Couples Counseling

Couples counseling to help you realize your relationship’s potential.

As a San Diego marriage therapist and couples counselor, Craig Lambert, LCSW is dedicated to helping people realize their relationship’s potential.

Craig believes that while our work is to strengthen our relationship abilities for our primary relationships, the effects spread into the world –  in all places that our lives touch.

Who needs Couples Counseling? Someone who:

• feels baffled about why a discussion always ends up in a fight.
• has several failed relationships in his or her past and is reluctant to try again.
• fears their partner’s anger or other extreme emotions.
• has given up trying to connect with his or her partner.
• feels concerned or disappointed in their sex life.
• thinks the relationship is over after an affair.
• feels they have no idea whether healthy relationships even exist; they haven’t seen one.
• is susceptible to ideas that humans as a species aren’t made for monogamy.
• experiences intense jealousy.
• provokes fights.
• retreats through “stone-walling” and withdrawal.

Still not sure if couples counseling is right for you and your partner? Ask yourselves:

• Have you and your partner lost interest in each other sexually does your relationship lack intimacy?
• Do you and your partner have difficulty discussing and deciding on how to handle finances?
• Are either of you having a hard time forgiving and letting go of past hurts and disappointments?
• Are you having difficulty discussing and resolving differences?
• Are you or your partner unable to share feelings, understand each other, and listen to one another?
• Do you struggle with decisions regarding division of responsibility, including household chores?
• Are you dissatisfied with the amount and quality of leisure time spent together?
• Are you dissatisfied with how your partner relates to your or their family and friends?
• Do either of you feel the other is too controlling or inflexible?
• Are you on the same page with regard to parenting your children?

If any of the questions or statements above feel familiar, please don’t hesitate to call me at or contact me here. I’ll explain the steps we will take together, along with your partner, to improve your daily life – starting with the first session. 

With focus and guidance, your relationship can become the joyful, nurturing haven it once was. And, because both partners explore the underpinnings of their own behavior and their own sometimes extreme reactions to their partner’s behavior, couples counseling becomes a path to individual healing. Many who experience couples counseling even report a clearer sense of their purpose in life and healthier connections with family and friends.

Which Is Riskier? Getting Couples Counseling Or NOT Getting Couples Counseling?

Every day, La Jolla and San Diego couples get married with absolutely no relationship, communication or conflict training whatsoever. Is there a problem with that? The following statistics would say yes:

• 50% divorce rate for first marriages
• 67% divorce rate for second marriages
• 73% divorce rate for third marriages

We are all well aware of the impact divorce has on children (greater unhappiness, less life satisfaction, higher rates of depression, weaker sense of personal control.) Divorce also leads to higher financial, emotional and health risks to adult partners.

While divorce may seem the better option right this minute, keep in mind that going onto a second marriage (for which the average divorce rate is 67%) often doesn’t solve relationship issues. In fact, it can repackage and redeliver the same issues all over again. And most do remarry, no matter how much they swear they will never walk down the aisle again.Even if you don’t stay in this marriage, getting relationship education only empowers you with practical information and insight into your own motivations and behaviors.