A couple sits across from me, and I can feel the exact weight they've brought into the room.
It's not anger exactly, though I've heard them fight so I know there has been plenty of that. What I'm noticing is something heavier. It feels like the exhaustion of people who have tried, repeatedly, and can no longer tell if they are fighting for their relationship or fighting to get out of it.
​
One of them says, "I don't even know what I want anymore."

She's talking about being in the relationship, and I hear that more than anything else.

It's an honest thing to say. It takes courage to say it out loud, especially to your partner, especially in front of a stranger.

Not knowing is not the same as not caring. It usually means you've been so busy surviving the dynamic between you that you've lost the thread back to yourself.
Relational Life Therapy is built for this.

Terry Real's RLT model doesn't assume that staying together is the goal. It assumes that clarity is. What I want is two people showing up fully, telling the truth without weapons. Then we can figure out what is actually possible between them. Sometimes what's possible is a transformed relationship. Sometimes it's a conscious uncoupling, done with care and dignity instead of carnage. Both require the same work.

What RLT gives couples on the edge is a container rigorous enough to hold the the actual question.

I've watched people arrive at my door certain they were done, and discover through the work that there was something they hadn't yet tried, some version of themselves they hadn't yet brought to the relationship. I've watched people arrive hoping to be convinced to stay, and discover instead that the kindest thing they could do for themselves and their partner was to leave well.

Neither of those outcomes can be rushed. And from where I sit, neither can be decided from the outside.

Somatics teaches us that body knows things the mind hasn't caught up to yet. A clenching in the chest when your partner reaches for you. The way you breathe differently in their absence. Numbness you've gotten so used to you stopped noticing it. RLT and somatics work with those signals, not just the story you've been telling about what's wrong.

In relationship therapy sessions, I give couples the same invitation again and again: put down the case you've been building against each other, just for now. I don't say this because the case isn't real, but because building it has already cost you years, and it hasn't resolved anything.

What would it mean to get curious instead? What would it mean to let your partner see what is actually happening inside you, not the defended version, not the one that has learned to wound before being wounded?

RLT cultivates what Terry Real calls the Wise Adult. Not a spiritually bypassed version of adulthood that never gets angry or afraid. The kind that can feel all of it and still choose how to respond.

Some couples do this work and recommit with a clarity and honesty they didn't know was possible when they walked in. Some couples do this work and part. They part having said the true things, having understood each other at a level the fighting never allowed. Their kids, if they have them, feel the difference.

If you are sitting with the question of whether to stay or go, you don't need someone to hand you the answer. You need a space honest enough, and rigorous enough, to let you find it yourself.

If you are ready for clarity, reach out and let's talk, honestly. I can help you find your way through, instead of staying stuck. 

If you keep having the same fight with your partner, no matter how many talks you’ve had, you’re not broken. You’re stuck in a painful dynamic.

I practice Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy, which is transforming how I help couples stay connected even through the necessary growth moments in their relationships.

The great thing about learning and practicing relational skills is they benefit ALL of your relationships, for the rest of your life.

Pretty great self-investment, amiright?

Why You Keep Having the Same Fight​
​Repeating conflict cycles are the bane of most couples.For example,

• The more you get angry, the more they pull away.
• The more they pull away, the angrier you get.

Or:

• The more they get blamey, the more you withdraw.
• The more you withdraw, the blamier they get. ​

Relationship Life Therapy calls these cycles "The More, The More."The more, the more is a dance of our wounds colliding, on repeat. I bet you know what I'm talking about!
Many of us think, "If my partner would just act differently, I wouldn't feel (insert bad feeling.)"

We outsource the solution to them. But guess what?

They are thinking the same thing!

If YOU would just change, they wouldn't feel the bad way they feel, and there wouldn't be this stupid repeating conflict!
Or maybe you are an internalizer, and blame yourself.
If only you could keep it together, you wouldn't take your partner to this negative place.

It's common to feel hopeless, despairing and trapped when trapped in cycles of conflict.

