What this can feel like
- The same fight, different week, that you can both predict before it starts
- Attachment patterns you can name and still can't change at the speed you'd like
- Sex and intimacy that has gotten complicated, distant, or anxious in ways you don't have language for yet
- A history of relationships that keep ending the same way
- Polyamory, open relationships, or non-traditional structures that don't have ready-made therapy frameworks built for them
- Dating after a long relationship, after coming out, after a major identity shift
- Intimacy concerns that are tangled up with body image, dysphoria, or trauma
How therapy can help
We work with relationship and intimacy concerns in several ways:
- Individual therapy — to do the parts of relationship work that aren't about your partner
- Couples counseling — using approaches like Gottman Method and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), adapted for LGBTQ+ couples and non-traditional relationship structures (see Couples Counseling)
- Attachment-focused work — to understand and shift the older patterns showing up in current relationships
- Sex therapy adjacent work — for intimacy, desire, dysphoria-related sexual concerns; we refer to specialized providers when needed
- IFS — for the parts of you that show up only with certain partners, and never the way you'd want them to
You don't have to figure this out alone
If any of this looks familiar, that's reason enough to reach out. The first conversation is mostly logistics — you don't have to walk in knowing what to call any of it.