Individual relationship counselling means sessions for you alone: no partner, ex or parent in the room, and nobody else has to know.
Relationship strain tends to show up in small moments. You rehearse a conversation for days, then say nothing.
You check your partner’s phone and hate yourself for it. A Sunday call with your mother leaves you flat all evening.
What brings people to relationship counselling
- A partner: the same argument on repeat, growing distance, jealousy, trust after an affair, or not knowing whether to stay
- A break-up, divorce or separation, including the months when friends assume you have moved on
- Dating: being drawn to people who aren’t available, going cold when someone is keen, or always expecting to be dropped
- Parents and family: approval, guilt, boundaries, or contact that has stopped
- Friends and colleagues, when a manager’s tone or a friend’s silence sets off the same reaction every time
Break-ups and divorce
A break-up is a loss even when you chose it. You grieve the person and the plans: the flat you meant to buy, the holidays, who you were in that life.
Many people keep checking an ex’s profile or replaying the last conversation. When the longing turns obsessive, it is sometimes called limerence.
Divorce adds solicitors, money and childcare plans, with decisions due when thinking is hardest. With children, each handover can reopen the old argument.
Sessions help you sort out which decisions are urgent and which can wait.
Anxiety, jealousy and attachment
A partner’s two-hour silence can turn into a story about being left. Or the opposite: as things get close, you feel crowded and start finding faults.
Fear of abandonment and anxious or avoidant attachment are common names for this, not diagnoses.
In sessions we slow those two hours down: what you told yourself, what you did with the feeling, what you said when they finally called.
Parents and family
Being an adult doesn’t always change what it is like to be someone’s child. A parent’s remark about your weight or your job can still ruin your day.
You may keep explaining your choices, hoping to be understood this time, or keep the peace by agreeing to everything and dreading every visit.
We look at what you want from these relationships now and what you are prepared to give, rather than at who was to blame.
If saying no is hard with everyone, not only with your parents, the page on self-esteem may be relevant too.
