Couples counselling · Clifton, Bristol · Stroud · Online
When you still love each other and it still isn't working
Ninety minutes, fortnightly, with a BACP Accredited counsellor who works with the relationship and not with either of you against the other.
Free 30-minute call. No charge, no obligation, just a conversation about what's going on.
Sound familiar?
Most couples don't come to me because everything has fallen apart
They come because the same conversation keeps happening, and neither of them can find the way out of it.
The loud version
An argument starts over nothing and ends somewhere neither of you meant to go. By morning you're being careful with each other again, and nothing has actually been resolved.
The quiet version
You're kind. You're organised. The children get to school, the work gets done, and somewhere in all that competence you stopped being close. Nothing is wrong, exactly.
Either way
You've almost certainly tried to fix this yourselves. Most couples try for years before they ring anyone. That isn't failure. Patterns are very hard to see from inside them.
What actually changed
You started as two people. Now you're running six or seven things together.
At the beginning there are two of you and not much else. Then life adds jobs.
You become the people who sort the boiler and the bins. You become the ones who handle money together, which is its own relationship and a tense one for most couples. If there are children you become parents, and that takes far more than anyone warns you about. You're still supposed to be friends. You're still supposed to be lovers. You're the person the other one comes to when work has been awful, and they're the same for you.
Nobody sits down and agrees any of it. When you start a job there's a contract, an induction, and someone to go to when it isn't working. I ran businesses for years before I did this, and all of that was written down. A relationship gets none of it. The jobs simply arrive, one at a time, and you divide them up without ever discussing it.
Most couples I see are doing five of these well. The house runs. The children are fine. The money is handled. It's the last two that went quiet, and they're the ones the relationship was built on in the first place.
That's usually what people mean when they say they've become housemates. Not that they've stopped caring. That the jobs took over.
Who you'd be seeing
I'm Luke Brownlee-Williams
I'm a BACP Accredited counsellor and clinical supervisor, and I've spent my career working with relationships, as a therapist and as the person other therapists bring their difficult cases to.
I trained specifically in couples work. I mention it only because relationship counselling is its own discipline. A lot of people offering it are individual therapists working slightly outside what they know, and couples can feel the difference in the room within about ten minutes.
You won't be handed to an associate. You'll see me.
- BACP Accredited counsellor
- Clinical supervisor to other therapists
- Specialist couples training
- The relationship is the client, not either of you
- Clifton, Stroud and online
What the work is like
Ninety minutes. Fortnightly. No sides taken.
A clear framework rather than endless talking, and not a referee's whistle either.
Ninety minutes, not fifty
An hour isn't enough for two people. By the time you've both said what happened, it's gone. The longer session is what lets us get past the incident and into the pattern underneath it.
A fortnight between sessions
The work happens between sessions, not in them. You need time to catch yourselves doing the thing we named, and that noticing is where change actually starts.
No sides taken
I'm not there to decide who's right. The relationship is my client, and both of you need to believe that or neither of you will be honest with me.
Almost every couple is caught in a cycle. One partner steps back, which makes the other push harder, which makes the first step back further, and round it goes. Most couples can feel it and can't name it. Naming it is where it starts to loosen.
If only one of you is sure
One of you wants to come and the other one doesn't
This is more common than it looks from the outside, and it isn't a reason to give up on the idea.
Reluctance is usually about the process rather than the relationship. What will get said. What will come out. Whether it's going to be two against one. Most reluctant partners aren't against getting help. They're against being taken somewhere to be told what's wrong with them.
Ring me anyway. The thirty-minute call is free, nothing is booked at the end of it, and it usually answers the questions causing the hesitation. Worth saying plainly: I'm not going to gang up on anyone. Both of you get an advocate in me, because the relationship is what I'm working for.
If it helps, the Foundation Package has a defined beginning and end. Four sessions, a fixed price, two of them individual. That's an easier thing to agree to than an open-ended course of therapy.
Fees
Two ways in
Most couples
Ongoing sessions
£135 / 90 minutes
Book as you go, usually fortnightly.
- No package required, no minimum commitment
- Some couples come for six sessions. Some for a year.
- Stop and come back later if life changes
- Clifton, Stroud or online
The Foundation Package
£495 / four sessions
For couples who'd rather begin with a defined structure.
- Together. Map the landscape, find the pattern.
- One of you. Space to think without managing anyone.
- The other of you. Same time, same attention.
- Together. Name the cycle, agree what changes.
What couples bring
Different presenting problems. Usually the same underlying work.
Find the pattern. Change it together.
Getting started
The hardest part is the first phone call
Thirty minutes, free, no obligation. You tell me what's been happening and we work out together whether I'm the right person for it. Either partner can make the call.
Call or text 07398 779 124 · hello@bristolrelationships.co.uk
Clifton, Bristol · Stroud · Online