“The average couple waits six years before seeking help for marital problems (and keep in mind, half of all marriages that end do so in the first seven years). This means that the average couple lives with unhappiness for far too long.”
Love is a partnership of two people who bring out the very best in each other, know they're wonderful as individuals & even better together. B. Cage
Photo: Lynne Azpeitia
To schedule an appointment or arrange a free phone consultation, email Lynne or call her at 310-828-7121
“Marriage operates at much greater intensity and pressure than we expect—so great, in fact, couples mistakenly assume it’s time for divorce when it’s really time to get to work. ”
“Love is a feeling, Marriage is a contract, and a Relationship is work.”
Where there is marriage without love, there will be love without marriage. Benjamin Franklin
“Infidelity is an erotic injury to the relationship, and if the partners choose to stay together, the commitment must be renewed through step by step erotic recovery work in order to move forward.”
“I think a man and a woman should choose each other for life, for the simple reason that a long life with all its accidents is barely enough time for a man and a woman to understand each other and. . . To understand is to love.”
The three stages of love and marriage: You don't know em, but you love em. You know em, and don't love em. You know em and you love em. Unknown
Wheel of Manchester, now in Edinburgh. Photo: Lynne Azpeitia
Couples Counseling
Relationship Therapy
Marriage Counseling
Love cannot thrive in a negative environment
Change Forever the Way You Perceive & interact
Move From Hoplessness to Hope
Have A Great, Loving Relationship
Behind every happy couple is good communication.
How good is yours?
How is your marriage doing?
Did you know that your relationship satisfaction actually depends on:
How you and or your partner or spouse think about your problems & difficulties
How you manage your feelings about and when you are with your partner or spouse
Where you focus your attention in the relationship and when you communicate with each other
How you act and communicate under stress
Are you experiencing any of these?
It's been a long time since you felt "that loving feeling"
You feel that you and your partner are growing or have grown apart.
You don't feel heard or understood on topics important to you.
A casual remark makes you or your partner upset.
Minor incidents escalate into big battles.
You find yourself arguing over the same issues.
You're upset but don't express your feelings.
If you answered yes to any of these, marriage, relationship or couples counseling can help!
Keeping emotional love, passion and affection alive in your relationship isn’t easy these days. When our spouse doesn't respond positively to our expressions of love, we get frustrated. We often forget that the euphoric stage of new love doesn’t require a lot of effort because we’re swept along by a river of positive emotions—we’re willing to do almost anything to make our partner happy and feel loved and appreciated. And vise versa.
As couples come down from the emotional high of new love, they need to make the transition to the second stage of love which is more intentional and requires a conscious and constant effort from each person to learn about, understand and meet the emotional needs of the other.
Many couples fail to make this transition from the wonderful emotional high of new love to the stage of intentional, conscious love.
When couples fail to make the transition from new love to intentional conscious love, what often happens is that they get “feelings” for someone else, then divorce and remarry—and repeat the same exact cycle with another mate.
Tired of having conflict and dealing with problems?
Wondering whether to work things out or leave?
Need help making important decisions?
Want fewer arguments and less tension?
Want less distance and helplessness?
Want MORE love, affection, & support?
It’s important to learn how to make the transition from the high of new love to the intentional stage of love. Marriage counseling helps couples keep their love alive and to make this transition so their relationship is reborn.
For more than 10 years using a skill based and communication oriented approach, Lynne Azpeitia has been helping couples make the transition to intentional, conscious love and learn how to communicate and express their love in a language their partner or spouse understands.
Good intentions are not enough. To sustain a passionate marriage or relationship we must also learn how to meet our beloved’s emotional need for love.
Don't wait for a crisis to make you scramble to save your relationship.
Email or call Lynne today and have a conversation to see how counseling with her can help you strengthen, reinvigorate or save your relationship or marriage.
You can achieve a closer relationship with your partner, overcome difficulties, develp better communication and a deeper emotional bond and connection. Lynne can show you how.
Put yourself and your relationship at the top of your agenda.
Start couple therapy today to make your marriage or relationship better.
Click Here for Books for Couples Who Want to Make Their Relationship Better
If you want a great, loving relationship, communication and skilled-based couple therapy with a relationship and marriage friendly therapist like Lynne Azpeitia, can help you and your spouse, partner or significant other:
• promote behaviors to nurture & sustain a healthy, intimate relationship
• strengthen your relationship
• develop skills that foster communication and emotional understanding
• discover new dimensions of life and love
• rekindle the sparks of love that brought you together
Take your marriage or relationship from good to great.
Email or call Lynne today and have a conversation to see how counseling with her can help you strengthen, reinvigorate or save your relationship or marriage.
Through Communication & skilled-based relationship therapy with Lynne Azpeitia, couples can
• learn and practice effective communication
• develop the skills needed for sharing with each other
• learn how to address and repair painful misunderstandings and past hurts
• learn how to hear your own and your partner's unrealized dreams beneath your conflicts
• work together to develop intimacy and a more affectionate and satisfying relationship
Have less stress and more love.
Find Contentment.
