Couples & relationships
I'm not here to tell you what your relationship should look like.
Online relationship therapy for two people or more — conventional or unconventional, monogamous or open — working on what is actually happening between you.
The premise
Does it work for the people inside it?
Most couples arrive with a version of the same problem: something keeps happening and neither person can stop it. The content varies — money, sex, an affair, a mother-in-law, a decision about children — but the mechanism is usually older and more repetitive than the subject matter.
Relationships can involve two people or more. They can be monogamous, open, polyamorous or structured in other consensual ways. Clients may be straight, gay, bisexual or otherwise identify. Relationships may include kink or fetish. A married couple dealing with an affair and a polyamorous relationship dealing with jealousy are equally at home here.
The same argument, arriving again in a slightly different costume. Resentment that has been accumulating for years. An affair, disclosed or discovered. Trust that has to be rebuilt from something other than promises. Sex that quietly stopped, or desire that never matched in the first place. Jealousy. One person already halfway out of the door.
Clients may be straight, gay, bisexual or otherwise identify; relationships may be conventional or unconventional, and may include kink or fetish. My role is not to impose a model of what a healthy relationship is supposed to look like.
I don't arrive with a template of a healthy relationship and measure you against it. I'm interested in whether needs can be expressed, boundaries understood, agreements respected, conflict resolved, and whether the relationship can change as the people in it change.
- Can needs be expressed?
- Can boundaries be understood?
- Can agreements be respected?
- Can conflict be resolved?
- Can trust exist?
- Does each person have space to be heard?
- Can the relationship evolve when needs change?
What we work on
The real material.
Conflict and connection
- The same argument, repeating
- Resentment that has accumulated
- Communication that has become tactical
- Emotional disconnection
- Mental health difficulties affecting the relationship
- Different needs and different expectations
Trust and infidelity
- Affairs, disclosed or discovered
- Secrecy and concealment
- Rebuilding trust after a breach
- Understanding what happened and why
- Deciding whether to continue
- What a future relationship would require
Sex and desire
- Sex that has stopped
- Differences in desire
- Sexual function and anxiety
- Fantasy, kink and fetish
- Shame and disclosure between partners
- Sexual compatibility over time
Structure and agreements
- Opening an existing relationship
- Managing an established open relationship
- Consensual non-monogamy and polyamory
- Multi-partner relationships
- Jealousy, boundaries and agreements
- LGBTQ+ and non-traditional relationship structures
Infidelity
After the disclosure.
An affair rarely arrives with a tidy explanation. What follows is usually a period in which both people are trying to think clearly at precisely the moment thinking clearly is hardest.
Affairs are among the most common reasons couples contact me, and among the most poorly served by moralising. I don't moralise, and I don't arrive with a villain and a victim already cast. That framing tends to shorten the conversation rather than deepen it.
- What happened
- Why it happened
- What the disclosure has changed
- Whether trust can be rebuilt
- What each person needs now
- Whether the relationship should continue
- What a future relationship would have to look like
Some couples repair. Some restructure. Some separate with far more clarity and far less destruction than they would have managed alone. Therapy's purpose is not automatically to preserve the relationship.
Practicalities
Sessions and fees.
Couples psychotherapy is 50 minutes at £300 / $400. Extended couples psychotherapy is 90 minutes at £450 / $600, which many couples prefer when the material is complex or when partners are in different locations and time zones.
For relationship sessions involving more than two partners, session length and fee are arranged individually depending on the needs and number of people involved.
Requests are reviewed for availability, suitability and jurisdiction before anything is scheduled.