From Divorce to Devotion: What My Own Relationships Taught Me About Relationship Therapy & supporting couples

Feb 1
3 min read

What Makes a Healthy Relationship? 5 Key Elements Every Couple Needs to Nurture Love and Connection

I’ve been married and divorced twice in 12 years.

So when I say that I understand the pain of a relationship not working, it’s not an understatement – and it’s not theoretical, but lived.

I know how utterly gut-wrenching disconnection feels.

How the person you once loved and adored can suddenly feel impossibly far away.

How desperate you can become to find a way to make the relationship work.

Sleepless nights.

Stress levels through the roof.

Anxiety spiralling, while all the unresolved issues drive you further and further apart.

Between those two marriages, I sought help from six different relationship therapists, and yet, not one of them was able to support us in understanding what was actually happening in our bodies when we were feeling threatened and stuck in an activated response.

No one helped us understand attachment styles.

No one helped us build safety.

No one helped us identify the unhelpful behaviours we were each bringing into the relationship – let alone how to communicate effectively, really hear each other, and work through the long-standing issues together.

WHY I CHOSE A DIFFERENT PATH

Two things have happened since those relationships ended.

The first is that I studied hard for years. And when I say years, I really mean it.

I was determined to learn as much as I could to understand what had gone wrong and to make sure I never experienced that level of pain again.

I committed myself to learning how to support other couples in finding their way back to each other on all levels – emotionally, physically, and relationally.

To rekindle and deepen love. To feel respected, valued, adored, and desired again.

And, importantly, to help keep families together where possible.

The second thing that happened is that relationship therapy itself evolved.

The field has changed enormously over the past decade – even in the last five years. We now understand so much more about the nervous system, attachment, trauma, embodiment, and how safety (or the lack of it) shapes how we relate, communicate, and love.

WHAT ACTUALLY CHANGES RELATIONSHIPS

What I love most about my work now is witnessing the moment two people finally feel safe enough in their relationship to speak their truth.

And when they do – because their partner is listening from a place of curiosity rather than defence – they are truly seen and heard.

From there, both partners begin to thrive.

This is the kind of magic that transforms relationships from struggling (like my marriages once did) into something that can bloom again in love.

That doesn’t mean disagreements disappear and never happen. It means that couples are equipped and empowered to get curious instead of reactive.

That they learn how to understand each other, even when they disagree.

They learn how to reconnect and repair ruptures between them – rather than slowly dying by a thousand cuts.

As Esther Perel so beautifully says about reinventing relationships over time:

“Most of us are going to have two or three significant long-term relationships or marriages. And some of us are going to do it with the same person.”

WHY SEX IS NEVER JUST ABOUT SEX

When couples come to see me because they’re struggling with sex, where we often start, and the first thing I explore, is what’s happening in the rest of the relationship.

Because amazing, quality, deeply satisfying sex doesn’t exist in isolation.

Sex – truly connected, pleasurable, alive sex – can only come back online when communication improves, and when emotional and mental safety are restored.