As a Portland marriage counselor, I work with a lot of couples with children who struggle with relationship issues, so I was interested when I saw a 2010 Pew Research Center report saying that young adults are making becoming parents more of a priority than professional success, faith, or even romantic relationships.
Essentially, single people who [...]

Many clients at my Portland relationship counselor practice are embarrassed when they come to discuss problems in their sex life. Not only because of the intimate nature of the admission, but because many of them – especially those in long-term relationships – feel like their sexual unhappiness is something that they should just grin and [...]

Many of my female Portland marriage counselor clients complain of relationship issues because their male partners don’t listen to them and often seem clueless about how to deal with or even discuss their feelings. In recent years, this phenomenon has even gotten a name: “Stupid Boy Syndrome.” I prefer to call it “cluelessness”, and skip [...]

As our population continues to live longer and more fully, I find that I’m seeing more couples in their 60s and even 70s come to Portland marriage counseling with relationship issues. While issues at this stage of the relationship can come from numerous things, including children leaving the nest for good, there’s one that always [...]

As a Portland marriage counselor, I’ve listened to countless women tell me that all their boyfriends or husbands ever think about is sex. And we’ve all heard the statistic that men have a sexual thought every seven seconds, right? For a 16 hour waking day, that would be 8,000 sex thoughts!
Well, a Psychology professor at [...]

Often when people come seeking relationship advice in Portland marriage counseling, they want a quick fix. Some simple tips they can take home with them to make their problems better. Of course, many issues aren’t that easy to fix. They take time and require both partners to learn better communication skills. But there are a [...]

At my Portland marriage counseling practice, my clients often talk to me about the stress they feel around birthdays, anniversaries, and especially the holidays to buy gifts that their partner will love. Some even go so far as to say they are afraid a bad gift will cause relationship issues.
Sadly, they might not be too [...]

In-laws can be the cause a lot of relationship problems – especially for newlyweds who are also trying to learn how to live as a married couple for the first time. Perhaps your wife’s parents are always making cutting remarks or overriding the decisions you’ve made together as a couple. Or your husband’s mother is [...]

The Beatles’ relationship advice that money can’t buy you love is true. A recent study by Brigham Young University asked over 1,700 couples across the country to complete a marriage study where one question asked them to rate how much they value “having money and lots of things.” The couples who reported that money isn’t [...]

In my work as a Portland marriage counselor, I’ve noticed that one of the major issues older couples struggle with in their sex lives is body image. As we age, we may feel less desirable. After all, the media often holds up a particular body type as “sexy,” and it becomes even harder (and eventually [...]