DISCLAIMER: We would like to reassure all visitors to our site that the Reality TV program “Couples Therapy NZ” is not connected to our practice in any way. We offer a professional service with a profound respect for privacy and regard the presentation of therapy for entertainment as unethical. If you come to us, we will NOT invite TV cameras in to watch!
If you’re reading this, then you probably have some concerns about your relationship. That’s usually a big deal. For most of us, a long-term committed relationship is the cornerstone of our lives, not just emotionally but practically; our finances, our friendships, our kids (if we have them), our property, so much of our life is built around that core partnership.
Maybe you fear you have fallen out of love or worse, your partner is telling you he or she has done so. Maybe your partner has done something behind your back that is unacceptable to you or worse, you have done something that violates your own standards. Maybe you feel like you have drifted apart or that you fight over the smallest thing.
We are here to help you make sense of what’s going on, to try and reduce the anxiety and increase the action.
There’s a lot going on in any relationship and in its ongoing journey, many complexities arise as part of any relationships normal evolution. Sadly, TV and the movies misrepresent what being in relationships is like. Most of the time, they feed the fantasy that the first stage of building a relationship (the bonding or “honeymoon” stage) is the whole thing, that passion is all there is to love and there’s something wrong with you or your relationship if it no longer feels like it did in the first months. The rest of the time TV and movies are over-emphasising the conflict and bad behaviour to create better drama.
In reality, relationships are places where we all have a lot of learning and growing to do. This is a normal part of healthy relationship development. At Couples Therapy NZ, our therapists have expertise in supporting healthy relating through their training in the Developmental Model. As the name implies, this model views the mistakes we make and the places we get stuck at as an inevitable part of developing as a person.