Long-term relationships always start with the best of intentions. Physical attraction, romance, intellectual connection and shared aspirations all contribute to the making of a powerful bond. Yet, when life’s challenges begin to exert pressure on the relationship, difficulties can emerge, showing up as unsatisfying communication, loss of trust, anger, disappointment, and recurrent frustration.
Current relationship problems often have roots in the past, and this is especially so in committed, long-term relationships. The nature of our early interpersonal experiences have a significant effect on what we look for in our primary relationships as adults. These earlier experiences form a template for how we seek safety, security and connection in a trusted partnership, and for how we respond emotionally when we feel hurt, attacked or rejected.
The Center for Personal Growth & Creativity has developed an eclectic model of marital and couples therapy, drawing on a variety of theoretical and clinical approaches that effectively identify distorted core beliefs and examine how those beliefs generate unrealistic expectations of our partners that are a set-up for disappointment. In addition, we believe in the importance of teaching new skills to better understand our personal insecurity triggers, to improve the quality of our communication, to increase the ability to be empathic and to learn how to resolve conflict effectively.
A note on infidelity:
If you are in a relationship you consider to be committed and monogamous, finding out that your partner has been unfaithful can be traumatizing. You may be going through a roller coaster of emotions, ranging from rage to confusion to deep sadness to hopelessness. You may be puzzled about how this happened and why you didn’t know about it. You may be wondering whether this was a single, isolated affair or just the tip of the iceberg. You may be questioning how to set appropriate boundaries in order to protect yourself from further harm. You may even be blaming yourself.
We believe this is a crucial time to contact a relationship professional who can help you to process these painful and confusing emotions; an experienced clinician who can enable you to find the answers you seek, and who can guide you in deciding what next steps to take. (see treatment for the partner)
At the Center for Personal Growth treatment choices include individual therapy, traditional couples therapy as well as an option for conjoint therapy (where the individual therapist for each party is present in the session).
There may be difficult challenges ahead. You don’t have to face them alone.