* Grace (early 30s) and Alan (early 40s) are a heterosexual “intimacy warrior” couple, married for 7 years, with a young child, living in the US. They had hit 9 out of 10 on the spiral of intimacy-destroying behaviors. We have been working together continuously for three years. Names have been changed to protect privacy.

Childbirth threw Alan and Grace into a years-long sex rut that disguised itself as incompatibility. They lost a year trying to fix the wrong problem.

Grace:  “Our son was born, and we loved being parents, but the birth triggered a rut in our love life that lasted a year. We were fighting a lot and we got to the point where we didn’t feel like we could solve our own issues. We decided that we needed to talk to somebody.

I found Irene’s website but hesitated to contact her at first. We have insurance, so we decided to try to find someone who was covered first. I was really careful and I found a lot of good reviews for our first marriage counselor. But, after several meetings, I didn’t feel like counseling was helping us. In some ways, it made things worse actually, because our former counselor told us that she didn’t even know if we were going to stay together. We both kind of felt like she almost wanted us to be apart. We left each session feeling worse. It was a bad experience. 

A year passed and our relationship was still in the same rut and maybe even worse, and I was feeling less hopeful to the point where I was thinking ‘If we can't figure this out, I don't know how we're going to continue doing this.’ I decided that the cost of splitting up would be greater (both emotionally and financially) than just investing in sessions with Irene. So we decided to try it. We wanted a coach who would believe in us instead of wondering if we should even be together.”

Alan added: It seemed like our former marriage counselor was hedging her bets or managing expectations, where if she wasn't able to help then at least she wanted it clear that it wasn't her fault. She had a fatalistic attitude from the beginning.

Plus, she was not focused on us making changes. And we, as a result, weren't focused on taking actions that could make change. So nothing was happening. We would just go home after each session, and the problems we had weren't being addressed. She didn't give us any tools or techniques … she just sat there while we got things off our chests. Instead of hope, she would reflect back our darkest fears. It was not helpful.

For Grace, there was also another urgent consideration.

Grace: “I just remember feeling like we had to figure out a better way to be together before our son got older. It was important to me that we didn’t have daily fights in front of him. 

I felt like it was all just a big ball of tangled up jewelry that I didn't want to throw away, but I didn’t know how to get it untangled. We needed help.”

They were growing further apart and slid into a sexless marriage.

Grace:  Our sex life was down to nothing. Looking back, I had bad postpartum anxiety and wanted to always be in the room next to our son, just in case something was going to happen. So we were sleeping in different rooms. I was also nursing, so I just felt like my body didn't want to be touched. I just felt shut down and completely separate. When I had a moment to myself, I didn't want to be touched.

When Alan needed anything, I felt that I'm already doing so much and I can't do one more thing.

For Alan, the lack of touch led to withdrawal and depression. 

Alan: I was aware of those things too, so I didn't want to be an imposition because I thought she just needed more space. So I withdrew more too, because I thought, ‘well, if she doesn't want to be touched, I don't want to bother her.’

We had good intentions, but then we were just moving farther and farther apart. In the end, we had withdrawn all the affection, but the criticism and the distance were still there. We were just hurting each other, with nothing to balance it out. So the bad things just compounded.

Before we even met Irene, we bought that love language book and discovered that touch is a big love language for me. When we were withdrawing from each other, I felt unloved and unwanted, and my confidence was deteriorating. I felt very lonely. And that had a big impact on me because touch is part of what I need just to feel okay. You know, even right now, as we're sitting here talking to you, I have my knee on Grace's leg without even thinking about that. And that would not have been the case a year ago. There was no contact at all.

Alan continued: So those little daily casual contacts are super important for me. At first I probably didn't think about it, but over many months, it started to really drain me in all kinds of ways. I had days at work where I had to leave because I felt too sad to do work and I would just go off and sit in my car. I got on antidepressants because that level of sadness didn’t seem normal. I worried that I wasn’t acting like a normal person. There were other things too, not related to the relationship, such as my dad passing away, but it all contributed.

