Marriage & Couples Counseling in Jackson, MS
When You Love Each Other but Keep Getting Stuck
You can love someone and still struggle to understand each other.
Maybe every disagreement turns into the same argument. One of you pursues while the other shuts down. Trust has been damaged, intimacy has changed, or you've started avoiding certain conversations because they never seem to end well.
Maybe you're not in crisis at all, but you can feel distance growing and don't want to wait until things get worse.
At Watershed Counseling in Jackson, Mississippi, we offer marriage counseling, couples counseling, relationship counseling, premarital counseling, and family counseling to help you understand what's happening between you and learn how to relate differently.
Couples Counseling Isn't About Deciding Who Is Right
Most struggling couples develop patterns that both partners become caught in.
One person reaches for reassurance and the other feels criticized. One withdraws to keep the conflict from escalating, and the other experiences that withdrawal as rejection. Both react to the other's reaction, and soon you're having a version of the same fight you've had dozens of times before.
Couples therapy can help you understand not only what you're fighting about, but what happens between you when you fight.
What Can Marriage and Couples Counseling Help With?
Couples come to Watershed for help with:
Recurring conflict and communication problems
Emotional disconnection
Infidelity and broken trust
Sexual and intimacy concerns
Parenting and blended family challenges
Family-of-origin and extended-family issues
Major life transitions
Premarital preparation
Feeling more like roommates than partners
Strengthening a relationship before it reaches a crisis
You don't have to wait until your relationship is falling apart to come to counseling. Reaching out earlier can give you more opportunity to change painful patterns before they become deeply established. If you can see where things are heading, now may be the right time to change course.
Gottman Method Couples Therapy
Several Watershed therapists have training in the Gottman Method, a research-based approach that helps couples strengthen connection, manage conflict, improve communication, and build healthier relationship patterns.
Our Gottman-trained therapists include Caty Coffey, LPC (Level 3), Alleen McLain, LPC (Level 2), Candi Crawford, LPC (Level 2), and Emily Hartman, P-LPC (Level 1). Russ Schulte, LPC, and Jay Roberson, LPC-S, also have advanced couples training with Drs. John and Julie Gottman.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
Every couple has a dance. One person reacts, the other responds, and before long, both are caught in a cycle neither actually wants.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) helps couples recognize and change that cycle. Rather than focusing only on communication skills or behavior, EFT explores the deeper emotions, fears, longings, and needs underneath each person's reactions.
As partners feel more seen and understood, it can become safer to reach for one another differently and build a more secure connection.
Emily Hartman, P-LPC uses EFT in her work with couples.
Premarital Counseling
You don't have to have a problem to benefit from couples counseling.
Premarital counseling gives couples an opportunity to talk intentionally about communication, conflict, expectations, family backgrounds, finances, intimacy, faith, roles, and the kind of marriage they want to build.
Alleen McLain, LPC and Candi Crawford, LPC are also trained in Prepare/Enrich for premarital and couples counseling.
What If There Has Been Infidelity?
An affair or other breach of trust can leave both partners wondering whether the relationship can recover.
Marriage counseling can provide a structured place to address what happened, understand its impact, rebuild trust when possible, and determine what moving forward looks like.
You don't have to know the future of your relationship before coming to counseling.
Family Counseling
Family counseling can help when conflict, parenting challenges, blended-family dynamics, grief, transitions, or longstanding patterns are affecting the family.
Therapy can help family members improve communication, understand how they affect one another, establish healthier boundaries, and develop new ways of relating.
Christian Marriage Counseling
For couples who want their Christian faith to be part of counseling, faith and biblical principles can be incorporated into therapy. Clients of all backgrounds and beliefs are welcome at Watershed.
Our Marriage & Couples Counselors
Caty Coffey, LPC provides marriage and premarital counseling and is Gottman Method Level 3 trained.
Russ Schulte, LPC works with couples and families, including conflict, affairs, and sexual concerns, and has advanced Gottman couples training.
Jay Roberson, LPC-S works extensively with couples and relationship concerns and has advanced Gottman training.
Alleen McLain, LPC provides marriage, couples, and premarital counseling and is Gottman Method Level 2 and Prepare/Enrich trained. She offers counseling in English and Spanish.
Candi Crawford, LPC works with couples experiencing relationship difficulties, communication problems, and conflict, helping them build healthier patterns of connection.
Emily Hartman, P-LPC works with married and premarital couples using Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Gottman-informed approaches.
Our Client Care Coordinator can help match you with a therapist whose experience and approach fit your relationship.
Marriage Counseling at Watershed
Watershed Counseling provides marriage counseling, couples counseling, relationship counseling, premarital counseling, and family counseling in Jackson, Mississippi, with telehealth available throughout Mississippi.
Whether you're trying to repair something that's been damaged, change a pattern that keeps repeating, or strengthen an already healthy relationship, you don't have to wait until things get worse.