Couples Therapy Services in Toronto

Begin Your Journey Towards Connection and Understanding

Has Your Relationship Veered Off Course?

Are you and your partner feeling stuck in your relationship but unsure how to resolve your differences? Do you find that you’re spending more time apart and no longer connecting on an emotional or physical level? Without shifting the dynamics of your relationship, do you worry you may be heading toward divorce or a breakup?

Perhaps you and your partner have drifted apart due to a significant life event, such as having a baby or going through a career change where one or both of you travel more frequently. Or maybe you have experienced a gradual withdrawal from each other, but it’s hard to identify when or why it started. Either way, you may feel misunderstood, invalidated, and underappreciated.

You May Keep Having The Same Argument

It may seem like the only way to avoid getting stuck in the same argument is to purposely avoid each other. Consequently, you may be spending more time apart as a way of keeping the peace. Although this strategy may work in the short term, it ultimately contributes to an emotional distance growing between you. Although you may pretend that things are fine when you’re around others, they are not.

If infidelity has occurred, you might be reeling from feelings of betrayal, guilt, and shame. The emotional wounds you carry could make it difficult to engage in a meaningful conversation that doesn’t turn into another dead-end argument.

You might have reached a point where you feel powerless to change the situation without breaking up altogether. If only you could figure out how to resolve your differences, you could get back to the place where you felt more deeply connected to each other.

Couples therapy offers a neutral space for you to safely explore the depths of your relationship and find healthier ways of communicating. With the support of a couples counsellor, you can slow down the conversation, making room for newfound understanding, empathy, and compassion.

Work With Colleen for Couples Therapy

Colleen offers couples therapy for partners who want to improve communication, work through conflict, and feel more connected in their relationship. Therapy provides a supportive space to better understand each other and build healthier patterns together. If you’re wondering whether couples therapy could help, you’re welcome to schedule a free consultation to learn more.

Even The Most Harmonious Relationships Take Work To Thrive

Even though being human is synonymous with being in relationships with others, we often have misconceptions about what an ideal relationship should look like. Most of us believe that the mark of a good relationship is a steady trajectory that’s absent of conflict. However, this is seldom, if ever, the case—all relationships go through twists and turns where certain seasons are more challenging than others.

Nevertheless, the ideal relationship myth often makes us feel ashamed to fight or disagree with each other. Rather than rock the boat and express how we feel, we might push down our true feelings to appear “normal.” But eventually, avoidance causes our pent-up frustrations and resentments to reach a breaking point and boil over.

We Often Lack Healthy Role Models

Because committed relationships are challenging to navigate, we are rarely provided with ideal role models growing up. We may have been exposed to unhealthy patterns that developed between our parents, leading to similar patterns emerging in our own relationships.

It’s common for couples to feel shame or embarrassment when they can’t figure out how to resolve their differences on their own. The idea of meeting with a couples therapist can seem like an admission of failure. However, it’s normal not to know how to address relationship challenges when they arise.

Getting your relationship on track often requires re-learning how to be with another person. To do this successfully, you must look to an outside source to help guide you through the process. Couples therapy can provide you with the tools to discover more effective ways to communicate, connect, and develop emotional safety.

Therapy Gives Couples A Chance To Rekindle Their Relationship

The truth is, being in a committed relationship isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies. Committing to another person not only takes work but also challenges our deepest core issues related to self-esteem, jealousy, insecurity, and shame. The ways that we trigger each other can lead to loneliness, rejection, grief, and anger.

Therapy offers a safe, non-judgmental space for both of you to refocus on your relationship with openness and vulnerability. The long-term goal is to become aware and honest about the feelings that reside beneath the anger and fear that have kept you from connecting more deeply. Once you learn how to better communicate your needs and desires so they are truly understood, you can support and trust one another more fully.

What To Expect In Sessions

Although most sessions will be held jointly, we may decide to schedule one or two individual sessions with one or both of you. Speaking with your therapist individually can help you become more aware of what you need and value first before asking for it from your partner. We can also refer you to another therapist within our practice if additional individual sessions would benefit you.

In couples counselling, we will observe how you relate to each other by asking you to engage in an open dialogue while the therapist observes how you communicate. Your therapist will facilitate the conversation and add feedback whenever you get stuck or triggered. Together, we will slow down the dialogue and explore the underlying emotions that fuel your conflict.

Bringing these underlying emotions into your awareness can transform your dialogue, healing your relationship in numerous ways. Learning how to connect on a deeper level can help change your mindset, clarify your needs and desires, and help you feel more valued and understood by your partner. With more understanding and empathy, you will become more compatible and at ease with each other, which allows sexual intimacy to flourish.

The Modalities We Use In Couples Communication Therapy

Using Gestalt therapy and emotionally-focused interventions, we help couples deepen the dialogue beyond the surface. Gestalt and Emotionally Focused Therapy are attachment-based techniques that offer couples insight into how they form relationships and how their specific style affects interpersonal dynamics. With awareness, you can break past cycles that were created in your family. Once you get comfortable slowing down conversations in sessions, eventually, you will no longer need the therapist there to facilitate, allowing you to resolve disagreements yourselves.

At Sun and Moon, we believe that with a commitment to therapy, couples can experience true and meaningful healing within their relationship. By deepening your awareness, you can make different choices that build connection, rekindle intimacy, and move your relationship forward on a more loving path.

But Maybe You’re Not Sure If Couples Therapy Is Right For You…

We’re embarrassed to admit we need couples therapy and fear our friends and family will find out we’re seeing a therapist.

Seeing a couples therapist doesn’t mean your relationship is doomed. In fact, the opposite is true. All couples go through challenging periods in their relationship, and it takes courage to seek therapy. Whereas not taking action perpetuates the problem, reaching out for help provides a path toward solutions. Seeking marriage counselling indicates strength in your relationship and a willingness by each of you to look at how you contribute to challenges in the relationship so you can make changes and heal together.

What if we become reliant on couples counselling to keep the peace and never get out of therapy?

Marriage counselling is typically a shorter process than individual therapy,with well-defined goals and a targeted endpoint. Working closely with a counsellor, couples will learn how to navigate through their challenges and leave therapy with the awareness and tools to manage future disagreements on their own. On average, the duration of marital counselling is somewhere between 10-20 sessions.

My partner is concerned that our marriage therapist will take sides.

As couples therapists, our focus is never to blame one partner or the other. We believe that you are doing the best you know how to do. The focus of couples counselling is what’s going on between you. We shift the focus from blame and place it on what you do together to create discord. We ask, what is your dance, how do each of you contribute to the dance, and how can you create awareness to change the steps to foster mutual understanding and empathy?