Pre Marital Counseling

Why Pre-Marital Counseling Is One of the Best Investments You Can Make

Premarital counseling with a skilled therapist is one of the most valuable investments you can make in the future of your relationship. The patterns we “naturally” fall into—usually learned in childhood—either set us up for secure attachment, emotional closeness, and joy, or they set us up for disconnection, conflict, and unmet needs.

Most of us unconsciously repeat our parents’ relationship patterns, or we overcorrect in ways that unintentionally trigger our partners. Premarital counseling gives you the chance to shape the culture of your relationship intentionally, rather than defaulting to what you inherited. The long-term impact of this is enormous.

Most couples wait an average of seven years of pain before seeking help. If you love each other, it makes far more sense to fine-tune your relationship before those patterns become entrenched.

What to Expect in Pre-Marital Counseling

You’ll start by taking an online relationship inventory that highlights your strengths as a couple and identifies differences that could create future challenges. Becoming aware of these differences and creating shared strategies for navigating them is essential for long-term success.

We’ll then work through a series of relationship upgrades, including:

• Exploring your current rituals of connection and identifying which ones you want to strengthen
• Learning how to listen empathically in ways that truly land and deepen the bond
• Learning how to have forgiveness conversations that actually work
• Learning how to take space during conflict and return for meaningful repair
• Learning how to heal your partner’s anxiety triggers, rather than be a victim of them
• Using modified trauma-informed strategies to soothe each other’s nervous systems
• Building shared habits that reinforce emotional safety 

Together, you’ll also learn how to make a radical commitment to each other’s emotional safety. Prioritizing connection over being “right” becomes a core value.

After Pre-Marital Counseling, you may brag to other couples—

 “In our relationship, we make sure we’re connected before we focus on who’s right about what. That makes us feel secure and held because we’re in each other’s care.”

SPECIALIZING IN COUPLES COUNSELING:
It really hurts when the person you love is focused on “being right”, rather than really getting you! Does your relationship create a deep pain or numbness in your heart? When we start to believe that our LEGITIMATE needs for connection will not be adequately met with our partner, it is easy to focus on our personal needs (at the expense of our partner’s). A NORMAL human response to this is: nagging, petty repetitive fights, silent-treatments, numbing out, outbursts, being condescending, focusing on being right (rather than really listening).

I don’t play referee. I FOCUS ON SHIFTING THE CULTURE OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP from its current negative painful cycles into being a safe place for both of you to GET YOUR ATTACHMENT NEEDS MET! Once that is in place, the painful repetitive power struggles that creates so much pain will become more easily addressable.

I’m extremely good at helping MEN WHO MIGHT OTHERWISE NOT WANT TO BE IN COUNSELING feel comfortable giving it a shot.

For information on HOW DOES TODD WORK?, check out my link, EFT Couples (Emotion Focused Couples Therapy.  In a nutshell, I first help you (on an emotional level) pathologize the dance that you get caught in, rather than each other.  Once there is a unified team against the nasty dance, we create space for both of you to safely express your underlying attachment longings.  Once these underlying attachment longings are able to be held by both of you; then the previous protest behaviors and withdrawing strategies (that are quite painful) will have less of a charge and be less necessary.

1)  Premarital Counseling / preventative couples therapy

2)  Couples caught in negative fighting patterns with communication challenges.

3)  High Conflict Couples:  You love each other, but drive each other crazy!

4)  After couples are stabilized (learn how to be a stable loving empathic base for each other), I work with couples to work as a team to help each other heal their underlying personal work.  Basically, I have found that doing individual work in the context of couples therapy, for many people, can be more trans-formative than individual therapy.

My approach works for…

• Couples who live together
• Non-traditional couples
• Couples with kids
• Couples who are thinking about marriage

And it works best if…

• You care about your relationship and want to strengthen it
• You’d like for you and your partner to work more as a team
• You’re willing to listen to your partner, even when you don’t agree
• You’re willing to be honest about your values and what’s important to you
• You want practical tools that will help you move forward quickly
• You’d like a proven, researched approach that has helped 75% of couples resolve their problems

• You’re caught in nagging, petty, repetitive fights that never really resolve.
• You’re stuck in patterns of silent treatments, numbing out, blow-ups, and condescension.
• No matter how hard you try to be seen, it doesn’t seem to work.
• When you apologize, your partner doesn’t take it in and keeps holding it over you.
• Your partner is more focused on being right than actually giving a shit about you.