MARRIAGE COUNSELING


Experience at the Center shows that even 2 or 3 skillful visits can change the course of many relationships.

Our commitment is to offer exceptional skill and rapidity, towards the goal of saving your marriage. We have a bias towards saving a marriage and will do everything possible to do so, if that is your goal.


RAPID RESULTS:
Our commitment and experience is that 2-15 visits have allowed the vast majority of couples to reach their therapeutic goals and vastly improve their marriages.

By choosing the Center, you and your spouse will receive the most effective therapies available. Your therapist has an expertise developed over 30 years of specializing solely in marital therapy, unconsummated marriage, loss of sexual desire, orgasmic difficulties and erectile dysfunction. Results have consistently evidenced unprecedented success rates and rapid achievement of improvement, typically from the second visit on. You will receive:

  • A Positive and Practical Approach
  • A Solutions-Oriented Approach
  • The Most Direct and Rapid Approach Available
  • Providing Tools and Treatment for couples struggling with:
  • Communication Difficulties
  • Hurt/Anger
  • Stress
  • Parenting Issues
  • Infertility Stress
  • Depression
  • Grief
  • Weight Issues
  • Anxiety Disorders
  • Loss of Sexual Desire and Function
  • Unconsummated Marriage
  • Premarital Counseling
  • Erectile Dysfunction
  • Loss of Passion and Desire
  • Male Premature Ejaculation
  • Male Retarded Ejaculation
  • Female Anorgasmia
  • Painful Intercourse

Experienced specialist: Your therapist is one of the most experienced, and respected marital and sexual dysfunction therapists in the country. You are not treated by a general psychologist, student, or therapist gaining experience for licensure.

The Center offers compassionate and caring treatment with:
  •  A bias towards saving marriages.
  • Convenient hours 7 days and evenings a week.
  •  Two of Chicago Magazine's top 500 physicians have referred their own patients for decades.
  •  Nationally recognized expert: Your therapist was represented by Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Wayne Dyer's literary agent as a national expert in sex and marital therapy.
  •  Your therapist has written a privately printed book on her treatment methods that is recommended by Dr. Michael Blum Glenview Hospital, one of Chicago Magazine's top 500 physicians, as well as one of Mayo Clinic's leading physicians (previously at Brigham and Women's Hospital).
  •  Regard for the spiritual values of a couple.
  •  Regard for marriage as a foundation of societal and individual well-being.

  • Marriage counseling at the Center is a positive, dynamic, often enjoyable, approach. The foundational premise is that a couple's love is almost always still alive, but merely hidden or numbed by hurt, anger or depression. There is a conscious, therapeutic bias towards saving marriages and each moment of treatment is generated towards that aim. The safe, skillful and structured environment of this therapy/counseling will allow the loving feelings that have been hidden behind the hardness of anger or hurt to return. Your treatment is uniquely and individually designed for you. Most often within the first three sessions, their is softening of anger and increased feeling of understanding and affection. This approach does not require the re-hashing of negative events. You will be skillfully guided to gain insight into your own and your partners realities, beliefs and motivations, which leads to compassion and renewed love and intimacy. Hurt and anger rapidly diminish when understanding of each other's motivations and pain invite kindness towards each other.
  • INTENTION TO RAPID HELP: We are very cognizant of the level of pain that individuals and couples can be in when seeking marital therapy. Thus a primary intention and goal at the Center is rapidly relieving that suffering, if possible. To this end, we most often complete the history in the first meeting and if possible begin treatment, versus a more traditional approach of spreading the history over the first 3 sessions via a couples meeting followed by individual sessions over the course of weeks, which can limit help for weeks. Our hope is that couples can be feeling and doing better within weeks. Not all couples are able to achieve this, but that is our goal and intention.
  • Underlying issues of depression, anxiety, family conflict, etc. often improve with this therapy. The vast majority of our couples successfully obtain their treatment goals while increasing individual well-being.

