Arguments and Conflicts
It's rarely about the dishes, or being late, or whose turn it was to call the plumber, even though that's usually what the argument looks like on the surface. The same disagreement keeps returning in different clothing, one of you withdraws while the other pursues, or both of you escalate until neither remembers what started it, and afterwards there's a residue that doesn't fully clear before the next one begins.
Underneath most recurring conflict sits a much smaller, more vulnerable question that rarely gets said out loud: do you actually see me, do I matter to you, can I count on you. Once a couple gets stuck in a conflict pattern, both partners tend to fall into predictable roles, the pursuer and the withdrawer, the one who raises their voice and the one who shuts down, and each person's response ends up confirming the other's worst fear about them, which only deepens the pattern further.
In therapy together, we slow conflict right down, often frame by frame, to see what's actually happening between you in the moment it starts to go wrong. We look at what each of you is really asking for underneath the content of the argument, and build a different way of disagreeing, one that allows for real difference without it threatening the relationship itself. We also look at repair: not just how to avoid the fight, but how to recover from it well when it happens anyway, because it will.