The goal of couple counseling is to help couples create a safe place and a relationship that is “big enough” for both partners–big enough to include the wishes, hopes, dreams, and longings of each partner.
- What is Professional Couples Counseling?
- Two Most Common Challenges: Communication and Conflict
- Benefits of Couples and Marriage Counseling with Someone Local
- Why Many Find Dr. Jay is the Right Therapist for Them
- What to Expect in a Session
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Ready to Reconnect with Your Partner? Contact Dr. Jay Today
What is Professional Couples Counseling?
Couple counseling includes dealing with typical day-to-day issues in their life together, as well as extra-difficult or high-conflict situations, such as rebuilding a relationship after it has been damaged by infidelity, trauma, or substance use/abuse. As a professional helper, I work together with both partners on their relationship issues and challenges to increase their understanding, sympathy, acceptance, and respect for each other, and then to move on to practical solutions.
Two Most Common Challenges: Communication and Conflict
When a couple reaches out to me for help, their “presenting problem” is almost always communication or conflict, or both of these.
Couples have difficulty communicating clearly and non-angrily about many different “content issues” or relationship problems such as household responsibilities, finances, sex, intimacy, parenting, in-laws, children, hobbies, friendship (healthy or unhealthy), as well as difficult or painful issues such as emotional involvement with other people, anxiety, depression, in a way that threatens the marriage. An unhealthy or unskillful communication style leads to conflict, and couples want to learn how to prevent feeling trapped, avoid fights, exit from fights, and repair their relationship and rebuild trust after a fight.
No couple can avoid all conflict, but in marriage counseling, I help couples learn how to manage conflict lovingly and wisely.
Benefits of Couples and Marriage Counseling with Someone Local
I have been counseling couples since 2004 in the New York City area. I’ve worked with hundreds of clients in all 5 boroughs of New York City, as well as Nassau County, Suffolk County, and Westchester County. I meet with couples in person in my Flushing (Queens) office, as well as on Zoom.
We New Yorkers tend to think of ourselves as tough and as survivors (which we are!). As a born and bred New Yorker, I am well-equipped to talk about the unique challenges that come with living and loving in the New York City area.
Over more than two decades, I have worked with couples from many different cultural backgrounds and who come from many different countries. I study hard and work hard to be sensitive to the nuances of each couple’s cultural context and symptoms.
I have met with hundreds of couples for thousands of hours, listening to their complaints, trauma, and relationship issues, but, more importantly, listening for the pain underneath their complaints. The story of every relationship is unique, but all relationships operate with basically the same dynamics.
Why Many Find Dr. Jay is the Right Therapist for Them
Everyone wants to be loved, understood, accepted, and respected. Everyone wants to feel safe and secure with their partner, to have a deeper connection – that’s what it means to be in a committed, permanent relationship. But at the same time, we all have sensitivities, or “emotional allergies,” and by the time we enter adulthood, we’ve developed a number of protective self-esteem mechanisms, some of them simple and easy to understand, but others complex and difficult to understand.
Couples have told me that they appreciate how I help them explore their inner world and then share that inner world with their partner, and how I help them listen by exercising curiosity about and compassion toward their partner. Clients tell me that they appreciate the warm and non-judgmental safe space I create, and how my sense of calmness makes them feel safe.
What to Expect in a Session
Since every couple is unique, I work hard to customize my approach to each couple, in every session, in a way that meets their very specific needs.
I start with every couple by listening to both, assessing the nature of their pain and their unmet needs, and understanding the way the partners relate to each other. While the past is important – couples come prepared to tell me “who did what to whom” – the present is even more important, because the present is where our relationship counseling work is located, right there in my office or in the Zoom session.
The strategies and techniques I use in helping couples come from Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy. I share with them my understanding of their “dysfunctional dance,” and we work together to develop appropriate goals for our work together.
The basic elements of our work together, which I use in each session, are (1) understanding each partner’s deep longings, (2) helping each partner to tell the other about their longings in a vulnerable and honest way, and (3) helping the other partner to listen with curiosity and compassion. Each time we’re successful in doing this together, the couple experiences a “bonding moment,” which helps them feel safer and more secure with each other.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How long will the process of therapy take?
Some couples arrive with an understanding that problems that developed over years or even decades can’t be untangled and corrected overnight. My rule of thumb is that, the longer a couple has been in the same cycle of distress, without the benefit of help, the longer the process of healing will take.
Of course, a couple is free to pause or leave therapy whenever they want, but the best practice for a couple is to stay the course until they reach the stage where they understand their “dysfunctional dance,” they can avoid it or exit from that negative cycle, and they can repair their attachment bond after a fight. This is a step towards their experiencing deeper connection, better relational and mental health, and a more fulfilling life.
Q: What if my partner doesn’t want to come?
Sometimes one partner will want to start couples counseling before the other partner is ready. In cases like this, I can serve as a coach to the partner who is willing to meet, helping her or him to change their own functioning in the relationship. As one partner becomes healthier, the relationship itself has a chance of becoming healthier.
Q: What does “success” look like in marriage or couples counseling?
Here is an example (composed of elements of my work with many couples) of a successful lasting change treatment approach with couple therapy:
A couple came for their first session with these complaints: the wife complained that her husband spends too much time at work, and the husband complained that his wife nags him. As I listen for the pain beneath the wife’s complaint – her loneliness and her longing to be closer to her husband – and repeat it back to her, she practices sharing her longing vulnerably. The husband realizes that she’s not criticizing but reaching for him, and he begins feeling less defensive and more compassionate, and he begins making space for her desire to do things differently. He realizes that his commitment to work is partly a response to his wife’s criticizing, and as his heart softens toward his wife’s longing for connection, he becomes willing to adjust his work schedule.
The point of this example is to demonstrate that “the problem” is not always the problem – the real problem, our unmet needs and our unfulfilled longings for connection, lies underneath. And as both partners learn to look deeply into the nature of their own as well as their partner’s suffering, as they learn to reach vulnerably and respond compassionately, they will draw closer to each other and experience more of the relationship satisfaction each longs for.
Q: Is online counseling available?
Absolutely. While I do meet with couples in person in my Flushing (Queens) office, I also meet with couples on Zoom. As I mentioned earlier, I have counseled hundreds of couples in all 5 boroughs of New York City as well as Nassau County, Suffolk County, and Westchester County over the past 20 years.
Ready to Reconnect with Your Partner? Contact Dr. Jay Today
Does this sound this might be helpful for you? Why not reach out to me via phone, text, or e-mail to set up a free 15-minute “test drive” Zoom session. Then we can begin meeting either in person in my Flushing (Queens) office, or on Zoom.
Please call or text me at 917-572-4068, or click here to send me a message and schedule your first appointment.
I look forward to working together!
