A perfect couple is just two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other.

Struggling in Your Relationships?

At the outset of a relationship, no one would ever have imagined that it could hurt so much.  How did our relationship suddenly become so exhaustingly difficult?  At a certain point of closeness, when two lives overlap, there arises a competition of needs and a colliding of emotions, in the confined space of a still growing relationship.  Communication skills, practical solutions, and emotional sensitivity reach their limit and each partner faces a growth challenge. Emotional pain cumulates and it becomes important for the relationship to rise to new levels of sensitivity and responsibility.  The relationship must learn to do something constructive with pain.  Emotional pain will either drive distance into the relationship or become a bonding experience.  When individuals and couples learn to bond over pain, relationships become emotionally secure.  Secure relationships will still encounter conflict and struggle but instead of hurting the relationship, conflict will initiate a creative and constructive process that will work sensitively to meet the needs of both.  The relationship will then become a source of growth and healing.

What Is Relational Work?

Relational work is for individuals seeking to understand and improve all of their relationships (eg. romantic, family, at work, at school, in the neighbourhood, with themselves).  How we relate to anyone, tends to be how we relate to everyone.  Are we people pleasing?  Do we feel misunderstood?   Is there a particular way that we want to be seen by others (eg. as smart, as strong, as good)?  Emotional undercurrents, underlying pain, and subconscious thoughts are at work in all our relationships.  Cultivating awareness of these helps us to manage the automatic processes and allows for more possibility in relationships.  Cultivating personal resources readies an individual to balance dependence and inter-dependence.  Determining what personal boundaries are healthy and necessary creates relationship stability.  Learning how to process emotional pain and how to heal cultivates bonding and protects relationships from unresolved pain.  When emotional pain goes unchecked, it eventually projects onto relationships (eg. blame, criticism, defensiveness, distance).  Relational work is an effective approach to personal growth because, more than any other experience, relationships challenge us to understand ourselves, to take greater responsibility for ourselves, and to figure out how to cooperatively get what we need from others to heal and to grow. 

What Is Couples Work?

Couples work focuses particularly on the emotional dynamics of the relationship that either produce hurt and distance or sensitivity and bonding.   The process is more experiential than informational as partners experience in real-time what bonding can occur when core emotions are discovered and expressed.  Partners learn to communicate and respond when vulnerability arises.  The couple learns how to balance closeness and independence and to use this balance for maintaining desire in the relationship.  Partners learn to show up more authentically for themselves and for each other.  Couples discover that what hurts helps to guide healing and restoration of trust.  Long-term committed couples cultivate the resources needed to build a stable and satisfying relationship. 

Affairs/Betrayal of Trust

Sometimes couples work focuses on particular pain in a relationship.  Healing from an affair, or betrayal of trust is a difficult task for any couple.  Couples therapy provides space to process pain, to heal, and to rebuild the relationship.

Uncoupling

Sometimes it is too painful to hang on any longer. Relationships can become stuck in patterns of perpetual pain. One or both partners may decide that it is time to release each other and to break up. This is a difficult decision for couples. Couples therapy can be used as a space to consider this difficult decision and if necessary to process the ending of the relationship. Uncoupling partners learn to treat each other well even when it hurts.  

Meeting a therapist is free.  Not meeting a therapist can be expensive. 

The quality of your relationships will be the single most determining factor to contribute satisfaction in your life.  Relationships will either be the cause of or the comfort to emotional pain.  Learn to access bonding out of emotional pain.   At Liminal Space, we understand that partners and couples are often new to therapy.  We invite individuals and couples to book a free 30-minute consultation to discuss concerns, asks questions, and to explore whether therapy is a helpful option for them.  Our goal is to respond within 24 hours to setup your initial appointment.  The contact form below will take about 2 minutes to fill out and get you started.  We look forward to meeting you soon.