Learn how to shed helplessness, confusion and misunderstanding with:
Couple Therapy • Relationship Counseling • Pre-Marital Marriage Counseling & Therapy
Many times couples wait too long to come for counseling.
Don't let that happen to you. Get your relationship back on track.
Email or call Lynne today and have a conversation to see how counseling with her can help you strengthen, reinvigorate or save your relationship or marriage.
You can't live happily ever after if you don't take care of your relationship.
Working on better communication and addressing sensitive issues, hurts and misunderstandings when you first begin to experience problems may save your relationship.
Learn effective communication, conflict resolution and problemsolving. Counseling with a skilled, experienced relationship and marriage friendly therapist can help couples learn the practical and necessary skills for successful relating that will make your love last.
To schedule an appointment or arrange a free phone consultation, email Lynne or call her at 310-828-7121
Here's what you need to know:
Through solution-oriented communication and skilled-based couple therapy, Lynne Azpeitia teaches couples and individuals, the skills, attitudes, understanding, and actions they need to build and preserve intimacy in healthy committed relationships and marriages. Rediscover the fun and love that started it all.
Experience respectful couple therapy in a safe and confidential environment.
Professional, confidential and affordable. Short term intervention and strategies.
Lynne Azpeitia, a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist who specializes in relationships and couple communication has been working successfully with couples for more than 10 years, helping them acquire the skills and tools they need to communicate with each other and navigate life together. Get tools and skills that really do work.
Lynne's therapeutic experience and expertise is greatly appreciated by those couples who are serious about intimacy and who want to build and sustain caring, trust and love in their relationships and marriages. She has the training and skills to help you.
Lynne Azpeitia is a member of the National Registry of Marriage Friendly Therapists and has worked with couples doing Marriage & Relationship Counseling and Therapy for more than a decade. During that time she's also taught, trained, and supervised therapists to work with couples, too..
Couples can experience results in as few as 6 sessions of marriage or relationship therapy when working with Lynne. Most couples receive what they need within 10-12 sessions.
Click Here for Books for Couples Who Want to Make Their Relationship Better
Get help for your marital crisis. Heal your relationship wounds and misunderstandings. Get the skills you need to foster intimacy, emotional attunement and connection.
John Gottman's research showed that.....Marriages became stable over time if the couple learned to reconcile successfully after a fight. Partners heading for divorce responded to each other's bids to clear the air only 33 percent of the time, while the happy couples' response rate was 80 percent.
Psychotherapy Networker
Find out how marriage counseling or relationship therapy can benefit you and your spouse.
Contact Lynne Azpeitia at (310) 828-7121 or by e-mail to find out how couple therapy can benefit you and your relationship or marriage.
Interested in exploring Relationship or Marital Therapy?
Schedule a session with Lynne Azpeitia. Email or call Lynne today and have a conversation to see how counseling with her can help you strengthen, reinvigorate or save your relationship or marriage.
Read what Lynne has to say about her approach to Marriage and Relationship Counseling
Read what Lynne has to say about Increasing Couple Intimacy
Books for making your relationship or marriage better
Interested in finding out whether marriage or relationship counseling can benefit you and your relationship?
Call Lynne Azpeitia at (310) 828-7121 for a complimentary 30 minute telephone consultation. Find out how counseling can improve your relationship and make your life better.
Find out how relationship therapy can benefit you and your spouse. Contact Lynne today.
Lynne Azpeitia, MFT
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
AAMFT Approved Supervisor
310-828-7121
3025 Olympic Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90404
Coaching, Counseling & Psychotherapy for Couples, Individuals and Families
Have a question? Need some information? To schedule an appointment or have a free consultation, contact Lynne
Lynne Azpeitia's Registry of Marriage Friendly Therapists Profile
Click Here for Books for Couples Who Want to Make Their Relationship Better
Lynne Azpeitia
Licensed MFT
AAMFT Approved Supervisor
310-828-7121
“I love you, not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.”
“To reconnect, lovers have to be able to de-escalate the conflict and actively create a basic emotional safety. They need to be able to work in concert to curtail their negative dialogues and to defuse their fundamental insecurities.”
The major aim of therapy is increasing your knowledge about yourself, your partner and the patterns of interaction between you. Therapy becomes effective as you apply new knowledge to break ineffective patterns and develop better ones.
Bader & Pearson
Email or call Lynne today and have a conversation to see how couples counseling can help.
“As much as I would miss my wife if she were to die, I would miss what we are together even more. Our “we-ness” our “us-ness.””
The development of a really good marriage is not a natural process. It is an achievement.
David & Vera Mace
“Giving a sincere apology and using these ways to say sorry can help restore your relationship with your husband or wife, and can help you grow in humility, as well. And its critical to saving marriage.”
“Loneliness doesn’t come from having no one around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that are important to you.”
"We were recommended Lynne from a long time friend, and she certainly lived up to everything that the friend said.
Lynne is a very intelligent woman who really knows her field. She allows you to talk but also encourages you to listen, not just to the words spoken but the tone they are spoken in.
We have been to counseling before. The counselor has always been too laid back and placid.
Lynne confronts people a bit more, draws things out of you and gives you a lot to think about with out hurting anyone's feelings.
We would highly recommend her!!!!"
