Why therapy for older adults and older couples?

You go along in life thinking that you know who you are. Then you hit your 50’s, 60’s, or 70’s, and everything starts to change. The shift may be subtle, but the effect is tectonic. You no longer feel like the person you used to be. And you may begin to think about the big life questions that never seemed really important when you were younger.

  • What is my purpose in life?

  • What does my marriage mean now that the kids are gone and we’re retired?

  • How can I deal with the idea of aging and death?

  • Am I happy?

  • How can I deal with all this grief?

Aging is a time of change

For many of us, our 30s, 40s, and 50s were structured, busy, and orderly. Our lives seem to be defined by external forces: launching a career, creating a family, and building a life.

But, aging asks us to look beyond some of those traditional constraints. And we have to ask ourselves, who am I if:

  • I’m no longer working. What do I do with my life?

  • The kids are grown and gone. What am I here for?

  • I can’t function physically or sexually the way I used to. What am I good for?

  • My friends and family are dying. How do I deal with my grief?

The purpose of Therapy for Older Adults and Seniors is to help you find answers to these questions. And to find a sense of meaning and purpose in the life you have today.

Read the blog post: End of life and the search for meaning

Do you know your attachment style? Take the quiz. Find out now.

Counseling for Older Couples

Older couples face special challenges. As we age, we experience transitions that can place tremendous stress on our primary relationship. 

  • Dealing with the new challenges of retirement

  • Managing the physical and cognitive changes of aging in the marriage

  • Maintaining a sense of intimacy, romance, and sex in your marriage

    Read my blog post: Senior Sex: Focusing on intimacy vs. intercourse.

Dealing with grief

Loss is a part of aging. It can’t be avoided. And with loss comes the anguish of grief. In therapy, I help seniors and senior couples express their grief. Grief over the friends and family they are losing, grief over the sense that their own life is ending, grief over their lost mental and physical abilities.

We have a natural desire to push away our grief. It’s so painful and overwhelming. But processing our grief means feeling it rather than running away from it. We move through our grief by expressing it and feeling it in a safe and supportive environment where our grief is understood and accepted.

Infidelity and Older Couples

It’s a myth that older couples don’t have affairs. Infidelity is common among older couples. There are many different types of affairs: sexual affairs, emotional affairs, use of pornography, or any other way in which one partner feels their trust has been betrayed by the other. And that fundamental betrayal of trust is at the core of the infidelity.

It’s important to know that your relationship doesn’t have to end because of an affair. It’s not an easy process, but in couples therapy, many couples find a way to move forward and rebuild their loving and committed relationship.

Click here to visit my Affair Recovery page

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

FAQ’s

  • The idea that people get too old to change or make their life better is just a myth.

    In truth, aging is hard. So many parts of your life change and so many parts of your life are lost. It is very easy to feel lost in all these changes. And to need help finding your way back.

  • Marriages aren't static, they are changing all the time. If the marriage feels stuck, that's a problem. Couples therapy helps older couples get un-stuck, see their partner and themself in new ways, and feel reconnected.

    It can also help the couple navigate a sex life that has changed as they've aged and their bodies have changed.

  • Older couples want to be sexually active too. But sometimes it is very hard for partners to talk about how their bodies have changed. They can feel shame about not being able to be sexual in the ways they used to.

    In couples therapy I help older couples talk about sex, and what sex means when things have changed.