Couples and Marriage Counseling
You are hurting.
Your relationship has become a source of tension, loneliness, or disappointment. Conversations turn into arguments, or one of you shuts down before anything gets resolved. One person may push for answers while the other pulls away. You both feel misunderstood, and neither of you knows how to change what keeps happening between you.
You may still love each other. You may also be angry, exhausted, and unsure whether love is enough.
You agree on one thing: something has to change.
Maybe you wouldn’t still be together if it weren’t for the kids. The same fights happen over and over, but nothing ever gets resolved. Or perhaps you gave up arguing long ago. Now you live more like roommates, managing responsibilities and going through the motions while the relationship slowly disappears.
You may be considering counseling for the first time, or you may have tried it before without seeing meaningful change. Either way, you know you cannot continue as you have been. You want something different, but you may no longer know how to find your way back to each other.
This is where I come in.
My approach to couples therapy may be different from what you have experienced before.
I believe in joining with my clients through the truth. I will listen carefully and work to understand both of you, but I will not sit back and simply watch you repeat the same patterns. I will be straightforward about what I see happening between you, including the behaviors that are damaging trust, intimacy, and connection.
This is not about harsh truth or tough love. It is about creating enough honesty and safety for meaningful change. I will help each of you examine your role in the relationship without assuming that both partners are equally responsible for every problem. Accountability is not about assigning blame. It is about recognizing what belongs to you and what you have the power to change.
Together, we will identify the patterns affecting your relationship, understand what keeps pulling you back into them, and develop practical ways to respond differently. My role is not to take sides or decide which one of you is right. My role is to help you see your relationship more clearly and challenge both of you to do the work required to make it better.
You Want Real Change. That’s Why You’re Here.
Insight alone is not always enough. You may already know that you need to communicate differently, manage conflict more effectively, or make more time for your relationship. The harder question is why those changes are so difficult to make when you are hurt, angry, defensive, or afraid.
Some couples need practical skills for navigating conflict and repairing after an argument. Others need help rebuilding trust, strengthening their emotional connection, or understanding the deeper patterns that keep pulling them apart. Most couples need some combination of both.
My approach brings those pieces together. We will identify the patterns affecting your relationship, understand what keeps those patterns in place, and practice more effective ways of responding to each other. I will give you practical tools, but I will also help you work through the parts of yourself that resist using them when they matter most.
Real change requires more than knowing what to do. It requires taking responsibility for how you participate in the relationship and practicing something different, especially when falling back into old patterns would be easier.
How I Approach Couples Therapy
I integrate the Gottman Method and Relational Life Therapy because couples need more than communication tips. They need to understand what is happening between them, what keeps pulling them back into the same patterns, and what they can practice instead.
Gottman’s decades of research help us identify the patterns that strengthen relationships and the patterns that cause them to deteriorate. It also provides practical tools for improving friendship, navigating conflict, repairing hurt, rebuilding trust, and strengthening emotional and physical intimacy.
Relational Life Therapy takes the work deeper. It helps each partner understand the behaviors, protective strategies, and past experiences that continue to shape the relationship. It also helps us address why people often struggle to use healthy relationship skills when they feel hurt, angry, defensive, or afraid.
Together, these approaches allow us to work on both the visible problems in your relationship and the deeper dynamics keeping those problems in place.
The Gottman Method: Research and Practical Skills
The Gottman Method is based on more than five decades of research into what makes relationships succeed or fail. This research gives us a clear framework for recognizing the behaviors that build connection and the patterns that gradually weaken trust, respect, and intimacy.
Gottman Method Couples Therapy provides practical tools to help couples:
Strengthen friendship, affection, and emotional connection
Better understand each other’s internal experiences
Manage conflict more calmly and productively
Repair after arguments and relational injuries
Rebuild trust and commitment
Create shared meaning and a stronger sense of partnership
I have completed all three levels of Gottman Method clinical training. I am also the only Gottman Leader in North Dakota, offering the Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work program and the Bringing Baby Home program.
I also offer the Gottman Relationship Checkup, a comprehensive assessment that examines important areas of your relationship, including friendship, intimacy, emotions, conflict, values, trust, and commitment. The assessment helps us identify your relationship’s strengths and the areas that need focused attention.
Relational Life Therapy (RLT): Understanding what keeps you stuck
Relational Life Therapy, developed by Terry Real, helps couples understand the deeper patterns beneath their conflict and disconnection.
Many people know what they should do differently in their relationships. They know they should listen, communicate more clearly, become less defensive, or respond with greater care. But knowing what to do does not mean they can consistently do it when they feel threatened, rejected, criticized, or overwhelmed.
RLT helps each partner recognize how protective strategies developed through earlier experiences may now be creating distance or harm in the relationship. These strategies can appear as withdrawal, control, defensiveness, resentment, entitlement, emotional reactivity, or avoiding difficult conversations.
This work is direct, but it is not about humiliation or blame. I will help each of you take responsibility for your behavior without assuming that both partners are equally responsible for every problem. We will identify what belongs to each of you and what each person has the power to change.
Relational Life Therapy helps couples:
Recognize and change harmful relational behaviors
Understand the deeper experiences driving conflict and disconnection
Replace blame and defensiveness with personal accountability
Communicate with greater honesty and respect
Rebuild emotional connection and intimacy
Practice healthier ways of responding when old patterns are activated
Why the Combination Matters
Gottman research helps us recognize what healthy couples do and gives you practical tools for strengthening your relationship. Relational Life Therapy helps us understand why those changes can be difficult and addresses the patterns that interfere with them.
I combine both because knowing what to do is not always enough. Lasting change requires practical skills, honest self-examination, personal accountability, and the willingness to respond differently when returning to an old pattern would be easier.
Reasons Couples Seek Marriage Counseling
Couples come to counseling at many different points in their relationships. Some want to strengthen a relationship that is basically healthy. Others have become trapped in years of conflict, emotional distance, or loss of trust. Some are facing a major crisis and are unsure whether their relationship can recover.
I work with couples who are dating, engaged, married, or in long-term committed relationships. You do not need to wait until your relationship is falling apart to ask for help.
Couples seek Therapy or counseling for concerns including:
Pre-Marital Counseling
Recurring Conflict and Communication breakdowns
Emotional Disconnection
Controlled Separation
Transition to Parenthood
Parenting or Co-Parenting Disagreements
Emotional and Relational Intelligence
Life Transitions
Infidelities/Affairs
Intimacy Issues
Secret Keeping
Traditional couples therapy works best when both partners are willing to participate in repairing the relationship. If one partner is seriously considering ending the relationship and is uncertain about participating in couples therapy, Discernment Counseling may be a more appropriate place to begin.
Let’s Work together
Couples therapy requires honesty, participation, and a willingness to examine how each of you contributes to the relationship. You do not need to have all the answers before you begin. You do need to be willing to look honestly at what is happening and practice responding differently.
If you are both ready to stop repeating the same patterns and begin working toward a healthier relationship, I invite you to complete my counseling inquiry form. The form includes information about my current availability
You can also learn more about me and my approach on my About page. You can also find answers to common questions, including fees and scheduling, on my FAQ page.
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