Couples Therapy & Marriage Counseling
For partners in Conway, Arkansas who are stuck in a pattern they can name but can't seem to break.
Most couples don't come in because of one enormous problem. They come in because of a small one that never got resolved, and then another, and then a hundred more, until the weight of all of them makes it hard to remember why they liked each other in the first place.
The research on this is blunt: couples wait an average of six years from the point a problem appears to the point they ask for help. Six years is a long time to practice a pattern. The good news is that patterns, unlike personalities, can change, and usually faster than people expect.
Couples I work with
- Stuck in the same argument. You could both recite it from memory. One of you pursues, one withdraws, and the topic barely matters anymore.
- Living like roommates. The fighting stopped, but so did most everything else. Logistics, kids, schedules, and very little in between.
- After an affair. One of you is trying to figure out whether trust can come back. The other is trying to figure out how to make it possible.
- Considering separation. You want to know whether there's something here worth saving before you make a decision you can't take back.
- After a big change. A new baby, a job loss, a move, a diagnosis, an aging parent. Things that were manageable stopped being manageable.
How the work usually goes
Getting started
We begin with a session together, where you tell me what's happening and I get a sense of the history between you. From there, depending on what seems most useful, I may meet with each of you individually so I can hear each perspective without the other person in the room, and I may ask you to work through a written relationship questionnaire.
Within the first several sessions I'll share what I'm seeing: where your relationship is genuinely strong, what seems to be driving the conflict, and what I think the work ahead would involve. You decide from there whether to continue.
The work itself
Depending on what surfaces early on, we may focus on any of the following:
- Conflict that goes somewhere. Learning to raise a complaint without contempt, and to hear one without defending. This is the most common starting point and often the fastest to shift.
- Rebuilding friendship. This turns out to be foundational rather than optional. The research is clear that the quality of the everyday friendship between partners is what determines whether an attempt to repair actually lands during conflict.
- Understanding gridlock. Some disagreements never fully resolve because they sit on top of something each of you deeply values. The goal there isn't agreement, it's getting unstuck from resentment.
- Repair after rupture. Every couple hurts each other. The difference between couples who last and couples who don't is largely what happens in the hours afterward.
How long it takes
Most couples I see meet weekly for somewhere between three and eight months. Some come in for a focused stretch around a specific problem and finish in ten or twelve sessions. Couples working through infidelity generally need longer. Once I have a clearer picture of what's going on, I'll give you a realistic estimate rather than a vague one now.
Recovering from infidelity
An affair is one of the few things that can truly break a marriage, and one of the few things a marriage can truly survive. Which way it goes depends far less on the affair itself than on what happens next.
This work moves through phases, and skipping them is why so many couples stall. The first is stabilization: managing the crisis, agreeing on what happens with the outside relationship, and getting through the days when the betrayed partner cycles through the same questions on a loop. That looping is normal, and it has a purpose.
The second is understanding, which is not the same as excusing. Why this happened, what was true about the marriage beforehand, and what each partner contributed to the conditions, which is a different question from who is responsible for the choice.
The third is rebuilding, which is slow and unglamorous and made almost entirely of small kept promises. Trust doesn't return because of one conversation. It returns because of a hundred ordinary moments where the thing that was said would happen actually happened.
You don't have to have decided to stay together before beginning this work. Many couples haven't, and that's okay. Sometimes arriving at that decision with a clearer head is part of what the work is for.
What I ask of you
Couples work goes best when both people are willing to look at their own half of the pattern. That isn't easy, and it rarely happens all at once. What I ask is that you come open to considering your own part, even in the moments when it would feel much better to point at your partner's.
Beyond that: come consistently, practice between sessions, and be willing to sit with some discomfort for a while. Most couples feel worse for two or three weeks before they feel better, because we start talking about the things that got avoided. That part passes.
Ready to start?
I'm accepting new clients for in-person sessions in Conway and telehealth across Arkansas.