My couples' clients often say things like, "Ugh, I can't believe we are here again."
Conventional relationship therapy often focuses on the problems instead of solutions. 

But what you focus on increases.
For example, if you want a more trusting relationship, do the practices that will increase trust rather than endlessly reinforcing where trust was broken.

When I work with couples, I give them the same choice again and again.

1. "We can spend our time in sessions processing the hard things that happened between you, if that is how you want to spend your time and money."
2. "Or, we can focus on practicing what you long for in your partnership."

It’s a paradigm shift.
​
So how do you get out of "The More, The More?"

1. Name the pattern when not activated. While only one of you needs to see it to have leverage, it is helpful if both of you share an understanding of the dynamic
2. Watch for it happening in the wild.
3. See if you can name it while it is happening. (This works really well for my competitive clients; they want to be the first one to see and name it.)
4. The act of naming it while it's happening is often a total gamechanger. The smallest of interruptions can get you back on the same team.
5. Seek support for changing dynamics, not just processing negative emotions. Find a couple's counselor who is willing to help you keep your eyes on the prize: a thriving relationship, not endless venting. We are going after true change!

​
I am currently accepting a small number of new relationship clients.​

Let’s map your unique pattern together and discover how to interrupt and bring back joy and connection → Book a free call

What does it mean if you feel contempt in your relationship?
(Read until the end to get your free resource.)

I recently heard the phrase "Normal Marital Hatred" in my RLT training.
When I heard this I thought, "Yep, I know that feeling."

I've written elsewhere about my two marriages, but in the story I'm going to tell you, I am 29. I've been married for four years. We have a small home we've built together. It is a shoes-off house.

There are two steps leading up to the front door of the house. My then-husband has a habit of leaving his shoes in the middle of the steps. So that I either have to move them, or step over them.

I arrive home first from work. And on this particular day, I've had it. My students were a pain in the butt, my lessons didn't work, and my boss was micro-managing. I just wanted to come home, have a nice dinner, and chill.
I'm entering the house, and as usual, his boots are in the way, but in my urgency to enter, I don't see them. I trip, and fall through the threshold.

A swoosh of rage rushes through me. Why can't he put his fucking shoes on the fucking shoe rack that is RIGHT NEXT TO THE DOOR???

Instead of responding as an adult, I react from my adaptive child. I pick up his boots and throw them into the snow-covered yard, in two different directions.

After, I'm standing in my kitchen fuming. What an inconsiderate asshole. He doesn't think of anyone else but himself. Selfish. Entitled.

What I didn't know at the time is that I was stewing in my Core Negative Image of my partner.

I remember thinking, 'Ah, this must be marriage then. You just hate your partner, and keep going.'

At the time, it seemed clear that this was just the trajectory of relationships. And truly, the married people I knew all seemed to hate their partners, even if just a little bit.

My then-husband came home puzzled and annoyed that I'd thrown his boots in the yard. He didn't stop leaving them on the steps. I didn't have the tools to explain what I needed (consideration) and what I was asking for (please put them on the shoe rack.)

And so the contempt trajectory continued, until it reached its obvious conclusion: divorce.

Fast forward 25 years.

My current partner and I were going through a challenging season.
When I started to feel contempt, my lips would turn down. I didn't want to look at him. I felt gross inside.

Something in me went "Uh oh. Oh no."

I recognized the feelings. I got quiet, and sought what was beneath that feeling.
What I found surprised me: deep yearning for mutual cherishing.

I yearned to cherish, and be cherished.

There was an ache, like something had gone missing from the place it had always been.

The goodwill and warm positive regard I had felt for years was just... gone. I felt grief, and deep concern.

This time, instead of accepting contempt as a normal phase of a relationship, I challenged myself: maybe this was a warning sign. Not something to wait out.

A huge problem with contempt and resentment is that you are the one holding them.