We were withdrawing from each other, not from an evil place or anything. It was more that we were protecting ourselves, or even protecting the other person.

But then the resentments built and built, and then the resentments kept us apart to where we weren't even trying to meet each other's needs because we felt our own were so neglected.

Still with all that urgency, Alan and Grace were skeptical and hesitant to find another counselor.

Grace:  After our [negative] experience with that first therapist, the big fear was that a new counselor wouldn’t support us or, worse, they might make us see that we are wrong for each other and shouldn't be together. 

And the logistics of starting with someone new were scary. Now, I have to go there and bear my soul to this person on the first day, and what if I don't like her and then I have to start over again immediately with someone else. It was hard after that first bad experience, risking that it was going to hurt or that they were going to tell me that this is all my fault. 

Also, working with a therapist in person created all sorts of logistical challenges. We had to find someone to watch our son, so I would get in my head ‘what am I going to tell my mom every time she has to watch our son? Eventually she's going to want to know why am I dropping him off for an hour every couple of weeks at her house. And what excuse am I going to say?” I didn’t want to tell her it was couples therapy. And I just had general anxiety about what the world would think if they knew.

They were holding all of this inside, dealing with it on their own.

Alan: I've pretty much been autodidactic all my life, and I would just teach myself stuff. And so part of me was skeptical: what could any random person possibly say to me that I couldn't just read on my own and figure out. For me, [I had to get over] the idea that I could be helped by a stranger. That wasn't intuitive to me.

They finally made the decision to go all in — and things started to shift.

Grace: Just in the first few sessions, when we got the worksheets about patterns … I just remember how it blew my mind that what we're going through is so normal that it can be boiled down to patterns. (We named one of ours ‘The Jerry Seinfeld’ pattern.) Every time we had a problem, we knew how to begin fixing it and healing some of the old patterns, so they don't happen again. It was like ‘wow, I have a tool now.’

And everything Irene said tracked with what I was feeling. At first, I was thinking ‘how does she know all of this about us?’

I felt like we are talking to someone who can really help us because all of the issues we were coming up with, Irene would respond: ‘Oh yeah, I know this dynamic and it’s normal, and here's how to deal with that.’

We couldn’t surprise Irene with any of it and she knew what we could do to fix it. 

So I started to feel that we're not “broken forever” people. We just had to keep working through our issues and keep doing the work. We were just stuck – not broken. And once we do the work, it actually helps. (We haven't had to deal with the ‘Jerry Seinfeld pattern’ for a long time.)

Alan noticed that they started to use the tools organically.

Alan: When I noticed that we were organically using the techniques that we learned with you, things started to really shift. One in particular that stands out in my mind is that I now admit to myself that ‘I'm telling myself a story.’ In other words, my assumptions aren’t necessarily true. Once I started considering that my opinions weren’t “facts,” conflict would start to taper off. It's not like our arguments just stopped immediately, but we gradually learned how to de-escalate arguments. It was a big revelation that my conclusions about the world are not etched in stone — not some capital “T” truth — they are merely my perspective. My reality is my story. And Grace has her own perspective that is just as valid. It's not important that I impose mine on her’s.

We are both fully important individuals with totally valid perspectives. 

For Grace, speaking up about her needs added to the breakthroughs.

Grace: I realized that when there's something wrong, I could just say it. I don't have to keep it in. My whole view of the relationship just changed. My needs are needs — they're not “nice to haves.”

As a result …

Alan: It’s not that our arguments would stop, but they wouldn't go to 10. Before, it started with something small and blew up to the worst every time. Over time, we'd get in an argument and they would go to eight, then seven, then six, then lower and lower. It never got as bad as the worst days. Things were getting better and better. 

We have disagreements, but we got much better at not taking things personally and listening to the other person. Now we don’t even get beyond two.

Another thing that changed is how easily they can talk about their needs without fighting — and actually get them met.

Grace: Now we like talking in depth about our relationship. We even have a “constitution” now that we would not have had without Irene — we never would have been able to get through such a conversation without fighting.

We now have the vocabulary to discuss our sex life and other topics that would have been impossible to talk about before.

