Relationship Counseling
* Please note the names of the patients have been withheld due to
client confidentiality
We took our relationship to the next level of happiness.
Dear Dr. Fibus,
We are sitting down together to write this letter. A few months ago, we never could have imagined we would be doing this. As you know, we were on our way to divorce. We had given up. We came to you pretty much without hope, as a last resort. Now, thanks to you, we have a marriage. We are amazed – and we want to thank you.
Our marriage had lots of reasons to fail. We had both been divorced before (as had our parents and most of our friends) and we had come to think of divorce as ‘normal.' We had many years of bad habits and wrong assumptions in our relationship. Plus, we had had a very rocky experience with a previous counselor, who had thrown up her hands and told us to ‘just get a divorce!'
Things started to change that first day we met with you. For one thing, you made us feel safe, like we were not being judged, and like it really mattered to you what happened to us. You didn't ‘take sides' or ever make us feel like one of us was bad or wrong while the other was good or right. The big surprise was when you said flat out that our marriage was not working and we should start planning for our next relationship. We were both stunned and pretty close to storming out of your office – that was NOT what a relationship coach was supposed to say!
But as you continued to gently challenge us with exercises that would improve our communication and rebuild trust, we finally understood that the ‘next' relationship you were talking about was going to be OUR OWN!
You helped us redefine our marriage – from an impossible-to-achieve Hollywood-inspired romance to a deep, enduring love. In the process, you helped us each feel better about ourselves. You made it safe to laugh, even when we were angry.
Dr. Fibus, your patience and compassion kept us in our chairs, but your skill and understanding of relationships guided us toward renewed commitment that will last a long time. We are deeply grateful for your help.
— Thousand Oaks Couple
Imagine Our Marriage Better Than Ever
Lots of people told us that we were too young and immature when we got married at nineteen. That was ten years and two kids ago. By the time we made an appointment to meet with Dr. Fibus. Both of our families were encouraging us to get divorced. My family was telling me "we told you so" and I was feeling like a stupid failure.
There advice seemed a little weird though, because most of them had gone through a divorce themselves and most of them weren't any happier now, since their divorces. Two of my aunts said flat out that they wished they had stayed married to my uncles, but their husbands wouldn't take them back. My husband Bob and I were both very confused about what to do. We wanted to stay married, but we didn't know how to be happy together.
Our work with Dr. Fibus was amazing. He helped us realize that most of the times when we thought we were disagreeing and fighting, we weren't, because we actually weren't talking about the same thing. We were having two different conversations and didn't even know it.
Our well meaning friends who "just wanted to support us", listened to the one of us they could relate to and then amplified that the other partner (who was speaking words they were not bilingual with) didn't make sense. Our families and friends are the one's who taught us this selectively dysfunctional way of miscommunicating, so they were the last people we should have been listening to. Talking to them made things even worse.
Dr. Fibus is a wise man. All he needed to hear from each of us was a positive answer to the question "Do You Want To Be Happily Married To One Another"? Once he got the green light that we were motivated to make our marriage a winner, his professional abilities became quite apparent. He made it all seem so simple.
Dr. Fibus taught me how to talk so Bob would want to listen and how to listen so Bob would enjoy talking to me. Bob spend some alone time with Dr. Fibus and whatever they did worked. It all ended up feeling good to me.
It seems odd that we never learned how to do these things earlier, but most of our friends and family never learn how to do them either. These were the people we were allowing to give us advice.
Well, we did learn how to communicate our love to one another; Both of us expressed our love to the other in the unique way we each craved it. Dr. Fibus's coaching did much more than save our marriage. We're both doing great and we've sent some of my family to do a few sessions with Dr. Fibus too. My family did a different kind of work with Dr. Fibus than we did. My family didn't give us any details, but they agree with Bob and I; We should have all called Dr. Fibus ten years ago. Anyway, everyone got what they needed. Bob and I have learned to be happy together.
— 28 year old, Christian mother of two.
We Have a Stronger Marriage
Dr. Fibus got us through a hard and unpleasant segment of our marriage. Despite the unpleasant aspects of the affair, we've learned how to address the issue and our marriage is now much stronger and healthier than before the incident.
— Growing Couple (Studio City, CA)
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