About Approach Relationship Issues
Aaron Platt, online coach
Aaron Platt MA Counseling (La Salle) · MA Sociology (UC Berkeley) · BA Sociology (NYU) Pattern-focused coaching →

Your relationship doesn't need more advice. It needs perspective.

You've read the books. Tried the communication tricks. Maybe even had the scheduled date night where you both sat there thinking about the fight from Tuesday. None of it stuck, and it's not because you weren't trying. It's because something in how you're each seeing the situation made those things feel pointless, or impossible, or like they were already happening. I work with couples to find and undo the distortions that keep them locked in place.

Find your issue

Search for what you are dealing with.

Here's the thing that makes relationships so maddening: you're both sure you're seeing the situation clearly. And you're not entirely wrong. You each have real insight into what's going on. But you also each have areas where your vision is off, and those are precisely the areas you can't tell are off. So you end up stuck: two people who are partly right, each convinced the other is the one not getting it.
The real problem

Your blind spots aren't things you happen to miss. They're things you're hiding from yourself.

Everybody sees from their own angle. That's obvious. What's less obvious is that every angle has gaps, and the gaps aren't random. They tend to cluster around the things that are most personally sensitive for you: old wounds, sore spots, the stuff you learned early on to not look at too closely. You don't notice the gaps because you've been working around them your whole life. They feel like how seeing works.

This is what makes couple conflict so crazy-making. Your partner can see something about you that is genuinely invisible to you. And you can see things about them that they absolutely cannot see. You're both walking around half-right and half-blind, totally certain you're the one with the clear view. The fighting, the distance, the contempt: it all follows from there. Nobody's the villain. The picture is just incomplete on both sides.

So the way out isn't to try harder or communicate more or schedule a weekly check-in. It's to start seeing the parts you've been missing. When that happens, the anger tends to quiet down on its own, because it was never really about what you thought it was about. And what's left, once the anger is out of the way, is usually a lot of love that's been sitting there the whole time with nowhere to go.

How this works

I change how you see, not what you do

Most couple advice starts from the assumption that you already understand what's going on and just need better tools. In my experience, that's almost never the actual problem. The problem is that each person's read on the situation has warps in it that they can't detect. That's not a character flaw. It's how perception works for everyone. What a good coach does is help you catch those warps in real time.

01

Seeing the patterns as they happen

You and your partner each have habitual ways of interpreting, reacting, and protecting yourselves. These run automatically. Most of the time you don't even know they're running. In our sessions, I help you catch these patterns in the act, as they're happening. That changes things, because a pattern you can see is a pattern you can do something about.

02

Understanding takes the charge out of anger

Resentment and contempt feel permanent when you're in them, but they're almost always downstream of something else: a failure to see what's actually going on with your partner, or with yourself. When that gap closes, the anger loses its heat. Not because you've decided to let it go. Because it no longer makes sense in the same way.

03

No worksheets, no "I statements"

I'm not going to hand you a script or assign exercises. That stuff assumes the problem is that you lack relationship skills. It's not. What's going on is a distortion in how you're reading the situation, and the correction happens live, in conversation, when something becomes visible that wasn't visible before. You can't homework your way to that.

04

The love is usually still there

Most people who come to me haven't stopped loving their partner. They've just lost access to the feeling. Something got in the way. When both people start to see themselves and each other with less distortion, the warmth and generosity that brought them together in the first place tend to come back on their own. You don't have to manufacture it.

What brings people here

The specifics differ. The structure underneath is usually the same.

It might look like fighting about money, or sex, or the kids. It might look like one of you shutting down and the other one chasing. But almost always, if you go one level deeper, it's two people with partial vision, stuck in a loop that neither one can see well enough to break on their own.

Why perspective, not advice

If tips and tools worked, you wouldn't be here.

What most people have already tried

Learn to communicate better. Use "I feel" statements. Schedule quality time. Practice active listening. You've probably heard all of this already. Maybe you've tried some of it. And it didn't work, not because the advice is bad in the abstract, but because something about how you're seeing your situation right now made those things feel beside the point. Or exhausting. Or like you were already doing them and your partner just couldn't see it. That's the tell. When good advice bounces off, the problem isn't effort. It's perception.

What I actually do

Think about what a coach does in sports. A good coach doesn't grab the ball out of your hands and score for you. A good coach watches how the team is playing, sees what the players can't see from inside the game, and says the thing that shifts the whole picture. That's what I do with couples. I'm not going to tell you what to say to your partner or how to fight better. I'm going to help you and your partner see what you've each been missing about yourselves and about each other. After that, you usually don't need to be told what to do.

Start with a conversation.

A 15-minute call to see if this is the right fit. Not coaching, not a sales pitch.

$20050-minute session
$25060-minute session
$30075-minute session
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I will respond within a few hours on weekdays to find a time that works across time zones.

You can also email Aaron directly at or message via the WhatsApp icon at the bottom of the screen.

Session fees:50 min: $200 · 60 min: $250 · 75 min: $300
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