Couples Therapy Galway

Specialist in-person couples therapy in Galway

If you’re looking for couples counselling or marriage counselling in Galway, there’s a good chance something in your relationship has reached a point where you want more than simply another conversation about it.

Perhaps you’re caught in recurring conflict. You’ve become increasingly disconnected. There has been an affair or betrayal. One of you is considering leaving. Or perhaps you’ve already tried couples therapy and still find yourselves returning to the same place.

My practice is based just outside Galway City, where I specialise in working with couples experiencing significant relationship difficulty.

I no longer offer conventional weekly couples counselling.

Instead, I work with couples in focused extended sessions and intensive formats, giving us substantially more time to understand what is happening between you and begin working with it.

When an hour of couples therapy doesn’t feel like enough

Traditional weekly couples counselling can be enormously helpful.

But for some relationships — particularly those involving longstanding conflict, betrayal, emotional disconnection or the possibility of separation — an hour can feel remarkably short.

Just as you begin to get underneath an argument, the session is ending.

For that reason, my couples practice has increasingly moved towards longer, concentrated periods of therapeutic work.

Depending on your relationship and what is appropriate, this may involve a three-hour extended session, a one-day intensive or a two-day Intensive Couples Therapy programme.

The additional time allows us to slow the relationship down, understand the patterns that keep bringing you back into conflict or disconnection, and begin working with them while we are together.

The work begins before we meet

One of the foundations of my approach is careful relationship assessment.

I have trained directly with Dr. John Gottman, and Gottman Method Couples Therapy continues to form an important part of my work.

Before intensive work begins, both partners complete a detailed relationship assessment, including the Gottman Relationship Checkup.

I review this before we meet.

That gives me an understanding of the strengths of your relationship as well as the areas of distress, recurring conflicts and some of the patterns that may be keeping you stuck.

It means that when you arrive in Galway, we don’t begin from zero.

The couples I work with

Couples come to see me in Galway for many different reasons, but much of my work involves relationships that have become complex, distressed or difficult to shift.

This includes couples experiencing:

• Recurring or escalating conflict
• Affairs, infidelity or betrayal
• Emotional or sexual disconnection
• Autism or ADHD within the relationship
• Trauma and longstanding relationship injuries
• Difficulties around parenting or family life
• Significant differences that have become increasingly polarised
• Previous couples therapy that hasn’t created enough change
• Uncertainty about whether to remain together

Couples on the brink of separation are a particular area of my work.

Sometimes one partner desperately wants to repair the relationship while the other is no longer sure whether they want to continue.

My role isn’t to persuade you to remain together. Nor is it to assume that separation is inevitable.

Sometimes the work is about repair.

Sometimes it is about understanding whether repair remains possible.

And sometimes couples need enough space and clarity to understand what should happen next.

Three hours, one day or two days

Not every couple needs the same amount of time.

Three-hour couples therapy session

A focused extended session provides considerably more room than a conventional therapy hour and can be appropriate when there is a particular issue or relationship pattern that needs focused attention.

One-day intensive

A full day gives us substantially more time to understand what is happening, work with the relationship in real time and begin addressing the areas causing the greatest difficulty.

Two-day Intensive Couples Therapy

For complex, highly distressed or longstanding relationship difficulties, my principal programme provides approximately 12 hours of private specialist couples therapy over two days, together with comprehensive assessment and preparation beforehand.

Couples Therapy in Galway

My practice is located just outside Galway City.

Couples come to work with me from across Ireland, the UK, and internationally.

If you’ve arrived here looking for couples counselling in Galway, marriage counselling or in-person couples therapy, the first question isn’t necessarily whether you need months of weekly appointments.

It may be whether giving your relationship a more substantial amount of focused time would be more useful.

You don’t need to know which format is right before getting in touch.

We can begin by establishing what is happening in your relationship and whether intensive couples therapy is appropriate for the two of you.