Hear each other again.

It starts with something small: a late reply, a tone of voice, a plan that changed. Within minutes, you’re somewhere familiar, saying things you’ve said before and hearing things you’ve heard before.

One of you presses to be understood. The other explains, defends or goes quiet. The harder you each try, the further apart you feel.

Sometimes there’s no argument at all. You avoid certain subjects, keep things practical or stop asking for what you need. Life carries on, but something between you feels out of reach.

For many couples, work adds to the pressure. Long hours, a career that takes up all the oxygen, a business you run together, or simply too little left at the end of the day to really listen.

More talking doesn’t always bring you closer. Feeling heard can change the conversation.

We draw on Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Intimacy from the Inside Out (IFIO), an approach developed for working with couples.

IFS offers a way to understand the different parts of us that come forward when something matters. A part might become critical, work hard to explain or retreat into silence. Often, these reactions are trying to protect us from feeling hurt, dismissed or overwhelmed. Yet the way we protect ourselves can make it harder to reach each other.

In our sessions, we slow the conversation down enough to notice these moments. What happened inside you? What did you want your partner to understand? What became difficult to say or hear?

Speaking so you can be heard

You’ll practise expressing what’s happening inside you, including the feelings and needs beneath your first reaction.

In IFIO, this is called speaking for a part of you rather than from it. That might mean finding a way to say: “When the plans changed, I felt I didn’t matter. I got sharp, but what I wanted was to feel included.”

There’s room to be honest about your experience and to recognise the impact of how you express it.

Listening so you can understand

Listening can be hardest when what you hear touches something painful in you. You may want to explain your intentions, correct the details or prepare your reply before your partner has finished.

We make room for those reactions too. You’ll practise noticing what happens inside as you listen, asking questions and checking that you’ve understood.

You can understand your partner’s experience and still see things differently. The aim is for each of you to feel heard, with space for both perspectives.

Finding your way back

You will still misunderstand each other. There will be conversations that go badly and moments when familiar reactions take over.

We work on what happens next: recognising when you need a pause, returning to the conversation, acknowledging hurt and making a meaningful repair. You’ll also practise asking more clearly for what you need.

Over time, sessions become practice for the conversations you have at home — about work, money, family, intimacy and the future.

I make room for both of you to be heard, while helping you recognise the pattern you create together and take responsibility for your own responses.

That can mean helping you stay with a difficult feeling, finding words for something you’ve struggled to express, or pausing an exchange that is taking you further apart.

I bring steadiness and curiosity while you develop more confidence in having these conversations yourselves. We work towards what matters to both of you, with room to speak honestly about what you want from the relationship.

I offer coaching informed by my IFS and IFIO training. Our work focuses on communication, listening, understanding your reactions and practising different ways of responding to each other. I don’t offer psychotherapy or trauma treatment.

An initial conversation helps us consider whether coaching is appropriate for you. If your needs fall outside my scope, I’ll explain and help you explore other support.

Where there is abuse, coercive control or fear of a partner, joint coaching is not an appropriate starting point. Specialist individual support comes first.

We meet together, online, for 60 to 90 minutes. Sessions are in English, and I work with couples across time zones. There's no fixed number of sessions. Some couples come for a few, others for longer.