Marriage counseling is appropriate for couples who have committed themselves to a shared future together. Studies show that on average, couples wait six years from the first signs of problems before they seek help. Many couples arrive at my office in more emotional pain than they have ever felt in their lives.

At this moment, It may be difficult for you to imagine your marriage could possibly change for the better. Small problems may have slowly drained your relationship of the happiness you and your spouse once knew together and you may be wondering how you can ever feel close and connected again. Or a major crisis, such as the disclosure of an extramarital affair, may have you wondering if it could ever be possible to trust your spouse again. You may not be feeling very hopeful, but I can work with whatever level of hopefulness you and your spouse are feeling at the moment. I'm not easily discouraged.

My approach is to view your marriage as my "patient" and I will help you and your spouse work together to make your marriage healthy. Years of experience with hundreds of couples has taught me never to judge which marriages can or can't be saved and which couples will or won't find happiness together. I have seen many troubled and traumatized marriages transform into healthy and satisfying marriages, even when my own first impressions weren't optimistic.

Sometimes troubled marriages become satisfying marriages over many months, but a surprising number change very quickly, often if a couple has had many happy years together before major problems developed. The change process usually includes moments of despair and hope, pain and joy, seriousness and laughter. The past 25 years have brought remarkable advances in our knowledge about the ways couples establish and maintain healthy marriages, and there have been significant refinements to the tools skilled marriage counselors use to bring about positive change.

Your history as a couple is unique, so I will modify my counseling approach to fit your particular needs. If you've had a long and mostly positive marital history, your needs will be different from a couple who has struggled since the beginning of their relationship. If you and your spouse are feeling cold and distant from each other, your needs are different from the couple who regularly engages in heated battles. Years of experience have taught me to recognize patterns and adjust my counseling approach to fit each couple.

During your first session of marriage counseling, I will try to understand your concerns and needs. In some cases, I will determine that I have enough information to begin therapy without further assessment. If that is the case, we'll just get started. Other times, I will recommend a more extensive assessment that may include brief individual interviews and questionnaires for you to complete and return for review. I will send you two 100-page personalized workbooks and provide handouts and homework assignments as you progress. I will check with you frequently to make sure that counseling is moving in a direction you find helpful.

In general, many of the things that lead couples to marry are the very things that restore marriages when they become troubled: Friendship and trust; shared interests and activities; good communication and good sex; common values like honesty and respect; a shared vision of the future. Although you will have a personalized plan for your therapy, I help all couples work toward developing a relationship that feels emotionally safe and satisfying. Some specific goals may include:

• getting unstuck from gridlock around your perpetual issues (the ones that never seem to go away).
• replacing criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling with their antidotes. These include: softer ways to bring up complaints, learning to accept each other's influence, techniques for soothing yourself and your spouse during conflict, learning ways to make repairs during an argument, mastering the art of compromise.
• learning how to process a marital argument successfully, without my help.
• learning how to get away from the "attack-defend" mode of discussion into the "collaboration" mode of discussion.
• building your marital friendship by: 1) learning how to deal with a failed attempt to make an emotional connection 2) establishing rituals of emotional connection 3) creating and maintaining a detailed understanding of each other's lives 4) nurturing fondness and admiration for each other 5) creating a comfortable balance of togetherness and independence.
• honoring each other's life dreams.
• minimizing the chance of relapse after therapy ends by creating rituals that guarantee you and your spouse take time to: 1) talk about important issues 2) manage stress 3) have fun and keep romance alive 4) make love.

I will leave it up to you to decide how much time, effort and money you want to invest in counseling. Some couples are content with a few sessions to help them "turn the corner" and others decide ongoing counseling for several weeks or months is needed to rebuild trust and practice new skills. In general, you and your spouse will participate in each 90 minute session, usually held once every other week. With progress, sessions will be spread out further. Even after no more sessions are scheduled, I will invite you to come back for a "tune up" session any time you become concerned that you are not making progress in your life together.

If you and your partner are already committed to a shared future—even if you are not legally married—you would benefit most from the same counseling approach I use with married couples, so please read the information under the heading: Marriage Counseling.

Couples counseling is appropriate if you and your partner are not yet fully committed to a shared future.

You may be considering couples counseling because you and your partner have reached an impasse in your relationship and you're wondering whether to break up or stay together. You may have many strengths as a couple, but there are also some troubling issues that remain unresolved. Couples counseling can help you understand why you are stuck and what needs to happen if you want to move ahead in your relationship. Trust is often a major factor. If you or your partner were hurt in a previous relationship, it may be hard for you to trust again; or if you or your partner grew up without your parents providing a model of healthy relationship functioning, you may be uncertain about your ability to create and maintain a healthy intimate relationship of your own. No matter how much you and your partner love each other, it may be hard to feel confident in your future together until you have developed the attitudes and skills that are required for successful intimate relationships. Couples counseling can help.

If you and your partner are willing to change and grow as a couple, I will do my best to help you develop the attitudes and skills that will enable you to increase your confidence and satisfaction in your relationship. Couples counseling begins with both partners participating in 90 minute counseling sessions, usually scheduled every two weeks. I will check with you frequently to see if our sessions are addressing your needs. You will each receive a 100-page personalized workbook along with handouts and homework assignments as you progress. How long you participate in couples counseling will be entirely up to you.

Premarital counseling is a four session educational program that will enrich your relationship and help it grow into a satisfying and stable marriage. Most couples schedule premarital counseling sessions a few months before their wedding date. There are two main goals in premarital counseling: awareness and skill building.