Having that vocabulary makes me feel like we're not broken. There's someone that already wrote a book on this and they made a word for this dynamic — that makes me feel understood. I feel “helpable” because we're not going come to Irene where she might say ‘I don't know … you guys are screwed.’

Alan: Which is literally what the other people said to us. Now it seems that our world feels supportive and happy and safe and we're looking forward to future fun … instead of feeling scared, sad and angry and then worried, you know, about the future.

Over time, things continued to get better in communication and intimacy.

Alan: What I'm proudest of is that we didn't just use the tools and techniques … and then forget them. Instead, we both actively made them a part of our lives. We've changed our language and now have a common understanding of what really helps us get through conflicts, talk about difficult things and ask for what we want. We didn't just learn things in an academic way.

We really applied them and made them practical and real. We made them our own.

There were a lot of different processes, guides, suggestions, modules and exercises, so we adopted what worked for us and modified things, so they fit our lives.

Grace: I am proud of the breakthroughs with our communication.

We are getting a lot better at recognizing when we're in the red — or even when we're in the yellow — and we’ve averted a lot of really bad fights … because we stopped when it was smart to stop. And then we could reel ourselves back in before the arguments became traumatic, which made it easy to make up and move on. We are able to let off steam with each other to a point before it gets to a dangerous level.

Now, we can stop, and say that we will discuss it as a better time, and then it's a lot easier to solve. 

Alan: One of the biggest [transformations] is that we've built up a lot of faith in each other so that we are much better at assuming the best in the other person. We've built up that foundation that had really deteriorated before we first started working with Irene.

Even when we have difficulties, we keep our trust that the other person loves us and vice versa. That makes problems much easier to solve.

That was the most difficult thing before, because if you don't trust what the other person says, then it doesn't matter what tools you're using. If you don't even believe what your partner says, it doesn’t matter what they say. We … fundamentally believe each other and take each other’s point of view seriously.

Even when we don't understand each other — because we really don't speak the same language at all.

Alan and Grace laugh together: Even though we don't always interpret each other correctly, we always believe the other person. (And we’re getting better at translating.)

Grace: I also want to add that before, it would be like pulling teeth to get Alan to speak up from his point of view and tell me what he's actually thinking and feeling. 

And now, lately, he'll just say ‘I'm nervous to tell this to you because I don't want you to take it the wrong way or be mad’ and with my assurance that it’s ok, he’d tell me how he's feeling.  

And then it's a positive feedback loop, because now he trusts me and that if he actually says what he's thinking and feeling, it won't be catastrophic.

Alan: We learned through this process how we should lead any conversation, especially about a sensitive topic, with our feelings first instead of the details or the argument. We’d run into trouble before where one or both of us would just start talking about a topic and the other person would be defensive or not understand what it was about or why we were doing this.

We are more focused on forging safety and intimacy, rather than making a point.

This positive feedback loop in communication translated to sexual connection and physical intimacy.

Alan: That's an area that we're still learning, exploring and developing, but the starting point is a whole different place. [Before], there were genuine questions that each of us had about whether the other person even wanted intimacy. For different reasons, we were questioning if the other person wants to keep improving that part of our lives and connecting more.

Our breakthroughs have been around learning our different love languages and sex languages and learning how to initiate in a way that is comfortable for both of us.

With the foundation of believing each other and trusting each other, we have the starting knowledge that we're both interested, and now it's a matter of figuring out — how do you come on to the other person in a way that they will like and respond to? 

Without the trust, it's hard to even have those conversations. If you don't trust the person to begin with, you have no means of communicating what you're thinking and feeling, then it doesn't matter. Because you can't bridge that gap. We're developing a way to talk about things so that it can just lead to having sexual experiences and making them better.

These conversations about sex have been leading to more sex.

Alan: We also have more vocabulary that we can use to talk to each other about sex. As a result, we've just been better at touching, cuddling and being together — the nonverbal connection.

