Two people can look at the same sky
and see different constellations.
You are both looking at the same marriage, the same Tuesday night, the same sink of dishes. You are not seeing the same thing, and neither of you is wrong. I work with couples where one or both partners are ADHD or autistic, and where the arguments have started to feel like the same argument wearing different clothes.
Translation, not repair.
Nobody in my office is the broken one. When two differently wired brains share a life, each one makes perfect sense from the inside and imperfect sense from across the couch. One partner's "I was focused" is the other's "you disappeared." One partner's "I need a minute" is the other's "you're shutting me out." Both readings are honest. Both are incomplete.
My job is translation. I help each of you hear what the other one actually said, which is frequently not what arrived. I am curious about how each of you works, and in couples work that curiosity is contagious: somewhere along the way, you start getting curious about each other again instead of certain about each other. Certainty is usually where couples get stuck.
Certainty is usually where couples get stuck.
Any mix of wirings,
any stage of figuring it out.
Some couples come in with two diagnoses, some with one, some with a strong hunch and a stack of articles one of you sent the other. Some come in newly married and some come in twenty years deep. The common thread is two people who still want this to work and are tired of the version where they keep missing each other.
To be clear about what this is not: I do not take sides, I do not treat one partner as the patient, and I will not help anyone build a case. If either of you arrives hoping I will fix the other one, my first job will be talking you both out of that. It is also my favorite part of the job, because what usually gets discovered on the other side of it is a person you already liked.
Start hearing each other again.
The first consultation is free, and both of you are welcome on the call. I see couples online across Texas and in person in Dallas. What is the sentence your partner never seems to hear the way you mean it?