Together we’ll work on identifying repeated behaviors that damage trust and cause distance. You’ll learn new healthier approaches and basic skills to stem those behaviors to where trust is reestablished and the conflicts are resolved in a way that binds you closer together which will inevitably affect a different and better outcome.”

“How do we start … I mean our problems sometimes seem so insurmountable that we can’t get beyond them to even start the rebuilding process.”

“That’s just it Tina. You can’t even begin to tackle the problems or expect any kind of resolution until you restore the relationship. If the timing is off, if the bond is weakened, if either of you have trust issues, if there is anger, resentment or the lack of forgiveness, if you don’t have a solid foundation to build on then all your efforts are for nothing. All your energy is expended in arguments and disagreements which only serve to cause further damage and puts more distance between you. You lose respect for one another and sometimes emotional abandonment has taken place to where one or both have given up and don’t even care to try anymore. You can’t come to an agreement even to disagree if you’re not talking ergo the silent treatment that some couples impose.

We’re going to focus on you the individual and you as a couple and your personal and interpersonal interactions. As we go through some of these exercises issues are going to be revealed. We’ll deal with them as they come up but as I mentioned before there might be times when we’ll need to put them aside because dealing with them head-on might be more detrimental. There might be other times when I might suggest that we delve in more deeply to get to the root cause. We’ll have to make those determinations as we move along but a lot will be based on the state of the relationship at that time and the individual’s emotional readiness to deal with it.

Over the course of the next few days I’m going to have you do a series of exercises aimed at re-establishing trust, re-connecting, re-learning how to listen emphatically, re-creating a safe environment, re-discovering all the things that made you fall in love in the first place and re-energizing your attractiveness towards one another. We will get to some of the current big issues in your relationship. The goal is to confront as many of them as we can before you leave here on Sunday or at the very least give you the tools to continue the work on your own or with Julia.