Why Couples Therapy? Why Now?

Hi friends and colleagues,

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Fall is here: beautiful, busy, and maybe a little overwhelming. Since I announced I’m now opening a couple of spots for couples therapy, I’ve been getting one question over and over:

“Why couples therapy? Why now?”

And honestly? My answer is pretty simple: “Why not now?”

My Old Take on Couples Therapy

Let me be honest: I wasn’t always on board with couples therapy.

In fact, I used to joke, “Sure, couples can come see me, but don’t be surprised if I suggest breaking up.”

Back then, I really believed my directness and assertiveness made me too blunt for couples work. I thought couples therapy meant being neutral at all costs, never taking sides, refusing to name unhealthy power dynamics, and never empowering one partner to stand up for themselves.

In my mind, couples therapy either:

• Gave one partner more personal empowerment while leaving the relationship behind, or

• Silenced the hurting partner to keep the status quo going.

  
  

That didn’t sit well with me.

Enter Relational Life Therapy (RLT):

Then one day, Terry Real showed up on my Instagram feed. (Go follow him on Instagram, seriously. The posts are so helpful, timely and thoughtful. It's @realterryreal).

Here was a therapist saying exactly what I’d been craving: holding people accountable, naming unhealthy patterns, pointing out how patriarchy hurts us all.

And I thought: finally.

Relational Life Therapy (RLT) is refreshingly straightforward. It moves through three steps:

1. Spot the patterns or the dance you and your partner participate in (diagnosis + reconnection).

2. Heal old wounds from childhood that are triggering your flight/fight/fix response in your partnership today (relational trauma work).

3. Learn new tools so you can get more of what you need and want (relational skills that last).

   
   

Clear. Practical. No bullshit. It blends the Gottmans’ marriage research with a sharper edge: definitive skills you can carry into every relationship, not just your romantic ones.

Sign. Me. Up.

Imagine This

You want more physical affection. Instead of asking directly for this, you toss out a side comment when your spouse walks by:

“Well, it’d be nice if you actually kissed me when you walked in.”

Your partner hears criticism, perhaps the same critical voices from their family growing up. Gloves go on. Ding, ding. The fight begins.

Or maybe it’s quieter: an eye roll, a sigh, a slow retreat into silence. Either way, the disconnection grows. And you're left feeling lonely, which triggers your own emotional wounds from childhood of being emotionally abandoned by a caregiver or parent. Adults cannot be abandoned; they can be left, but not abandoned. That feeling of abandonment is from childhood; it's an old unhealed child part of you. And child parts shouldn't be running your adult relationships today.

Now imagine saying this instead:

“Hey, I’d love a kiss right now. I missed you today.”

That’s clear. That’s vulnerable. Sure, it stings if your partner says no. But at least you asked. The real heartbreak is never asking, for years, and letting resentment pile up.

Why Daring to Rock the Boat Matters

Here’s what I love about RLT: it tells us to stop playing it safe. When we stop talking about what we need in our partnership, the first thing we lose is passion. Conflict is a counterpart to a truly passionate marriage. This doesn't mean you need to have huge screaming fights. It does mean you have to be brave enough to stand up for yourself and your relationship with love.

Rock the boat. Say what you need. Be bold and kind. Remember loving firmness gets more than harsh criticism any day of the week.

Not to shame or attack, but because courage is the only way things change.

And nothing changes if nothing changes.

How RLT Shifted My Own Relationships

This isn’t just theory for me. It’s personal.

Before RLT, I was the anxious pursuer in conflict, always chasing, always pushing for resolution before my partner was ready. Can you guess that my partner is the avoider? He would rather not engage, and often needs time to process his feelings before he's ready to problem solve.

After training, reading, and practicing RLT tools? I’ve changed.

My husband recently told me how much better I am at pressing pause, stepping back, grounding myself, and coming back calmer. That’s not who I used to be. And honestly? It feels like freedom.

A New Way to Think About 'Us'

Relational empowerment flips the script.

It’s not about me winning or you winning. It’s about us.

And working toward “us” doesn’t mean giving up your voice. It means learning to repair faster, laugh more, and actually enjoy each other.

Think of your relationship like an ecosystem. Your partner is part of your atmosphere: the very air you breathe.

When that air is toxic, everything suffers. When it’s cared for, everyone thrives.

“Good enough” relationships don’t just comfort us. They grow us into better, wiser, more generous humans.

Let's Begin

If you’re ready to breathe easier in your relationship, I have a couple of new openings for couples therapy this month.

The holidays are coming. Why not give yourselves the gift of a healthier, happier “us”?