The poison is in you, slowly eroding the love and care you used to have. And to be honest, they are fairly come by. You don't start hating your person in a vacuum.
There is a backlog of unrepaired wounds. The triggers have gotten grooved.
They are too predictable, and you know too well the path the fight will take. But you are the one living with the unmetabolized pain. It's hurting you and your good life.

(I'm imagining standing on a pulpit preaching about the value of love and relationship) But there is a way back from contempt!

It starts with deciding you love yourself too much to live with it.

Surprised?

So now what?

Decisions, decisions.

• Is the relationship salvageable?
• Will you keep on keeping on, misery intact?
• Will you leave? And take your own bullshit with you, even as you escape theirs?​

When I felt contempt in my current marriage, I knew exactly where that road led.
So I got my ass into therapy with a Relational Life Therapist who could help me clean up what was on my side of the street. (I'm the one who hurls boots, remember?)

I have recovered my warm positive regard for my partner.

I do not feel contempt anymore.

I work regularly to replace my core negative image of my partner with a better version.

My marriage now feels like the marriage I want to be in.

Feeling contempt was the warning sign that made me take action instead of sitting passively and letting things unfold.

Here's the counterintuitive good news: if you hate them, it means you still care. There is still room to do the work.

My Relational Life Therapy teacher, Terry Real, says it's possible to live a contempt-free life. I believe him, because I'm living it.

If any of this landed for you, I made something specifically for you.
It's called The Contempt Audit: A self-assessment for when you're done pretending you don't hate your partner a little. Free PDF guide and audio recording, if you're sitting with feelings you haven't quite named.
​
Grab your free guide

I love Valentine’s Day, and my partner thinks it’s completely pointless.
That difference easily turns into hurt feelings, unspoken expectations, and conflict.
Holidays like Valentine’s Day often expose an uncomfortable dynamic: one partner feels they are carrying more of the emotional labor of the relationship.

My story, when my partner didn’t show up on Feb 14 bedazzled with hearts and candy and romantic gestures, was that I care more about our relationship than they do.

As a couples therapist, I see this dynamic show up frequently.
​
The core problem is the pursuer-distancer imbalance: one partner experiences relational inequity, or the perception of it.

Let's talk about the Relational Life Therapy (RLT) model of “The More, The More.”

The more you pursue, the more they avoid.

• Their avoidance increases your anxiety, which leads you to pursue more.​

Feel Familiar?

Pursuing and avoiding do not create relational safety, nor joy. Over time, the connection suffers.

Relational Joy is the point of relationships: the soothing ease, contentment, and delight you experience when you and your person have stepped out of the dance of pursuit and avoidance.

Many of my clients can understand this cognitively, but applying the corrective is more difficult.

What do you even do?

Here are two things to chew on, for the sake of your relational joy.
1. Attention
Attention is the currency of a relationship.

• Do you respond to my bids for affection?
• Do you hear my pain, or are you listening through your defensiveness?
• Can I soften how I share feedback to not push you away, but bring you closer instead?

Attention Action: Send or say one appreciative message today.​
2. Prioritization
I worked with a couple once, and when I asked one of the men, “What are your priorities?” he said, “My husband is my priority.”
His husband had been complaining about not feeling attended to, so I didn’t buy it.
“Prove it,” I asked, “Show me your calendar.”
His calendar was full of work meetings, friend activities, and family events.

Not one mention of his partner!

Here's the thing.

The primacy of the bond must be intentionally nourished, and it starts with your calendar.

Intentional time together, and attentional time together, where you are engaging with one another.

A date night that involves a movie may be nice and relaxing, but is it connective? Do you feel closer?

Prioritization Action: Schedule one protected hour together this week and focus on connection.

Not feeling connected
?Feeling like you care more than your partner?I am opening a limited number of Relationship Reset calls this month.

In this session, we identify your pursue-avoid pattern, map what keeps it stuck, and create the first concrete shifts you can start using immediately.

If your relationship matters to you, do not wait for the pattern to fix itself (it won't.)
​Book your call and begin shifting the pattern now.

