Couples Therapy
Stop Pretending Your Marriage is What it Should Be
Are you suffering and just going through the motions with your marriage?
The stress is overwhelming.
Fights quickly escalate out-of-control.
Are you competing for your partner’s attention or time, and losing?
You’ve tried everything you know to solve relationship pain, and nothing helps.
You did not get together so it can bitterly end.
No, you hope and pray for a forever love like Adele’s, Love Song.
Adele paints a beautiful picture of love, fun, being whole, feeling young, and clean again. Her song ends with, “I will always love you, ‘Cause I love you.”
Did you believe your love was a forever love in the early years?
Time flies, and for some relationships, the stress of raising kids, getting ahead, and getting along wears your bond thin.
Your relationship changes.
Subtle shifts move you away from connecting. With severity, you learn about what the two of you cannot talk.
Couples counseling can help.
You used to both be in the same boat, rowing together toward a common destination.
You weathered the storms. You even laughed in the face of storms.
Now, it’s as if you’re in separate boats.
Try as you might to get together in the same boat, the undercurrent pushes you further apart.
You begin to feel the foreboding and fear. You tell yourself and others it’s too late for the two of you.
Is it like that for you?
All couples experience difficulties.
You and your partner are two complex individuals living together and in conflict.
World-renowned couples’ researchers, Drs. John and Julie Gottman, have found that 69% of couple conflicts are unending; their findings do not alarm me.
To the contrary, if 69% of the conflicts my wife and I have will never resolve, it makes space for us to relax and figure out a way to talk about problems.
What do you do with the relationship pain?
Do you pray? I hope you do.
Do you talk to your friends? Of course, you do.
You can’t talk to your partner. When friends hear about what’s going on, they agree with you about how horrible your relationship is.
Am I right?
When your couple-ness is suffering, you find ways to comfort yourself.
Why wouldn’t you?
At this point, it’s common for partners to pour themselves into all manner of activities.
The busier you are, the less time you feel the lonely heartache of disconnectedness from the Most Important Person in your life.
At least, they were your Most Important Person in the past.
Disconnection hits both of you in your most vulnerable places:
your heart and emotions.
When relationships hurt, you do not expose vulnerability. Why would you?
You probably get angry or experience rage. When vulnerable, you withdraw or attack or both.
And why not? All of us, including me, have finely tuned protective measures which have proven reliability. The desperate problem is that self-protection does the exact opposite of what we yearn. Protective strategies push us apart.
It’s not too late. I can help.
When couples come in, many times, they feel the end of a long, pain-filled road is looming.
It’s like you’ve heard the low rumbling of impending disaster getting louder, but now the freight train has turned the bend, and it is bearing down on you.
The two of you are stuck and cannot move to avoid tragedy; this is NOT what you had in mind when your relationship started.
Do those days seem long ago?
The couples counseling model I follow has changed my life and the lives of many of my couples.
I have advanced training in and practice Dr. Sue Johnson’s Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT).
The work I do is deceptively simple.
No matter how distressed, I help couples have conversations they cannot have (right now).
And there are good reasons you can’t calmly talk about your pain and suffering.
You will experience my high regard for both of you. I do not take sides or use blaming or shaming. You will feel safe with me.
I view your relationship as my client. Yes, both of you are my clients.
I fight for the relationship to find hope and healing.
I help couples slow their out-of-control episodes down, so they can make more sense of what they are experiencing. I help each of you touch deep emotional places that are the real drivers of what is going on.
I don’t force anyone into emotion. I know it’s there.
I ask questions about what the negative interactions are like for you. I wait. I listen. I ask questions. I watch you and your partner and see what happens between you.
There’s so much more going on than we know. I help couples make sense of what’s going on underneath the pain.
I believe I can help you, too.
Your relationship can grow.
If you would appreciate more information or schedule an appointment, I am available at (501) 205-4570. I usually respond the same day, if not then, within 24 hours.
There is real hope for real people!
Saving Your Marriage Relationship, a 4-Part Podcast
In February 2018, Bill was interviewed for a Four-Part Radio Broadcast Series: Saving Your Marriage Relationship. It will give you a sense of his heart and hope for couples. We hope you find it encouraging! Others have!
In loving memory of our longtime friend and podcast host, Dr. Barry Wingfield. We miss his presence during each episode.
