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The Journey in Partnership

This is an exciting time to be in an intimate partnership. That’s because neuroscience, spirituality, politics, psychology, and the therapeutic sciences and arts have advanced to bring together new insights about successful relationships. Through these lenses, we see what traps people in conflict or causes infidelity, reactivity, avoidance of intimacy, and other relationship dilemmas. If you look down the road and yearn to have a deeper, more peaceful, meaningful, and loving connection with your intimate partner, the road looks back at you and beckons on.

Intimate relationships deserve safe, private, respectful places to resolve pain and find new joys. My training and experience allow me to hone in quickly on problem areas and to provide the tools and understanding for partners to continue the journey joyfully with each other.
Somatic work is useful in couples therapy and at Counseling for Joy we don’t just talk. We put our minds and bodies, our whole beings, into the journey. As Dr. Susan Johnson, the founder of Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT), explains: “Having clients in therapy pay attention to their biologically based affective responses (emotions) helps them utilize an important source of adaptive information to aid problem-solving.” Co-regulation involves not just verbally being in sync with someone, it involves bringing awareness to the very being, the nervous system, the energy of the life force.

Learning new skills with a partner allows for a smoother, happier relationship in which communication, intimacy, and mutual appreciation are improved.

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When you lose your laugh you lose your footing. - Ken Kesey — When you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
– Ken Kesey

Every couple that I see in couples therapy has left one another in pain for a long time and just gone off to their busy lives. What people really need to communicate to their partner is that when their partner is uncomfortable, angry, sad, lonely, disappointed, hurt or anxious, you really want to be able to say, ‘Talk to me, baby. I’m listening. The world stops when you’re upset, and I listen.’ - Dr John Gottman, researcher of what makes for successful couples — Every couple that I see in couples therapy has left one another in pain for a long time and just gone off to their busy lives. What people really need to communicate to their partner is that when their partner is uncomfortable, angry, sad, lonely, disappointed, hurt or anxious, you really want to be able to say, ‘Talk to me, baby. I’m listening. The world stops when you’re upset, and I listen.’
– Dr John Gottman, researcher of what makes for successful couples

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The road in relationship winds through intimacy. It rises through conflict and isolation. It wraps around grief and loss. It flushes with yearning and desire. And it circles around again to restoration and love. Sometimes relationships need a helping hand to climb a step or lead lost partners from a slump. Deeper understanding and appreciation grow when the road wanders through a safe and sacred therapeutic space. Joy and hope are renewed in deep psychodynamic work. - Judy Rintoul — The road in relationship winds through intimacy. It rises through conflict and isolation. It wraps around grief and loss. It flushes with yearning and desire. And it circles around again to restoration and love. Sometimes relationships need a helping hand to climb a step or lead lost partners from a slump. Deeper understanding and appreciation grow when the road wanders through a safe and sacred therapeutic space. Joy and hope are renewed in deep psychodynamic work.
– Judy Rintoul

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Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts. - Voltaire — Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.
– Voltaire

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A journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. - John Steinbeck. — A journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
– John Steinbeck

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