Take Exquisite Care of Yourselves,

Megan

Why Relationships Disappoint Us & How to Find Real Intimacy

Relationships can be incredibly disappointing. Terry Real says this without cynicism, and it's the truth. I sincerely believe it’s one of the hardest truths for us to swallow.

We come into relationships with an unspoken list: all the things our partner should be, all the ways they should show up, all the ways they should heal us. When they inevitably fall short, it hurts. It feels personal, and deeply painful. Hearing 'no' sucks. Being disappointed is hard. It triggers all of our deepest fears about how we will "never be enough" for anyone, and we will "never get what we really need." And honestly, many of us struggle to even identify our emotional needs in relationships, as opposed to emotional wishes, which are often flimsy, at best, and completely unrealistic, at worst.

But the deeper truth is this: the ache is spiritual.

Our Longing for the Divine

What we really want, in the deepest recesses of our souls, though we rarely admit it, is someone endless. Endlessly available. Endlessly fascinating. Endlessly compassionate. Endlessly attuned.

In other words: we want a god or goddess, who worships us and our needs/wants/desires. Our understanding of wants and needs in relationships are also conflicting. We want a parent and a lover, a best friend and a confidant, a business partner (after all, running a household is a lot like running a business) and a sexpot. We want too much from one person. And we, often, don't hold ourselves to the same standards or expectations.

We want someone to complete us. Anybody remember the movie Jerry Maguire? "You complete me." (YUCK. Let's do a future post on working on completing yourself and offering a full, unencumbered wise adult to our partners.) Also, can we please keep in mind that Tom Cruise playing himself in every movie is not a good model for healthy relationships? Just sayin'.

We desire divine perfection dressed up as flesh and blood. We want a savior, a rescuer, and when that just doesn't exist in our partner, we are left yearning. Yearning doesn't feel good. It can often feel like desperation.

When we clash with the reality that the person across from us is as limited, flawed, and messy as we are (and that they aren't coming to save us from ourselves or rescue us from our pasts,) we despair.

Why We Struggle to Stay in Real Relationship

This longing for divinity isn’t just about romance, though it has largely been shaped by romantic comedies, poor examples of love in our own families of origin, and Hallmark card versions of love. This longing also affects how we view friendships, colleagues, family, even strangers online. We are restless, agitated and dissatisfied because no one measures up to the fantasy.

And here’s the cost:

• We don’t know how to hold nuance. You can look at our current political climate to see evidence of this.

• We can’t tolerate contradictions in others. People are not all good, or all bad. They have multiple parts to them, some of which have maladaptive and unhealthy ways of getting their needs met in present relationships.

• We choose to settle for good enough relationships, or we don't risk getting into them at all.

• We cling to individualism rather than risk being changed by relationship and community.

• We protect our egos instead of helping each other win, and we miss out on the learning and growth that can come from letting go of our understanding of the world. Our way isn't the dominant way. It's a way to see things. There are many perspectives.

In short, we resist the very thing we need and want most: real intimacy.

Intimacy Is Messy

This is where Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy (RLT) addresses our cultural wound directly. RLT shows us that true intimacy is not founded on perfection, but rather on how two imperfect individuals handle their unavoidable conflicts.

That’s the guts of intimacy. Not a flawless partner. Not eternal bliss. But learning, over and over, how to repair, reconnect, and recommit. Relationships of all types are in constant cycles of harmony, rupture and repair. Therefore, we all have good experience with these three states in relationships, unless you're a hermit living in the desert.

Except most of us didn't learn anything about repair or any skills of how to get more of what we want and need in our relationships.

Our families of origin were either "totally normal, never really saw my parents fight" (a.k.a. you never saw conflict being repaired at all; or you ), or they were chaotic messes where people were harmed either physically or emotionally on the regular. In examination of our childhood experiences of rupture and repair, we can glean vital information on how and why we struggle on showing up fully in our adult relationships.

As children, we didn't have much choice in how we acted and reacted, which is why relational harm or attachment trauma is so hard to heal. As adults, we have choice. We can choose our actions and our reactions to our partners, our bosses, our friends, our colleagues, our church members, etc.

Learning how to ride the waves of harmony, rupture and repair is the crux of becoming a fully fledged person. Becoming a wise adult is work. This is messy work. But it’s sacred work.

My Work as an “Intimacy Merchant”

I am in the process of becoming certified in RLT because I believe this truth is urgently needed: in marriages and partnerships, in friendships, in communities, in the world.

I see my role as an intimacy merchant. I want to help people trade in their impossible longing for divinity and perfection in their relationships for something real: the transformative power of human connection.

It won’t be neat. It won’t be perfect. But it will be worth it.