Premarital counseling will increase awareness of your individual selves and your life together as a couple. Most couples take an online questionnaire called PREPARE (or a similar one called RELATE) that will help you identify your strengths and the areas where growth would be helpful to your relationship. By learning more about yourselves, you will be better able to spot problems developing long before they become serious threats to your relationship. We will cover a variety of topics including: communication, conflict management, friends, finances, spirituality, sexuality, children, gender roles and expectations. You will also have the opportunity to discuss the families in which you grew up and learn how your family experiences are influencing your couple relationship. The more you learn, the more you will understand the value of good relationship skills.

Sophisticated marital research over the past 25 years has made it possible to identify specific attitudes and skills that accurately predict success in relationships. In premarital counseling you will have the opportunity to learn and practice some of those skills. You will each receive a personalized 100-page workbook that you can refer to for years to come. And during sessions you will practice new skills with the option of seeing yourselves interacting on a videotape recording.

For most couples, we cover all of the above during four 90 minute sessions, scheduled every other week. Adjustments can be made to this premarital counseling program for couples requesting help with specific problems. Additional sessions can be added if requested.

Premarital counseling is primarily education rather than therapy and is offered at a lower fee than couples counseling. The total fee for the standard program of premarital counseling is $630. That includes four 90 minute sessions, the PREPARE questionnaire and the 100-page workbook. The amount of $180 is payable at the first session ($150 plus $30 for the computerized scoring of PREPARE); $150 is payable at each additional session.

One privilege of my status as an ordained minister is the authority to officiate at weddings. I make myself available as a wedding officiant for those couples who complete premarital counseling with me. Every year I enjoy celebrating marriage with a few of the couples I have come to know during premarital counseling. If you'd like to know more about my services as a wedding officiant please follow this link: Wedding Services

The Marriage Checkup Program is a four session education program to help you and your spouse understand yourselves and your relationship better and to teach you skills that will help you deal better with the normal stresses of marriage and family life. This program is for couples who generally feel positive as a couple and committed to their relationship. You will learn better ways to manage problems now so they never become a threat to your marriage. The Marriage Checkup Program is not appropriate if you are currently at a crisis point in your marriage.

The Marriage Checkup Program consists of four 90 minute couple sessions, usually scheduled about two weeks apart. Although the program is adjusted to the needs of each individual couple, it typically includes: 1) discussion of your relationship history and your families of origin as a means to gain new insights and awareness about your strengths and work areas 2) a computer scored questionnaire called ENRICH, which points out similarities and differences in your attitudes and ideas about communication, children, sex, money, gender roles, etc. 3) instruction in basic communication and problem solving skills and supervised practice in applying those skills to real problems 4) a 100-page personalized workbook that will help you understand the attitudes and skills necessary for a successful relationship. Other possibilities include: 1) learning how differences in psychological type (personality) are affecting your marriage 2) learning how to cooperate better as parents and 3) learning how to enhance couple intimacy.

The cost of each 90 minute educational session is $150. The scoring fee for ENRICH is $30. Total cost: $630.

Family therapy involves two or more family members in counseling together and focuses primarily on improving family relationships.

Family therapy is my preferred approach with most problems involving children because it provides me with the opportunity to observe family members interacting with one another and to help them practice alternative behaviors during sessions. I like to begin most family therapy with everyone present so I can win the cooperation of the family as a whole. If children are very young, I serve mainly as a parenting coach and may meet only with the parents during most sessions. With older children or teens, I may spend part of a session with the parents and part of the session with the child or teen. In some cases, individual counseling may be recommended for a teen or young adult who would benefit from an opportunity to talk with a responsible adult who is not his or her parent.

Family therapy can be helpful for many kinds of situations including intergenerational issues between adult members, dealing with health issues, grief and loss, running a family business, and many others.

Generally, the initial session of family therapy is 90 minutes; however longer sessions can be held to accommodate a crisis or members visiting from out-of-town. Additional sessions are usually 90 minutes. The frequency of sessions will depend on whether you are in crisis, the number of people attending the sessions, and your goals for change. Your needs may be met in just a few sessions, or you may decide you would like to continue for a longer period.

If you have marriage or family issues, but your spouse or family members are reluctant to participate in counseling, then please call me to talk over your situation before making an appointment for individual therapy. Often reluctant spouses and family members will participate if they are helped to see the benefits of their participation.

Individual therapy is appropriate if you want help with issues that are not primarily couple or family relationship issues.

If your issues are primarily individual ones, I will be happy to schedule an individual appointment for you. A good counseling relationship is built upon the same foundation as any healthy relationship: trust. After our first session, you'll be better able to discern if our relationship will be helpful to you.

During the course of therapy, I will help you look upon difficult situations with new perspective, try out new behaviors, and work toward positive change. There will be times I challenge you, but always in an atmosphere of respect and support. I will listen to you carefully and respond openly and genuinely, just as I will expect you to do the same. That is how we will maintain the high level of trust that makes change and growth possible.

At this point in my life, I have had many personal and professional experiences that enable me to understand and help with most of the issues people bring to therapy including career issues, sexual issues, religious or spiritual issues, aging issues, stress, grief, depression, anxiety and many more.

Generally, we will meet for 50 minutes, with sessions scheduled as often as you find helpful. Your needs may be met in just a few sessions or you may decide to continue for a longer period.