If you’re reading this, chances are your relationships often feel one-sided, like you are the only one doing the heavy lifting, listening, connecting, reaching out, being supportive, while the other person just never seems to reciprocate.
anxiety
by Wanda Diep, LCSW.
I've been reflecting on uncertainty and acceptance quite a bit lately. In both my personal and professional life, I hear people talk about uncertainty related to finances, job security, relationships, the climate, politics, etc. (I can definitely go on), and how this uncertainty has been fuel for anxiety, rumination, catastrophizing thoughts, frustration outward or anger inward. People search for solutions to alleviate the distress, and as a fellow human being, I've definitely leaned into a solution-oriented mindset to find relief. But what happens when there doesn't seem to be a concrete solution? What is to be done when it's hard to find certainty or have control or influence over a situation? This is when acceptance can be a tool to try.
couples therapy
by Sara Stanizai, LMFT.
There's a specific kind of couple I see a lot, and you might be one of them. You've been together a long time. There are shared finances, sometimes tied up in property or a business you built together, and a shared history at this point that would be genuinely painful to untangle.
From the outside, and often from the inside too, it looks like it's working. But somewhere along the way, one or each of you stopped being emotionally reachable. Not hostile, just quietly unavailable in a way neither of you ever fully said out loud.
If that's you, especially if your relationship was never going to fit the default script to begin with, (maybe you're queer or trans, maybe one or both of you is somewhere in transition, whether that's a career, a diagnosis, a move, a loss, or some other life milestone that's changed who you are mid-relationship, maybe you're navigating two different cultures' worth of rules about how a relationship is supposed to work, or maybe, like a lot of people, it's honestly some combination of all of the above), here's what I think is actually going on.
couples therapy
by Sara Stanizai, LMFT.
Most people who reach out to me have already done real therapy, sometimes for years, and can describe their relationship with genuine accuracy: the pattern, the roles, the whole shape of it. That was never going to be enough on its own. Here's the structural thing weekly therapy just isn't built to do, no matter how good the therapist is.
couples therapy
by Sara Stanizai, LMFT.
You can know exactly what's wrong with your relationship, be able to give a TED talk on it, and still be completely unable to stop it.
Most couples who sit down with me have already done the work of naming their own dynamic somewhere else, sometimes years of somewhere else. They know who pursues and who withdraws, they know what sets it off, and they're still stuck, because understanding a pattern and actually interrupting it in real time are two entirely different skills, and almost nobody ever gets taught the second one.
Here's what's usually going on underneath the fight you haven't been able to fix.
couples therapy
by Tiffany Hooton, LMFT.
Think about the last time you felt truly at ease in a relationship, not just comfortable, but safe. Safe enough to say what you wanted. Safe enough to say what you didn't. For many of us, that kind of ease isn't something that comes automatically. It's built, slowly, through a thousand small moments of honesty and repair.
