality time for each other because of how preoccupied you are?
Maybe you’re incredibly busy working, managing finances, and taking care of the kids, and you feel like your partner’s not pulling their weight. Yet the more you express your frustration with them, the more they withdraw. Sex may be nonexistent—every time you try to initiate it, your partner isn’t interested. And whenever you try to make room for quality time, they’re too deflated or exhausted to engage with you. They’d rather put their headphones in, listen to the latest podcast episode, and check out entirely.
After a while, you might start asking yourself questions like: Am I just not lovable? Is my partner going to leave me? Should we consider seeing a couples therapist?
Your Relationship May Feel Stuck In A Cycle Of Pursuit And Withdrawal
When your relationship is struggling, it’s normal for a pattern to emerge where one of you constantly pursues the other in an attempt to make things right and the other keeps pulling further and further away. The pursuing partner feels taken for granted, like their partner doesn’t see or hear them at all. The withdrawing partner, meanwhile, feels like they can never do anything right to begin with—so why even try?
If this negative cycle sounds familiar to you, it may be time to consider couples counseling. At California Relationship Clinic, our therapists specialize in helping couples interrupt negative patterns and communicate from a more emotionally-connected place. We provide both weekly therapy as well as intensive sessions for couples who want to do their healing work in a shorter block of time.
Questions About Couples Therapy?
All Couples Go Through Seasons Of Disconnection
Relationships are hard. From time to time, all couples find themselves hung up on the same old issues, unable to work through disagreements or connect on an emotional level. It’s normal for their spark to fade over the years, especially when children and new responsibilities enter the picture.
In many relationships, one partner often ends up having to carry the lion’s share of child-rearing, social planning, and household responsibilities. Meanwhile, the other partner often gets so busy with work that they have little time for family and household matters. This can quickly lead to resentment, because both people feel like they’re functioning in two different worlds.
On Their Own, Couples Often Turn To Quick Fixes To Solve Their Problems
We live in a society that’s obsessed with quick fixes and easy life hacks. So when many couples are struggling, their instinctive reaction is to try new communication tools. And while learning to communicate in new ways can certainly be beneficial, doing so doesn’t address the deeper problems in your marriage or relationship.
After all, there are emotional blocks that live deep within the body and can’t be accessed just with a few skills or books. Unconscious conditioning is very powerful—without even knowing it, many of us succumb to confirmation bias and end up resorting to the same solutions we’ve always known. In order to break out of these unconscious patterns, sometimes we need the help of an experienced couples counselor.
Therapy Can Help Couples Create Deeper And More Secure Bonds
At California Relationship Clinic, our goal is to help you and your partner go from feeling disconnected and hopeless to connected and empowered, able to meet each other’s needs and communicate in a way that leaves you feeling seen and heard. Our emotionally-focused approach to therapy can help you gain the emotional and sexual intimacy you desire. We’ll teach you to understand each other’s needs on a deeper level and help you feel safe enough to bring those needs to each other, trusting that you’ll be met with validation and understanding.
Our Practice Offers Both Weekly And Intensive Couples Counseling Sessions
Many couples who come to our practice meet with us on a weekly basis. That said, some couples may have less room in their schedule for therapy. Others may have deep-rooted challenges that are hard to fully address in the shorter timeframes of weekly sessions. For these couples, we offer intensive sessions that give them a chance to work through the initial phases of therapy faster and do the deeper healing work sooner.
In the end, our mission is to do whatever is best for you and your relationship. We will listen to you, validate your concerns, and help you create goals together. We have experience providing therapy for couples who are married, unmarried, and engaged as well as those who are part of the LGBTQ+ community. So no matter what your background as a couple is, we’re confident that we can help you course-correct, come back into connection, and fall in love again.
Tailoring Our Approach To Couples Counseling
The main approach that we utilize is Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT), which is all about helping couples get to the heart of their problems and explore their deeper unmet needs. EFT can help you and your significant other look beyond the noise of day-to-day conflicts and focus on why you do the things you do.
In essence, this means teaching you to speak from your pain and focus on your own feelings instead of complaining or criticizing the other person. In this way, you’ll develop a language you can use when you’re hurting that brings your partner closer instead of pushing them away.
Our therapists also use mindfulness techniques and various somatic skills to help couples regulate their emotions, inner child exploration to assist them in identifying core wounds and inner resources, and Internal Family Systems (IFS) to show them how different parts of their psyche are causing relational difficulties. By combining a wide variety of skills with a compassionate, emotionally-focused approach, we believe we can help you breathe new life into your relationship.
You May Have Some Questions About Marriage And Couples Therapy…
Won’t talking about our issues in therapy makes them worse?
It’s understandable that you and your partner would have this concern, especially if your attempts to talk things through have only led to more arguing. Thankfully, a specialized therapist can help you create enough safety to open up and express your hurts from a place of empathy instead of criticism. We are unbiased in our sessions with couples and have specialized training in managing high conflict, so you can rest assured that sessions will remain peaceful and focused.
What if we can’t afford couples counseling?
Money is important, but so is your relationship. In the end, counseling is an investment in your marriage, family, and future. The financial cost generally outweighs the greater cost of not seeking help. For what it’s worth, our practice can work on a sliding scale and we can also provide a superbill for insurance reimbursement.
Can we meet biweekly?
We don’t recommend starting with biweekly sessions because the first few sessions can open up challenging topics that, if left alone for two weeks, can lead to conflict. The sooner we move through the initial phases of therapy, the better. Once your negative cycle feels more under control and you’re having success breaking patterns at home, it’s fine to switch from weekly to biweekly sessions.
Break Unconscious Patterns And Fall In Love Again
If you and your significant other want to rebuild trust, deepen your intimacy, and improve your communication, we encourage you to pursue counseling with California Relationship Clinic. To learn more about how we can help you, use our online scheduler or call 424-274-7745 to book a free 20-minute consultation.