Couples Therapy in Charlotte, NC

Are You And Your Partner No Longer On The Same Page?

Have differing expectations and opinions driven a wedge between you and your significant other?

Are you feeling lonely and misunderstood in your relationship?

Do you miss your early days as a couple, characterized by fun, romance, and connection?

Communication is a key element to sustaining a relationship, but many couples develop unhealthy communication patterns over the years. Whether you disagree about finances, parenting, shared goals, or sex, you may feel more like adversaries than partners.

What Are Some Signs That You Are Not Communicating Effectively?

Despite communication issues being a major hurdle for many couples, every partnership experiences its own unique challenges. Depending on how you view and approach problems as an individual, you may feel that you and your partner don’t have compatible negotiation tactics.

Perhaps one or both of you becomes avoidant, passive, or clingy when conflict arises. Instead of addressing the issue head-on, you may sweep it under the rug or bring other unrelated factors into the mix. As things escalate between you, it becomes harder and harder to approach your problems objectively and as a team.

Over time, this can create obstacles to becoming vulnerable, emotional, and intimate. You may feel as though your partner has become closed off from you, intensifying the isolation you feel in the relationship. And it’s likely that your sex life has been affected by the disconnection growing between you.

Couples therapy can be a great tool for repairing the connection in your relationship. Working with one of our experienced couples therapists at Halos Counseling, you can recover your spark and get on the same page about your marriage/long-term relationship.

How Did We Get Here?

There are many reasons why couples encounter setbacks in their partnerships. Aside from the individual patterns, experiences, and wounds we bring into the mix, many external factors influence our ability to connect with one another.

For instance, some couples struggle to reconcile limiting gender stereotypes that are ingrained in our culture. Without realizing it, couples may perpetuate heteronormative norms (like beliefs that women should be the caretakers and men should act as breadwinners) and end up resenting the societal expectations placed on them. This can be particularly true for couples who come from vastly different cultural or religious backgrounds.

Trauma can also adversely impact a couple’s ability to maintain a healthy, sustainable connection. Many of us carry wounds from the past into our relationships, whether we struggled to form secure attachments as children or were betrayed by a partner in adulthood. If we don’t have the proper tools to handle distress, it can compromise our ability to communicate effectively as a couple. Moreover, if we encounter a stressful situation together—including the death of a loved one, a relocation, or caring for a sick family member—it can put a lot of pressure on the partnership.

When faced with a challenge, many couples respond with defensiveness rather than curiosity and connection. But couples therapy is an opportunity to slow the cycle of conflict down so you can adjust your response and be more open to what your partner is saying. Through counseling, you can learn how to navigate issues together.

Couples Therapy At Halos Counseling

As you and your partner better understand the source of conflict, you will be able to team up and change course toward rebuilding a stronger foundation for your marriage or relationship in therapy. Counseling is a chance to not only enhance your problem-solving skills as partners, but to also learn more about your individual emotions, strengths, and stressors.

At Halos Counseling, we welcome couples of all orientations and backgrounds. The couples we work with come to us with concerns that range from differing expectations, intimacy issues, communication barriers, and emotional unavailability, but therapy has helped them to develop the necessary skills to stay connected emotionally, physically, and intellectually.

What To Expect

Our approach to couples therapy is structured and solution-oriented, meaning that you will not have to work with a therapist indefinitely, and you will likely see positive results rather quickly.

While we have therapists on-staff who specialize in a range of couples issues, we will generally begin the process by assessing your personalities, strengths, and focus areas for improvement. Using this information, we can identify core relationship issues more readily. And as we engage in exercises—such as goal-setting and role-playing—you and your partner will learn actionable skills that will facilitate closeness and understanding.

Some of the counseling techniques we use are:

Gottman Method for Couples Therapy to help encourage a stronger friendship between partners, leading to increased shared meaning, decreased conflict, and an enhanced bond
Insights from renowned couples therapist Esther Perel, who focuses on the contradictory standards present in many marriages and monogamous relationships, helping partners adjust their expectations
Sex Therapy to resolve physical or sexual issues that create barriers to intimacy
Faith-informed counseling on request for couples who identify as Christian or otherwise spiritual

Our counseling approach creates the space for you and your partner to have a calm and open conversation about your relationship. As you both feel more heard, aware of underlying issues, and resourced with meaningful communication skills, you will be able to chart a new path forward together.

Still Unsure If Couples Therapy Is Right For You?

I don’t know if I can get my partner to agree to counseling.

Couples counseling is only successful if all partners are willing and open to participate. Without both partners present, it can be difficult to get a sense of the overarching issues affecting the relationship.

This work requires vulnerability, curiosity, and exploration, but a trained couples counselor acts as a guide in the process. We want to help your partner feel seen and supported—not blamed—in therapy, so we encourage you to remind them that couples counseling is a safe, solution-oriented space.

How can we prepare ourselves for couples counseling?

Great question! Couples therapy is likely to be more effective for partners who:

Are willing to be open and honest about expectations and concerns
Can set realistic goals for the therapeutic process
Take responsibility for their role in the relationship and are open to receiving feedback
Engage with growth exercises outside of the therapy space, committing themselves to ongoing practice and application of skills

How do we know if couples therapy is working for us?

Each couple will have a different experience and duration in therapy. However, some good indicators of progress are positive changes in behavior, enhanced communication, and increased satisfaction in the relationship. As your partnership experiences more closeness and less conflict, you are likely to feel more confident in your future together.

Find Your Way Back To One Another

If communication setbacks have impacted your marriage or long-term relationship, couples therapy through Halos Counseling can help you and your partner get back on the same page. Contact us to schedule a free, 20-minute consultation or find out more.