“All relationships are different, but healthy relationships share at least these six things in common: a feeling of safety, honesty, open communication, and mutual respect, acceptance, and enjoyment.”
Sex&U
Relationships
Here is a glimpse of what we focus on:
If you’re experiencing challenges in your relationship, we’re here to support you in rebuilding connection, trust, and intimacy. Our focus includes:
- Intimacy and Connection: If you’re feeling distant, disconnected, or disillusioned in your relationship — and are considering separation or divorce — we can help facilitate healing and renewal.
- Trust and Stability: Struggling with jealousy, infidelity, or arguments that rupture trust and stability? We provide a safe space to address these issues and work toward rebuilding trust.
- Trauma and Past Experiences: If your relationship is impacted by previous abuse, trauma, mental health challenges, or addiction, we offer compassionate support for healing and growth.
- Sex, Sexuality, and Gender: Concerns about sex, sexuality, gender identity, sexual fantasies, or practices — including kink and BDSM — are valid. We can guide you on safety, communication, and consensual boundaries.
- Cultural and Religious Influences: When cultural, religious, racial, or ethnic beliefs create conflicts or barriers to intimacy and sexual fulfillment, we help you navigate these dynamics with understanding and respect.
- Relationship Barriers: If fear, past experiences, or other issues have prevented you from experiencing affection or intimacy — or if you struggle with forming relationships due to family dynamics or personal history — we support you in overcoming these challenges.
- Relationship Transitions: Whether you’re planning for major life changes such as having children, choosing a life without children, or preparing for marriage, we assist you in navigating these transitions together.
Our goal is to foster healthy, fulfilling relationships where love, trust, and intimacy can thrive.
Relationships are complex and come in many forms. The interpersonal space can sometimes experience pain, trauma, and conflict, and many of the issues we face with our partners may remain unresolved.
In relationship counseling, we focus on strengthening the foundation of your partnership. We explore your relationship patterns, address individual and shared histories, family-of-origin influences, and create space for secure bonding and trust.
Our work with relationship systems aims to help you define and foster meaningful connections. Through relational therapy, you will learn to set and respect healthy boundaries, improve communication, cultivate empathy, understand attachment styles, and find resolution and healing for conflicts or past trauma.
We work with many frameworks of intimacy and sexual relationships:
- Asexual
- LGBTQ+ (including bisexual, lesbian, gay, queer, trans, non-binary, genderqueer, two-spirit, and gender non-conforming identities)
- Blended family systems
- Casual sex and non-committal sexual encounters
- Consensual non-monogamy (such as open relationships, polyamory, relationship anarchy, and swinging)
- Heterosexual (straight) relationships
- Kink, BDSM, power dynamics, and related fantasies
- Long-distance relationships
- Monogamous and monogamish relationships
- Secret relationships or hidden partnerships (extra-dyadic relationships- active infidelity and betrayal)
We embrace a wide spectrum of relationship structures and identities, providing a supportive, non-judgmental space for all types of relationships to flourish.
We use evidence-based methods to help you rediscover connection, intimacy, attachment, and love. This process will help you and your partner(s) build a resilient, and strong future together.
Resources
SexandU.ca– Rated one of the top 5 e-health projects in the world provides credible and up-to-date sexual health information.
OMGYES– A research-oriented space designed to address a woman’s pleasure.
Relate Institute– The RELATE questionnaire is designed to help you and your partner have meaningful discussions about criteria proven to affect relational satisfaction, while identifying both common ground and trouble spots in the relationship.
Athens Counseling & Psychotherapy, LLC 