Healing your relationship, one conversation at a time

Couples Therapy: For long-term relationships that have lost their way and partners who would like to find each other again.

Most of the couples I see aren't here because something dramatic has happened. They're here because something quietly has. The arguments have started looping. The conversations have got shorter. The sex has thinned out, or stopped. They're functioning as parents, as a household, as colleagues running the family logistics, but something that used to be between them has gone missing, and they don't quite know how to get it back.

Sometimes though, it's louder than that. An affair has surfaced and you're both in the wreckage trying to work out whether, and how, to rebuild. A betrayal you've been carrying alone has finally come out. A version of one or both of you has changed in a way the relationship hasn't caught up with.

Whatever has brought you here, you're welcome.

Common reasons couples come to see me

• You've lost the spark. You love each other but the warmth, the laughter, the closeness have faded, and neither of you is sure when it started.

• You've been struggling since the children arrived. Sleep, logistics and exhaustion have flattened your relationship. You parent well together; you don't really know each other anymore.

• You're stuck in the same argument. It might be about money, sex, in-laws, the household, parenting, but you can both sense you're not really fighting about that. You're fighting about the same thing in a hundred different costumes.

• There's been an affair. One of you is trying to understand what happened. The other is trying to work out whether to stay. You both need a steady space to do that.

• You communicate very differently. One of you wants to talk it through; the other shuts down. One of you raises things; the other minimises. You both end up feeling unheard.

• One of you is changing. A career shift, midlife, a bereavement, therapy — something has moved in one of you, and the relationship is creaking as it tries to keep up.

How I work with couples: Imago Relationship Therapy

I use Imago Relationship Therapy, an approach designed specifically for long-term relationships. It's structured but human, with techniques I'll guide you through in the room, not endless free-flowing argument that just replays what you do at home.

What Imago does well, and why I trained in it, is help couples slow down enough to actually hear each other. Most long-term relationship conflict isn't really about the surface issue. It's about the unmet need underneath, and the older wound that need is sitting on top of. Imago gives us a way to surface that gently, without one of you becoming the villain.

Over our work together, you can expect to:

• Understand the patterns underneath your conflict — including the bits that pre-date your relationship

• Learn to hear each other without going straight into defence

• Find safer ways to raise difficult things rather than letting them build

• Reconnect with what brought you together — warmth, fun, intimacy, friendship

• Make repair after rupture, rather than papering over it

What sessions look like

Couples sessions are 60 minutes, £65, at The Psychotherapy Place on Audlem Road in Nantwich, or online via Zoom across the UK. We start with both of you in the room, I rarely see partners separately, because the work happens in the space between you.

Our first session is a chance for me to hear from each of you about what's brought you, what you're hoping for, and how you're each experiencing the relationship right now. From there we'll agree how we'd like to work. I don't take sides. I won't tell you whether to stay or go. And I'll be honest with you both, kindly, about what I'm seeing.

Beginning Your Journey Together

If you and your partner are ready to embark on a journey towards a more connected relationship, please express your interest via the contact form.