Just today, for example, Grace suggested ‘let's cuddle on the couch for 15 minutes before Irene's meeting.’ It was Grace's idea, which means a lot to me. It was really sweet. This just contributes to a feeling of closeness that then spills over to sex and more intimacy.

The touching and being close non-sexually is another route to more sexual connection.

Grace:  When it comes to sex, before I felt like there was a timer over my head, as in ‘how many days we can have this situation before the marriage is going to be over?’ 

So I felt this huge pressure. And then that played into a trauma response I had, so I drew away even more. And now I don't feel like that at all. Now I recognize that it's a story. Now I feel like we both want to meet each other's needs, and we’re still learning how.

Irene helped us break out of our mindset that it had to be just the way we were used to. For example, I thought I didn't really like hugs, and now that sounds crazy. It’s actually that I don’t like feeling squished.

The mindset shift was that I can find modifications that suit us instead of just thinking that it’s how it must be.

Hugs have become a totally different experience when I am standing on the stairs hugging [tall] Alan, or if I'm hugging him from above. It had us reexamine and re-explore everything we do physically — what do I like and how can I make it work for me? 

Alan: I've noticed that Grace has learned that her voice counts and that she can ask for what she wants. The hug is a perfect example.

If she does not like the hug, that's not the end of the story. She has absolutely a right to not like it and can do something about it. Instead of ‘that hug sucked, end of story,’ she says ‘I want this hug to be different in a way that's good for me.’ She's more comfortable recognizing that she can even do that and then doing it.

Grace: For me, it’s also been trusting that if I say this is good for me, it’s also what Alan wants and will make him happy. Before, I just thought that if it's not how he wants it or how he's used to it, then he's not going to like it or want it changed.

Alan: I think maybe Grace had an assumption that if I was hugging in a certain way, that it was because I had decided it was my gold standard for hugging.

When in reality I was just taking a stab in the dark, assuming what she likes without knowing or asking about it. I'm happy to adjust in a way that makes her happy.

Grace: For a lot of stuff, it was me assuming because we never talked about stuff like that. I just did it that way because I thought that's what you did. All of these unsaid assumptions were actually quite wrong. 

Alan: [With regard to having sex on vacation while there were many distractions], one insight I had from that experience is around dispelling the assumption that any little distraction can derail arousal. There were distractions, like there were literally people knocking on the door and trying to get our attention, and we just wanted each other and were having sex despite of it all.

I had the incorrect belief that if everything isn't perfect, then it's all going to collapse. And I felt like that was on my shoulders to make it perfect. Before, when I didn't know how to do it, I felt frustrated and overwhelmed, and I had a lot of that stuff in my head, which was distracting me.

On that trip, there were many distractions. So my paradigm was wrong. I realized that Grace can just want me, even if someone's knocking on the door. That gave us hope for figuring out what inhibits sexuality at home. 

That's what we've been exploring lately. Certain things can be disruptive, and that's true for me too, how do we create spaces at home that are like vacation?

There were many surprises for Grace and Alan along the journey, things that they didn’t expect of sex & intimacy coaching.

Grace: I was surprised just how much help we got with communication, which is what I would have assumed about regular marriage therapy. We did a lot of stuff to improve our marriage. 

I thought it was just going to be ‘Here's your sex homework. Do something with your scrotum. Do something with your labia’, ‘go jump into this pool of pleasure’ kind of thing. It was really good and important foundational help with our marriage that we really needed. 

And what surprised me was how much things were not directly about sex, but then when you got into them, you realize they really are. We needed to fix these, to heal from all the trauma we've done to each other over the years, before we could do the sexual stuff.

The holistic approach of sex & intimacy coaching goes to the root of the problem.

Alan: It's been a very holistic approach. Because we learned that our sexuality is interconnected to the whole relationship and to each of us as individuals. You can't really talk about sex in a vacuum.

It's not so shallow as just talking about sexy positions or toy recommendations or something like that. It’s been about how do you open yourself up to the other person so that the sex comes naturally

Grace: We tried solving some of the stuff in couples therapy before, but we just never really were able to tie it back to how does that impact our sex lives. We never really got much progress because we were just settling fights and not understanding the bigger picture.

