Attachment-Based, Experiential Therapy for Individuals & Couples at Our Kind Therapy

Relationships and intimacy therapy focus on how people experience closeness, conflict, and emotional safety over time. Most relational distress is not caused by a single issue, but by patterns that form when stress, expectations, and emotional needs interact inside a relationship.

The phrase “it’s not about the dishes” captures this dynamic accurately. Conflict is rarely about the task itself; it’s about what the moment signals emotionally, reliability, care, fairness, or whether one person feels alone in carrying responsibility. When those signals feel threatening, attachment systems activate, and people move into protection rather than collaboration.

At Our Kind Therapy, we offer relationships and intimacy therapy in NYC grounded in attachment-based, experiential work. Therapy focuses on identifying the patterns driving conflict and supporting emotional safety and repair that can be felt in real time, not just discussed. We work with clients across New York City, including Manhattan and Brooklyn, both in person and virtually.

Get Started

Why Relationships and Intimacy Affect Everything

Intimacy is not limited to romance or sex. Psychologically, intimacy refers to the ways people allow closeness, share impact, and remain connected through conflict. It is built through repeated experiences of being seen and responded to.

There are 7 types of intimacy:

Emotional intimacy: building connection through sharing feelings and needs

Relational intimacy: building trust and mending conflict in a timely manner

Communication intimacy: speaking vulnerability and honesty without fear

Physical intimacy: non-sexual touch and closeness

Sexual intimacy: connection built through desire and arousal

Practical intimacy: sharing daily responsibilities and building a life together

Spiritual intimacy: building connection through shared values, purpose, or faith

When intimacy feels insecure in one or more of these areas, people often experience anxiety, withdrawal, resentment, shame, or emotional numbing. Relationship-focused therapy helps all partners understand how your nervous systems interact with each other under stress and how to strengthen your connection.

What Relationship and Intimacy Therapy Focuses On

Relationship and intimacy therapy helps make sense of what keeps repeating and why.

In therapy, attention is often drawn to:

How conflict unfolds, not just the topic
Pursuit and withdrawal under stress
Fragility or inconsistency in trust
Fear of abandonment or loss of autonomy
Changes in desire or sexual presence
Unspoken rules around needs and boundaries
Feeling unseen inside the relationship

Rather than rushing toward solutions, we use therapy to slow down moments of disconnect. This allows the patterns to be understood and softened. We work swiftly to repair the connection, with the intention to create more grounding and stability between each session.

Start Healing

What Working on Relationships at Our Kind Feels Like

Therapy at Our Kind is grounded, relational, and centered on real human experience.

Clients often describe feeling:

Understood without being analyzed
Able to speak honestly without punishment
Less reactive and more present in difficult moments
Clearer about their needs without having to defend them
More capable of staying connected during conflict

Rather than being told what to do, therapy offers a place where new relational experiences can actually be felt. Over time, this steadiness becomes internalized and begins to show up outside of sessions, in conversations, decisions, and moments of repair.

Couples Therapy: Repair, Connection, and Teamwork

Couples come to therapy because they care about the relationship and want to understand what is getting in the way of closeness.

Partners often arrive navigating:

Communication breakdowns
Repetitive conflict
Emotional distance or resentment
Trust issues or infidelity
Sexual disconnection
Differences in values, culture, or family expectations
Life transitions such as parenthood, career shifts, or blended families

Couples therapy focuses on slowing reactive cycles, identifying emotional needs underlying conflict, rebuilding trust through repair, and strengthening secure attachment.

Sometimes therapy helps couples stay together in a healthier way. Sometimes it helps them separate with clarity and care. The goal is not a predetermined outcome, but truth, dignity, and emotional safety.

Individual Therapy for Relationship Patterns

Many relationship struggles repeat across different partners or stages of life. Individual therapy offers a space to understand why.

Clients seek individual therapy for relational issues when they notice:

Patterns of people-pleasing or self-silencing
Attraction to unavailable or unsafe dynamics
Difficulty setting or maintaining boundaries
Losing a sense of self inside relationships
Ongoing shame around needs or desire

Individual work helps clarify how early attachment experiences shaped current patterns and how to build relationships that feel steadier, more mutual, and more aligned.

Start Healing

Communication, Trust, and Repair

Most relationship struggles are not about a lack of communication. They are about what happens under stress. People often speak from urgency, fear, or protection rather than from safety. Therapy helps create space for honesty without escalation, avoidance, or shutdown.

This work supports:

Repair after conflict
Rebuilding trust after rupture or betrayal
Naming what was missed or misunderstood
Creating consistency and emotional reliability

Trust is rebuilt through lived experience, not promises.

Sexual Intimacy and Desire

Sexual concerns are often relational concerns.

Clients seek support around:

Desire discrepancies
Difficulty staying present during intimacy
Shame or anxiety around sex
Transitions in sexuality or identity
The impact of stress, trauma, or life stages on intimacy

Sex-informed, attachment-focused therapy works with the emotional and relational layers of intimacy, not performance or technique alone.

Culture, Identity, and Family Systems

Relationships do not exist in isolation. Culture, religion, family expectations, identity, and history shape how people love, argue, commit, and separate.

We work with individuals and couples navigating:

LGBTQIA+ relationships and identity
Dating patterns and attachment wounds
Cultural and religious differences
Family pressure and fertility stress
Parenthood transitions and blended families
Financial alignment and shared responsibility
Non-monogamous relationships
Breakups, divorce, and relational loss

This page offers an overview. Each of these areas is explored more fully in our specialized pages.