Couples Therapy in Manhattan
Relationships can be among life's greatest sources of connection, meaning, and growth. They can also become places where people feel misunderstood, disconnected, hurt, or alone.
Many couples come to therapy after finding themselves caught in recurring conflicts, emotional distance, or patterns that neither partner fully understands. Others seek support during periods of transition, uncertainty, betrayal, parenting challenges, or major life changes.
Couples therapy gives both partners time to slow down, understand what is happening beneath the surface, and begin to see the relationship from a different perspective. The work can help make sense of recurring conflicts, emotional reactions, unmet needs, and the ways each partner experiences the other.
Understanding the Patterns Beneath the Conflict
Some couples find themselves caught in patterns that repeat despite their best efforts to resolve them. They may find themselves having the same argument repeatedly, struggling to recover from a rupture, or wondering whether they can continue together.
Communication difficulties are often only part of the problem, and patterns of conflict usually carry more than the words being exchanged. Relationships can bring up fears, expectations, vulnerabilities, family patterns, and emotional reactions that developed long before the current relationship began.
Together, we will explore these dynamics with curiosity and honesty. The goal is to understand the meaning of these recurring patterns, why they continue to pull the relationship into distress, and what each partner may be bringing into the dynamic.
Feeling Seen and Understood
Partners may find that even when they explain themselves clearly, they still do not feel understood by one another. They may know how to argue, defend themselves, or explain their position, yet still feel unseen within the relationship.
Couples therapy gives each partner an opportunity to speak more openly about their experience while also listening differently to the other person. As the work develops, partners may begin to recognize what lies beneath the argument: hurt, fear, longing, anger, shame, disappointment, or the wish to feel closer.
Understanding each other more fully does not mean agreeing about everything. It can make it possible to respond with more awareness and less reactivity.
A Jungian Approach to Couples Therapy
A Jungian approach looks at what may be happening underneath the conflict between partners. The same argument can repeat again and again even when the couple is trying to solve it. Often, the disagreement is tied to older fears, unmet needs, family patterns, or expectations that each person brings into the relationship without fully realizing it.
We may also look at projection, including the qualities, fears, hopes, or conflicts that one partner may place onto the other without being aware of it. This can help each person sort out what is happening in the relationship now and what may be connected to earlier experiences in their own life. The goal is to understand the relationship more clearly and respond differently to conflicts.
Common Areas of Focus
I work with couples around concerns such as:
Recurring arguments and communication difficulties
Emotional distance and disconnection
Affairs, betrayal, and rebuilding trust
Sexuality and intimacy
Life transitions and major changes
Parenting stress
Cultural differences
Non-monogamous relationships
Questions about commitment and the future of the relationship
Repeating relationship patterns
I welcome married and unmarried couples, heterosexual and LGBTQ+ couples, and monogamous and consensually non-monogamous relationships.
What Meaningful Change Can Look Like
Success in couples therapy is not measured only by whether a couple remains together. For some couples, the work leads to rebuilding trust, greater emotional closeness, improved communication, or a different understanding of the relationship. For others, it may bring clarity about whether the relationship can continue and what each person needs moving forward.
My role is not to decide whether a couple should stay together or separate. I help each partner better understand themselves, one another, and the relationship they have created together.
Sometimes the work leads to renewed connection. At other times, it helps a couple separate with greater clarity, honesty, and respect.
Considering Couples Therapy?
Couples often wait a long time before reaching out. By the time they begin therapy, they may feel discouraged, disconnected, uncertain, or exhausted from trying to solve the same problems on their own.
A complimentary 15-minute clinical consultation gives us time to discuss what is bringing you to couples therapy, answer initial questions, and consider whether working together feels appropriate.
If you are interested in understanding your relationship more deeply and becoming more aware of the patterns shaping it, a Jungian approach to couples therapy may be a good fit.