Couples counseling, in my experience, is often one of the briefer therapies. For many couples, communication is the primary problem. Once that is addressed, the couple can often begin to work on re-establishing understanding and intimacy on their own time, between and eventually without counseling sessions. To that end, from the very first session of counseling, I encourage couples to learn and use IMAGO, a simple but highly effective listening and responding strategy developed by Harville Hendrix, author of GETTING THE LOVE YOU WANT (1988). After the first session, I meet individually with both members of the couple to do a detailed intake that helps me understand each person’s background and patterns. This enables me to help the couple identify and change the patterns that each brings to the conflicts they are having with each other. During all subsequent sessions, we work together to highlight and improve the way individual patterns are interacting with each other to create the couple’s specific dynamic.
SEXUAL INTIMACY: For some couples, sexual intimacy remains robust despite growing conflict between them. For many, though, when emotional intimacy has diminished, sexual intimacy suffers greatly or disappears altogether. As conflict lessens and emotional intimacy improves, I encourage couples to use specific strategies that gradually enable them to re-establish (or create, in those cases where it has never existed before) physical and sexual trust, pleasure and intimacy. Sometimes, sexual intimacy has suffered because one or both members of the couple are survivors of sexual trauma of some sort. In these cases, using gradual and gentle strategies to establish a sense of physical safety, control and trust is essential. These strategies, in tandem with techniques to improve communication and emotional intimacy, can often enable even couples where one or both members have been highly traumatized to achieve a new experience can often enable even couples where one or both members have been highly traumatized to achieve a new experience of sexual intimacy and satisfaction.