The Invitation

If you’re tired of the endless dissatisfaction, in yourself, in your partner, in the world, it might be time to try a different way. I do work with couples who want more. And I don't mince words. I take sides, judiciously. I call out harmful patterns. I want real intimacy for every person I work with, and I believe it's possible for many of us, especially if we are committed to doing the work. There is a different path forward.

One rooted not in perfection, but in relationality. Not in individualism, but in connection. Not in fantasy, but in messy, glorious intimacy.

Because when we learn how to be real with each other, we don’t just survive relationships. We grow through them.

Take exquisite care of yourselves,

Megan

Disenfranchised Grief: What to Do When Your Loss Feels Invisible

Even Grief That Feels Small, Hidden, or 'Not Enough' Deserves Tending To, and Compassion.

Disenfranchised grief can feel lonely, like being at the top of a mountain with no companions to give credit to the difficulty of your climb.

Hello friends and colleagues,

I hope you are having a lovely week thus far. Our topic today is one of particular interest and importance to me. And here’s why: people come to see me for deep grief work. Some of them know exactly what they’re coming in for: the death of a child, the kind of grief that splits life into a “before” and “after.” Others arrive unsure why they’re hurting so much. Something in their world has shifted: a friendship ended, a pregnancy was lost, a dream collapsed, and the pain feels outsized, even confusing. More often than not, what we discover together is hidden grief, what Kenneth Doka (1989) called “socially unrecognized or unsupported” grief.

Here’s the hard part: when your grief isn’t acknowledged, you carry two burdens at once: the loss itself and the pressure to minimize it. You may catch yourself thinking, “This shouldn’t matter so much,” or worrying others will see it as “silly” or “stupid.” But grief without witness is pain without validation. It doesn’t stop hurting just because no one else sees it.

In this post, I want to give voice and space for those hidden losses. We’ll explore what disenfranchised grief looks like, why it hurts so damn bad, and what actually helps you feel better in real time. If your loss mattered to you, it matters.

What is Disenfranchised Grief?

It's a common misconception that the only 'valid' grief is the sadness and yearning that comes after experiencing the death of someone we loved dearly. Here's the thing: if that were the case, then I truly believe society would actually do a better job of supporting grieving people than we currently do. Our society fails mourners precisely because we narrow the definition of what it means to grieve and what is 'appropriate' to grieve. We often struggle to witness to pain in our society. It's uncomfortable and gritty and requires people to step outside of themselves and their experiences and feelings in order to create room for the spiritual experience that is grieving, no matter what the impetus was.

Disenfranchised grief happens when someone's loss is unseen, minimized or stigmatized. From a brain perspective (O’Connor), grief is a learning process: your brain keeps reaching for the person, future, or identity it expected. When that bond breaks through death, miscarriage, a relationship ending, the brain has to update its map of reality. Without validation, that learning process takes longer and feels disorienting.

Here are some examples of grief that often go unnoticed:

• Miscarriage, infertility, birthing trauma, or perinatal loss

• Loss of a beloved pet

• A break-up, a situationship ending, a friendship fading out

• Changes in health, identity, or future dreams

• A job loss or unexpected retirement

• A faith shift

• A move

• The death of an ex-spouse or an abusive parent

What matters is the meaning the loss holds for you, not how it measures up on anyone else’s scale.

Why It Matters

Grief unseen is like physical pain without treatment. It lingers and compounds. If you feel unmet, unanswered, in your loss, you will feel the pain of abandonment on top of the yearning, sadness and depression that is present because of what is missing from your life. Remember, to your nervous system, abandonment can feel like a threat. If you don't want to feel bad forever, then you need to not feel alone forever. And we need to acknowledge the two layers of your pain: the loss and the invalidation.

From a brain perspective, grief is a ‘learning problem.' Your nervous system keeps reaching for what was lost or for what you never had, and without acknowledgment, that relearning takes even longer.

How Disenfranchised Grief Shows Up

When grief isn’t recognized, you don’t just feel the loss. You feel the vacuum around it. That gap shows up across emotions, thoughts, the body, behavior, and relationships.

Emotional Costs

• Shame or second-guessing (“Why am I this upset?”or "Most people don't seem to understand what I'm going through, so it must not be a big deal.")

• Irritability, short fuse, numbness, or sudden spikes of sadness.

• Ambivalence: wanting to talk about it and also wanting to hide away or be alone with it.

Thought Patterns

• Rumination and mental replay of what happened or what might’ve been.

• Self-doubt: “Am I overreacting?” “Does this even count?”

• Global conclusions (“I’m too much,” “I should be over it by now.”)

Body

• Sleep changes, fatigue, headaches, muscle tension.

• Stress loops after invalidating interactions (tight chest, shallow breath).

• Startle or hypervigilance when reminders pop up.

Try a Micro-reset: 60–90 seconds of paced breathing (inhale 4, exhale 6) before/after grief work or hard conversations.

