When the same fight keeps happening — when one person shuts down and the other escalates, when closeness feels risky and distance feels safer — something deeper is usually going on. Not a communication problem. An emotional pattern. And patterns can change.
What’s really happening
Most people trace their relationship struggles to communication — the words, the timing, the tone. But communication is usually the symptom, not the cause. Underneath it are patterns laid down long before this relationship: how you learned to ask for what you need, how you learned to protect yourself when connection felt risky, what you came to expect from the people closest to you.
These patterns don’t stay contained to one relationship. They show up with partners, friends, family, even at work — the same reflex to over-explain, shut down, or pull away, playing out in slightly different rooms with slightly different people.
Every relationship develops its own cycle — a predictable sequence of triggers, reactions, and disconnection that both people get pulled into, often without realizing it. One person reaches. The other withdraws. The reaching gets louder. The withdrawal deepens. Both people feel alone — even when they’re in the same room.
How we work on it
I draw primarily on Relational Life Therapy (RLT), developed by Terrence Real — an approach built on direct, honest naming of the relational patterns that keep people stuck, and helping each person take real responsibility for their part rather than only exploring where those patterns came from.
Where it’s useful, I also bring in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) to understand the attachment needs and emotional cycles beneath relationship conflict, and how they first took shape.
Individual relationship work
Not all relationship work happens with both people in the room. I also work with individuals navigating relationship difficulties — whether that’s a struggling partnership, patterns that keep repeating across relationships, or simply wanting to show up differently in the connections that matter most.
Start with a conversation