Who I Work With
Couples Therapy for Physicians, Nurses, and Medical Professionals
90-minute private Zoom sessions built around your schedule.
What this career does to a relationship
Medicine does not clock out, and the marriage often lives on whatever is left. I work with physicians, nurses, and other clinicians whose relationships are paying for the job. How long has your partner been getting the leftover version of you?
Call schedules and 24-hour shifts
A 24-hour shift does not end when you hand off the pager, and you come home already spent to someone who has been waiting to be met. Treating that person the way you managed the unit is particularly hard on the relationship.
Rotating nights
Rotating nights flip the household, so one of you is asleep while the other is packing lunches, and the conversation you meant to have keeps sliding to a morning that never stays free. Both of you start to experience that distance as normal.
Residency, fellowship, and moves
A match can put you in a city that fits the program and strains the relationship, and the partner who came along often carries a resentment that is difficult to say while you are still inside training. The silence does not make that resentment smaller.
The partner who always waits
Someone becomes the person who stays, moves the birthday, and tells the children you will try to be there, until that role starts to feel like a job. We name it early, while there is still warmth in the relationship.
Burnout and compassion fatigue
You spend the day steady for patients and families, and at home the patience is used up, so a small request lands like one more demand. Your partner meets a closed door and eventually stops knocking, which you may then mistake for peace.
The fixer identity
Medicine rewards the person who walks into a difficult situation and solves what is wrong, and at home that reflex can sound like a lecture when your partner wants to be met. I will tell you when the white coat is still on.
Two call schedules at once
When both of you are covering call, there is no default parent and almost no margin for a sick child, so the calendar becomes a negotiation you are both too tired to have. Someone starts keeping score, and that score follows you into the relationship.
The same hospital culture lands differently depending on the chair you sit in.
Physicians and surgeons
Attendings, surgeons, and hospitalists carry different call burdens and the same trouble at home. You decide quickly at the hospital, then cannot find a slower pace with your partner, and we practice staying in that conversation without turning your spouse into another case.
Residents and fellows
Training is called temporary, and it can last a decade, with modest pay and hours that are not up for debate. Couples postpone the relationship until after boards. I would rather we not wait on a finish line that keeps moving, because the person at home is living this year.
Nurses, CRNAs, and APRNs
Floor nights, a CRNA roster, and an APRN panel each empty you in a different way, and you can lead at work while still being asked to leave the unit at the door. We look at that gap. You will not have to defend the job before we talk about what home has become.
Dual-physician couples
When both of you are physicians, you share a hospital language and almost no spare margin for each other, and the risk is a polite, efficient house that has stopped being a marriage. You will not have to teach me that culture before we start.
Why 90-minute video sessions fit
A 50-minute hour ends just as a post-call couple starts telling the truth, and ninety minutes lets us get past who covered pickup and into the pattern that keeps returning.
We meet on a secure Zoom call, from home, a call room, or a desk between cases, with no office to drive to after a shift that already took the day.
I will not promise a standing evening, because call would make that promise dishonest. We place each session where both of you can actually be present.
If something urgent comes up between sessions, I can usually offer priority scheduling.
If you or your partner are in crisis, call or text 988, or call 911.
I am licensed in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Regular sessions are virtual. You need to be physically in one of those states when we meet.
Longer meetings are how we make progress without inventing hours the hospital will take back. What you do between sessions tells us whether the work is actually helping.
Privacy
You should not have to cross a hospital lobby, or sit where a colleague might see you, to talk about your marriage. For some physicians, the chance of seeing their therapist at a hospital event is enough to skip getting help. Video, with someone outside your daily world, is the separation.
The practice is private pay, so no insurance claim is filed.
Records stay confidential under HIPAA and state law.
Sessions happen from your own space. There is no waiting room.
If you have questions about what your board or employer asks, check its current wording.
How the work goes
With medical couples I use Emotionally Focused Therapy. I am Gottman Method Level 3 trained, and I am trained in Relational Life Therapy, which comes in when a conversation went sideways and you need a concrete way back to each other.
We start with the cycle you are stuck in, one of you pursuing and one withdrawing, until a missed dinner becomes evidence in a case neither of you meant to open. You can be right about the schedule and still be contributing to that pattern.
I see couples only. If one of you also needs an individual therapist, that is a different relationship, and I will say so.
When separate sessions are too hard to protect, a weekend intensive offers a longer block of time in your home, or a place you choose. We talk first about whether that format fits. Regular sessions stay virtual.
FAQ
Can we schedule around call and night shifts?
Yes. We set the next session around the calendar you actually have, including post-call days and weeks when one of you is on nights. You do not need a standing slot the call schedule will only break. Tell me when the month is real, and we will put the meeting where both of you can be present.
We are both physicians. Is that common?
Yes. I work with couples in which both partners are physicians, including pairs on competing calls. You will not have to explain what a holiday weekend on service does to a family before we can work with it. The work is still the marriage, including the scorekeeping that starts when both pagers go off.
Is couples therapy private from my hospital?
Your hospital does not receive a bill from me, and it does not receive a record of the session. The practice is private pay, so no insurance claim is filed. Records stay confidential under HIPAA and state law. Sessions happen from your own space. There is no waiting room. If you have questions about what your board or employer asks, check its current wording.
Does this work if one of us is in residency?
Yes. Residency is one of the seasons I sit with most. We will not pretend the hours are fair, or that the program will make room for you. We will work on how the two of you stay attached while training has a real claim on your time. How far you get depends on what you do between the sessions you can actually keep.
What does it cost?
A session is $750 for 90 minutes. The consultation is 30 minutes and costs $100. That fee applies toward your first session if we go ahead. If I am not the right fit, I refund it. The practice is private pay. I do not bill insurance. I can give you a superbill for out-of-network reimbursement.
Request a Private Consultation
$100 consultation, applied toward your first session.
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