Relationships Counselling – This Being Human

Five minutes on social media can be enough to make you question your entire relationship.

The smiling selfies. The anniversaries. The “couldn’t do life without you” captions. Meanwhile you’re sitting on the edge of the bed after another circular argument, or lying next to someone you love and feeling miles away.

It’s hard not to wonder if you’re the only ones finding this difficult. The truth is, most relationships look smoother from the outside than they feel on the inside. And comparing your behind-the-scenes to someone else’s highlight reel can leave you feeling ashamed, isolated, and as though you’ve somehow failed at something that’s supposed to come naturally.

And yet this is where most couples find themselves at some point. Not broken. Not doomed. Just tired of going round the same loop.

Relationships are brilliant. They’re also, quite often, a complete nightmare.

Not because something is fundamentally wrong with you or your partner — but because being really close to another person is one of the hardest things humans do. You’re two people, shaped by completely different histories, trying to build something together. Of course it gets messy sometimes.

You might be stuck in arguments that flare up quickly and resolve nothing. Or the opposite. A polite distance that looks calm on the surface but feels lonely underneath. One of you reaches, the other retreats. One wants to talk, the other shuts down. Over time it can start to feel less like you’re on the same side and more like you’re managing each other.

Sex and intimacy often get pulled into this too. Desire shifts. Initiating feels risky. Rejection stings more than either of you want to admit. Sometimes it’s easier to avoid it than to risk another awkward conversation. What used to feel natural can begin to feel loaded, pressured, or quietly absent.

Couples counselling offers a space to slow this down. To look at what’s happening between you without turning it into a courtroom. We pay attention to the patterns you both get caught in, especially in moments of stress or vulnerability. Not to assign blame, but to understand what each of you is protecting, needing, or struggling to say.

There are no quick fixes here. No scripts for the perfect relationship. Just an honest exploration of how you relate, what hurts, what still matters, and whether there’s a different way of being together that feels more alive and less exhausting.

You don’t have to be on the verge of breaking up to come to couples counselling. Some of the most useful work happens before things get to that point.

I work with couples of all kinds — different backgrounds, different ages, different relationship structures. As long as you both want to be there, we can work with it.

What happens in sessions?

We’ll talk. Properly. Not in careful, polished sentences — in the real, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes funny, sometimes muddled way that humans actually talk when they’re trying to work something out.

I won’t take sides, and I won’t pretend I haven’t noticed something important just because it’s awkward. My job is to help you both feel heard — which, honestly, is often half the battle — and then to help you start to understand each other a bit better. What’s really going on. What you actually need. Where the disconnect is happening.

Sometimes that means looking at the patterns you’ve both brought into the relationship from long before you met each other. Sometimes it’s more immediate than that. Usually, it’s a bit of both.

I work with couples navigating all sorts of things:

Communication and conflict
When talking to each other has started to feel like defusing a bomb — or when one of you has simply stopped trying because it never seems to go anywhere. We’ll look at what’s underneath the arguments, not just the arguments themselves.
Intimacy and sex
Whether physical closeness has dropped off, you want to explore something new together, or there’s a mismatch in desire or needs — this is not off the table. I work with all of it, without embarrassment and without judgement.
Infidelity and trust
Whether you want to rebuild after a betrayal or understand what happened and make a clear-eyed decision about what comes next — I can hold space for both of those possibilities. I’m not here to tell you what to do.
Life transitions
New baby. Bereavement. Redundancy. Kids leaving home. Illness. Life has a way of testing relationships at exactly the moments when you’re already stretched. We can work with whatever has shifted between you.
Alternative and non-traditional relationships
I’m kink-aware and work with ethically non-monogamous couples and relationship structures. Whatever your relationship looks like, you’ll find a non-judgmental space here — no explaining yourself, no justifying your choices.

Ready to give it a go?

Getting in touch is the hardest bit. After that, it gets easier — I promise.

Drop me an email to book a free introductory call and we’ll have a chat about what you’re looking for. No commitment, no pressure — just a conversation to see if this feels like the right fit.

Sessions are 75 minutes — longer than standard individual therapy, because there are two of you, and you both deserve space to be heard. We’ll meet weekly, and you will both need to attend each session. Sessions cost £90.

How Many Sessions Do Couples Typically Have?

The average course of couples therapy runs to around 6 to 12 sessions, though this varies. A typical pattern looks like this:
An initial assessment session (sometimes a pair of sessions, or a longer first appointment)
A core working phase of 6 to 10 weekly sessions
A consolidation or closing phase
Follow-up sessions available as needed

I will see you separately for the first session (these sessions are priced at £60 each), one immediately following the other. The reason I do this is to:

Gather personal history and background from each partner separately, without the other present

It allows each person a space to speak more freely about things they find difficult to raise in the joint room

What is said individually stays confidential unless I consider withholding the information will affect the work we do – if so, I will encourage you to raise it in the joint sessions, and if you don’t agree to that, we may need to have a conversation about whether to continue the sessions.