L&D
What Works in Couples Therapy?
John Gottman Interview
I've tried to create a psychology of marriage from the way real, everyday people go about the business of being married....The interesting thing to me is that my research supports a systems view, that really is husband affecting wife and wife affecting husband in a circle. The existential view is supported because you can't just look at what these gridlock conflicts are about; you have to look underneath at what the life dream is. Then these dreams have narratives, so narrative therapy is supported, and they usually go back to the person's childhood and they go back to have symbolic meanings about the way they've been traumatized in other situations, so a psychodynamic point of view is also supported. You get a behavioral view supported because you find when you look at the evidence that often the best way to effect change is changing the behavior rather than trying to change the perception of a person, and perception often follows behavior. So all these different kinds of therapies are supported by this research...More
Relationship Tip Sheet: Top Reasons Why Some Long-Term Marriages End in Divorce
LeslieBeth Wish
Why, we ask, would someone get divorced after more than twenty years of marriage? Before we take a look at the top reasons for why some long term marriages end in divorce, let's first see why some long term marriages succeed or just "go along to get along."
Should we call it quits? A new kind of couples counseling
Diane Maples
Many unhappily married couples turn to marriage counselors to help them improve their relationship. Now a new type of couples therapy helps them figure out whether the best solution is to call it quits.
"We basically only see people where divorce is on the table," says Bill Doherty, a professor in the family social science department at the University of Minnesota, who was recently featured in a Wall Street Journal story about a new therapy called discernment counseling.
Unlike traditional marriage counseling, in which couples try to work through their marital problems, discernment counseling aims to help struggling couples decide whether to "improve the marriage or let it go".....More
Was It Our Sex Life That Made You Cheat?
Tammy Nelson, Ph.D.
So your spouse cheated. Ask yourself, what was going on in the bedroom prior to the affair? Although a lackluster sex life in no way justifies infidelity, exploring what was present in your erotic life prior to the affair can neutralize blame. If both of you felt trapped in a boring or routine sex life, it was the responsibility of both of you to change it. The one who cheats can't blame her partner for lack of passion. This is an excuse and a way to avoid taking responsibility. What was really happening in your love life before the affair even began? More....
Why Men Cheat
One of the things women don’t realize is that most married men live in a culture of adultery. We see it all around us. We have friends who have cheated on their wives. We have been on business trips where we went to strip clubs and our colleagues went into the back for hand jobs or more. We don’t tell our wives, of course. A lot of husbands still operate with the idea that what gets revealed among men stays among men. Part of this is based on boyhood ideas of not snitching. Part of it, however, is based on a more cynical motive: If we were to tell our wives, they would begin watching us more closely, and as most of us married men keep in mind the possibility that one day we too will have an affair, to tell our wives would be to diminish this chance...You might believe that your husband or your father or your boyfriend doesn’t think this way. Even if a man is committed to remaining faithful, he is affected by the adultery he sees around him. More
Talk about Money with Your Honey
Chellie Campbell
Make your relationship work. Talk about your money, your expectations, your goals, your beliefs. Write them down. Then write some positive money affirmations and practice them together. Give each other space to talk about what is really important to you financially, even if you’re afraid the other person will think you’re frivolous, cheap, irresponsible, tight, or whatever. If the things you really want aren’t provided for, either in your current (low or medium) budget or your goal (high) budget, anger and resentment are going to creep in to your relationship....More
What a Marriage Therapist Really Thinks:
They try to encourage commitment and not take sides
Elizabeth Berenstein
William Doherty, Ph.D.
Here are excerpts from this interview.
How do you approach marriage therapy?
Dr. Doherty: I emphasize each person understanding their own contribution to the marital problems and their responsibility to change. There are ways to do marital therapy that focus more exclusively on the dance that people are doing—helping them coordinate, communicate, play off each other better. I help people look at themselves as individual dance partners. What weaknesses do they bring to the relationship?
One of the mistaken notions of marriage therapy is that it is not also personal therapy. People think they may be having marital problems and then individual problems. And they think they should go to individual therapy first. But good marital therapy can be good individual therapy, too. More...
The Five Love Languages
Do you know what "love languages" are? In The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate. Dr. Gary Chapman says a love language is how someone wants to be shown love because it satisfies a deep-seated need. According to Dr. Chapman, the five love languages are Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch.....More
The Search for Intimacy Inside the Sexual Crucible
David Schnarch, Ph.D.
Most of us remember times in our lives usually when we were young--when the entire world seemed suffused with a bright and glistening eroticism. We remember the delicious thrill of seeing somebotdy we desired walking toward us, smiling, the warm shock of a special person's touch on our arm, or the almost unbearable pleasure unabashedly into the eyes of a new lover. Even when we grow older, marry, have children, and take responsible jobs, this sexual electricity jolts us from time to time.......More
Bids For Connection: The Building Blocks of Emotional Connection
Dr. John Gottman
In Dr. John Gottman's apartment lab at the University of Washington, he studies how people interact with one another under everyday circumstances. He has discovered that "bids for connection" happen at a very high rate between partners. For example, happy couples "bid" 100 times in ten minutes. What makes the bids so important?.....More