To those considering sex & intimacy coaching for couples, Grace and Alan have a few words of advice.

Grace: Think about what you're willing to risk if you don't do it.

We thought first to try just one more person that our insurance covers before we see Irene but that had us delay getting the real help. If you're thinking about what you're willing to risk, it's not worth risking a year to see if something else will work. 

If you're looking up Irene, and you’re watching the videos and thinking ‘This chick really understands, but I don't know …” just go for it.

You might just lose a few hours of your life for a free consultation, but at most you could lose a whole year just spinning your wheels trying to see if something else can work and miss out on something that definitely will. 

Alan added: If people might be hesitant that this would pressure them to do something they aren't ready to do or willing to do, I would say don't worry about that. Everything that we talk about with Irene has been very collaborative: we moved at our own pace. I never felt pressured and I don't think Grace did. 

If somebody is thinking ‘Oh, is this just going to be endless chatting, but how do we get my partner to start wanting to have sex more’ and they are impatient, know that sex is very much part of the process. You don't brush it off into the corner — it stays central — that means that it’s never going to get lost in the discussion, which was the case with some of our earlier attempts at marriage counseling. They just didn't acknowledge that sex as a central part of the relationship. 

Irene’s style strikes a really good balance between these two: there is no pressure to do anything and sex is always in the picture in the process.

Also, it is intensive in the beginning, and you meet every week. That might sound intimidating but it’s not forever.

Through [the consistent meetings], you start recognizing that your marriage is the most important relationship you have. So to be willing to invest your energy regularly into it just makes sense.

If you're avoiding that, then maybe ask yourself why would you avoid that? Why wouldn't you want to be focusing on improving your most important relationship every day?

Grace: I don't think anyone really wants to end a marriage. Before you give up, just give it all you have. When I first met with Irene, I wasn't sure if we were going to be able to be saved. Just give it everything you have, just to see, because you might feel differently a year from now and you might realize like we did, ‘Wow, this really was worth it.’ 

And even if it's not, you're going to learn so many skills that will help you in your future relationships that it's not a waste of money or time. We're better communicators in all parts of our lives because of Irene. It's not just limited to our sex lives.

Alan: If you’re afraid or worried that Irene is going to side with one partner or the other, that has not been our experience. She does not listen to arguments and then picks who's right. Irene helps the couple learn how to connect. She’s not the referee or the arbitrator, but there to facilitate the coming together.

Reinforced by their relationship, Alan and Grace made life-changing decisions towards more fulfillment.

Grace: [Without doing this work to get closer] Alan could not have become a [full-time] writer.

I don't think I ever could have come to the point where that would've been a conversation without it blowing up to a 20.

And we worked through it. Now that he's doing it, I see how important that was for him and how I'm able to support him. Now, I'm just so proud of him for it, and I see how much better it is for his mental health and for his goals in life. And it feels good to support him. I'm so glad we got through that conversation so that he can do the thing he really loves and become his best self.

And I don't think we would've made it through the pandemic really without Irene.

Alan:  For me personally, I made a change to the career that I really wanted and I don't think I would have. It was Grace who said to do it. I never would've made the leap because I wouldn't have felt like I was hurting my family. There have been growing pains with that, just like everything else that is new. But … when I recall that every Sunday when I was working in law, I would almost feel an anxiety attack about going to work the next day … I was just miserable every day. And the growing pains are worth it.

Grace used to talk about how she had to tiptoe around me and not ask for what she needed, because she could sense that I was so unhappy. And so she was not expressing herself. And so now, Grace is pursuing things she likes, like pottery and photography, and blossoming into all of these interests and hobbies. And she's becoming all these facets of herself that I think she was holding back. Looking back, all the weirdness between us, we were holding ourselves back.

Grace: I probably never could have done pottery stuff either because I felt that I can't ask him to let me leave for three-hour classes so I can just do something for myself because he's going through so much with work. And now it's in our “relationship constitution” right now and I do it three times a week.

Alan: And every time she comes back, she's always happy. We started pursuing individual passions seriously.