Relationships & Intimacy

Relationships shape how we see ourselves, and sometimes we lose pieces of ourselves inside them. This is a space to understand your patterns and build connection that doesn't cost you your sense of self.

What shows up in therapy?

Realizing you’ve merged with a partner so much that you don’t know who you are outside of your relationship
Questioning whether monogamy is right for you and wanting to explore different relationship structures
Your body doesn't feel like yours during sex, and that disconnect is hard to sit with let alone explain
Having your bisexuality dismissed or invalidated when you’re dating
Watching your partner transition and finding yourself questioning what that means about your own identity
Low self-worth that you can't quite trace back to anything specific but has been there for as long as you can remember
Questioning whether you should break up with your partner or keep trying to make it work

Where does it come from?

The absence of roadmaps. Queer relationships don't come with inherited scripts for how things should look, which means everything has to be consciously negotiated, and that takes energy
Minority stress and its aftermath. Chronic exposure to discrimination, rejection, and systemic invalidation impacts the body, the nervous system, and the way we attach to people we love
Attachment wounds that get activated in intimate relationships, especially for people who grew up feeling different, unsafe, or unseen
Relational patterns like merging quickly, codependency, or intimacy avoidance that developed as adaptive responses to trauma and oppression
Identity being tied to relationships. When your sense of self has been shaped by who you're with, a breakup or a shift in the relationship can leave you feeling like you don't know who you are anymore
The exhaustion of being in queer relationships when the world is so hostile