In both same-gender and mixed-gender relationships, issues and problems arise. In some traditions and psychologies, this is considered a positive thing. Relationships bring up whatever needs attention and resolution in either partner.  So when something comes up, it means the relationship is working: something is ready to heal. 

Couples counseling is a way to consciously address problems that come up in your relationship, especially problems that persist.  It is a way to gain perspective on how you relate.  While sometimes the focus of sessions is on the issue itself, often the focus is also on the process of how you as a couple relate. Regardless of the issue, the point of the process is to empower you as a couple to connect and then look for and find your answers together.

Couples enter counseling together for many reasons: differing approaches to time, work, or money; communication difficulties; differences raising children; dealing with betrayals or dishonesty; dealing with addictions in one or both partners; and many different kinds of sexual issues (see below).  But what connects these various reasons for seeking help is the desire that underlies them: to more deeply know, support, and love one another.  This is the guiding emphasis for couples counseling, and it is possible regardless of the form, or lack of form, the relationship may take. 

More for Couples Working with Sexual Issues

Over the past three years, I have worked a great deal with couples dealing with sexual issues: one partner wants more or less sex than the other; one partner wants a different kind of sex than the other; both partners want less but fear they may be losing an important part of their lives; or one or both partners have a history with or are currently dealing with sexual trauma or sexual addiction.

Sexual patterns in relationships are powerful and frequently difficult to transform.  In part, this is because of the "no talk" rule that surrounds sexuality.  Although talk about sex is everywhere in the media and sex is more discussed than ever, in most people's personal lives it is still off-limits for meaningful and serious conversation.  Even for those more comfortable talking about sex, admitting and trying to cope with dissatisfaction in this area of life is usually very difficult.  As a result of this "no talk" rule, sexual problems or concerns become split off and isolated in the relationship, making them less likely to change or improve.  

For this reason, couples counseling to work with these issues can be powerfully transformative.  Bringing sexuality back into the conversation of your relationship, and also having another person besides the two of you who can hear about and assist with your struggles together, is powerful medicine for restoring an organic, shame-free, sexual experience together.

Most couples discover that their sexual issues do not exist in a vaccuum.  In some way, what happens sexually mirrors or responds to other dynamics in the relationship (such as communication, emotions, spirituality, others), and these can be worked with alongside the sexual issue per se.  Likewise, because sexual energy is life energy, when it begins to freely circulate in the relationship once more, most couples discover many other benefits from taking this journey together: increased emotional intimacy, vitality, and a deeper sense of reciprocity in the relationship.  

"Relationships have the power to break personal patterns and the power to establish and reinforce them.  Conscious partnership, where we genuinely encounter our partners, allowing ourselves to be affected by the encounter, can transform even the most stuck places in ourselves.  At the same time, unconscious partnership tends to breed a stuckness, as both people in the relationship mutually reinforce undesirable patterns in one another."

-from Trauma, Addiction,and the Curriculum of the Soul (forthcoming)