You love each other. That was never the question.
Couples therapy in Toronto and online across
Ontario, for when love isn't the part that's hard.
Most couples don't arrive because something catastrophic happened. They arrive because something has quietly stopped working, and neither of you can find the thread that leads back.
Maybe the same fight resurfaces in different costumes. Maybe you've become polite with each other, which is somehow worse. Maybe you've both changed and neither of you knows how to say so out loud.
None of that means the relationship is failing. It usually means it's asking to be different than it was.
What we're going for is this: fewer conversations that end where they always end. Feeling like you're on the same side again. Being able to disagree without it costing you the whole evening. Getting back to the version of each other you actually like.
Relationship Therapy is 50 or 75 minutes and $180 or $260
Relationship Therapy
feeling unseen
intimacy
repair
attachment
communication
loneliness
trust
resentment
infidelity
parenting
recurring conflict
disconnection
finances
relationship patterns
life transitions
You might recognise some of this
You know how the argument goes before it starts, including how it ends.
One of you reaches, the other retreats, and you've both stopped noticing which came first.
You're keeping the peace so carefully that neither of you is saying much at all.
Something happened and you moved on from it, but not really.
You love each other. That was never the question. The question is why it's this hard.
“A relationship is also a living thing. It doesn’t stay the same shape either.”
Three things that are true here
Nobody is on trial. I won't be building a case for either of you, and I'm not keeping score across sessions.
You don't have to arrive in agreement. Including about whether you should be here at all. That's workable.
One of you being more reluctant is normal. Most couples arrive that way. It doesn't predict how this goes.
I'm an integrative therapist, which means the work follows the two of you rather than a manual. Most sessions draw on more than one of these.
The approaches I work with
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Finding the vulnerable feeling underneath the argument — which is almost never what the argument appears to be about. Most conflict is a protest about disconnection wearing a different outfit.
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Practical, research-based work on how you actually handle conflict: what happens in the first few minutes, how you repair afterwards, and what keeps affection alive in an ordinary week.
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Looking at what each of you learned about closeness long before you met. Often explains why one of you reaches when the other needs space, and why neither of you can help it.
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Tracing a recurring pattern back to where it first made sense. Useful when a fight feels much bigger than its subject.
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Following what happens in the body during conflict — the shutting down, the heat, the leaving-the-room feeling — before it becomes something either of you says.
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For couples who think about their relationship in terms of meaning as well as mechanics — where you're each being asked to change, and what the relationship might be becoming. Available if it resonates, entirely absent if it doesn't.
Frequently Asked Questions
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With a free 15-minute consultation, by video held through Jane. Either of you can make the first call ~ you don't both need to be on it, but its preferred you are. We'll talk a little about what's brought you, and you don't need to have agreed on a version of the story first. If it feels like a fit, we'll find a time you can both make. If it doesn't, I'll gladly point you toward someone who might suit you better.
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Yes. This work is open to everyone, in whatever structure your relationship takes — polyamorous, open, relationship anarchist, throuples and larger constellations, or something that doesn't have a tidy name. If there are more than two of you, all of you are welcome in the room.
I'd rather you didn't have to spend the first session explaining your relationship structure to me before we can get to what you actually came for. Tell me how it works for you, and we'll start from there.
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Reluctance is common, and it's worth taking seriously rather than pushing past. What I'd suggest is that you both come to the consultation anyway — including the hesitation. A lot of what makes someone reluctant is not knowing what they're walking into, and fifteen minutes is usually enough to answer that. If it's still not right afterwards, that's a legitimate answer too.
What I don't do is start couples work with one of you and add the other in later. Couples therapy relies on both people being in the room; seeing one partner first would shape the work in ways that make it harder to be useful to you as a couple. If your partner genuinely isn't willing to come, individual therapy focused on the relationship is a real option and often more useful than people expect — relationships shift when one person changes how they show up in them.
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Not while we're working together as a couple. If something surfaces that one of you needs space to look at alone, I'll talk it through with you and help you find the right individual support — but seeing one of you separately would compromise the neutrality that makes couples work possible. It's a boundary that protects both of you.
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No. If it ever feels like I'm siding with one of you, please say so — that's important information, and I'd much rather hear it than have it sit quietly in the room.
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Yes. This is for any people in a relationship trying to work something out — dating, engaged, long-term, separated, co-parenting, or somewhere you don't have a word for yet.