"This is one area of counselling very close to my heart – if you’re reading this and experiencing huge waves of hurt, sadness, pain and anger because you and your partner have separated and you aren’t coping, you can be assured I have boundless compassion for your situation."

I’ve sat with hundreds of people in the same situation as you. I also know how this kind of loss is often invalidated by (well-meaning) people around us.

Separation and divorce as a common outcome in marriage is pretty new. It is only in the past 20 or 30 years that married couples have felt free to separate if they were making each other miserable. While it is absolutely my goal to help couples avoid separation when possible if there still is a hope of positively re-connecting, the reality is that if there is no chance of reconnecting, separation for many couples is the best option.

But as a society we haven’t really worked out fully how to come to terms with this idea. Those in cosy happy relationships can be judgemental (or worse, those in terrible relationships can be even more judgemental!) “Someone must have been at fault” or “You should have tried harder”. And even though you may have lots of lovely well-intentioned friends and family, I know you can often feel like they just don’t want to hear about it again, or they just don’t understand the pain.

It’s often seems that you will receive considerable amounts of sympathy if your partner was to pass away, but if your partner leaves you, or worse, if you made the hard decision to leave, you get the feeling eventually that you should just “get over it”.

It is much harder to “get over” losing the person who you were attached to, loved, had children with – your lifeline and support, when you must keep seeing them again and again. You feel like you’re feeling a bit better then they drop in to pick up some stuff, or email you about a bill, and all your composure and togetherness drops away in an instant.

I can talk to you about your loss, for as long as you need to do, and hopefully help you make some kind of sense of it. I work towards helping you find a way to go forwards with your loss in a way that helps you feel held and supported, but also able to keep your life on track.