Couples Therapy: A Place to Rebuild Together
Most couples I meet are not out of love. They are out of ways to say the same thing differently. Online couples therapy for partners across North Carolina, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Florida.
What usually happens
The argument is not really the problem.
The loop is. It has about four moves in it, and most couples have run through it more times than they can count. It usually goes something like this:
Something small starts it
A tone. A look. A question that lands wrong. It is almost never the thing you end up arguing about.
One of you moves toward
You push for an answer tonight, because leaving it open feels worse than having the fight.
One of you moves away
You go quiet, or very reasonable, or suddenly busy. It’s not that you stop caring, it’s that going quiet feels like the only way to keep things from getting worse.
You both file it away
Each of you walks away a little more certain of what you already believed about the other. Which makes it easier to start next time.
Nobody in that loop is the villain. You are both doing something that makes complete sense from the inside, which is exactly why it keeps running. It is also why telling each other to stop almost never works.
Two versions
You were both there. You did not have the same evening.
This is the part that surprises people, and can be the most frustrating. What you meant and what your partner received can be honestly, genuinely different, and you can both be telling the truth about it.
What you meant
What landed
“I just want to know we are okay.”
“Here we go again.” One of you is reaching. The other hears the start of a long night.
“I need a minute before I say something I regret.”
“You do not care enough to stay.” One of you is trying to protect the relationship. The other is watching it walk out of the room.
“I am tired and I do not have this in me tonight.”
“I am somewhere down your list.” One of you is at the end of a hard day. The other is doing the math on how many times this has happened.
Neither of you is making it up. Much of the work is getting the gap between those two columns small enough that you can talk across it.
Where the arguing often ends up
It does not get louder. It gets polite.
You stop bringing things up, because you already know how it goes. You get efficient about logistics and careful about everything else. You are kind to each other, and there is a whole subject you both walk around. From the outside, it may look like things have settled down. What actually happened is that you both quietly stopped expecting to be understood, and got very good at living around it.
And for plenty of couples it is nothing like quiet. It is loud, or it is one specific thing that happened that you have not found a way past. That belongs here too.
How I work with couples
We slow the loop down until you can both see it happening
Emotions and behaviors make sense once we understand what they are trying to accomplish. That is as true between two people as it is inside one. The pushing has a job. So does the going quiet. Neither of you picked your move on purpose, and neither of you can drop it just because the other one asked.
So we do not start by working out who is right, and I am not going to hand you a script for how to talk. We slow the whole thing down until you can both recognize it, work out what each move is protecting, and find out what the other person is actually trying to say underneath it.
Once you can both see it, you have a choice you did not have before. You learn to interact with it and respond differently, instead of bracing for it and hoping this time is different.
Internal Family Systems
I am trained in IFS, a modality built on the idea that the part of you that pushes, and the part that shuts down, are each protecting something worth protecting. We find out what.
ACT and CBT
Practical work on the thoughts and the avoidance, so something actually changes in your week and not only in session.
DBT skills
Concrete tools for the moments when your body gets there well before your thinking does, which are moments that really matter.
Motivational interviewing
For when the two of you want different things, or want the same thing at different speeds. We do not pretend that is simple when it is not.
Your therapist
I’m Peter.
I am a licensed clinical social worker, and I have been doing this for six years.
I work with couples and with individuals, and I believe each one makes me better at the other. A lot of what shows up between two people is also running quietly inside each of them, and it is useful to be able to follow it in both directions.
What I hear from many clients is some version of “this is definitely what my relationship needs.” That is the part I am most proud of. I am not here to hand you a worksheet, and I am not here to be the referee who decides which of you is right.
I am warm and I can be direct, and I can usually tell which one will be most helpful on a given day. Once we know each other, we laugh. And if there is something one of you is not seeing, I will say so, gently.
How this works in practice
A few things worth knowing
You are both my client
Not one of you with the other sitting in. I am not building a case for either side and I will not be the tiebreaker. What I am paying attention to is what happens between you.
How I keep my caseload
I keep enough room in my week that nobody is being moved through on a schedule. When we work together you get my full attention for the hour, and I know where we left off without checking my notes first.
How it fits your week
Everything is online, which for two people with two different schedules is often the only reason this happens at all. Sessions run 50 to 53 minutes, and you do not have to be in the same room as each other to attend.
Getting started
Three steps, and the first one is small
One of you reaches out
Send a short note. You do not need to agree on how to describe the problem first.
A free consult
About fifteen minutes. Both of you if that works, one of you if that is an easier place to start.
First session
If it feels like a fit, we book. If it does not, I will help you find someone better suited.
Questions people ask
Good to know
My partner is not sure about therapy. Can I start on my own?
Yes, and it is a more common way to begin than people expect. Plenty of partners are not against therapy so much as unconvinced it will be fair to them. That is a reasonable thing to be cautious about.
We can start with you, and if your partner wants to hear how it works before deciding, they are welcome to join a consult and ask me directly.
Are you going to take sides?
No. I am not the referee, and deciding which of you is right would not help you even if I did it accurately.
That said, I am not going to sit there silently either. If I think one of you is missing something, I will say so, and I will say it to either of you. Being even-handed is not the same as being vague.
We have been having the same argument for years. Is it too late?
Length of time on its own tells me less than you would think. What tells me more is whether there is still some willingness in the room, even a tired version of it. Two people who are worn out but still showing up have something to work with.
I am not going to promise you an outcome. What I can tell you is that a pattern you’ve both been running for years is usually driven by reasons neither of you have said out loud, and those are workable.
Does couples therapy actually work online?
In my experience it works well, and there are a couple of things about it that genuinely help. You are usually in the room where most of this happens, rather than reconstructing it in an office two days later. And you can both attend from wherever you are, which for a lot of couples is the difference between going and not going.
Being in the same physical room is not required. Some couples sit together, some join from two different places. Both are fine.
Do we have to be married?
No. Dating, living together, engaged, married, together twenty years, somewhere in between and figuring it out. Any two people trying to work out how to be with each other.
Do you take insurance, and what does a session cost?
Couples sessions are private pay, $150 per session, and run 50 to 53 minutes. Insurance plans handle couples work very differently from individual therapy, and many do not cover it at all, so I keep it simple: one rate, and no surprise bill later.
For individual therapy I am in network with most major plans. There is more detail on the pricing page.
Let’s talk for fifteen minutes
No paperwork and no commitment. Just a conversation, so you can get a feel for how I work and decide from there. One of you is enough to start.
Peter Bown, LCSW · My Home Counseling · Telehealth across North Carolina, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Florida