Many relationships don’t fall apart from one big moment — they slowly run low on connection. This post explores how everyday communication shapes closeness and what small deposits can help restore it.

Relationship conflict often feels personal, painful, and exhausting—but the real issue isn’t you or your partner. It’s the negative cycle pulling you both out of connection. In this post, we explore how emotional pain affects the body, why couples get stuck in repeated patterns, and how naming the cycle can soften blame, reduce shame, and help you find your way back to each other.

Remember the excitement, curiosity, and connection you felt when you first started dating your partner? Over time, life’s stresses—kids, work, finances—often push dating to the backburner, leaving couples feeling disconnected. At Thrive Marriage & Family Counseling, we believe intentional dating in marriage is the key to rebuilding intimacy, reducing conflict, and strengthening your relationship. By choosing to invest time, effort, and fun back into your partnership, you can restore love, deepen connection, and create a thriving marriage that lasts.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret information in ways that support our existing beliefs, which can distort how we see our partners over time. Small, unresolved issues in relationships can accumulate and lead us to view our partner more negatively, even ignoring their efforts to connect. This biased thinking often creates a cycle of emotional distance and misunderstanding, with both partners feeling unseen or unloved. By recognizing our assumptions and choosing curiosity over judgment, we can break the cycle and rebuild trust through empathy and open communication.

We are challenging the way couples therapy is done traditionally. Read more to understand how an intensive could be a jump start to the next phase in your relationship!

A reminder about powering through with intention!

Roommate Syndrome, if not addressed can cause damage and resentment to your relationship that feels impossible to overcome at times if you let it go too long. Dive into what it is and what to do when you feel it creeping into your relationship.

Feedback is hard to receive but it is a necessary part of the process of therapy sometimes. What do you do when your therapist gives you some feedback that stings?

Our emotional bank account isn’t talked about enough. Take some steps to evaluate your withdrawals and credits to your relationships emotional bank account.

At Thrive Marriage and Family Counseling, we aim to provide our community with a diverse group of counselors trained in many modalities and interventions. One faith-specific modality is the Christian counseling approach offered by Sam Sanchez, LPCC. But what exactly does that mean?

I want you to take a second and think about the word “gratitude”. What words would you use to describe the word “Gratitude”. How do you express it? How do you know someone else is expressing gratitude?