Great Couples Counseling in Baxter Estates, NY. Therapy to heal relationships.

It's important that you know that I don't take sides or engage in blaming either partner. I understand that you are in my office because you want help. I get to know the couple as individuals and as a couple. So in addition to meeting together, I would meet individually with both partners. We would come up with a treatment plan, including frequency of meeting and schedule, treatment goals, and what each person wants from the therapy. We might focus on identifying feelings, changing toxic communication patterns, and opening up communication.

Drawing close in intimacy in a couple can be challenging. Being close to another person can result in buttons getting pushed in areas of the self that were never resolved. Despite the challenge, we deeply want to feel intimacy in life. Intimacy in relationship, while often challenging, is one of the greatest opportunities for growth. Caring, compassionate communication between partners opens each person to deeper feeling, connection, and expression. These capacities are crucial for a fulfilled life. I help you learn genuine communication expressing your needs while respecting and caring for your partner. These fulfilling communications lead to a better relationship and a better life.

Couples can be premarital, marital, same sex, transgender, lesbian or gay. Couples can be sexually involved, emotionally involved, or both. I love working with couples of all types! There are many themes that occur with couples that can cause problems, such as money, power, sexuality, children (if there are any), in-laws/family, friends, values, etc. I am experienced in working with couples of all kinds and helping you create better communication and intimacy. When you are in therapy, you will feel heard and respected in a way that you may not be able to feel without a facilitator. I will make sure that each of you have a forum to express yourselves respectfully.

In session, our couples learn to build a strong marriage and healthy relationship through improved communication, conflict resolution, managing expectation, reconnect and more. We work with couples living together or long distance. We guide them along the way implementing various methods to help them develop new attitudes towards life’s most complex matters. 

Couples therapy can be a transformative process that addresses relationship challenges, enhances communication, and fosters mutual understanding. It provides a safe space for couples to express feelings, explore patterns, and confront issues impacting their relationship. Therapy can help couples learn effective conflict resolution strategies, strengthen emotional intimacy, and reconnect with shared goals and values. By focusing on both individual growth and relationship dynamics, couples therapy can pave the way for healthier, more satisfying partnerships, fostering resilience and shared understanding in the face of life's challenges.

I use my vast experience to help couples in their early 20s to late 70s, of all genders and sexual orientations to understand each other and communicate effectively. Whether the conflicts are emotional, sexual, or financial, I am there for you to help you navigate the waters, leading to a satisfying relationship. Couples counseling and premarital counseling can empower you to bring more joy into your life and can help prevent the heartache and the tremendous cost of divorce.

I am a relationship therapist with years of training and experience helping couples to navigate the most painful and difficult chapters in their relationship. I will guide you with compassion, empathy, and a skill set that is born in working with couples across the country in their relationship challenges. I have been featured in Forbes, the Knot, and other leading media outlets discussing relationships, sex, and communication. I’d love to connect with you and your partner about the unique circumstances that you are facing and how I might be able to help.

Each couple is unhappy in its own way, but the core of the unhappiness is always miscommunication. Generally each member of a couple brings bad communication habits to the relationship and these habits clash. I use an eclectic approach to couples therapy that combines the latest research, utilizing psychoanalysis, role playing, role reversal, video and practice in constructive communication skills. In time, couples learn to communicate in a way that leads to resolution, not conflict.

Why do we seem to have the same arguments over and over again? How do I know if we are really supposed to be together? Are there things we could be doing to better support each other, to help each other grow and be our best selves? If we really love each other, why do we so often hurt each other? How do I know if this is real love, anyway? Relationships are hard. Even more than desire, they require effort and understanding to make them work. Often, even if two people really love each other, one or both may need help to maintain the right effort or understanding to keep the balance necessary for long-term success. Having outside, objective support can make all the difference.

The word couples suggests a sense of togetherness, meaning two people, who want to be together, get together for the purpose of experiencing something good, something meaningful, or something positive. However, coming together can be a source of pain if couples loose sight of their main reason for coming together and not resolving their conflicts. Quite often, one of the most difficult things for couples to do is to learn to communicate effectively with each other. Couples usually feel stuck and unable to express their needs. If you truly care about your relationship with each other, my intent is to help you make your connection with each other stronger.

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples focuses on strengthening the emotional bond between partners. Through structured sessions, we explore underlying patterns and attachment needs driving relationship dynamics. Using interventions aimed at fostering empathy and understanding, we facilitate open communication and emotional expression. Couples learn to recognize and address negative interaction cycles, replacing them with healthier patterns of connection and responsiveness. EFT emphasizes creating a secure attachment bond, fostering feelings of safety and trust within the relationship. By deepening emotional intimacy and building a stronger connection, couples experience wellness.

Dr. Joel Stukalin and Dr. Sara Mandelbaum are particularly sensitive to the needs of unmarried couples, such as conflicts regarding trust, fidelity, emotional-bonding, finances, future-planning, resistance to committment. We have specialized in couples work for 40 years and have been highly praised by clients as attuned psychologists who truly understand the problems and frustrations of couples living together. As child psychologists, we additionally help couples negotiate important issues with child-care concerns. Dr. Joel and Dr. Sara offer realistic models to improve empathic-communication and problem-resolution with minimum disruption. Meaningful change can start within 4 sessions.

Growing together with our loved ones can be an amazing gift. Somewhere along the line we sometimes struggle with those closest to us. We may bring our old emotional issues into a new relationship or perhaps we find our old ways of communicating with our loved one is no longer working the way it used to. Change is difficult but taking steps to increase communication and sort out our old beliefs that no longer serve us, can bring new light and joy to the relationships we cherish.