What brings people here.

Relationship difficulties come in many forms. Some are acute — a betrayal, a rupture, a crisis that has forced something into the open that can no longer be ignored. Others are slower and harder to name — a growing distance, a pattern that keeps repeating, a sense that the same argument is happening on a loop with different words.

People come to me with relationship issues across every kind of relationship. Romantic partnerships — the strain of conflict, disconnection, infidelity, or simply two people who have grown in different directions. Family relationships — the weight of difficult parents, estrangement, the particular complexity of sibling dynamics or inherited family patterns. Friendships. Work relationships. The relationship with an ex that somehow still has a grip.

The patterns we carry

One of the most important things to understand about relationship difficulties is that they rarely begin with the relationship you are currently in. The patterns we repeat in our closest relationships — the way we attach, the way we fight, the way we withdraw or pursue, the things that trigger us most reliably — were almost always learned long before this person came into our lives.

This is not an excuse. It is an explanation. And it is where the most useful work happens — not just at the level of the current conflict, but at the level of the pattern underneath it.

When it's you, not just the relationship

Sometimes people come to relationship therapy not because of a specific relationship crisis, but because they keep arriving at the same place. Different person, same dynamic. Different relationship, same outcome. If this is familiar — if there is a pattern you can see in retrospect but cannot seem to interrupt in the moment — that is exactly the right reason to be here. The relationship is the presenting problem. The pattern is what we work with.

The toll of patterns across all relationships

Relationship difficulties are not always about one person or one partnership. For many people, the same patterns show up everywhere — a persistent feeling of being let down or not prioritised, difficulty expressing needs without guilt or fear, a tendency to people-please at the expense of their own wellbeing, a terror of rejection or abandonment that quietly shapes every interaction.

These patterns rarely announce themselves dramatically. They accumulate. A friendship where you always do the adjusting. A work dynamic where you cannot say no. A family relationship where your needs have never quite made it onto the agenda. A romantic history where the same wound keeps getting reopened by different people.

For some people, the pattern shows up in one or two areas — at work, or in romantic relationships, or with family — while other parts of life feel more settled. For others, it is present across the board: a niggling thread that runs through every domain, every dynamic, every relationship they have ever been in.

And the pattern doesn't always look the same. For some people it is quieter — the fear, the people-pleasing, the shrinking. For others it is louder — frequent conflict, a short fuse in close relationships, a tendency to push people away before they can leave, or a trail of relationship breakdowns that are hard to fully account for. Both ends of this spectrum are worth paying attention to. And in both cases, what looks like a relationship problem is almost always, underneath it, a pattern problem. And patterns can change.

When the relationship itself needs the work

This page focuses on individual therapy for relationship issues. If you and your partner are looking for couples therapy, I am happy to discuss what that might look like and whether it is something I can assist with directly or refer you to the right person for.