At 15 years into my second marriage, I suddenly realized we were on the brink of divorce.
We still loved each other deeply, so this surprised me.
My first marriage was at the tender age of 25. Signed up for the traditional gender roles, monogamy package, factory-installed.
That marriage ended in a blaze of glory: hot, painful, violent. So much shame, blame, yelling, and aggression.
I thought that was how all marriages end.
So imagine my surprise that there had been none of those nasty ingredients in my current marriage.
Instead, it had been a quiet drift, a walled-off silence, a slow misattunement that lasted years.
Let me be clear: my current partner and I love and respect each other. A lot.
But our adaptive children were getting in the way of us actually connecting.
Once I started seeing it, I couldn't unsee it.
If you've ever been in a relationship for long enough, you probably know the moment your kid self starts to drive.
Your adaptive child is both wise AND destructive.
My teacher, Terry Real, says, "Adaptive then, maladaptive now."
Our adaptive children used strategies then that worked to help us survive, but now harm our love.I know you know what I'm talking about!
That moment you stop being a wise, present, and skillful adult, and start being, well, an asshole who is really just hurting and needing love, but acting out at the same time.
In my current marriage, we were both lonely, quiet, and hurting.
But because there is so much love, it was hard to notice that we were at the doorway threshold of ending.
I’m writing this today for those of you living lives of quiet desperation, where the rift is not loud and ugly, but you feel the deadening, the lifeforce draining out of your love.
In my first marriage, I have many clear moments of memory: standing in the kitchen and realizing that the misattunement I just experienced from my partner was a “little death.”
Even in that loud, explosive relationship, the ending did not come from one final blow. It came from a thousand tiny deaths.
And I can see now that the same thing was happening in my second marriage, just more quietly. Misattunements. Small withdrawals.
Losing strategies block connection.
A thousand tiny deaths.
In retrospect, I suppose that most relationships get to the verge at least once.
Being a couple's therapist didn't stop mine from going there.
“The true work begins now,” our current couples therapist tells us, "Now is when you can become adults in love."
Can we work to rein in our adaptive children, to prevent them and their losing strategies from running the show?
Can we learn to let our wise adults guide us, hold those wounded and acting-out little kids, and find our way into a boundaried, adult love?
I'm deep in the work of learning to be a Relational Rife Therapist, the work of Terry Real.
Terry teaches that there are five losing strategies our adaptive children use.These can be mapped onto the fight, flight, and fix responses.
They all have a child’s logic to make them make sense.
Five Losing Strategies:

1. Being Right​
   a) Arguing about whose view is more accurate
   b) Fuels self-righteous indignation
   ​
2. Controlling Your Partner​
   a) Can be direct or indirect manipulation
   b) No one likes being controlled. It leads to retaliation and payback
   ​
3. Unbridled Self-expression​
   a) Saying whatever is on your mind with no kindness or respect
   ​
4. Retaliation​
   a) Offending from the victim position
   b) "I’ll make you feel what I feel!"​
   c) Can be overt or covert (passive-aggressive)
   ​
5. Withdrawal (AKA Stonewalling)​
   a) This is different from taking a responsible time-out or responsible distance taking
   b) Comes from resignation or retaliation.

When you read these, which is yours? We all have at least one.
My top pick is being right.
There is no shame in having a losing strategy, and it's good to know what you do when you get activated.
My RLT therapist says, “When you find yourself about to use one of your losing strategies, the best thing to do is the absolute opposite.”
So for me, the opposite of being right, justified as it may be to my adaptive child, is to allow myself to be wrong.
To not have certainty, to not believe the story I've made up in my head about my partner.
Sometimes you are not with the right person, and the relationship clearly needs to end so you are both free to become more fully who you are.
Sometimes, though, you are with the right person, but your adaptive children remain hypervigiliant and unconvinced. You question the relationship endlessly.
You whip out the losing strategies.
I'm so grateful that my partner and I are in RLT therapy and are learning to wrangle our adaptive children.
The flow that is present between us, Eros and love and excitement and curiosity, which had nearly dried up, is gushing again. It feels wonderful to fall back in love with a long-term partner and realize you never really stopped.
This isn't a sales pitch.
It's just me, in the trenches with you, reaching out from my very real relationship.
If you still love them, fight for it. There's a way back.

