Coupleworks Blogs
When Love Grieves Differently: What Hamnet Teaches Us About Couples and Loss
In Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell offers a tender, devastating portrait of grief—not as a shared experience that naturally brings people closer, but as something deeply personal that can quietly pull partners apart. The novel (and now movie) shows how two people can love...
Couples Counselling for Older Couples
January is often framed as a fresh start and a time to set new goals. Yet for many older couples who have been together for decades, this time of year can feel more like a time to slow down. With the festivities over and fewer social demands from friends and family,...
Love on the Menu – why Eating Together Matters
When we think about relationship challenges, food is rarely the first thing that comes to mind. Couples usually focus on communication, trust, intimacy, or conflict. Yet in the therapy room, food often tells a quiet, but powerful story about how partners care for each...
When Couples Mirror Nations: Conflict, Listening, and the Path to Peace
The story of every couple changes and evolves over time. What one partnership can tolerate may feel impossible for another, and this depends on countless factors in each person’s history. Cultural values, beliefs about right and wrong, habits, customs, and the...
Thanksgiving for Two: How Couples Can Cultivate Gratitude and Deepen Appreciation
Thanksgiving arrives each year as an invitation to pause—to slow the rush, soften the noise, and look closely at what sustains us. For couples, it offers something even more intimate: a moment to turn toward one another and acknowledge the goodness that partnership...
What to expect in a first couple therapy session
Whenever I am contacted by someone exploring the possibility of beginning therapy or counselling, I am aware that a question that will be on their minds, whether or not they articulate it, will be ‘What can I expect from a first assessment session?’ and ‘What will...
Managing Anxiety
Recently I have often found myself listening to the world news and the despair that we are living through dark times. A constant feed of stories about countries riven by difference, hatred, dispute and violence, and witnessing the suffering of whole communities and...
Harvesting Patience: How to repair a relationship through steady, lasting change
As a couples counsellor based in North London, I often see how people hope for quick answers when things go wrong in their relationship. Yet learning how to repair a relationship is rarely about sudden breakthroughs or dramatic moments. With autumn's harvest season...
It matters to matter
Why is Mattering so vital to our existence The more I say the word ‘Mattering’ the more curious it sounds. But it has been mentioned in several sessions with clients recently, and of course it explains a fundamental human need that is central to our wellbeing and can...
Words Creating Boundaries
Fences, gates, walls, hedges, brambles, mines, broken glass, barbed wire, guns, armed barriers, checkpoints, and border control. All of these are boundaries. When faced with any of them, people become alert and try to think of ways to negotiate and be allowed into a...
Summer Holiday Relationship Stress and How to Overcome It.
As a couples counsellor based in North London, with over two decades of experience supporting individuals and partners, I've seen how a summer holiday that's often looked forward to can also be a surprisingly testing time in many relationships. The extra time...
Repairing a rift in your relationship
The current issue of Private Eye (No. 1651 13 -26 June 2025) has, on its front cover, the question ‘Is Bromance Dead? A Photocasebook Special.’ Not surprisingly given the nature of that magazine, the six pictures accompanying the headline chart the relationship of...
Betrayal, Infidelity and Loss
‘The loss of a loved one is one of the most profound experiences of human existence.’ [John Bowlby] The loss of someone greatly loved means the person to whom we thought we were firmly attached has ripped away and our relationship has been torn apart - and we are left...
No Closure: How to Make Sense of the Unfinished
When a partner dies or a relationship ends suddenly, we experience a visceral shock to our system. At that moment, we can’t think about the “why” much less begin to understand what has happened. We need time to grieve and allow ourselves to accept what has transpired....
CELEBRATING THOSE WHO HAVE MADE IT
CELEBRATING THOSE WHO HAVE MADE IT An Overview of the Length and Depth of Couple Life Well Lived Coupleworks, our group of veteran relationship counsellors have written scores of blogs to help our clients navigate all sorts of the crisis that will arise in the course...
The Heartbreak of a 20-Year Separation: Navigating the Unexpected
I have been working with a remarkable couple for the past few years. We see each other irregularly now and when we do it's more like a 'check-in' where they are able notice their own behaviour and speak about what issues may still be lurking. In our recent sessions...
Couples dealing with crises.
Couples sometimes come to us at Coupleworks to find the best way through a crisis. We look at how they can work together in order to feel they have some kind of control. This in turn will help them to find some joint necessary strength. I am not writing about a...
An Anxious Generation
Anxiety in many different forms is hitting the headlines at the moment and inevitably its consequences end up creating difficulties requiring therapeutic attention. One therapist, Owen O’Kane, has recently had his book ‘Addicted to Anxiety – How to break the habit’...
Coping with Loss
‘Sometimes it lasts in love. Sometimes it hurts instead…’ Adele ‘The loss of a loved one is one of the most profound experiences of human existence…’ John Bowlby ‘Life can be amazing. And then awful. And then it can be amazing again. And in between the amazing and the...
Handling Relationship Bugbears: Practical tips to help you.
When I begin relationship counselling with a couple, the first few sessions (whether online or at my London practice) often involve partners telling me about the everyday issues they don't like about each other, which causes conflict in their relationships. These...