I have a confession that tends to surprise new clients: couples therapy is where I relax.
I know. That’s like saying you unwind by untangling Christmas lights or find inner peace doing your taxes. But it’s true. After two decades helping 19-year-olds figure out whether they should major in biology or become the next great disc jockey, and years spent as a disability specialist helping students get the accommodations they needed to actually finish that degree, sitting across from two people who are stuck — really stuck — and helping them find their way back to each other? That’s my happy place. I’m also a husband and a father of four, which means I’ve personally lived through approximately every version of “we are so tired and why won’t you load the dishwasher the right way.” I don’t just study conflict. I reside in it. I get it more than most, because I am most.
The Word “Rehabilitation” Isn’t Just for Knees
Here’s the part of my résumé people don’t expect to matter in a therapy office: I’m a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor (CRC). For years, my job was helping people whose bodies, minds, or life circumstances had changed — sometimes overnight — figure out how to build a functional, meaningful future anyway. Not by pretending the injury, diagnosis, or setback didn’t happen. Not by “fixing” them like a car that rolled off the lot with a defect. By helping them identify what still worked, what needed support, and what a realistic, sustainable path forward actually looked like.
Turns out that’s almost exactly what distressed couples need.
Nobody walks into my office because their relationship is running at 100%. Something got injured — trust, intimacy, communication, the ability to fight fair, the sense that your partner has your back. The instinct is to treat that injury like a mechanical failure: find the broken part, replace it, done. Rehabilitation counseling taught me relationships don’t work that way, and neither do people. You don’t “fix” a marriage. You assess function, you build on strengths that are still very much intact (even when they’re buried under a decade of resentment), and you create accommodations — real, structural changes to how two people operate together — so the relationship can bear weight again.
This is also, not coincidentally, the entire philosophy behind Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), which is the model I lean on most heavily in the room. EFT doesn’t ask “who’s right?” It asks “what’s the injury underneath the argument, and what does each of you actually need to feel safe again?” If that sounds like an accommodation plan, congratulations, you’ve been paying attention.
Career Counseling Taught Me Something Else: People Panic When the Plan Falls Apart
Before rehabilitation work, I spent years as a career counselor on college campuses, which means I have personally watched thousands of 20-year-olds discover that their five-year plan lasted about five weeks. Nothing teaches you about human panic quite like a junior who just realized their major doesn’t guarantee a job and their parents are texting “so what’s the plan?” in all caps.
Marriages hit the exact same wall. You had a plan — the wedding, the house, the 2.5 kids, the golden-retriever energy of it all — and then real life shows up wearing a Halloween costume of your actual life, and nothing looks like the brochure. Career counseling taught me how to sit with people in that specific flavor of disoriented grief — the “this isn’t what I signed up for” feeling — without rushing them past it. Couples in crisis need that same patience. You can’t skip to “here’s your five-step action plan” before someone’s finished mourning the relationship they thought they were going to have. Ask any senior who majored in theater and ended up in software sales. The grief is real, and so is the pivot — you just have to let both happen.
Yes, My Office Is Basically a Tailgate Away From the New Bills Stadium
Let’s talk logistics, because I know half of you are Googling “couples therapist near Highmark Stadium” between doomscrolling Bills mock drafts. Our Orchard Park office sits right in the shadow of the new stadium construction — close enough that on Sundays in the fall, you can practically hear “Shout” playing before we’ve finished your intake paperwork.
I think about football more than a licensed mental health professional probably should, but hear me out: a good marriage and a good football team actually run on the same fundamentals. You need a system everyone actually buys into (not just the quarterback). You need to know your partner’s “route” well enough to throw the ball before they’ve finished turning around. You need film review — which is a much friendlier way of describing “let’s go back and look at how that fight actually happened” than my clients initially expect. And yes, sometimes you need a hard reset at halftime, because whatever you were doing in the first half clearly is not working, and pride has no place in a comeback.
Home field advantage is real in therapy too. There’s something about doing this work in the town where the Bills Mafia jumps through actual tables in the actual parking lot that keeps things from getting too precious. My clients are Western New Yorkers. They can survive lake-effect snow, a Scott Norwood field goal attempt, and four straight Super Bowl losses with their sense of humor intact. I promise you, they can survive couples therapy too.
Why Any of This Matters to You
If you’re reading this because things at home feel stuck, injured, or just quietly off, here’s what I want you to take from a rehabilitation counselor’s perspective: stuck is not the same as broken, and “different than the plan” is not the same as failed. What you need isn’t a miracle. It’s an honest assessment, a partner (me) who’s not afraid to sit in the mess with you, and a structured path back to full function — built by two people who are willing to do the work.
I’ve walked students through losing scholarships, losing their sense of identity, losing the plan entirely — and watched them build something better than the original blueprint. I’ve watched couples do the exact same thing.
And unlike Sunday afternoons in Orchard Park, this is one contest where I’m rooting for both sides to win. Reach out today to schedule an appointment.
Aaron Garmon, CRC, LMHC, is an EFT-trained couples therapist at The Relationship Center of Hampton Roads’ Orchard Park, NY office, where he draws on decades of experience as a career counselor and disability specialist in higher education. He and Victoria Burgess Holroyd, PhD, LMHC, LPC, see individuals and couples throughout Western New York. To schedule a session, contact The Relationship Center.
