Helping Couples Sustain an Intimate Relationship

HonnolDCounseling helps professionals who are smart at work, but underperforming or struggling in their personal relationships.  Many professionals in Washington make significant contributions at work, but lead lives of quiet desperation at home:

• “I have no time for my husband.  I find him boring and too dependent.”
• “I’ve become a boring person now.  I have nothing going on in my life.”
• “My marriage is only for convenience.  We share the bills, but not the bed.”
• “It’s nice to earn a lot of money, but I have no time to spend it with my wife.”
•  “It’s a relief to go away on a business trip – it’s like a vacation – because I can leave my husband and kids behind.”
• “Actually, I’m married to the job.”
• “I’m a good communicator – but I have nothing to say to my wife any more.”
• “I’m busy all day, interact with many people, and I’m married with kids, but I’m deeply lonely.”
• “I haven’t had sex with anyone but myself in more than ten years.”
• “I’m so unhappy at home, that I can’t wait to get to work, where at least there is something going on.”

Miraculously, many successful professionals find a spouse or life partner.  With the demands of professional life, however, sustaining this relationship may prove difficult.  

For busy professionals, significant relationships can feel very “intense,” and a source of more pressure than pleasure.  Intimate relationships can require:

• more juggling of demands for time and attention;
• another arena for measuring performance standards;
• an ongoing risk of disappointment and failure; and
• a challenge to replace a “problem-solving” mentality with skills of emotional maturity (such as patience).

Relationships “raise the stakes” in life. When a primary relationship begins to fail:

• emotional wellbeing and financial security systems collapse;
• attention to work can become distracted;
• friendships can become strained, overburdened or irrelevant;
• physical and emotional health can be sacrificed;
• impulses to engage in extramarital affairs are increased; and
• previous avocations become impossible, or uninteresting.

HonnolDCounseling provides couples counseling that:

• Draws on many years of experience and extensive clinical training with several marital therapy frameworks.
• Uses a positive attitude, intuition, sense of humor, and fierce determination to help every couple achieve its highest potential.
• Even if a relationship seems near its “end,” helps couples explore all available options, and to bring a relationship back to life, if possible.

HonnolDCounseling can help you and your partner to:

• Find time to develop your life outside work, in order to enliven a relationship;
• Strengthen “empathic listening” skills needed for effective communication;
• Maintain a commitment to spend time with each other, and your children;
• Understand the underlying emotional issues that may interfere with intimacy;
• End extramarital affairs, address the damage from past ones, and do “no more”;
• Learn to speak for oneself, rather than for a partner;
• Avoid judging and blaming;
• Emphasize positive behaviors and traits in a  partner,
• Coordinate responsibilities and tasks for home and children;
• Negotiate financial issues;
• Remember the “chemistry” and attraction that first drew you together;
• Learn to touch, embrace and soothe each other;
• Restore a sense of humor and perspective;
• Forgive indiscretions and lapses;
• “Make space” for your partner to be comfortable and genuine; and
• Accept the humanity, vulnerability, adequacy and beauty of oneself and a partner equally.

Either party to a relationship can make the first contact with HonnolDCounseling:

• Best if both come together:  Either party can come in first, but it is best if both come in together the first time;
• Initial session is exploratory: After an initial session, you and  your partner will decide if you wish to come in again;
• Both must feel comfortable:  If either party is unwilling to continue, counseling can sometimes continue with one party individually;
• Flexible scheduling:  Counseling sessions can be scheduled flexibly around the demands of dual professional and family schedules.  Early morning, midday, and evening appointments may be available.

HonnolDCounseling helps professionals sustain and enrich their primary relationships.  The stakes are high but the rewards are great, especially when a marriage or other significant relationship is at serious risk. Life can be a sad and empty journey all alone.  HonnolDCounseling can help you continue to live life fully with someone you love.