Every so often, I hand the pen to someone who knows this work — and our marriage — from the inside. My husband Eric has spent years studying what makes relationships thrive, and his doctoral research on shared meaning has genuinely shaped the way I think about couples...
When a relationship has been shaped by addiction, it’s easy to focus on what went wrong. Because during addiction, there are often so many negative events — things that went sideways, conversations that escalated, moments that left lasting hurt. The fights. The...
One of the most tender — and often overlooked — parts of recovery is this: You don’t just rebuild sobriety. You rebuild understanding. Because addiction doesn’t just create distance — it replaces knowing with guessing — guessing what your partner...
For a long time, the “gold standard” in addiction recovery was this: the person struggling with substance use needed to focus only on themselves for at least a year. No couples therapy. No family work. No real attention to the relationship. Just recovery...
When couples seek therapy after an affair, they are often hoping for guidance on how to move forward. But what many people don’t realize is that affair recovery is very different from traditional couples therapy. And without the right approach, therapy...
Few experiences shake a relationship as deeply as discovering that your partner has been involved in an affair. For the hurt partner, the moment of discovery often feels like an emotional earthquake. Whether the truth comes from a third party, a message on a...
