Couples Therapy
Psychoanalytic couples therapy in Mayfair and Streatham Hill, London.
When the relationship stops feeling like home
Relationships often begin with a sense of recognition — of having found someone who feels familiar, understood, or deeply needed. Yet relationships are also asked to bear the pressures of ordinary life: children, work, loss, illness, changing desires, disappointments, and unexpected ruptures. Over time, couples can find themselves feeling distant, caught in painful patterns, or unable to reach one another in ways that once seemed effortless. What once felt natural becomes difficult.
Couples therapy offers a space to think together about what is happening in the relationship, and what may be preventing change.
A space to understand what is happening between you
Many of the difficulties couples encounter are not simply the result of poor communication or incompatible personalities. Psychoanalytic couples therapy is interested in both what is happening consciously between partners and what may be operating outside awareness. Often, difficulties in a relationship are shaped not only by present circumstances but also by expectations, fears, and ways of relating that each person brings from earlier experiences.
The work is concerned less with assigning blame than with understanding what has become difficult between you. Often, what feels fixed or inevitable can begin to look different once it is given space to be thought about together.
Reasons couples seek therapy
Couples come for many different reasons, including:
- Repeated arguments and communication difficulties
- Emotional or physical distance
- Infidelity and breaches of trust
- Difficulties around intimacy and sexuality
- Parenthood and family pressures
- Bereavement, illness, or major life transitions
- Questions about separation or staying together
- A general sense of dissatisfaction that is difficult to name
Some couples arrive in crisis. Others come because something important has gradually been lost.
The psychoanalytic approach
Psychoanalytic couples therapy focuses on understanding the conscious and unconscious patterns that shape the relationship.
Rather than offering advice or strategies, the work seeks to create a space in which thoughts, feelings, assumptions, and expectations can be explored together.
As these patterns become more visible, new possibilities for relating can emerge.
How the work is structured
Initial consultation
We begin with one or two consultation sessions to think about what has brought you to therapy and whether working together feels right.
Sessions
Sessions are 50 minutes and usually take place weekly.
Location
I see couples in person in Mayfair (Hanover Square, W1S) and Streatham Hill (SW16). Online sessions may also be possible in certain circumstances.
Fees
Fees start at £120