Specialties · Relationship Issues
Relationship Issues
Most couples do not arrive because of one bad fight. They arrive because the same fight keeps returning in different clothes, and neither of you can find the door out of it.
60-Minute Sessions · $250 · In Person or Telehealth in Utah
The Pattern
Recurring Conflict Has a Shape
One of the most reliable patterns in distressed relationships is pursue and withdraw. One partner raises the issue, presses for a response, and escalates when the response feels thin. The other partner feels flooded, goes quiet or leaves the room, and that retreat reads as confirmation that the issue was not taken seriously. The pursuer pushes harder. The withdrawer retreats further. Neither person set out to create this; the cycle builds itself once it starts, and it will run on autopilot indefinitely if nobody names it.
Underneath the specific arguments — money, chores, in-laws, sex, time — there is usually a smaller set of recurring themes and a familiar sequence of moves. Work in this area often starts by slowing an argument down enough to see its architecture: what was said first, what each of you heard, what each of you did next, and where the sequence could have gone differently. Once a couple can see the cycle as a shared enemy rather than as evidence against each other, the tone of the work changes.
Contempt and criticism deserve particular attention because they are corrosive in a way ordinary complaint is not. A complaint names a specific behavior and its impact. Criticism generalizes it into a statement about character. Contempt goes further, communicating disgust or superiority through tone, sarcasm or mockery. Naming the difference out loud, and practicing complaint in place of criticism, is often some of the most concrete work a couple does together.
Solvable vs. Perpetual
Not Every Problem Is Meant to Be Solved
A useful distinction in couples work is between solvable problems and perpetual ones. Solvable problems have a workable compromise waiting inside them — who handles the dishes, how holidays get divided, what time the house goes quiet at night. Perpetual problems come from real differences in personality, background or values, and they tend to resurface in some form for as long as the relationship lasts.
Treating a perpetual problem as if it were solvable is a common source of exhaustion, because every attempted final resolution just produces the next round of the same disagreement. The goal with a perpetual issue is not to make it disappear; it is to build enough dialogue around it that it stops generating gridlock, and to find repair attempts that work when it flares up again.
A repair attempt is any move — a joke, an apology, a hand extended, a request for a pause — meant to de-escalate tension before it turns into contempt. Couples in trouble often have repair attempts available and simply stop using or accepting them. Rebuilding a couple’s working repertoire of repair attempts, and their willingness to let one land, is often where visible change shows up first.
Seeking help for your problems means you’re taking action.
The Work
Rebuilding Friendship and Trust
Conflict skills alone rarely hold a relationship together. Underneath most struggling couples is a friendship that has thinned — less curiosity about each other’s day, less physical affection, less of the small bids for attention that used to get answered without a second thought. Part of the work is deliberately rebuilding that foundation: attention, fondness and admiration, and a habit of turning toward each other in small everyday moments rather than turning away.
Trust, once damaged by a betrayal large or small, is rebuilt the same deliberate way. That usually means a clear accounting of what happened, room for the hurt partner’s reactions without being rushed toward resolution, and a period of consistent, verifiable behavior from the partner who caused the harm. This is systemic work throughout: Athena is licensed as a marriage and family therapist, and the relationship itself — not one partner’s individual pathology — is treated as the client.
Sessions with couples run 60 minutes at $250, in person at the Salt Lake City office or by telehealth for partners located in Utah. Pace is set collaboratively; some couples come weekly through an acute period and taper to biweekly or monthly as things stabilize.
Athena works with the relationship system rather than assigning blame to one partner. She does not treat substance abuse, grief, or OCD as the primary concern, and will discuss referral options if one of those is central to what is happening in your relationship.
Common Questions
Relationship Issues Questions
- What if we keep having the exact same fight?
- That is one of the most common reasons couples come in. A fight that recurs word-for-word is usually not about the stated topic at all; it is a cycle, and cycles can be mapped and interrupted once both partners can see the pattern from outside it.
- Is Gottman training the same as Gottman Method Couples Therapy?
- Athena is Level 2 Gottman trained and draws on that framework within a broader systemic approach. Sessions are not a scripted program; the concepts inform the work rather than replace clinical judgment about your particular relationship.
- How long are sessions and what do they cost?
- Couples sessions are 60 minutes at $250. Select Health, BCBS, UBH and University of Utah Health Plans are accepted.
- Do both partners need to attend every session?
- Most sessions include both partners, since the pattern lives between you. Individual sessions may occasionally be used within the course of couples work, but the treatment relationship is with the relationship, not with one partner alone.
Start With the Contact Form
Couples work is built around both partners attending. Send the contact form before anything is scheduled.