Every couple goes through hard stretches. Stress piles up, communication gets clipped, the warmth between you goes quiet for a while. Most of the time, things find their way back on their own. But sometimes they don’t — and knowing the difference between a temporary rough patch and a problem

It’s one of the most common situations couples counseling ever deals with — and it usually starts before anyone even walks through the door. One partner wants to go to therapy. The other doesn’t. And now there’s an argument about whether to have the argument in front of a professional.

Most couples don’t notice it happening in real time. Usually, there’s no single moment, no dramatic turning point. One day, you look up and realize that the person you share a home and a life with has become someone you mostly coordinate logistics with. You’re not fighting. You’re not miserable.

One of the most frustrating things couples in counseling describe is this: they can talk about a problem for an hour and still feel like nothing changed. No resolution, no relief — just the same stuck feeling they walked in with. It’s not that they’re arguing badly. They’re arguing about

One of the most common destructive patterns I see couples get stuck in over and over again is the Request/Withdraw cycle. Request/Withdraw is when one partner tries to engage his or her mate (e.g. tries to get their partner to talk about or do something) and the other person does

This is the first of a periodic series of articles that explore how and why we fall in love and how something so wonderful can sometimes feel so horrible. When you first fall in love you are literally out of your mind. Your brain is bathed in all of these

One of the things I’m most frequently asked about is how to build or rebuild trust. It’s fundamental to any relationship. Without it, you can never really feel fully intimate or connected. Brene Brown has recently released an amazing video, “The Anatomy of Trust” (http://www.supersoul.tv/supersoul-sessions/the-anatomy-of-trust ) which provides a simple

When I tell people what I do one of the questions I’m most often asked is “why do couples seek therapy”. The most common couples reason couples offer is communication, but in my experience the real reason most couples come to therapy is that they’ve forgotten how to be a

It’s hard to be married or in a committed relationship. How hard? The numbers vary somewhat depending on which study you read, but it’s estimated that anywhere from 40% to 50% of first marriages end in divorce. The odds of a successful relationship get slimmer with each go round –

The Harvard Negotiation Project spent years studying hundreds of conversations in great detail. They discovered that there is an underlying structure to every conversation. It turns out that no matter what the subject is, each conversation has three levels to it: What Happened Feelings Identity The reason conflicts go unresolved