    Often "the grass seems greener on the other side of the pasture". What is working in a marriage is often taken for granted. And what is missing takes on huge proportions, as if it's acquisition is surely the source of your happiness. Happiness is a result of complex factors, including self-responsibility, biochemical wellness (lack of depression and anxiety), communication skills, stress reduction, etc., and often not as simple as merely changing partners. The new partnership may soon reveal an unimagined set of new problems. If you can begin to treat each other the way you would a new partner, your marriage might flourish as a new relationship can.

    Your therapist is one of the most respected, experienced and skillful marital therapists in Chicago. She  has been invited to educate North Shore physicians, Adler Institute graduate students and radio, PBS, and TV audiences on these issues for 30 years.   
  • You will be guided into highly skillful and constructive communications that bring the inevitable misunderstandings that occur in a love relationship onto a constructive course that brings you closer to your mate, rather than destructive patterns that distance you. All couple's experience hurt, anger or dissatisfaction in a marriage. How skillfully these normal feelings are handled and responded to will either bring you closer or further apart as a couple. Hurt, anger and misunderstandings are most often a result of lack of communication skills and/or a lack of understanding of yourself and each other.
  • Your therapist brings to the counseling experience over 30 years of marital experience to guide you through the many age-related stages of marriage.
  • Your therapist is aware of the biochemical realities that affect each partner during the phases of childbirth, menopause, etc. due to working closely with physicians and their referred patients for decades. For the first 30 years, patients were only accepted through physician and mental health professional referrals. We have served the patients of many of the finest doctors on the North Shore for decades.
  • It is imperative that a marital therapy have outstanding expertise in sexual dysfunction issues, as they can be the cause or result of marital distress. 
  • One of the most experienced sex therapists in the country is available to you.
  • Many couples are attempting to avoid divorce when they begin therapy at the Center. By the conclusion of therapy, many patients experience the most rewarding intimate relationship they have ever experienced. A patient, referred by one of Chicago Magazine’s top 500 physicians from North Shore University Health Systems, expressed what we often hear, “If only I knew then what I know now. This is the best our marriage has ever been in the entire 40 years.” Although results in therapy can never be guaranteed, it is valuable to note that since 1989, fewer than 5% who have been seen for 6 or more sessions,  have chosen divorce during or at the conclusion of therapy. That is, 9 out of 10 patients have experienced improvement and most often, reached their therapeutic goals, within weeks to months. Underlying problems of depression, anxiety, body image issues, weight gain, loss of sexual desire, etc. must be skillfully addressed to increase individual health and provide the foundation for a satisfying marriage

    EXPERTISE IN: 

    • Communication Skills
    • Understanding Individual Motivations leading to compassion for self and partner
    • Divorce Prevention
    • Passion Restoration
    • Vaginismus Expertise and Treatment
    • Unconsumated Marriage Expertise and Treatment
    • Mindfulness-Based Therapy
    • Family Therapy/Counseling
    • Premarital Counseling
    • Mediation
    • Internal Family Systems Therapy
    • Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

    You and your mate's family of origin affect your current relationship to the extent that certain beliefs formed in childhood affect your thinking processes now. You will discover how you can  reconsider those beliefs to support healthy relationships.

    You will be given tools and techniques that strengthen you as individuals and as a couple, to improve your relationship as quickly as possible.

    It is estimated that, statistically, as little as 25% of traditional marital therapy is successful. Sadly, the majority of cases end in divorce, or unhappiness, often after years of therapy. Fewer than 5% of our patients, who have been seen for 6 or more sessions, have chosen divorce during or at the conclusion of therapy. The vast majority of our patients have fully reached their therapeutic goals, usually within 3-15 sessions. This level of experience and skill is exceptional.

    The North Shore Center for Marital Therapy will provide you with a positive, solutions-oriented, educational, and dynamic approach to your situation. Your therapy will only be administered by a therapist with two decades of expertise as a marital therapist. Your therapist also brings life experience of 35 years of marriage, providing a realistic understanding of marriage throughout life's cycles. You will not receive therapy from an intern or a psychotherapist who is a generalist, who does not specialize in the unique skillset required for successful maritatl therapy.

    **Results cannot be guaranteed. Couples experiencing active addictions, physical or emotional abuse, psychosis, or mental illness are not appropriate candidates for this therapy and should see their personal physician for recommendations for treatment.