TRACY SONDERN
PSYCHOTHERAPIST
COUPLES THERAPY
The Relationship You Want Is Still Possible
​You feel like you're doing everything and none of it is noticed. Somewhere between work and kids and the ten thousand small things that keep a life running, you lost each other. Not dramatically — just gradually, quietly, until you looked up one day and realized the person across from you felt like a stranger.
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You've had the same conversation so many times.
And nothing has changed. You circle the same arguments, the same silences, the same moment where one of you shuts down and the other pulls away. It's not that you don't want things to be different. It's that you've run out of ways
to try.
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Everything is shifting at once.
​Your bodies, your roles, your sense of self. Menopause, empty nest, aging parents, a career that no longer fits — midlife asks a lot of a relationship. Especially one that was already carrying something. You're both changing. Just not always at the same speed.
I help couples find their way back to each other,not to who you were, but to who you are now.
When you feel safe enough to slow down and really talk — something interesting happens.The defensiveness starts to soften. The arguments that felt urgent begin to lose their charge. Two people who walked in feeling like opponents slowly remember they're actually on the same team. That shift doesn't happen all at once. But it happens.
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Using the Gottman Method for Couples, we work on what's actually underneath the conflict — the unmet needs, the old patterns, the fears neither of you has said out loud yet. The goal isn't a perfect relationship. It's an honest one, where you both feel seen.
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My goal is simple: I want you to leave with enough understanding of each other, and enough tools, that you don't need me anymore. I'll know I've done my job when you do.
When Life Changes, So Do You
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Midlife has a way of arriving quietly. You don't always notice it happening until you look up one day and realise the life you built together looks different — and so do the two of you.
In any long relationship, there will come a point where one of you changes and the other isn't quite ready to. It can look like growing apart. It can feel like you're not right for each other anymore. But often what's actually happening is that you've lost the thread — the joy, the friendship, the thing that made you choose each other. Finding your way back to that is what this work is about.
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Empty Nest
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I have a group of mom friends. We were inconsolable the fall our kids left for college — tears, phone calls, the whole thing. That spring we got together again and every single one of us was quietly dreading them coming home for the summer. That's the empty nest in a nutshell. The loss is real. And then suddenly so is the space. What you do with that space — together — is the question.
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Rebuilding Connection
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I miss my friend. That's one of the things I hear most often from couples. You've known each other for decades, you think you know every detail about this person — and yet somewhere along the way you stopped really being curious about them. The thing is, neither of you is the same person you were when you met. People change. What they think, what they want, what matters to them now — it shifts. In our work together, I'll teach you how to have the conversations that help you find out who your partner actually is right now. You might be surprised.
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Sex
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Sexual desire is a complex thing, and over the course of a long relationship your libidos are almost certainly not going to line up all the time. Maybe they never quite have. What tends to do the damage isn't the mismatch itself — it's what each of you makes it mean. The one who wants more feels rejected. The one who wants less feels pressured, or guilty, or both. Those feelings pile up quietly and start to affect everything else. Learning to talk about this — honestly, without blame — is where a lot of couples finally start to breathe again.
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Money
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Money is rarely just about money. It comes loaded with everything your family taught you to believe about security, scarcity, and what you deserve. Those beliefs are usually invisible until you share a life with someone whose beliefs are completely different. Then they show up in every argument about spending, saving, and who gets to decide. Understanding where your partner's relationship with money actually comes from — and letting them understand yours — changes the conversation entirely.
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Premarital Counseling
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Not every couple comes to therapy because something is wrong. Some come because they want to begin well.
We'll look at communication styles, conflict patterns, and expectations around money, intimacy, and the life you're building together — not to find problems, but to understand each other more deeply before you begin.
I'll teach you strategies to help resolve issues before they flare up. Starting well makes those moments easier to navigate together.
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The Gottman Method - How I work
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I use the Gottman Method — one of the most extensively researched approaches to couples therapy available, built on four decades of studying what makes relationships work and what tears them apart.
It's structured and evidence-based. We identify the patterns underneath your conflict, rebuild friendship and intimacy, and give you tools you can use outside the room — not just insight, but actual skills.
My goal is simple: I want you to leave with enough understanding of each other that you don't need me anymore. I'll know I've done my job when you do.