Erin Althuisius Runt

LMFT

Success in couples, marriage, or family therapy looks different for each relationship, but, overall I'd say that successful therapy will result in you walking away feeling more empowered and capable of having satisfying experiences in your relationship. You will be able to more clearly understand what both you and your partner need, and why, and feel you have the tools to either meet those needs, or to be able to advocate for yourself and your relationship if those needs aren't being met. You will be able to experience more of the emotional experiences you hoped to have with your loved one, and to decrease how often you have undesirable emotional experiences.

Because I work predominantly with couples, I often see couples trying to figure out how to meet an incredible demand in their relationship to provide partnership, companionship, fun, sexual excitement, support, love, healing, and happiness. It's not wrong to want this in your romantic relationship, and, sometimes it's hard to sift through it all to identify how to both have appropriate expectations for your romantic relationship while also having grace and kindness in the moments when inevitably, your partner falls a little short. Romantic relationships hopefully are a safe and loving place to be, including being a safe place to be an imperfect partner at times. In adult family therapy, family members are trying to figure out the best way to address toxic, painful, traumatic, or dysfunctional patterns with their family members in order to have the type of relationship they've always wanted. There's a lot of opinions in our general culture about what you should or shouldn't put up with from your family, and many people are struggling to identify their own truth about what they want and what they are willing to be vulnerable about to get there.