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5 Ways to Heal From Your Breakup
By Terry Gaspard, MSW, LICSW When a romantic relationship or marriage ends, it’s natural to experience feelings of rejection, anger, sadness, guilt, or regret. Self-defeating thoughts can grab hold because you’re vulnerable and trying to make sense of things....
How to Validate Your Partner’s Feelings During Conflict
By Terry Gaspard, MSW, LICSW In a recent article for The Gottman Institute’s website, couples therapist Kyle Benson tackles an all-too-common source of conflict for couples. The article, “Head vs. Heart: Solving Meta-Emotion Mismatches for a Stronger Bond,” unpacks...
How Trust and Vulnerability Can Lead to Intimacy
By Terry Gaspard, MSW, LICSW Being able to trust your partner is the bedrock of an amazing relationship and couples who are are able to achieve secure attachment and stay emotionally connected can risk being vulnerable. As a result, they enjoy sensuality and passion...
7 Tips to Fall Back in Love With Your Partner
By Terry Gaspard, MSW, LICSW The most common complaint of couples today is that they have fallen out of love. However, falling out of love usually does not occur overnight. Likewise, relationship repair takes time and effort on the part of both partners and includes...
4 Ways to Avoid Ineffective Apologies in Relationships
By Terry Gaspard, MSW, LICSW For many of the people that seek counseling with me for ruptures in relationships, being able to apologize to a partner or ex-spouse is one of their biggest challenges. While there aren’t any simple solutions to a good apology, there are...
Co-Parenting with a Narcissistic or High-Conflict Ex-Partner
By Terry Gaspard, MSW, LICSW At its best, co-parenting is a wonderful opportunity for children of divorce to have close to equal access to both parents – to feel it is okay to love both of their parents. Experts agree that the outcomes for children of divorce improve...
Distancer Behavior and Attachment Styles in Relationships
By Darlene Lancer Pursuer-distancer relationships cause a lot of heartache, especially for a pursuer. Learn about the mind of a distancer to understand your own or your partner’s behavior so you won’t take it personally. As codependants, we usually gravitate toward...
Tips for Keeping Romance Alive in Your Marriage All Year Round
By Terry Gaspard, MSW, LICSW A good romantic and sexual relationship is built on a foundation of emotional intimacy and closeness. Many couples struggle to maintain sexual intimacy because they don’t believe they have time for date nights and they have difficulty...
5 Ways to Make Small Gestures Count in Your Marriage
By Terry Gaspard, MSW, LICSW Elena, 48, and Jason, 52, have been married fifteen years and came to counseling to improve their communication and to stop bickering. Like many couples who I counsel, I asked them both what worked in their marriage and what areas need to...
How to Repair from Arguments and Have a Happy Marriage
By Terry Gaspard, MSW, LICSW We’ve all been there: embroiled in an argument with our partner, caught up in emotion, and perhaps most crucially, unsure of how something seemingly small escalated. The touchy topic of who’s “right” and who’s “wrong” in a conflict between...
