It makes sense when couples ask me about my life, particularly during consultation calls. They're frustrated and overwhelmed. The time and money required to pursue support for their relationship are a big investment. It follows that couples want to make sure they're working with someone competent and trustworthy. A few want also to ensure that I "walk the walk," in whatever way they define it.
Unfortunately, any one therapist's particular relationship status isn't a great indicator of how well they can support your partnership. If you're feeling aligned with a therapist who fits most of your criteria, but who you learn is recently divorced (or never married, or in a relationship configuration that doesn't make sense to you, etc), please consider giving them a shot anyway.
Fortunately, I'm ready to field those questions. They don't feel prying to me. The answers to said questions are essential to the work I do.
Couple's Work - Up Close
I work with couples because, simply put, PACT is the reason I have the rich, fulfilling, gorgeous partnership I do.
My relationship wasn't always this way. We had some very tough years. We fought, separated, saw other people, and were even legally divorced. Through those hard years, we were always clear that we loved each other, but we couldn't figure out how to translate that love into positive shared experiences.
Granted, we also had a tough start. Like so many of the relationships I currently support, neither of us grew up witnessing the type of relationship we wanted as adults. Additional external family pressures involved intense, sometimes cruel dynamics that we had no idea how to navigate.
In many ways, we were all each other had. And thank goodness.
Because we were all we had, we worked our butts off to rebuild a reliable, creative, supportive, courageous partnership. And still do. But now, (also, thank goodness) we know how to work much smarter.
Couple's Work - Writ Large
Before I was a therapist, I was an educator. As an educator, parental relationship strife made itself known in the lives of my students with heartbreaking frequency. All of those parents were trying the best they could, just like my partner and I had tried. And, unfortunately, their children both bore witness to and felt impacted by their relationship struggles.
I now understand couple's work as the smallest unit of community organizing. Imagine a world in which every child sees their parents practice self-regulation and co-regulation as they manage their emotions, delight each other (and delight in each other), and solve complex problems as a team while staying emotionally warm and connected! Imagine how much more bandwidth parents would have to attend to their children's needs, bring creative energy to their own self-care and creative pursuits, take risks, and make moves professionally if their primary relationships were resilient (and didn't consume hours per week fighting).
I specialize in supporting relationships because I believe that securely functioning relationships are a powerful tool for not only personal well-being but for enduring community healing.
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