You Can't See Your Marriage From Inside It
There's a third way here, and neither of you has thought of it yet.
Couples Counseling in Buckhead In-person and Online- Free consultation available
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You're Both Telling the Truth About This
You solve hard problems for a living, in courtrooms and operating rooms and companies you built. At home, none of it works.
One of you is depleted. Always mothering the children or working, with nothing left over for yourself.
The other is worn down from doing plenty and never being seen for it. From having the least say in a house they help carry.
From inside the glass, the water looks like air.
Both accounts are accurate. Read side by side, they explain the fights.
Marriage is like a fishbowl. It’s hard to see what’s going on from the inside.
You’ve read about attachment, planned the dates, tried scheduling the sex. Smart people bringing everything they have to it, and still asking: what are we still not seeing?
Someone outside the glass can see what neither of you can.
Get a Clear Read on Your Marriage
Get Started TodayYour Marriage Needs an Accurate Diagnosis First
No two couples are alike, so you won’t get a packaged program from me. I look at what’s actually driving the distress in your particular marriage.
Communication is part of the work. Underneath it sits an imbalance in power and relational functioning, and that is what has to change.
Treat the wrong problem, and you'll be back here in two years.
Build the third way you haven't thought of. The relationship doesn't have to survive at the expense of either one of you.
- Fight less oftenAnd less cruelly when you do.
- Speak for yourselfSpeak about your own experience instead of managing your partner's.
- A calmer homeGive your children a home that isn't organized around the fighting.
- Closeness, not negotiationRebuild physical closeness as warmth instead of negotiation.
- Everything else gets easierA good marriage makes everything else in your life easier to do.
Three Phases, and Why I'll Ask You for a Year
Stabilize the System
You each get safe enough to lower your guard, through the real experience of being respected in the room. Then we negotiate basic agreements for fairness and reciprocity. The fighting stops running the house.
Explore the Experience
We look back at the whole relationship together: the early hopes, the mutual disillusionment, the losses that hurt you both. Each of you accounts for your own part, and forgives.
Build the New Foundation
New relational behaviors get built and practiced: mutual respect, boundaries that hold, and intimate connection that means something again. The marriage runs on a new structure.
Conflict Doesn't Intimidate Me
Trained in the Methods, Branded by None
I'm trained in Gottman and EFT, and I'll use whatever helps. But what I'm really watching is the pattern you two fall into, and how much of it you each learned growing up.
I Can Sit in the Heat
High conflict doesn't intimidate me, and I won't flinch away from naming what isn't working in the room.
Both of You Have an Advocate Here
I'm for this relationship, and I'm for each of you as a person, which means supporting both partners at once.
About Shana Evans-Bassett, MEd, MS, LPC
- Licensed Professional Counselor, Georgia
- Trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Gottman therapy for couples
- 2023 Fellow, Emory University Psychoanalytic Institute
- Independent practice in Buckhead since 2024
My journey to becoming a therapist was not straightforward. In fact, it grew out of my own experience as a therapy client.
Sitting on my therapist’s couch in my late 30’s week after week, I not only found my own inner healing and transformation, but I learned firsthand what separates effective therapists from ineffective ones, and why the relationship you have with your therapist makes all the difference.
In addition to my training, my lived experience as an adult daughter, spouse, and parent enhances my capacity to understand and relate to the struggles my clients are going through.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Plenty of couples arrive with one person more convinced than the other, and the reluctant partner usually has something important to say.
It can, and it takes time. Rebuilding a foundation after infidelity happens in stages, and about three years is realistic.
Come anyway. I can help you come to terms with the whole relationship and move forward with mutual care and respect.
Yes, directly and without embarrassment. Sex and intimacy are part of couples work here.
Take the First Step Today
A free 15-minute phone consultation. No pressure, no obligation.
You don't want this marriage to end. Something in both of you keeps insisting there's a better version of it, and that instinct is worth trusting.
Serious relationship problems rarely resolve on their own or when circumstances change. They need someone outside the glass.
Heal, grow, thrive. Real, and worth the time it takes.
- Call Call me at (404) 735-9039 for your free 15-minute phone consultation.
- Schedule Schedule your free consultation. No pressure, no obligation.
- Talk it through We'll talk about how couples therapy can help you build a marriage that doesn't cost either of you.