​Coaching for couples, whether married or not, is about pragmatic skills to move forward with healthy communication and interactions. It is a type of life coaching and isn’t focused on mental health challenges. However, there are times when therapy is necessary to help heal deeper issues. As a licensed psychotherapist and experienced life coach with offices in New City, NY in Rockland County and Warwick, NY in Orange County as well as online, I offer a unique blend of both approaches where appropriate.

Most people call on a marriage counselor or marriage coach only when a relationship crisis occurs such as an infidelity following an affair or betrayal of trust.  Sometimes pornography use is an issue.  Often, uncovering marital issues reveals depression, anxiety or other mental health issues. It is not uncommon for undiagnosed adult ADHD to be involved causing significant challenges.  For many, differences in parenting styles or challenging teenagers become sources of conflict.  Some call seeking to address issues pro-actively, before they get married, or when conflicts arise. Others call on me to simply help improve what they know is a valuable relationship.  But for those who are in crisis in their marriage or intimate relationship, there are five distinct categories of emotional symptoms that often arise when a marriage or relationship is in trouble.

• Anger – directed either towards one’s partner or oneself, this may be a powerful block to effective communication when the anger turns into an ongoing and simmering resentment, rage, or a withdrawal from thOe relationship.

• Shame – marriage troubles can lead to feeling shame about the failure of the marriage. What to tell your family and friends?

• Guilt – related to shame but includes feelings of being responsible for the marriage problems, with feelings of remorse.

• Sadness – marriage trouble can cause you to appear as simply being “off your game” or it can swell to a full-blown depression.

• Fear – in anticipation of the many challenging consequences of a failed marriage.

I am fully prepared to help you get through your current marriage crisis or to give you a “tune-up” on how to live within an enduring, loving relationship. My top priority is to help you save your relationship. I help partners move from resentment and disconnection to understanding and trust, even after betrayal following an affair, or long-standing patterns.  During our sessions, I focus treatment on three entities: you, your spouse, and your relationship, each being an entity unto itself. To this end, I often break up sessions into individual as well as couples visits, sometimes splitting sessions accordingly.  

I use Emotionally Focused Therapy, one of the best documented, most substantive, and well-researched approaches to couple counseling in the world today.  Developed by Dr. Sue Johnson, it is one of the best validated couples’ interventions in North America. With Emotionally Focused Therapy, 86 percent of couples reported feeling happier in their relationships.  This is in stark contrast to other forms of couples therapy which have been shown in studies to be about 35 percent effective.  And the results have been shown to be long-lasting. It is an experiential, emotion-based, now-oriented process of helping couples become closer.  It provides a road map of helping couples who are lost in a painful and often lonely cycle, to learn and experience a new and healthier pattern of interaction.
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Coaching for couples, whether married or not, is about skills to move forward – in communication and interactions.  It’s a subset of life coaching and is not focused on the past or on mental health challenges.  Sometimes, however, psychotherapy (also referred to as therapy and counseling) is required in order to help heal deeper issues for either of the partners separately and/or the relationship itself.  Popular culture including Hollywood, television, and the advertising industries feed us false, misleading and detrimental images of what love is.  Learning what healthy "love" looks like is essential for cultivating the same in our intimate relationships. Healthy and effective communication is key.  So is forgiveness, wherever that is possible, though often not at all easy.
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Lifetime TV Interview
See link at bottom of Home Page to view videos from my Lifetime Television interview as well as  other YouTube videos including on Peeling the Onion, which shows how couples can go beneath the surface of their “stuck” cycles of bickering, arguing and withdrawal, to focus on the “core” issues rather than on the repetitive symptoms of the problem. 

My New City, NY office is convenient to Nanuet, Spring Valley and Stony Point; my Warwick, NY office is near Greenwood Lake and Monroe, NY and accessible to Vernon, NJ.  I also work virtually through my confidential, HIPAA-compliant web portal.