Couples Therapy
Relationships can bring out some of the most vulnerable parts of us.
You may find yourselves having the same argument over and over, struggling to feel understood, pulling away from one another, or unsure how to repair after something painful has happened. Sometimes couples come to therapy because their relationship is in distress. Others come because something between them isn’t working anymore and they don’t want to keep repeating the same dynamic.
How We Understand Relationships
At EMDR Therapy Austin, we specialize in trauma and understand that our past experiences can shape how we show up in relationships.
The ways we learned to handle conflict, closeness, vulnerability, disappointment, or uncertainty often developed for good reasons. Maybe you learned to pull away when things get intense. Maybe you work hard to get the other person to understand you. You might become critical, try to keep the peace, need reassurance, avoid difficult conversations, or feel responsible for making everything okay.
Each person brings their own history and their own ways of relating into the partnership. The strategies that help one person feel more secure can bump up against what the other person needs when things get difficult. You may pursue a conversation because distance feels unbearable while your partner needs space because conflict feels overwhelming. You may pull away when you feel criticized, only to find your partner pushing harder to get a response from you. Before long, you can find yourselves caught in a dynamic neither of you intended and neither of you quite knows how to change.
We help couples understand what is happening in these moments. What happens to you when your partner responds that way? What do you find yourself doing next? What are you hoping for from them? And what happens in your partner in response? Couples can become so familiar with the argument itself that it becomes difficult to see everything happening underneath it.
Couples therapy asks each of you to be willing to look at yourself. Most of us can make a pretty compelling case for what our partner could do differently. It’s harder to stay curious about what happens inside of us and how we respond when the relationship hits a tender spot. We’ll be interested in your reactions, assumptions, defenses, and the ways you participate in what happens between you and your partner. We want to help both of you see yourselves and each other more clearly, with enough honesty to take responsibility for the places where you have influence.
We want to create more room in the relationship for something different to happen. More openness when it’s tempting to protect yourself. More capacity to hear each other without immediately reacting. More ability to repair when you’ve hurt one another. And more choice about the kind of relationship you want to create together.
Couples Therapy May Be Helpful If…
You keep having the same fight, even when the topic changes.
One of you wants to talk things through while the other shuts down, pulls away, or needs space—and somehow you both end up feeling alone.
You love each other, but lately you’ve felt more like roommates than partners.
Something has happened that damaged trust, and you’re trying to figure out whether—and how—you can repair it.
Sex, affection, or physical closeness has become difficult to talk about, a source of tension, or something that has quietly disappeared from the relationship.
Parenting, family, money, work, grief, or another major change is putting pressure on your relationship and you’re having a harder time navigating it together.
You have different needs, expectations, or ways of approaching the relationship, and those differences keep turning into conflict or disconnection.
You’re questioning the future of your relationship and need a place to understand what each of you wants.
Or maybe your relationship isn’t in crisis. You care about each other and want to understand your relationship more deeply, strengthen what’s already working, or address the places where you tend to get stuck.
Getting Started
Every relationship has its own history. We want to understand yours— What brings you to therapy, what has happened between you, where you tend to get stuck, and what each of you hopes could be different.
Couples therapy gives us space to look at the relationship you have built together alongside the experiences each of you brings to it. Whether you’re coming in after years of struggling with the same issues or something has recently shifted between you, we’ll meet you with curiosity, honesty, and a willingness to engage with what is actually happening in your relationship.
We offer complimentary consultations for couples interested in working with one of our counselors.