Luke Row

Most of the couples I work with are competent people. They have held relationships and careers together for years. They often know the language of therapy well and can tell me, sometimes in the first session, exactly what they think is wrong. What they cannot do is make it shift.

The same argument. The same moment one of them goes quiet and the other starts pushing harder. The same sense, afterwards, that something important was missed again. They have named it to each other many times, and still it keeps happening.

I work psychodynamically, which in practice means we do not spend our sessions on worksheets, homework, or advice. We talk about what is actually happening. In the two of you, in the relationship, and in the room between us. The patterns that trip you up at home tend to show up here as well. That is not a problem with the work. It is the work.

The premise is that what is difficult now almost always has a longer history. The defences that kept you functional at thirteen often turn into the thing that limits you at thirty-five. The way a couple organise themselves around each other's feelings usually has a logic that goes back much further than the relationship itself. Slowing down enough to see that logic is what allows something to move.

That can mean sitting with moments that are uncomfortable. Misunderstandings. Silences. The point where one of you feels criticised and the other feels shut out. Rather than smoothing those moments over, we stay with them long enough to understand what is actually happening underneath.

I trained as a psychodynamic counsellor at the University of Greenwich, on a BACP-accredited programme, and have been in practice for over a decade. First in Central London, and from my Croydon consulting room since 2021. I am a registered member of the BACP. I am currently completing advanced specialist training in couples psychotherapy at Tavistock Relationships, accredited by the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC), where I hold trainee membership. All of my couples work is conducted under close clinical supervision by senior practitioners at Tavistock Relationships.

I am in my own psychoanalytic therapy three times a week. Not because registration requires it, but because I would not ask clients to do work I am not doing myself.

What keeps me in this work is what happens when a couple stop performing and find that something more honest can actually hold them. That is rarely fast and it is not always comfortable, but when it lands it tends to change how the rest of a life together feels.

If this way of working resonates, you are welcome to get in touch.