Liminal Intimacy Couples Recovery Program
From Rupture to Repair: A Specialized Couples Program and Recovery Process for Both Partners
Not Losing Sight of the Relationship in Recovery
This is an intensive couples program designed to support both partners, individually and together. There is an emphasis on individual recovery while also holding the relationship and connecting the personal work back to the relationship itself.
When partners sit in the same room, there are always three entities. Each partner and the relationship itself. Intimacy disruptions and sexual addiction recovery involve both a separate and a together process, and each must be supported throughout treatment.
Many recovery and treatment models emphasize individual healing, which is necessary, yet the translation of this inner work is not always linked back or fully integrated into the relationship system. What is discovered internally must be carried back to the bond you share.
I have coached couples and worked with relational and systemic theories for over 30 years. This model is a specialized recovery design that includes both partners working on the recovery path individually and together with the same coach. When assessed as appropriate, I find this to be a highly effective relationship and intimacy recovery model.
Program Foundations
A Relational Systems Approach
Honoring the self, the partner, and the relationship as an interconnected system.
A Structured Recovery Path with Clear Benchmarks
A thoughtfully designed process that supports clarity, pacing, and movement toward intimacy and repair.
Making Meaning of Defeating Cycles
Identifying the patterns that keep couples stuck and supporting new ways of meeting each other.
Holding the Relationship as Central
Ensuring the bond itself remains visible and supported throughout recovery.
Individual Recovery, Relational Integration
Personal healing that is intentionally carried back into the shared relational space.
From Insight to Connection
Translating recovery work into real-time intimacy, communication, and trust.
Assessment, Safety, and Readiness
Ongoing assessment that guides structure, timing, and ethical care.
Liminal Intimacy Couples Recovery Program
Couples who come to Liminal Intimacy are often carrying the weight of a double life lived inside the relationship itself. Secrecy. Sexual acting out. Betrayal. Long-standing patterns of disconnection. Because no two relationships are the same, I use a flexible, relationally focused structure that supports both the individual and the relationship as a whole.
This program includes a blend of individual sessions and joint sessions. Each partner has space to explore their own experience and healing while also tending to the bond between them. At times, meeting individually is essential for safety and accountability or deeper internal work. At other times, working together in real time is the most powerful way to repair connection, rebuild trust, and practice new relational and communication skills.
Rates listed are estimates and may vary based on structure, pacing, and clinical needs.
Assessment Process
Every couple enters with a unique history, pace, and level of readiness.
Before we begin, I complete a careful assessment to understand each partner’s attachment patterns, the current presenting crisis, safety concerns, and the relational challenges that brought you here. We also clarify the relationship outcome goals you each hope for.
This assessment guides how we structure the work and ensures the process is grounded, ethical, and attuned to the needs of both partners.
There is no single right format for couples in repair or recovery. Some couples begin with individual inquiry before moving into joint sessions. Others need the containment and clarity of joint work right away, supported by individual meetings. The program adapts to your relationship’s needs, capacity, and the stage of relational repair.
Your relationship determines the recovery path we design.
Assessment is ongoing throughout the program and there are times when additional therapists are recommended to support the individual or the couples work.
How We Work Separately and Together
We design your individual and couples recovery path together. We work toward the intimacy goals you desire to reach.
I meet with each partner individually and together when it is clinically appropriate and supportive of relational repair. Some couples begin with individual stabilization. Others benefit from meeting together early in the process.
The structure is not formulaic. It is a carefully designed path shaped by what will best support safety, clarity, and the work of relational healing.
Expected Challenges
Five Core Challenges to Authentic Intimacy
1. Attachment Injury and Threat to Safety
Betrayal, secrecy, and emotional misattunement activate attachment alarm systems, making closeness feel unsafe rather than regulating.
2. Protective Systems and Defensive Patterns
Parts organized around control, withdrawal, denial, entitlement, or self-reliance interfere with openness, vulnerability, and mutual responsiveness.
3. Fragmentation Between Individual Recovery and the Relationship
Personal insight or sobriety is not consistently translated back into the relational field, leaving the bond unchanged despite individual progress.
4. Cycles of Reactivity and Disconnection
Unexamined interactional patterns repeat familiar loops of pursuit, withdrawal, escalation, or shutdown that erode trust and contact.
5. Difficulty Sustaining Honesty, Presence, and Repair
Fear of conflict, shame, or loss disrupts ongoing truth-telling, emotional availability, and the ability to repair ruptures in real time.
How We Find Our Way to Authentic Intimacy
What intimacy is
Intimacy is not simply closeness, sex, or emotional disclosure. It is the lived experience of contact between two differentiated selves who are present, honest, and emotionally accessible at the same time. Intimacy arises when defenses soften just enough for what is real to be known, without collapsing the self or overtaking the other. It requires visibility. It is where attachment needs are met not through fantasy, performance, control, or secrecy, but through direct relational engagement. Intimacy is not the absence of fear. It is the willingness to remain in contact while fear is present.
Why intimacy is disrupted
Intimacy disruption almost always has an attachment history. When early needs for safety, attunement, or emotional responsiveness were inconsistently met, the psyche learned to protect itself. These protections are intelligent and necessary. They show up later as withdrawal, control, compulsivity, secrecy, self-reliance, or relational distancing. In adulthood, these strategies often substitute intensity for connection, or autonomy for vulnerability. Sexual compulsivity, emotional avoidance, and relational disconnection are not failures of character. They are adaptive responses that once kept the self intact, but now interfere with real contact.
How we get there
Intimacy is rebuilt through honesty, presence, and the integration of individual recovery back into the relationship. We begin by stabilizing what overwhelms the nervous system and loosening the grip of protectors that rely on denial, secrecy, or control. As awareness grows, shame softens and self-trust returns. From there, individuals learn to tolerate emotional proximity without disappearing or dominating. Intimacy emerges gradually through repeated moments of repair, accountability, and attuned responsiveness. It is a practice of returning. Returning to the body. Returning to truth. Returning to the relationship as a living system capable of holding both difference and connection.
Theoretical and Practice Foundations of the Work
My approach integrates Attachment Theory, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Internal Family Systems (IFS parts work), Gestalt relational practice, Jungian Theory, mindfulness-based teachings, somatic approaches including Brainspotting, and trauma-informed couples work. The purpose of this integration is to support movement from rupture and confusion toward honesty, emotional clarity, secure attachment, and the possibility of renewed intimacy.
