This service is for couples who are at a make-or-break moment in their relationship. They don't know whether it will be able to heal or needs to end — they just know that something needs to change. Maybe you are caught in cycles of escalating conflict that you can't seem to find your way out of. Maybe you just discovered your partner has been hiding things from you and your trust has been shattered. Maybe you have been living a double life and want to finally feel whole again. You loved each other once upon a time, and maybe you still do, but you can't seem to figure out how to move forward.

Every conversation turns into an all-out fight. The silences and withdrawals feel so heavy with tension that home doesn't feel safe anymore. You can't sleep, intrusive thoughts pile on, and you feel like your entire world is upside down. The betrayal of trust may have permeated every memory of your relationship and you play it over and over in your head, trying to work out the details. You feel traumatized, obsessive, ashamed, and angry. Depression seeps in and you begin to feel emotionally numb. With every resentful fight there seems to be less and less hope that things can get better. Maybe your friends and family suggest you should leave. Maybe one or both of you have threatened divorce. The idea of ever being emotionally vulnerable with your partner feels like a distant memory.

At your lowest you feel small, powerless, rejected, and still in shock. How could a relationship that began with so much love and passion have come to this? You might be wondering if you married the wrong person, or maybe if you have become the wrong person for them to be married to.

For many couples facing infidelity or high conflict, the root of the conflict is not a lack of love, but a breakdown in one of these areas:

• Poor Communication Patterns: No matter how hard you try, you don't feel heard by your partner, much less understood. Frankly, you don't understand them either, and what little you do understand, you don't like. The conflict spirals out of control and you don't know what to do or how to break the cycle.
• Unresolved Past Hurts: This could include attachment insecurity, unresolved trauma, or old arguments that resurface over and over. You project your wounds onto your partner and create self-fulfilling prophecies. They keep you both stuck in the past, unable to develop and grow.
• Crisis of Identity: When a partner cheats, it is often not because they are rejecting their partner, but because they are trying to reclaim another version of themselves that can feel buried under all their present responsibilities and domestic pressures.
• Loss of Intimacy: This numbness and emotional disconnection in the marriage can be due to a slow drifting apart, a deadeningly predictable routine, a lost sense of self, or resentment. Whatever the reason, the result is a lack of feeling desired, which eliminates sexual and relational connection.

I use a combination of Family Systems therapy, Attachment science, and Relational Psychodynamic therapy to help couples identify unhelpful patterns they are stuck in and help them better connect with one another. Family Systems therapy values the context you were born into and the patterns you learned to deal with relationships and emotions. Attachment science provides a foundational understanding for how you grew up, how it shaped your personality, and where the healing needs to occur. Relational Psychodynamic therapy guides us as we navigate your defenses, coping strategies, and your meaning for life.

My job in all of this is to help you address where trust has been broken, practice beneficial ways of communicating, learn how to fight well, and help you build a better marriage than you had before.

This is not just an interest for me — I see it as a calling to help couples in the DFW metroplex navigate conflict and infidelity. With a Doctorate in Professional Counseling, I have extensive training and years of experience helping with these specific issues. I also stay current in the field, consult, and train with other clinicians so you can experience long-lasting change.

Couples engaging in therapy often tell us that they begin to:

• Restore the trust that was broken
• Feel heard by their spouse
• Feel more connected to their partner on a daily basis
• Sleep more soundly at night
• Understand how their own family shaped their current relationship
• Navigate conflict with understanding and resolution
• Experience more satisfying sex and intimacy
• Enjoy and respect their partner again
• Imagine a future together again

This kind of therapy will involve deep work in a collaborative and exploratory space. Sometimes I will see either of you individually, and other times we will practice a communication skill together. I'm here as a guide and expert on therapy, while you are an expert on your experience of the relationship. We will work together in a confidential environment and unpack all that you are facing, both in the present and in the past — and you can set the pace.

In our first session I want to hear all of the emotions and conflict you are experiencing, as well as get to know your history and background, which will provide context for our work together. Our first sessions are a place for you and me to get a sense of what treatment would look like and see if we are a good fit together.

Trust is a bond that is slowly built and easily broken. Depending on how entrenched your conflict is and your willingness to try to understand one another, the length of your time in therapy may vary. Improvement for you might not mean healing, but instead clarity about whether or not to stay in the relationship at all. However, you will likely begin to feel either improvement or clarity about the relationship within two months of therapy.

Especially for infidelity and high-conflict couples, I recommend in-person therapy whenever possible to create a safe relational space. If a couple has a tendency to become dysregulated when in conflict, these sessions are best face-to-face and not over a tenuous Wi-Fi connection. I do offer virtual options when necessary to accommodate my patients' busy schedules, but only after we are all confident in the couple's ability to engage in conflict productively.