You can pay in cash, e-transfer, or Paypal. I will send an invoice after the session.

Relationship Therapy

Q: How much does it cost?

My fee is $220.00 Canadian. The first couples session is always a double session, (100 minutes). My fee is $220.00 Canadian. If, after the first session, the fee is the only obstacle to continuing, it can be negotiated. I do not direct bill insurance companies. Clients may use my invoice to submit to insurance companies.

Q: Is there homework between sessions?

There is no homework, but there is lots of practicing what you learned between sessions. Sometimes I will recommend that you find time dedicated solely to the relationship so that you can continue to practice what you learned in therapy.

Q: Are my fees covered be health insurance?

Most health insurance companies will cover at least part of the therapy. It’s important for you to check with your provider though before we start so that there are no surprises.

“The Point of Intimate Relationships...

... is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good relationship is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development.

But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”

- Rilke

I am a trained and accredited marriage and family therapist with the Canadian Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (RMFT 201707).

The Challenge of Intimate Relationships

Sustaining intimacy is challenging. You want to get as close as possible to your beloved without losing your own sovereignty as an individual. Chances are that, early in life, that delicate balance didn’t go so well. Too often, you had to make a deal, that the cost of intimacy was self-abandonment.

Bad deal. But you had no choice, then. You may find yourself replaying with your partner what happened (or didn’t) in your earliest intimate relationships. Time to break that agreement.

Falling in Love, Falling Out of Love, Falling Back in Love

We fall in love and enjoy a period of deep connection and blissful union. It’s as if the universe has conspired to bring us our soul mate. After some months we notice that our partner is not everything we imagined.

Little things start to get on our nerves. Then bigger things. Then practically everything! This is normal. It’s possible to fall back in love but, this time around, you let your partner be who they are, and vice versa, and love them as they are. That’s true love.

If Only S/he Would Change!

But instead, the temptation is strong when things aren’t going well to try to change him or her, to wish that they were more like you expected him/her to be. But the more you try to change your beloved the more resentment surfaces in both partners. You may despair that you made a bad choice.

That’s one possibility for sure. Sometimes it is time to exit, ideally with respect and as little drama as possible. I can help ease the transition.

It’s also possible that this relational friction is the greatest opportunity for your own growth.

I support you as you discover what is required of you to grow in your capacity to love your partner in their individuality.

Trauma Gets in the Way

You and your partner carry emotional wounds and entrenched patterns of behaviour into the relationship. It takes time for these to surface. By the time you catch on, years of spinning your wheels can make you feel like it’s hopeless. You are making the same mistakes, lashing out in anger, treating your beloved like an enemy and cutting yourself off from love.

You are each trying unconsciously to get the love you didn’t get growing up and blaming your beloved for failing you. But most of the time the real failure was in the past, not in your partner.

We hope that s/he will fill the love-void and when s/he doesn’t an ancient heartbreak comes to the surface. As we become conscious of this grief we free our partner from the burden of having to make up for what we didn’t get in the past.

We let them be without leaving them alone.

Testimonials

“The felt sense of love working with Bruce has been the springboard from which all clarity is now budding. Feeling his care and believing he loves me came at the exact moment I was ready to finally be DONE with the unconscious negative beliefs about myself that I desperately clung to. I did decades of work trying to improve myself.

There was nothing to improve. I needed his steady, loving presence to encourage my practice of self-compassion, self-acceptance and self-love”.

— Mary

"Working with Bruce has been a great experience. Over the years I have worked with several counselors often feeling like no real change or growth was occurring in my life. However, in the time that I have been working with Bruce, I have experienced profound changes to my health and well-being physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Today I feel more peaceful, grounded, and confident. I experience far less anxiety in my body, sleep more soundly, and have a much greater capacity to manage and hold everything in my life. These changes have rolled over into every area of my life positively impacting my relationships, business, physical health, and even my spiritual life.

I am grateful for the opportunity to work with Bruce and continue to refer friends and family."

— Dr. Joseph

"The principles that guide Bruce’s work aren’t a marketing strategy. They are foundational to who Bruce is and how he showed up with me during therapy. Some therapists approach their work by inhabiting a role. Not Bruce. His forthright honesty, transparency, steadiness, calm, and gentle humor was the beautiful thread, the how, of Bruce’s humanity. This cannot be faked.

His humanity touched those places within me that had gone underground and been cut off, providing permission for their expression. We were two human beings meeting and discovering what wanted to be revealed during those therapeutic meetings. I’ll always be grateful for the great good fortune to have met and worked with Bruce. Everyone should be so lucky."

— Elaine