My Blog

The average couple reportedly waits six years from the moment they first name a problem in their relationship before seeking therapy. Six years. When you first hear that number, it can sound exaggerated. But once you sit with couples in practice and listen to what brings them in, it becomes painfully clear why it is true. This statistic comes from the research of John Gottman, one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century in the field of couple relationships.

On the difference between leaving and returning — and why long-term love depends on knowing which one you're doing. There is a distinction I have been carrying for some time now, both clinically and personally, that I think matters more than almost any other in modern intimate life. It is the distinction between escape and return. They can look identical from the outside. A woman closes her laptop at six on a Friday, puts on running shoes, and leaves the house alone for an ho

On the quietest way a relationship goes missing. There is a sentence I hear in my consulting room more often than any other, and it never arrives as a complaint. It arrives as a kind of confused report. We were fine. We didn’t fight. We were just... fine. The couple saying it usually looks at each other when they get to the word, as if checking. As if hoping the other one will offer a different word and lift them out of it. They never do. They both reach for fine because fine

Why I started the Reconnection project. And why I believe you are here too. I remember a specific kind of evening. My partner was right there — same sofa, same room — and we were nowhere near each other. Not fighting. Not distant in any way you could name. Just... elsewhere. Two people sharing a postcode and very little else. What unsettled me wasn’t the moment itself. It was realising how familiar it had become. That’s the insidious thing about drift between two people. It d

I once had a couple who would argue over everything—dinner, timing, whose turn it was to bathe the kids. But the arguments weren’t loud...

A couple sat in front of me with a request I'd never had before. Both top executives, in an industry that runs on long hours and pride about long hours. They were living proof of it — children at home, grandparents far away, their time together not just scarce but downright rare. To make it harder, she was a morning bird and he was a night owl. They barely overlapped. "After all these years, we're still madly in love," they told me. "We respect each other, we work through our