Couples are seen throughout Northern New Jersey and nearby areas of New York, including Rockland and Westchester County. In-person sessions are available in NJ, with telehealth options for NJ and NY residents.
Garrett Coan, LCSW — Over 23 years helping couples repair trust and move forward with clarity.
If you’re unsure whether couples therapy is right for your situation, the first step is a brief, confidential consultation.
A structured, solution-focused approach to help couples rebuild trust, improve communication, and move forward — even after years of conflict.
Not sure where to start? A brief consultation can help you clarify next steps.
Prefer to talk or text first? You can reach me directly at (201)-303-4303 for a private, confidential conversation.
For Couples Who Feel Stuck, Disconnected, or Caught in the Same Arguments
Healthy relationships still experience conflict. Disagreements, misunderstandings, emotional distance, and stressful seasons are part of long-term partnership. Even deeply loving couples can find themselves repeating the same arguments, feeling unheard, or slowly drifting apart despite sincere efforts to reconnect.
When communication breaks down or emotional closeness fades, couples often feel overwhelmed and unsure how to move forward. Many begin to wonder: “Is this fixable?” “Are we too far gone?” “Will therapy actually help, or will it just turn into more talking?” These doubts are common—and they usually reflect stress and disconnection, not a lack of love.
Many of the couples I work with still care deeply about one another. They are not failing. More often, they are stuck in painful emotional patterns that developed over time—patterns rooted in stress, unmet needs, emotional reactivity, and long-standing attachment dynamics.
Couples therapy offers a calm, structured space to slow things down, step out of reactive cycles, and understand what is happening beneath the surface. Rather than assigning blame or rehashing old arguments, the focus is on clarity, emotional safety, and creating meaningful change—at a pace that feels manageable.
My work is structured, emotionally focused, and intentionally designed to help couples create real change—not remain in open-ended or endless therapy.
If you’re exhausted by the same fights, walking on eggshells, shutting down, or feeling like the relationship has become more stressful than supportive, you’re not alone. Therapy can help you understand the pattern you are caught in, reduce emotional reactivity, and rebuild connection in a way that feels grounded and realistic.
Sessions are available in-office and online, allowing flexibility while maintaining consistency and support.
Couples often reach out for therapy after months—or even years—of trying to resolve problems on their own. By the time many couples seek help, they may feel emotionally exhausted, discouraged, or fearful that the relationship is nearing a breaking point. Some couples come in during a crisis; others reach out during a quieter kind of pain—emotional numbness, chronic tension, or a sense that the relationship has lost warmth and safety.
Common concerns include:
In many cases, couples are not lacking love or commitment. What they are lacking are effective tools for managing strong emotions, expressing needs clearly, and maintaining emotional safety during conflict. Therapy helps couples move out of survival mode and into more intentional, connected ways of relating.
If you’re reading this and thinking, “This sounds like us,” it may be time to get support—before the pattern becomes more entrenched.
Most couples do not realize they are caught in predictable emotional cycles. One partner may pursue closeness, reassurance, or resolution, while the other withdraws, shuts down, or becomes defensive. Each response makes sense from the person’s perspective—but together, they create a loop that keeps the relationship stuck.
Over time, couples often fall into roles without choosing them. One partner may become the “pursuer,” bringing issues up repeatedly because the disconnection feels intolerable. The other partner may become the “withdrawer,” not because they do not care, but because conflict feels overwhelming or unsafe. These patterns often connect to attachment styles and early ways of coping with stress.
When couples are trapped in these cycles, conflict becomes less about the original topic and more about the emotional experience underneath: not feeling valued, not feeling safe, not feeling prioritized, not feeling understood. Couples may start to believe the problem is the relationship itself, when in reality the problem is the pattern that has taken over the relationship.
In couples therapy, we identify these patterns without blame. Understanding how you interact is far more important than deciding who is “right.” Once the cycle becomes clear, couples can begin to step out of it together—shifting from opposition to teamwork.
For many couples, the first major relief is realizing: “The problem isn’t one of us—it’s the cycle we’re stuck in.”
This shift creates momentum. When couples see the cycle clearly, change becomes possible—because the relationship stops feeling like a constant fight for survival.
Effective communication is not simply about talking more. Many couples communicate frequently but still feel misunderstood, unheard, or emotionally unsafe. Conversations may escalate quickly, become circular, or end with one or both partners feeling more alone than before.
Couples therapy helps partners learn how to communicate in ways that reduce defensiveness and increase understanding, including:
As emotional safety increases, arguments often become less intense and more productive. Over time, communication shifts from reactive to intentional—creating space for closeness, respect, and mutual understanding.
This isn’t about “perfect communication.” It’s about building the kind of emotional safety where hard conversations can happen without turning into damage.
