Let's build passion, intimacy, and love
together.

Most couples therapists work from heteronormative frameworks — even the affirming ones. They may be supportive of who you are, but they don't always understand the specific dynamics that shape gay and queer relationships: the absence of a sexual script, the way community intersects with intimacy, the history each partner carries around sex and shame, or what it means to build a relationship that mainstream culture still doesn't fully recognize.

I work with couples where sex has become a source of tension, distance, or silence — and where talking about it directly, in session, with someone who doesn't flinch, is exactly what's needed. Both partners don't need to feel the same urgency to begin. One person wanting this is enough to start.

Desire discrepancy is one of the most common things couples bring to therapy, and one of the most mishandled. It's rarely as simple as one partner having a "higher" or "lower" drive. Desire is contextual, relational, and deeply connected to how safe, seen, and wanted each person feels. In gay couples it can be further shaped by internalized shame, body image, aging, role expectations within the relationship, or simply the accumulated weight of never having modeled what you actually want.

This work looks at what's driving the gap — not just at the symptom. That might mean exploring what each of you actually needs to feel desire, what's been shutting it down, and how to start building toward something that works for both of you rather than just managing the disparity.

Non-monogamy is common in gay communities and genuinely complex to navigate — not because something is wrong with it, but because it requires a level of explicit communication, self-awareness, and ongoing renegotiation that most couples aren't trained for. The absence of a mainstream model means you're building your own from scratch. That's a real skill, and it takes real support.

I work with couples who are opening up, who have been open for years and hit something new, or where one partner is more enthusiastic than the other and that gap is causing friction. I don't bring a bias toward or against non-monogamy — I bring experience working with its actual dynamics: the jealousy, the unexpected attachment, the agreements that aren't holding, the conversation that keeps getting deferred.

Most communication problems in relationships aren't really about not knowing how to talk — they're about what feels too risky to say, what each person is afraid to hear, and the ways those fears have calcified into patterns that protect you from connection rather than building it. In gay and queer relationships, those patterns often have an extra layer: the learned self-protection of men who grew up hiding, the difficulty of expressing need without it feeling like weakness, or the specific charge that can come with talking about sex when shame is still in the room.

In session, we slow those patterns down. We look at what's actually happening in the moments before things break down, what each person needs that they're not asking for directly, and how to have the conversations you've been deferring. Not perfectly — but honestly.

Identity isn't static, and relationships that begin with one understanding of who each person is sometimes arrive at a different place. A partner coming out as trans or gender nonbinary, a shift in how someone understands their sexuality, or a change in how each person relates to sexual roles — these aren't relationship problems to be solved, but they do require the relationship to adapt. That adaptation is real work, and it involves both people.

I work with couples navigating these shifts with honesty and care — including the complexity of one partner's growth creating genuine disruption for the other. Both experiences are valid. The goal isn't to paper over the tension but to move through it together with enough support to make real decisions.