Hi, I’m Jeremy and I’m here to help couples achieve a more productive level of relational maturity - resulting in a more collaborative, honest, truthful, playful and intimate marriage and relationship based on courage, integrity, trust, true intimacy and friendship. Is that not what we really all want from our relationships?

My journey to learning and training in this field began with the breakdown of my own marriage and wanting to understand how we as a couple got to that point and what it takes to have a really good marriage. I embarked on my own Psychotherapy to better understand my own behaviors and where they stem from and my contributions to the marriage. That led to a real deep dive into learning from some of the world’s leaders in Relationship Therapies - Dr David Schnarch’s Crucible Approach to Marriage and Sex Therapy, Dr Jennifer Finlayson-Fife who trained under David and is a renowned Couples and Intimacy Coach and Therapist and Terry Real a world renowned Marriage and Family Therapist and founder of the Relational Life Institute and RLT - Relational Life Therapy for Couples. I have also completed training in Discernment Counselling through the Doherty Relationship Institute founded by Bill Doherty an internationally recognized marriage expert.

When we get married, we are actually partnering with another human who is completely separate and different from us – although quite often we tell ourselves the opposite. As human’s we all have limitations and flaws and we all have blind-spots as to what our limitations are. When we are able to self confront and make an effort to see those limitations in ourselves then we can try to improve, mature, grow and develop as an individual and as a couple.

I couldn’t see my own limitations and where I needed to grow and when they were shown to me I simply got defensive. I certainly couldn’t see the impact that this was having on our marriage. I had my way of doing things in the relationship that I had in part learned from my own parents (who separated when I was still in primary school) and developed through a lack of emotional maturity. Put this together with a sense of entitlement of what the marriage owed me only got us, as a couple, further stuck. I would withdraw, shutdown emotionally, blame and tell myself it had nothing to do with me, feel like a victim, lie and avoid uncomfortable conversations around not only the marriage but anything to do with me. This is where the resentment crept in! It’s so much easier to see what our partner’s contributions are to a perceived negative relationship dynamic but much harder to see our own. And in a close emotionally committed relationship there are actually two different people bringing two lots of different stories, different pasts and different ways of simply being in the world - it turns out!

If you want to mature, use what your spouse says about you to take an honest look at YOURSELF. Then do what YOU know in your heart needs to change. - Dr Jennifer Finlayson-Fife.

It was so much easier to justify my negative contributions to the relationship by telling myself “well I did this because she did that” rather than tolerate the discomfort of looking in the mirror and taking ownership of myself. The reality is that in relationships the one thing that you do have control over is you! Yes there are 2 people in the relationship making both positive and negative meaningful contributions - but you can only control what’s happening on your side of the street!

I would tell myself that it was a lack of communication that was the problem and if we could “communicate” better things would be different - but communication isn’t a virtue if you can’t stand the message, and I couldn’t stand the message!

“What is it like to be married and partnered to me?” was a question that I never asked myself (to be fair I never had the emotional capacity or maturity to do so) but if I had and also had the ability to manage the inevitable anxieties that would’ve come up - it would’ve been so very telling!

“Seek First to Understand, Then be Understood” - Steven R. Covey

Going on my own therapy journey and taking responsibility for learning, has enabled me to begin to see these limitations and the consequences of leaving them unchecked. My relationship with my wife suffered, my relationship with my children suffered and most importantly my relationship to myself suffered.

Growing up, I was (like many young boys) conditioned to be the “typical” strong male type and then spent many years working in the construction industry where the typical male bravado of being “strong”, “stoic” and “headstrong” simply reinforced this stereotype. I told myself a story that it was a sign of weakness to be vulnerable and share who I was and how I was honestly feeling. I lacked self-integrity and a solid sense of self, where I would fold into others ways of thinking and then quietly resent having done so. This type of attitude became a way to justify taking a one up position of grandiosity on the outside in my relationship and then be one down and manipulative when things weren’t going my way. I can see now how this mindset and way of being in the world was so detrimental to my relationships. What I have learned is that being “stoic” and “strong” in a marriage is not a strength but rather a weakness if you don’t have the ability to have some compassion for yourself and those that you are close to and an understanding of what it is to be human and to honestly choose to step in to my marriage and truly cherish my wife.