Relationship Coaching for Couples - including 
Infidelity & Affair Recovery

​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 and virtual, I offer a unique blend of both approaches where appropriate.

Most people call on a relationship coach or marriage counselor only when a relationship crisis occurs such as an infidelity following an affair or betrayal of trust.  Sometimes pornography use is an issue.  Excessive gambling and anger management may be present.  Indeed, narcissism in one's partner may be at play.  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. 

 

These challenges can have pervasive effects in other areas of functioning including burnout at work.  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 sets of emotions that typically 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 – relationship troubles can lead to feeling shame about the failure of the partnership. What to tell your family and friends?

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

• Sadness – relationship 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 partnership or marriage.

I am fully prepared to help you get through your current relationship or marital 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 partner, 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.  
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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.​

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.