Behavior

• Overfunctioning (fixing, caretaking, working late) or underfunctioning (avoidance, oversleeping, watching your comfort show on repeat, procrastination).

• Isolation to protect the grief from minimizers in your life.

• Compulsive Googling for proof that it “counts.”

Here's a tiny pivot: set a 10–15 minute container for grief tasks (journal, letter, ritual), then re-enter the day.

Relationships

• Over-explaining to earn legitimacy; feeling depleted when it doesn’t land.

• People-pleasing or pulling back from those who “don’t get it.”

• Resentment toward well-meaning “at least…” comments.

When you're dealing with minimizers, here are some boundary scripts:

• “I’m not looking for fixes, just a few minutes to be heard.”

• “This is important to me. Can you sit with me without trying to reframe it, or make it better?”

• “I’m going to skip this topic for now. It feels too raw.”

Red Flags for “Stuck” Grief (Consider Extra Support):

• Marked impairment in daily functioning beyond 1–2 months.

• Persistent self-blame, hopelessness, or relentless rumination.

• Strong physiological distress to reminders that isn’t easing with time and support.

Grief-informed therapy (including EMDR) can help the brain integrate the loss and reduce the intensity of your emotions.

What Helps (Practical Steps for Increasing your Bandwidth)

A. Name it.

• Script: “I’m grieving X. It matters to me.”

• Journal prompt: “What did this loss mean to me? What did it change?”

B. Choose witnesses wisely (quality > quantity)

• Identify 1–2 safe people/spaces (therapy, support group, spiritual mentor).

• Boundary script for the minimizers in your life: “I’m not looking for fixes. I just would like a few minutes to be heard. Are you available to listen?”

C. Create a small ritual with a beginning, middle, end

• Options: write a letter you won’t send, plant/stone/place marker, candle with a specific phrase, grieving music or movie scene playlist you retire after use.

• Keep it brief (5–15 minutes); repetition teaches the brain the new map (O’Connor).

D. Give the loss a form (containment)

• One-page “loss map”: what was lost, what remains, what needs care.

• Box or folder for objects/notes; decide review cadence (monthly/quarterly).

• Create an imaginary container in your mind where you can put grief or its negative emotional cousins or sharp memories, so you can function in the day to day moments. Tell the items in the container that you are coming back for them. You just need a little space right now.

E. Care for your nervous system and your body

• 60–90 seconds of paced breathing (inhale 4, hold for 4, exhale 6).

• Alternate nostril breathing

• Running in place or pretending to run in place if you feel jittery or anxious energy.

• TIPP emotion regulation skills (Temperature changes, Intense Exercise, Paced Breathing, Progressive Muscle Relaxation)

• Grounding through toe yoga. Not joking, try it! Next time you feel distressed put your feet on the floor and wiggle your toes back and forth and side to side. Notice how different you feel when you just pay attention to one part of your body.

• Gentle movement on hard days. Find ways to walk if you can. Walking is bilateral stimulation.

• Eat a protein, fat and carb at regular intervals throughout the day. Examples would be a jerky stick, with olives and some fruit. A balanced meal will help your blood sugar regulate and decrease your overall emotional reactivity.

What Doesn’t Help (and What to Do Instead)

• Comparing pain (“others have it worse”) → Both/And: My pain is real, and others suffer too.

• Arguing your case to minimizers → Protect your reps: share with one steady witness.

• Self-punishing for “not over it” → New frame: I’m learning to live with this.

• Doom-scrolling triggers → Containment: set a daily cutoff; use a 10–15 min grief container.

If You Love Someone with Disenfranchised Grief

Say:

• “I believe you.”

• “What did this mean to you?”

• “Do you want company or solutions?”

Avoid:

• “At least…,” fixes, timelines, silver linings, etc.

Do:

• Sit quietly; hold time.

• Offer a small task (drive, meal, errand).

• Support a simple ritual they choose.

If your grief has felt invisible, let this be your permission slip to be seen: it’s real because it’s yours. You don’t have to rank it, defer it, or defend it. Start small: name what was lost, choose one steady witness, create a brief ritual, and give your nervous system a few minutes of care per day. There’s no finish line here; the goal is function and relief, not “moving on.” With consistent, gentle reps, the brain does learn the new shape of your life, and the pain becomes more bearable, think less gunshot wound, more sensitive skin around a scar, over time.

If you want company in that process, I’m here. We can make space for the loss, reduce the cacophony of shame and second-guessing, and build real skills that actually help you feel better, whether through weekly therapy or focused EMDR work. When you’re ready, reach out. Your grief has a place with me, in my office, anytime.

Take Exquisite Care of Yourselves,

Megan