Therapy for the relationship you actually have.
Relationships can be loving and still be hard. You can care deeply about each other and still get caught in the same argument, stop feeling connected, struggle to talk about sex, or wonder how you ended up feeling so far apart.
Couples and relationship therapy isn't about deciding who is right, assigning blame, or forcing your relationship into a particular shape. It's a place to slow things down, understand what keeps happening between you, and work toward something different together.
I work with two or more partners across a range of relationship structures. Monogamous, open, polyamorous, and other consensually non-monogamous relationships are genuinely welcome here. You won't be asked to defend your relationship structure before we can work on the reason you actually came.
Sex, desire, or intimacy has become a source of tension
You're working through jealousy, boundaries, or relationship agreements
You're opening a relationship or navigating consensual non-monogamy
Neurodivergence affects communication, connection, or daily life together
Past trauma or attachment experiences keep showing up in the relationship
You want to strengthen a relationship that isn't necessarily “broken”
The same arguments keep happening without anything really changing
Communication has become tense, defensive, or nonexistent
You feel more like roommates than partners
Trust has been damaged by betrayal, secrecy, or broken agreements
One or more partners feels lonely, unseen, or disconnected
You're navigating a major life transition together
What brings people to relationship therapy?
You don't have to wait until you're considering ending the relationship to come to therapy. Sometimes the work is repairing something that hurts. Sometimes it's learning how to understand each other better before things get that far.
Relationship therapy isn't about bringing your argument into my office so I can decide who wins. My job isn't to pick a side. It's to help us understand what is happening underneath the pattern the two, or more, of you keep getting pulled into.
We might slow down an argument enough to notice what each person is actually reacting to, look at the needs that are getting lost underneath defensiveness or withdrawal, practice communicating differently, or explore how attachment, trauma, neurodivergence, sexuality, and past relationship experiences are showing up between you.
What does relationship therapy actually look like?
The relationship is the client.
In relationship therapy, my responsibility is to the relationship and the goals we've established together. That means I work to create space for each person's experience without becoming one partner's individual therapist inside the relationship work.
The goal isn't to make everyone agree. It's to help you understand each other more clearly, identify patterns that aren't working, and decide together what you want your relationship to become.
Relationship therapy isn't always about staying together. Sometimes couples come in unsure whether they want to continue the relationship. Sometimes the work becomes figuring out whether repair is possible, and sometimes it becomes finding a more thoughtful and respectful way to separate.
I'm not here to decide that for you. I'm here to help you have the conversations that make it possible to decide for yourselves.
And sometimes the goal changes.
Your relationship structure is not the problem.
Monogamy isn't the default setting that every healthy relationship is supposed to work toward. Open relationships, polyamory, relationship anarchy, and other forms of consensual non-monogamy are valid relationship structures, and I don't approach them as something that needs to be fixed.
If you're coming to therapy because you're struggling with communication, jealousy, trust, intimacy, boundaries, or connection, we're going to work on that, not assume your relationship structure caused it.
You won't have to teach me your relationship before we can talk about it.
You shouldn't have to spend your first several sessions explaining terminology, defending your choices, or wondering whether your therapist is quietly judging your relationships.
We can work directly with the things that actually brought you in: agreements and boundaries, jealousy and compersion, new relationship energy, time and attention, hierarchy, disclosure, changing relationship structures, navigating metamour relationships, or figuring out what consensual non-monogamy means for your relationship rather than following someone else's rulebook.
And monogamous relationships belong here, too.
Being affirming of diverse relationship structures doesn't mean assuming everyone should open their relationship. If monogamy is what you choose, that's the relationship we're working with. The goal is not a particular structure. The goal is helping you build relationships that are consensual, intentional, sustainable, and genuinely fit the people in them.
When sex and the relationship are tangled together
Sex rarely exists in a vacuum. Differences in desire, changes in intimacy, sexual pain or functioning, shame, past experiences, and difficulty talking about sex can affect the relationship. And what is happening in the relationship can affect sex right back.
Sometimes partners get stuck trying to figure out which came first. We don't necessarily need to. We can work with both.
You don't have to choose between couples therapy and sex therapy.
Because I'm an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist as well as a relationship and trauma therapist, sexual concerns don't have to become the thing everyone carefully avoids talking about while we work on “communication.”
We can talk directly about desire, pleasure, intimacy, sexual expectations, boundaries, consent, sexual changes, and the ways trauma or nervous system responses may be affecting connection.
You don't need to agree on exactly what the problem is before coming to therapy. In fact, you probably won't. You may have completely different ideas about what is happening, what needs to change, or even whether the relationship can change.
What matters more is whether you're willing to get curious about the relationship, your own part in its patterns, and what might need to be different.
Is relationship therapy right for us?
Talk more openly about sex and intimacy
Navigate boundaries, agreements, or changing relationship structures
Understand how trauma, attachment, or neurodivergence affects your relationship
Work through a major transition or decision together
Build a relationship that feels more intentional and sustainable
Communicate without every conversation becoming an argument
Understand the patterns you keep getting stuck in
Rebuild trust after a rupture or betrayal
Feel more emotionally connected
Navigate differences without one person having to “win”
Relationship therapy might be a good fit if you want to…
You don't have to know whether the relationship can be repaired before you come in. You just need enough willingness to look at what's happening together.
In person: Elizabeth City, North Carolina
Telehealth: Available throughout North Carolina and Virginia
Who I work with: Adults 18+, two or more partners
Relationship structures: Monogamous, open, polyamorous, and other consensually non-monogamous relationships
Approach: Integrative, trauma-informed, attachment-focused, body-based, and affirming
Provider: Britney Dixon, MS, LCMHC, LPC, AASECT Certified Sex Therapist
Relationship therapy at SOMA
Wondering if we'd be a good fit?
A free 15-minute consultation gives us a chance to talk briefly about what's bringing you to relationship therapy, answer questions about working together, and determine whether I'm a good fit for what you need. If I'm not, I'll tell you that too.