My career as a couples therapist began by accident. After a 20 year career as a journalist, interviewing everyone from famous actors to campaigners fighting for the rights of victims of domestic violence, I’d written a book which initially began as an article for The Times newspaper. Chatting over lunch, one interviewee had casually mentioned that his partner taught Tantra. “Is that what Sting does?” I enquired. Poor Sting. A single remark about the joys of Tantric sex has haunted him for decades. My interviewee explained it was a different approach to sex which meant that the better you knew someone, the more connected and fulfilled your sex life could be. In other words, the opposite of many people’s experience, when sex starts off frequent and fun and ends up routine and habitual or even desultory and dull. It had to be a subject worth researching. My potential newspaper article morphed into a book: Tantra The Art of Mind-blowing Sex. That title brought me publicity and numerous invitations to take part in radio and TV talk shows. But I was a journalist, not a therapist. And I was sitting in radio studios while people were invited to phone in with their relationship worries feeling slightly uncomfortable. I felt a fraud, to be honest. But I was also intrigued by the questions being asked. Was there a way to help these callers, beyond recommending they read my book? Within months I began my training as a couples counsellor. Running it alongside my journalism. And one day, I had a practice full of clients, and the realisation that I had no time to write any more.
Now, nearly 25 years on from that place, I have sat with hundreds of couples as they tried to figure out while they feel so distant from each other; why they get stuck in repetitive arguments which drain their relationship of energy and goodwill; why one of them has had an affair. Sometimes they agree that their best option is to part. But many times more, they find a way to stay together, happily, and with more than a degree of excitement for their path ahead.
Of course, I can’t share their personal stories. Clients rightly trust me that the individual work we do is confidential forever. But there are common themes and singular thoughts I have over the years that might be of interest to a broader community. A friend mentioned this space, and despite a degree of tech phobia, I thought I might give it a go. Apologies in advance for rookie errors in the tech department. I don’t post on social media, so the only place I will be popping up is here.
I imagine I might post every couple of weeks, perhaps when a theme has emerged in my therapy room, or I have a reflection that I think is worth airing among people who find themselves interested in relationships, and how we sustain ourselves through our connections with others.
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