Why I Specialize in Couples Therapy?
Couples therapy is unusual work.
With an individual client, I can listen to someone’s experience, help make sense of it, and work with that person toward change.
With a couple, all of that is happening—but something else is happening too.
The relationship walks into the room.
Two people can each make perfect sense individually and still become completely bewildering to one another.
One pursues because distance feels frightening. The other withdraws because conflict feels overwhelming. The withdrawal makes the first person pursue harder. The pursuit makes the second person withdraw further.
Before long, they’re arguing about the dishwasher.
Except they’re not really arguing about the dishwasher.
That’s why couples therapy has become the primary focus of my private practice.
I Don’t Need One of You to Be the Problem
Couples often arrive expecting me to figure out who’s right.
Sometimes they’re hoping I’ll confirm what they’ve been trying to tell their partner for years.
Sometimes they’re afraid I’ll do exactly that—but choose the other person.
Neither is particularly helpful.
I’m interested in understanding both of you.
More importantly, I’m interested in understanding what happens between you.
Most distressed couples have developed a pattern in which each person’s understandable attempt to protect themselves inadvertently makes things worse for the other.
After enough repetitions, that pattern can begin to feel like the relationship itself.
It isn’t.
Patterns can change.
I’m an Active Couples Therapist
I’m not going to sit silently while you have the same argument in my office that you had in the kitchen last night.
I’ll listen carefully, but I’ll also participate.
I may stop you in the middle of a conversation because something important just happened.
I may ask you to try saying something again.
I may ask what’s underneath the anger.
I may help one of you hear something the other has been trying unsuccessfully to say for years.
I may tell you that I think we’re talking about the wrong thing.
And yes, sometimes we’ll laugh.
Couples therapy can involve painful things without becoming relentlessly grim.
My goal isn’t to referee your arguments.
It’s to help the two of you experience each other differently.
I’m Marriage- and Relationship-Friendly
If you’re coming to therapy because your marriage is in trouble and you want to save it, you don’t need to wonder whether I think that’s a worthwhile goal.
I do.
I’ve seen relationships survive betrayal, resentment, disconnection and years of patterns that seemed impossible to change.
People can surprise each other.
That said, being relationship-friendly doesn’t mean preserving every relationship at any cost.
Sometimes people come to me genuinely uncertain about whether they want to stay together. Sometimes one person wants to repair the relationship and the other isn’t sure. Sometimes the question itself—Should we stay together?—needs careful attention.
I won’t make that decision for you.
But I’ll take your relationship seriously while you make it.
A Small Practice on Purpose
Minnesota Marriage Counseling is a solo private practice.
When you schedule an appointment, you’re scheduling with me.
There isn’t an intake department, a clinical director assigning cases, or a large roster of therapists offering everything from childhood anxiety to addiction treatment to couples counseling.
I’ve chosen to keep my practice small and focused.
That means I can spend most of my clinical time doing the work I care most about: helping couples understand what happens between them and find a better way of being together.
Specialization doesn’t mean I’ve discovered a secret formula for relationships.
Quite the opposite.
The longer I do this work, the less interested I am in formulas.
Every relationship has its own history, humor, injuries, loyalties, disappointments, strengths and strange little ways of functioning.
Good couples therapy has to take that particular relationship seriously.
I’m a Real Person Too
I’m a therapist, but I’m also a husband, a father, and a person who has lived long enough to know that relationships are considerably messier than most relationship advice makes them sound.
I don’t expect healthy couples to communicate perfectly.
I don’t expect people never to get defensive.
I don’t expect spouses to meet every emotional need their partner has.
And I’m not particularly interested in turning either of you into an idealized version of a “healthy person.”
I’m interested in helping you have more freedom in the moments when your relationship is hardest.
Sometimes that means learning a new way to communicate.
Sometimes it means understanding why something affects you as deeply as it does.
Sometimes it means recognizing that the story you’ve been telling yourself about your partner isn’t quite the whole story.
And sometimes it means finally saying something you’ve been trying to say for a very long time—and having your partner actually hear it.
You Don’t Have to Be Good at Therapy
Some people come to couples counseling eagerly.
Others would rather be almost anywhere else.
Both are welcome.
You don’t need to know therapy terminology. You don’t need to have read relationship books. You don’t need to be especially comfortable talking about feelings.
You don’t even need to agree that couples therapy is going to work.
What I do need is enough willingness from both of you to become curious about what’s happening and see whether something different is possible.
That’s enough to start.
About Jeffrey Hupf, LMFT
Jeffrey Hupf is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and owner of Minnesota Marriage Counseling, a solo private practice in St. Paul focused primarily on couples, marriage and relationship therapy.
Minnesota Marriage Counseling
I provide couples therapy and marriage counseling through my solo private practice in St. Paul, Minnesota.
If you’re looking for a couples therapist who will take your relationship seriously, stay engaged with both of you, and help you get beneath the arguments rather than simply referee them, we may be a good fit.
Learn more about couples therapy and marriage counseling in St. Paul.