Couples Counseling / Couples Therapy In-Person in Madison, WI and Online Across Wisconsin
It’s overwhelming, trying to choose a couples counselor! You don’t want to waste your time, money, and energy on a bad couples counseling experience. Especially in Madison, where the vibe is one of busyness.
Between jobs, professional careers, the school calendar, and the long list of things that keep a household going, most couples don’t neglect their relationship on purpose. It just keeps slipping farther down the list, behind the next deadline and the next obligation. Then one day you realize how long it’s been since you actually felt close.
If you’re looking for couples therapy in Madison and you want it to actually work, you’re in the right place.
So often, in not so great couples counseling, the well-meaning and truly caring therapist or counselor will listen to each partner vent about the other one. But endless venting is actually not going to get you where you want to go.
Don’t get me wrong — we absolutely hear both of you out and validate each of your experiences. And more importantly, we will teach you how to better hear and validate one another.
But great couples therapists do a whole lot more than listen and allow venting. Allow me to explain a bit about our process and what sets us apart.
Our process.
pre-first session
We start before you even come in (physically or virtually) to our office by giving you pre-first session homework to read and complete.
This exercise sets the tone right for our first session, in which we go through a series of structured questions about your love story and shared history, your strengths, your goals and shared dreams, your dealbreakers, and your sex life.
Session 1
In order to effectively help you, we must first thoroughly get to know you as a couple and as individuals. That’s why sessions 1-3 are the assessment process.
Session 1 is all together (the couple and the therapist). Rather than letting couples plop down on the couch and start venting, claws out, we ask a structured set of questions to best get to know you as a couple and as individuals.
The first session’s questions are about:
- Your love story and what drew you together in the first place
- Your past eras as a couple
- Your present strengths and problems
- Your dealbreakers
- Your sex life
- And your future dreams for your relationship
Sessions 2 & 3
Next, in sessions 2 and 3, your therapist meets with each of you individually. These are important so that we may hear each individual’s perspectives about the relationship and so that we may learn about your individual histories.
In these one-on-one sessions, we will ask you about:
- Your childhood and adolescence
- Your family of origin
- Your cultural and religious upbringing
- Your sexual development history and past significant relationships
- Any relevant traumas in your life
- Your perspectives on the issues in your relationship
Sometimes, clients may tell us something in these one-on-one sessions that they don’t want their partner to know.
Session 4
Finally, session 4 is where we really get to work. Your therapist has gotten to know you adequately as a couple to begin truly helping you.
We help you talk to each other more effectively, more kindly, more respectfully, and more affectionately. We intervene when words are hurtful. We teach tangible communication skills that will last you a lifetime.
We explain what’s happening in your bodies, your brains, and your nervous systems, when things are going really badly at home. And we give you new tools, really useful tools.
We guide you and counsel you rather than just providing a nice pretty room in which you can complain about each other.
How did we get good at this? Rigorous, specialized post-graduate training in couples therapy and extensive clinical supervision. Sadly, not all couples counselors do this. And couples counseling is an extremely specialized type of therapy to provide.
I (Caitlin) was trained in the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, which transformed my couples work. I started getting REALLY good results and feedback from my clients.
In sessions, I found that I had “therapist butterflies” for how authentically happy I was for the couples I helped, who were experiencing a completely transformed, loving, respectful, and sexually connected relationship.
I decided to teach more therapists how to be as effective at couples work as I’ve become.
Have you been putting off starting therapy?
There’s a self-improvement streak that runs deep in Madison. It’s a city full of high achievers and people who pride themselves on being thoughtful and capable, the type who research a problem before admitting they have one. Asking for help with your relationship can feel like conceding that you couldn’t reason your way through it on your own. So couples read the books, have the same careful conversations, and tell themselves it’ll get better. Sometimes it does. Often it doesn’t.
By the time most partners reach out, the same fights have been cycling for months or years. Now, there’s a distance between them that’s hard to name but also hard to ignore, the closeness that used to come easily now takes effort neither of you has left at the end of the day, sex has faded or stopped, and conversations feel like negotiations. You’re living parallel lives under one roof.
Couples who do the real work with us can learn how to:
Stop repeating
unwanted behaviors
that you learned in
your childhoods and
families of origin
Communicate with true honesty & authenticity
Regulate your nervous systems so that you can speak respectfully and calmly to your partner
Have sex worth
having, (that is: truly pleasurable sex)
Stop omitting and lying to your partner
Are these promises? Actually, no! Hear me out: I can promise you that we know our stuff and that we can teach it to you. I can’t promise that you are ready to fully engage in the process. Only you know if you have two feet in this relationship and are ready to look in the mirror and do the really, really hard work of working on what’s in your control (which is your own stuff, your own behaviors, your own choices, your own attitudes, your own follow through).
Sometimes, folks need individual therapy and/or discernment counseling before they are ready to do real couples counseling. And that’s ok! And, we provide those. In short, discernment counseling helps you both determine whether you’re going to give this relationship one last REAL try and truly be all-in the relationship while you work on it and on yourself.
Couples counseling is where the real couples work happens. But first, you both have to be absolutely willing to do the work.
Are these promises? Actually, no! Hear me out: I can promise you that we know our stuff and that we can teach it to you. I can’t promise that you are ready to fully engage in the process. Only you know if you have two feet in this relationship and are ready to look in the mirror and do the really, really hard work of working on what’s in your control (which is your own stuff, your own behaviors, your own choices, your own attitudes, your own follow through).
Sometimes, folks need individual therapy and/or discernment counseling before they are ready to do real couples counseling. And that’s ok! And, we provide those. In short, discernment counseling helps you both determine whether you’re going to give this relationship one last REAL try and truly be all-in the relationship while you work on it and on yourself.
Couples counseling is where the real couples work happens. But first, you both have to be absolutely willing to do the work.
Some results my clients have enjoyed:
A sense of authentic connection and relationship satisfaction
Higher frequency but much more importantly higher QUALITY of sex together
More playfulness and flirting in their relationship
More honesty
More humor and laughter
More productive and respectful conversations and disagreements
More curiosity for one another
The ability to truly relax with one another
More mutual understanding of consent and boundaries
A deep understanding of your and your partner’s childhoods and sources of bad habits
An ability to remove yourselves from harmful messages from culture and other systems (i.e. religious trauma)
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you offer telehealth services for couples in Madison?
Yes. Telehealth is available to anyone in Wisconsin, so couples in Madison and the surrounding communities can meet without battling Beltline traffic or working around university and Capitol schedules.
Can appointments accommodate busy schedules?
Yes. We know how packed a Madison week can get, so we offer times that work for couples with full schedules. Contact us through the form to see what’s available.