Working with Couples

A Safe Place for Both of You

We provide a safe place for both of you. Things won’t change unless you can both speak your own truth, and are listened to and understood.

We support each of you in talking through the things that are too difficult to discuss alone. And we’ll give you skills to practice so you can do this on your own, without judgement and escalation into fights.

If continued longer term, working in this safe place can truly transform your relationship.

Both Therapists in the Room

We work most often with both of us (Amanda and Ron) in the room with both of you. We find this helps enormously in understanding couple dynamics and the ways in which each individual triggers the other.

Psychologically, the square is more stable than the triangle. In other words, four people in the room (in this “mini-group” setting) provides a stability that minimises the risk of one individual in the couple feeling marginalised or excluded.

Your Relationship as a Container

We believe your relationship is a container which can create the safety and space for each of you in the relationship to grow.

Sometimes this container cracks. Our time with you as a couple assists with repair, healing and creating a renewed and healthy relationship.

There are also some circumstances where a relationship cannot be healed, and in this case working with us can support separation in a way that is best for both of you, and for your family.

There’s an Art to Loving

As Erich Fromm said in The Art of Loving:

Love is only possible if two persons communicate with each other from the centre of their existence, hence if each one of them experiences himself from the centre of his existence. Only in this “central experience” is human reality, only here is aliveness, only here is the basis for love. Love, experienced thus, is a constant challenge; it is not a resting place, but a moving, growing, working together.

Staemmler’s Schemes of Interaction

Staemmler’s Schemes of Interaction are powerful tools we often use with couples who tend to trigger each other. The diagram below shows how Staemmler’s second scheme works.

The shapes are shown “glowing” because the behaviours of each partner, and the meanings attributed to them by the other partner, are in constant flux; and in constant reaction to a wide range of factors, only some of which are in their awareness.

(Frank Staemmler’s schemes of interaction are presented in his paper Joint Constructions: On the Subject Matter of Gestalt Couple Therapy, Exemplified by Gender-Specific Misunderstandings with Regards to Intimacy, in Robert Lee’s book The Secret Language of Intimacy.)