Affirming Same-Sex & LGBTQAI+ Couples Counseling in Chicago

Every relationship is shaped by the experiences each partner brings into it. For LGBTQ+ couples, those experiences may also include navigating identity, coming out, family acceptance, chosen family, cultural or religious expectations, gender roles, discrimination, and the ways each partner has learned to feel safe and connected in relationships.

These experiences do not affect every LGBTQ+ couple in the same way. They also do not automatically mean something is wrong with your relationship. But they can become important when partners are trying to understand why certain conflicts, expectations, or differences carry so much weight.

In couples therapy, we may explore how these experiences intersect with the relationship you are creating together.

Couples may come to therapy wanting support with:

• Recurring conflict or communication that feels stuck
• Emotional or physical intimacy
• Trust, infidelity, or other relationship injuries
• Differences in how partners experience or express gender, sexuality, or identity
• Coming out or being out differently across family, work, or social environments
• Family acceptance, rejection, or complicated relationships with extended family
• The role of chosen family and community
• Cultural, religious, or generational expectations about relationships
• Different expectations around monogamy, consensual non-monogamy, boundaries, or commitment
• Parenting, family planning, finances, careers, and other major life decisions
• How past experiences of rejection, discrimination, or shame may show up within the relationship
• Questions about whether the relationship should continue or what each partner wants next

Our work is not based on the assumption that there is one correct way to be a couple.

Instead, therapy can provide a place to understand the relationship the two of you have created, recognize the expectations and experiences each of you brings into it, and decide more intentionally what you want your relationship to become.

Sometimes LGBTQ+ couples come to therapy because of something specifically connected to sexuality, gender, family acceptance, or minority stress.

Sometimes they come because one person leaves dishes in the sink and the other is ready to convene a congressional hearing about it.

Both belong in couples therapy.

Affirming care means your identities and experiences can be understood as meaningful parts of your relationship without assuming they explain every problem you have.

You may be working through communication, sex, money, parenting, betrayal, family boundaries, resentment, disconnection, or a major life transition. Therapy can help you explore those concerns while also making room for the cultural, relational, and personal experiences that shape how each of you understands love, partnership, responsibility, and belonging.