Relationships can become painful when the same patterns keep repeating. You may find yourselves caught in conflict, withdrawing from one another or feeling increasingly disconnected. One partner may seek reassurance and closeness while the other shuts down, pulls away or feels overwhelmed.
I’m Jennifer Nurick, a Master’s-qualified Clinical Psychotherapist and couples therapist with 21 years’ experience. I help couples understand the attachment patterns beneath their difficulties, repair emotional disconnection and create more secure, fulfilling relationships.
What Can Online Couples Therapy Help With?
Couples therapy can support you when you feel stuck in patterns you haven’t been able to resolve alone. You might seek therapy because you:
- Repeat the same arguments without reaching a resolution
- Feel emotionally disconnected or lonely within your relationship
- Struggle to communicate your feelings and needs
- Experience an anxious–avoidant relationship dynamic
- Feel criticised, rejected, controlled or misunderstood
- Withdraw or shut down during conflict
- Have difficulty rebuilding trust after a relationship rupture
- Feel overwhelmed by parenting, work or other life transitions
- Want to deepen intimacy and emotional connection
- Carry attachment wounds or childhood trauma into the relationship
You do not need to wait until your relationship is in crisis. Couples therapy can also help you understand one another more deeply, strengthen your connection and develop healthier ways of navigating challenges together.
What Is the Anxious–Avoidant Relationship Cycle?
An anxious–avoidant cycle occurs when one partner seeks closeness, reassurance or resolution while the other needs distance, shuts down or withdraws. The more the anxious partner pursues connection, the more overwhelmed the avoidant partner may feel. The more the avoidant partner withdraws, the more anxious and rejected the other partner often feels.
Both partners are usually trying to create safety, but they do so in different ways. One moves towards the relationship while the other moves away from emotional intensity.
Over time, this cycle can leave both people feeling unseen and alone. Couples therapy helps you recognise the cycle as the shared problem rather than seeing one another as the problem.
How Do Attachment Styles Affect Couples?
Our earliest relationships help shape what we expect from closeness, conflict and emotional dependence. These experiences can contribute to secure, anxious, avoidant or disorganised attachment patterns.
An anxiously attached partner may fear rejection, overthink changes in their partner’s behaviour or need frequent reassurance. An avoidantly attached partner may minimise their needs, feel uncomfortable depending on others or withdraw when emotions become intense.
These responses are not character flaws. They are often protective patterns developed in response to earlier relationships. When both partners understand what is happening beneath their reactions, blame can soften and compassion can grow.
You can learn more about these patterns on my Attachment Therapy page.
What Happens in Online Couples Therapy?
In our sessions, we explore the recurring cycle between you and the emotions, needs and protective responses that sustain it. I help each partner slow the interaction down, understand what is happening internally and communicate from a more open and grounded place.
We may explore:
- What triggers conflict or withdrawal
- The fears and attachment needs beneath your reactions
- How earlier experiences influence your current relationship
- The protective parts that become activated during conflict
- How each partner attempts to restore safety
- New ways of expressing needs and responding to vulnerability
- How to repair after conflict and rebuild emotional trust
The goal is not to decide who is right or wrong. It is to help you understand the pattern you have created together and develop greater emotional security, responsiveness and choice.
Which Therapy Approaches Do You Use With Couples?
My approach is integrative, attachment-based and personalised to each couple. It may include:
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy helps couples identify the negative cycle driving their distress and access the deeper emotions and attachment needs beneath it. It supports partners to communicate more vulnerably and respond to one another with greater accessibility, responsiveness and engagement.
Internal Family Systems and Parts Work
Parts work helps each partner become curious about the protective parts that appear during conflict. One part may criticise or pursue, while another withdraws, appeases or shuts down. Understanding these parts can reduce reactivity and create space for more compassionate communication.
Somatic Psychotherapy
Relationship conflict is experienced in the body as well as the mind. Somatic psychotherapy helps you notice physical signs of activation, overwhelm or shutdown so you can remain more present and make conscious choices during difficult conversations.
Trauma-Informed Couples Therapy
Childhood trauma and painful relationship experiences can intensify reactions to rejection, conflict and emotional distance. A trauma-informed approach helps us work sensitively with these experiences without blaming or pathologising either partner.
Can Couples Therapy Help if Only One Partner Has an Attachment Issue?
Attachment patterns develop and become activated within relationships, so both partners usually influence the cycle, even when one person’s distress initially appears more obvious.
Couples therapy is not about identifying one partner as the problem. We explore how both of you respond when you feel afraid, hurt, criticised or disconnected and how those responses interact.
When each person can recognise their role in the cycle, the relationship has more opportunity to change.
Work With Jennifer Nurick
I have worked in private practice for 21 years and hold a Master of Counselling and Applied Psychotherapy. I have completed all levels of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy training, alongside training in Internal Family Systems, EMDR, somatic psychotherapy and attachment-based therapy.
I am the author of Heal Your Anxious Attachment and host of the Psychotherapy Central Podcast, where I explore attachment, relationships and trauma healing.
You can also view my professional profile on Psychology Today.
Online Couples Therapy in Australia and Internationally
I offer online couples therapy to clients across Australia and internationally. Online sessions allow you to attend together from a private space without travelling to a clinic.
Frequently Asked Questions About Couples Therapy
Do we need to be in crisis to begin couples therapy?
No. Some couples begin therapy during a crisis, while others want to address recurring patterns, improve communication or strengthen their connection before problems become more entrenched.
What if my partner is reluctant to attend therapy?
It is common for one partner to feel more ready than the other. Your partner may worry about being blamed, judged or pressured. Couples therapy provides space for both perspectives and focuses on understanding the relationship cycle rather than choosing sides.
How long does couples therapy take?
The timeframe varies depending on your goals, the complexity of your relationship patterns and whether trauma or significant ruptures are involved. We will discuss your needs and likely direction during the initial sessions.
Can couples therapy help anxious and avoidant attachment?
Yes. Couples therapy can help you understand the anxious–avoidant cycle, recognise the fears beneath pursuit and withdrawal, and develop more secure ways of seeking and responding to connection.
Can online couples therapy be effective?
Online therapy can provide a focused and accessible space for couples to work together. It is particularly helpful if you prefer to attend from the privacy of home.
Ready to Begin?
If you are caught in recurring conflict, emotional distance or an anxious–avoidant relationship cycle, couples therapy can help you understand what is happening beneath the pattern and begin creating a more secure connection.