Couples Counselling in Edinburgh

Finding each other again.

There’s a particular loneliness in feeling distant from the person closest to you. Sometimes it’s open conflict, the same argument on repeat. Just as often it’s quieter than that: going through the motions, drifting into silence, the growing sense that something between you isn’t working even if neither of you can quite name it.

If this sounds familiar, you’re far from alone. And coming to therapy isn’t an admission that your relationship has failed. In my experience it’s usually the opposite: two people who care enough to stop repeating the pattern and find a new way through.

How I work with couples:

When couples get stuck, it’s rarely because one person is right and the other is wrong. It’s because you’ve both been pulled into a cycle. One pursues, the other withdraws. One criticises, the other goes quiet. The cycle takes on a life of its own, and underneath it, almost always, are softer feelings and needs that haven’t found a way to be heard.

I work with Emotionally Focused Therapy, one of the most thoroughly researched approaches to couples work, precisely because it goes after this cycle rather than the scorecard. Together we slow things down, make sense of the dance you’re caught in, and help you each say the truer, more vulnerable things underneath, the ones that draw a partner closer rather than pushing them away.

I welcome all couples, whatever your relationship structure, orientation or identity.

What couples bring to me:

• The same conflict on repeat, and exhaustion with it
• Growing distance, flatness or loss of intimacy
• Going through the motions, and the sense that something isn’t working
• Rebuilding trust after betrayal or infidelity
• Big transitions: parenthood, career change, loss, illness
• Working out the future direction of the relationship

Taking the first step together

It takes courage for two people to sit down and look honestly at their relationship. I’ll meet that courage with warmth, and without taking sides.

I offer a free initial consultation for us to chat about what’s bringing you and how I work. I see couples in person in Leith and Newington, Edinburgh, and online across the UK and around the world.