When I first opened my therapy practice, I purchased a small, beat-up, two-seater couch from IKEA’s as-is section. It was fifty dollars & all I could afford. A friend helped me carry it up to the fifteenth-floor of a city building, shove it into my tiny office, & cover it with a brown slipcover. Since then hundreds of couples have sat on that couch as they yell, cry, laugh, and share with each other. In those early years, the couples therapy I offered was fairly generic. Two people sitting side by side would tell me what was going on & I would coach them on how to communicate their frustrations with each other. While these skills are certainly important, the couples I was working with would come back week after week, sometimes year after year, complaining that while things had gotten better in some ways, they were still arguing in the same manner when things got difficult. I was doing everything I had been taught to do in school and yet I was missing one key component—recognizing the role stress plays on how couples can navigate everything from intimacy to communication to decision-making. A few years into my work, I got married following a whirlwind romance. Andrew and I met, moved in together, and got married all within two years. Everything was great until we had our first baby. Suddenly, I felt like I didn’t know my husband or myself. We went from being happy and connected to angry and withdrawn. I knew what was going wrong. We were too critical and defensive and too wrapped up in everything—our baby, our jobs, our activities— except each other. I would tell myself exactly how to avoid the next argument, repair the ruptures, and build our connection. Stop rage texting, I would remind myself. Even though I’m tired, I am going to put my damn phone down and listen when he talks to me, I’d commit. And yet day after day and night after night, I would behave in ways I couldn’t even identify. And so would he. One night, after a particularly bad argument, I spent time researching exactly why I was so unhappy. I came upon an answer. I write about that answer & what I’ve learned since in my new book Til Stress Do Us Part - available for preorder now ❤️