Couple Therapy – Relationship Tips

Parent, Child and Adult Roles in Relationships In working with a couple, I was recently reminded of a long established and widely used model of relationships, called Transaction Analysis.  Developed by Canadian psychiatrist Eric Berne in the 1940s, I first came...

Image by Freepik I have been listening recently to writer and broadcaster Jon Ronson’s series about the origin stories behind contemporary culture wars, entitled ‘Things Fell Apart’. It is an excellent set of stories about how issues such as divides between...

After the new year, many couples start thinking about whether to embark on couples therapy. The festive season can often be difficult for couples who have already been struggling with their relationship.  The presence (or absence) of extended families; high...

My clients, both couples and individuals, are all talking about Christmas in sessions right now. Whilst many of us hope for a joyous time, where conflicts and differences can be put aside, there is often a gap between our hopes and realities. And when the gap comes to...

We seem to live in a world in which anxiety is never far away. A glance at social media or news channels can quickly be unnerving. And in couple therapy, different versions of anxiety are often central to the difficulties couples face, even though that might not be...

These three questions are often asked of me when couples come for their first couple therapy session. Often clients hope for a fairly simple answer, but all three depend on the specific couple. In this article I discuss ways of thinking about these questions, which...

If your summer holiday fell short of expectations in terms of rekindling love, connection or sex, you’re not alone. This is a time when couple therapists often see a lot of people wanting to start working on their relationship.  Sadly, high expectations that a...

With many of us travelling to the sun right now, expectations for couples can start to rise. Couples where one or both partners have demanding high pressure jobs can finally think about taking a break and spending time with each other as a couple, and with their...

It’s no surprise that affairs are a common reason why people come to couple therapy. In this article, I want to make some observations about the potential meanings of affairs, and rather than necessarily signalling the end of a relationship, how they can in many...