During my time in India, I noticed how many Indian and South Asian families are rich in connection, responsibility, and loyalty.

At the same time, emotional expression is often limited or discouraged.

Conflict is avoided, pain is minimized, and feelings are managed quietly.

What appears to be harmony on the surface often hides too much silence.

Silence in Indian families isn’t accidental. It’s learned early and passed down through generations.

How Emotional Silence Starts

Kids quickly figure out what’s safe to show.

Tears get met with parents who say things like, “Be strong.”

I've watched parents tell their angry child that the kid is being disrespectful. 

Vulnerability and sharing of feelings is seen as drama, and not the good Bollywood kind.

Even joy, pride, or affection can be muted so no one seems arrogant, needy, or attention-seeking.

Over time, many Indians internalize a simple rule: keep feelings to yourself unless they protect the family’s stability or reputation.

Parents usually don’t teach this on purpose. They’re passing down the survival strategies they learned themselves.

Historical and Cultural Roots

Emotional suppression in South Asian communities comes from real pressures: colonization, displacement, caste violence, economic instability, migration, and survival-focused living.

In those conditions, holding feelings in often made sense.

Showing distress didn’t always bring support. Staying in control felt safer.

Collective values reinforced it.

Protecting elders from discomfort, avoiding public exposure of family issues, and maintaining social reputation—these mattered more than individual emotional needs.

Endurance was valued over self-expression. 

The Cost in Adult Relationships

Unfortunately, feelings don’t just disappear when suppressed. They come out sideways. In couples, this often looks like:

• Avoiding hard conversations until resentment builds
• Emotional distance even when partners care deeply
• Sudden outbursts after long silence
• Anxiety, exhaustion, or tension with no clear cause
• Throwing yourself into work or achievement to dodge vulnerability

Many couples blame their “communication skills,” but the real issue is emotional permission.

If neither partner learned to safely feel and express emotions, both stay guarded.

Redefining Strength

Strength is usually seen as control, endurance, and keeping going no matter what.

Relational strength is different. It’s emotional literacy: naming feelings, tolerating discomfort, speaking honestly without collapsing or attacking.

I wouldn't suggest you to be emotionally exposed with everyone.

You do need to recognize what’s happening inside you and communicate it clearly when it matters to your partner.

Saying “I feel hurt,” “I feel afraid,” or “I need support” isn’t a personality trait. It’s a skill most people were never taught.

Why Culture-Aware Support Matters

Couples work works better when the cultural context is understood.

As a Western-trained couples therapist, I will never completely understand your experience of being in an Indian family and marriage. 

There will be things I miss.

And, there are other things I can see more clearly from outside the system.

For example, how emotional suppression in Indian and South Asian families isn’t just an individual issue. It’s tied to intergenerational expectations, migration stress, hierarchy, and collective identity. Ignoring that makes people feel misunderstood and guarded.

Working with someone who understands these dynamics allows couples to explore honesty without feeling that their values, traditions, or loyalty to family are under attack.

Moving From Silence to Connection
Change doesn’t start with dramatic disclosure. It starts with small steps:

• Noticing your feelings before reacting
• Letting discomfort sit instead of shutting it down
• Naming one emotion instead of none
• Showing your partner uncertainty, not just certainty

Many people were taught how to succeed, provide, and endure. Few were taught how to feel together. Emotional openness isn’t a rejection of cultural strength. It’s an expansion of it.

Take Action

Breaking this cycle of emotional suppression is possible.

Bring your partner to therapy—for your own well-being, for the health of your relationship, and for your children.

Learning to feel and express together creates a home where honesty, connection, and trust can thrive.