When Your Relationship Feels Broken
Relationships can become deeply distressed without being beyond repair.
Couples often arrive in therapy after months or years of disconnection, recurring conflict, resentment or loneliness. Sometimes there has been a more significant rupture: an affair, betrayal, loss of trust, trauma, secrecy or an event that has fundamentally changed the way one partner experiences the other.
When this happens, simply learning to communicate better is rarely enough.
My approach to couples counselling integrates evidence-informed relationship therapy from The Gottman Method with Dr Sara Nasserzadeh's Love by Design framework. Together, these approaches allow us to look not only at what has gone wrong, but at what a healthy, resilient and meaningful relationship actually requires in order to move forward.
For couples experiencing significant breaches of trust, including infidelity and betrayal, I draw upon the Gottman Atone, Attune, Attach model.
Repair begins with understanding the injury rather than attempting to move past it too quickly. Atone creates space for accountability, questions, grief and acknowledgement of the impact of what has occurred. Attune focuses on rebuilding emotional understanding and responsiveness between partners. Attach involves gradually restoring intimacy, trust, connection and a shared sense of us.
This work is not about pretending the rupture did not happen, nor is it about returning the relationship to exactly what it was before.
Sometimes the more meaningful goal is to understand what happened, repair what can be repaired, and consciously create a relationship that is stronger, safer and more honest than the one that existed previously.
Repairing Relational Ruptures
“There are few experiences more lonely than feeling alone within a relationship.”
“There are few experiences more lonely than feeling alone within a relationship.”
Building Love Deliberately
Alongside this repair work, I incorporate Dr Sara Nasserzadeh's Love by Design framework, which explores the relational ingredients that allow relationships to remain healthy and sustainable over time.
Rather than viewing successful relationships as something that simply happens when two people love each other enough, this approach recognises that enduring relationships are created through the ways partners relate to one another: how they build trust, demonstrate respect, respond to vulnerability, navigate difference, maintain attraction and intimacy, and continue to grow both individually and together.
This gives us somewhere important to go beyond resolving the immediate problem.
The question becomes not only "How do we stop hurting each other?", but also "What kind of relationship do we want to create from here?"
Therapy that honours complexity
Available OnlineMore InformationSuitable for individuals, couples and helping professionals with queries about the process.
Available OnlineMore InformationSupport for overwhelm, anxiety, depression trauma, identity and emotional wellbeing.
Available OnlineMore InformationSupport for communication breakdown, betrayal and emotional disconnection.
Available OnlineMore InformationSupport for communication breakdown, betrayal and emotional disconnection.
