Couples Work • In Person & Online
Find Your Way Back to Each Other
Move from conflict and disconnection toward understanding, trust and deeper connection.
Couples Work • In Person & Online
Move from conflict and disconnection toward understanding, trust and deeper connection.
All relationships and identities are welcome here.
A clear, compassionate and supportive process.
Real skills for meaningful, lasting change.
Every relationship has hard seasons
Every relationship goes through difficult seasons. You may find yourselves having the same arguments, growing apart, avoiding important conversations or no longer feeling like a team.
Couples counseling gives you a structured place to slow down, understand what is happening beneath the conflict and begin relating to each other differently.
Together, we can help you interrupt painful patterns, communicate more clearly, rebuild emotional safety and create a relationship in which you both can flourish.
Common challenges
Different challenges often share the same hope: to feel understood, secure and connected again.
Conversations quickly turn into arguments, defensiveness or withdrawal.
The same disagreements and ruptures keep returning without resolution or meaningful repair.
You feel more like roommates, coworkers or co-parents than intimate partners.
You need a safe, structured process for addressing hurt and rebuilding trust.
Parenting, careers, illness, aging, loss or other changes are affecting your relationship.
You want to restore affection, vulnerability, emotional closeness or physical intimacy.
Ways to work together
Ongoing sessions
Regular 60- or 90-minute sessions give you consistent support as you strengthen communication, understand recurring patterns and create lasting change.
In person in North Ridgeville, Ohio, or online
Schedule a Free Consultation
Two focused days
A focused two-day experience gives you extended time to work through urgent or deeply rooted challenges without the limits of a weekly session.
In person in North Ridgeville, Ohio, or David travels to you
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2¼-day group workshop
A structured educational workshop that helps couples understand each other more deeply, communicate more safely and build a more conscious relationship.
Held in Cleveland, Ohio, and New York City
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Rebuilding trust
Compassionate, structured support helps you understand what happened, address the impact of betrayal and decide whether and how trust can be rebuilt.
In person in North Ridgeville, Ohio, or online
Learn MoreHow we work
No single method fits every couple. Your work is shaped around your relationship, drawing on structured communication, relational insight, body awareness and practical tools.
Imago helps partners understand the deeper needs and experiences beneath their reactions. The structured Imago Dialogue teaches couples to slow down, listen, validate and empathize, so partners learn to truly hear each other, not just respond.
Research-informed tools help couples strengthen friendship, manage conflict, make repairs and build a shared sense of meaning, replacing reactive patterns with greater understanding, trust and connection.
The Exceptional Relationship and Core Energetics perspectives bring attention to the body, nervous system and emotional energy between partners. Couples learn to notice when they close down or protect, and practice returning to openness and connection.
More about Imago, Gottman and Embodied Couples Work
Imago Relationships focuses on the unconscious dynamics that shape our intimate partnerships. The core idea is that we are instinctively drawn to partners who reflect both the nurturing and the challenging qualities of our earliest caregivers. These similarities are not accidental; they are an opportunity for healing and growth. Imago sees conflict not as a sign that a relationship is failing, but as an invitation to repair old emotional wounds formed in childhood. When couples meet these wounds with curiosity rather than defensiveness, their patterns begin to change and their bond deepens.
The process emphasizes structured dialogue, intentional communication and exploring childhood experiences. Through the Imago Dialogue, partners slow down, mirror each other to truly hear and understand, validate each other's perspective and empathize with the feelings beneath the words.
The Gottman Method was developed by Drs. John and Julie Schwartz Gottman from decades of research on what helps relationships last. Its Sound Relationship House model describes the building blocks of a strong partnership, from friendship and fondness to managing conflict and creating shared meaning.
David has completed Gottman Level 1 training and draws on Gottman-informed communication and relationship tools in his couples work. Alongside Imago and embodied exercises, these tools help partners understand each other more deeply, handle conflict with less reactivity, repair after hard moments, and build greater trust and closeness.
The Exceptional Relationship model, developed by Marcia and Brian Gleason, works directly with the relational field a couple creates together. It pays close attention to what happens in the body and nervous system when partners interact, combining teaching with experiential practice. The goal is to accompany couples on a journey from closed and protected to open and compassionate.
The model integrates psychology, somatic awareness and relational dynamics to help couples deepen their connection, heal past wounds and move beyond old patterns. It rests on the idea that couples can move past conventional, transactional relating into a space of profound connection, authenticity and growth.
Watch
See what sets Imago apart from other approaches to couples work, and how its structured dialogue helps partners truly hear each other.
Who you'll work with
Certified Imago Relationship Facilitator • Certified Exceptional Relationship Mentor
David is passionate about helping couples build stronger, healthier relationships. He thrives in sessions where he can facilitate open communication, foster emotional intimacy and guide partners toward deeper understanding and connection.
He has completed Gottman Level 1 training and is also an Advanced Certified Core Energetics Practitioner.
Ordained Minister • Certified in Exceptional Relationships
Bentley often partners with their husband, David, to work with couples. Together they deeply value commitment and believe strong relationships require continuous effort, understanding and intentionality.
Having faced their own ups and downs, they know firsthand that love isn't just about chemistry. It's about choosing each other every day, even when things get tough.
Advanced Certified Core Energetics Practitioner • Certified Exceptional Relationship Mentor
Clare often partners with David to work with couples. She is an ordained Helix minister from New York City and has also completed specialized training in Imago Relationships.
David and Clare share a deep bond built on mutual respect, shared passion and years of working side by side. Both practitioners and educators, they are a dynamic duo dedicated to helping couples thrive.
The vision
Long-term commitment may be the greatest undertaking of your life. As you join together, your relationship can become truly exceptional when it rests on a foundation that holds security and adventure, individuality and intimacy, harmony and conflict, the cozy and the erotic, the powerful and the most vulnerable.
In an exceptional relationship:
You both feel safe in each other's presence
You can share your inner selves with one another
You share a high degree of trust
There is laughter and lightness between you
Conflict happens, but repair is quick and you learn from it
You each take responsibility for yourselves
You're willing to learn from what goes wrong
You want to see each other flourish
You can admit to human realities like jealousy, competitiveness and insecurity
You balance independence and connection
Take the first step toward clearer communication, deeper understanding and a more connected relationship.
Schedule Your Free ConsultationQuestions? Call 216-544-9472 or email david@energeticawakenings.com