vines-green

Create a Relationship You Love

Welcome. We’re excited you are here. Make yourself at home. roam around, and gather some helpful information.

We launched our blog to begin a conversation about relationships in the 21st Century. We want to build a community of people who want to be crazy in love with their relationship. We hope that together we can shine a light on the ingredients that build a robust and sustainable love connection.

We believe that a relationship as unique as the two people in it. Everyone makes a different “contract” and through trial and error forges an arrangement that works for them. What if we short-circuited this oft times  painful process by sharing our experiences and best practices, and engaged in a conversation about what being in a committed relationship really means today?

In the blog (as we did in our book) we’ll be sharing our story and the stories of other couples (whose identities will be rendered anonymous, of course) who overcame their obstacles to love and benefited from our revolutionary approach. You’ll get front row access to their interior lives: their plans and struggles, their conflicting emotions and desires, and their courage to work things out.

  • Are you in a relationship that needs a tune-up? A blast of energy? A major overhaul?
  • Are you an empty-nester who wants a fresh vision for your long-term marriage to match your new life?
  • Are you about to get married or live together and want to start on the right foot?
  • Or, are you a person who wants a secure relationship but is afraid of giving up your freedom?
  • Do you wonder why people lose themselves for love?
  • Does your relationship have a solid foundation?

Over a 40 year career as a therapist, I have treated thousands of people. Couples come to me for marriage counseling, sometimes to enhance their relationship or often as a last resort when they’re on the brink of divorce when the fix is more challenging.

These clients come loaded down with serious problems. They feel unloved, misunderstood, ignored.  Sometimes couples don’t know what they really want or even what they need. Often they are blinded by false beliefs, Hollywood stories, distorted thinking or trauma. With our guidance, clients uncover these obstacles in their path to happy and harmonious  relationships. They leave feeling lighter, having shed years of baggage, and lit up with the energy of a new clarity about themselves and their partner.

There is always hope − no matter how dismal the situation may seem. The keys to transformation are:  a person’s courage  to dig to the root of the problem,  commitment to follow through, and devotion to create a vision of the best relationship for them. Every relationship is a unique as the two people in it. No one-size fits all and there isn’t one magic formula for success.

Our transformative process reflects best practices gleaned from my experiences over 40 years. It grew out of my frustration with traditional marriage counseling that research has shown ineffective. This type of marriage counseling focuses on the “ailing” relationship and teaches communication skills, anger management, negotiation and compromise.

Our work goes beyond teaching these basic skills and offers a new way of understanding your relationship. That’s why I wrote the book with my wife, Mary Ellen Goggin, and we started to offer private intensive couples retreats. We want to share this exciting stuff with as many couples as we can reach because we know it works. We know there is a better way. People do not need tl live in misery.

To have a satisfying and lasting love relationship is the biggest challenge in life, especially in these times of rapid change. The success of our process inspired me to share it with as many people as possible.

We hope you’ll roam around and take advantage of the resources.We invite you to join the conversation by leaving a comment or sending us an email.

─ Jerry Duberstein, Ph.D.

 

Jerry

Jerry is a patient, warm-hearted therapist dedicated to guiding couples to breakthroughs. He has counseled individuals and couples for over 40 years, in a variety of settings. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology at Saybrook Institute in San Francisco and a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology at Antioch New England University. Jerry co-authored Relationship Transformation: How to Have Your Cake and Eat It Too with Mary Ellen Goggin — and they were married by chapter 3. Jerry brings a great depth and breadth of expertise to his work, and distills nuanced theories into actionable simplicity. He loves The New Yorker, dew-laden fairways, and dusty delta blues. His revolution: changing the world, one couple at a time. Read more about the retreats