Some couples seek therapy during especially painful moments—after betrayal, major breaches of trust, or prolonged emotional disconnection. Others come in because the relationship feels chronically tense, emotionally cold, or stuck in ongoing resentment. Whether the pain is loud or quiet, therapy provides a structured environment where difficult conversations can happen safely and productively.
Some couples begin therapy after particularly painful experiences such as infidelity, secrecy, or prolonged emotional disconnection. These experiences can leave one or both partners feeling guarded, anxious, or uncertain about whether the relationship can be repaired.
Therapy provides a structured environment where difficult conversations can take place safely. The focus is not on assigning blame, but on understanding emotional impact, rebuilding trust where possible, and creating clarity about next steps. If you’re navigating betrayal, learn more about infidelity recovery therapy.
Healing does not mean forgetting what happened. It means creating a path forward with honesty, emotional responsibility, and a shared commitment to change.
Relationships don’t exist in isolation. Individual experiences such as anxiety, past trauma, attachment wounds, people-pleasing tendencies, or fear of abandonment often show up in relational dynamics—especially under stress.
These struggles may appear as overthinking, emotional shutdown, heightened sensitivity, difficulty setting boundaries, or avoiding conflict until tension builds. Over time, couples can begin to interpret these coping strategies as lack of care, when they are often protective responses to feeling overwhelmed.
Couples therapy creates space to address both relationship patterns and individual emotional experiences—without turning sessions into individual therapy or placing one partner in the role of “the problem.”
This balanced approach helps couples understand how personal histories influence the relationship and how to respond to one another with greater clarity, empathy, and compassion.
Many couples struggle with boundaries without realizing it. Boundaries are not about distance or control—they are about clarity, respect, and emotional responsibility. When boundaries are unclear, couples may experience resentment, emotional burnout, or codependent patterns.
In therapy, couples learn how to take responsibility for their own emotions, express needs without guilt or fear, respect each other’s limits, and balance closeness with independence. If you’d like to explore this topic further, see boundaries and codependency.
Healthy boundaries allow intimacy to grow because both partners feel safer, more respected, and less emotionally overwhelmed.
The goal of therapy is not to assign fault. It is to create a relationship that feels safer, more connected, and more sustainable—where both partners can express needs, manage conflict, and repair after difficult moments.
Couples therapy is not about deciding who is right. It is about slowing down the interaction, identifying the cycle that keeps taking over, and learning how to respond differently—especially during moments of stress.
Sessions are structured and guided. That means you won’t be left spinning in circular arguments. We focus on the themes beneath the conflict: emotional needs, attachment fears, trust injuries, communication habits, and the places where you have lost emotional safety.
Many couples feel relief when therapy becomes a place where conflict can be held with care, rather than escalating into attack/defend patterns. Over time, couples often experience more productive conversations at home, less reactivity, and a greater sense of teamwork.
If you’re the partner who feels like you’re “always the one trying,” or the partner who feels overwhelmed and wants to shut down, therapy helps both of you feel understood—and gives you practical tools to change the pattern.
Learn more about the structure of couples therapy and the way we work with patterns and emotional safety.
In my Bergen County and North Jersey couples therapy practice, I work primarily with couples experiencing chronic conflict, emotional disconnection, and trust injuries. Many are high-functioning in other areas of life—work, parenting, responsibilities— but feel stuck in painful relationship patterns that are affecting their emotional wellbeing.
My approach is calm, structured, and emotionally attuned. The work is practical and grounded, but also deep enough to reach the emotional roots of what keeps couples stuck. You can read more about my approach and style, including how therapy is structured and what you can expect.
Sessions are available in-office and online. Many couples choose online sessions for convenience; others prefer in-office work for a stronger sense of containment and focus. Either way, the goal is consistency and forward movement.
Reaching out for couples therapy can feel intimidating—especially when emotions are raw or the future feels uncertain. You do not need to know whether your relationship will ultimately heal in order to begin. Therapy is a place to gain clarity, develop healthier patterns, and make thoughtful decisions—rather than reacting from fear, resentment, or emotional overload.
Most couples begin with a consultation to talk through what’s happening, ask questions, and determine whether this approach feels like the right fit. If your primary concern is rebuilding trust after betrayal, you may also want to explore infidelity recovery. If you notice you’re caught in pursue/withdraw dynamics, see how attachment patterns influence communication and emotional safety. If boundaries and over-responsibility are part of the pattern, learn about boundaries and codependency.
Taking the first step can be the beginning of meaningful change.
Schedule a Confidential Couples Therapy Consultation Contact Me to Learn MorePrivate, high-quality couples therapy for communication breakdown, emotional disconnection, and relationship repair. Sessions are available in my North Jersey office and online, making it easy for couples nearby in Bergen County to access consistent, focused therapy.
In-person sessions available by appointment only