Rock Solid Relationships
From Conflict to Connection: Restoring Love Together
Struggling with disconnection, conflict, or communication that quickly escalates? I’m Henk, and I help couples find their way back to each other through calm, constructive conversations. In our sessions, we work together to break unhelpful patterns, address past hurts, and build healthier ways of relating — so you can move forward with renewed connection, clarity, and care.
Looking for Relationship Help?
Hi, I'm Henk.
I work with couples who are navigating conflict, feeling disconnected, or struggling to communicate safely when conversations at home become heated or escalate. I provide a supportive space where you can talk together in a calm, constructive way — even about the hard stuff.
In each session, we explore meaningful paths forward—helping you move through challenges and toward reconnection, growth, and healing.
From Conflict to Connection: Restoring Love Together
Sessions can invite a transformative journey for couples seeking to heal and grow together. IPRE (Intimate Partner Relationship Education) within sessions invite stopping the cycle of conflict and embracing the opportunity to reconnect with the same person. Couples can explore how love can be restored, past hurts addressed, and helpful communication strategies considered.
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Every relationship has a story. In these sessions, couples are invited to explore how conflict may have shaped their shared narrative—and how it might be rewritten. Using Narrative Therapy, we look at the problem as separate from the people, making space to reconnect with core values, address past hurts, and consider more supportive ways of communicating.
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With an invitation to insight and a focus on improved ways of thinking about the relationship, each session seeks to empower couples with ways to navigate their challenges and rediscover the love that brought them together in the first place.
Co-Constructing OK-ness:
Finding a Way Forward in Relationship Challenges
There can be many ways to see things in a couple’s relationship. Often, partners see things differently. It is not always about being right or wrong — it could simply be a matter of preference. At times, one partner may be hurting because of an event that has happened, or continues to happen.
Even though the views on an issue can be different — and even become a point of conflict — these views do not always hold to a rightness or wrongness. Sometimes it is not a matter of moral rightness that calls us to take up a position on an issue. It might be wisdom. It might be a difference in values.
The challenge couples often experience is how to talk about issues without them escalating — or without someone shutting down. Respectful and kind communication is usually a good way forward. It can be difficult when feelings are charged around the issues.
However, not all views are informed by one’s preferences. Sometimes there is a moral rightness informing the position one of the partners takes. One important thought that can morally inform our approach to conflict in a relationship is this: “If it’s not OK for one of you, then it’s not OK for both of you.”
If one of you is hurting, then it’s not enough to simply say that you see things differently. If something in the relationship is not OK with your partner, then choose to take the stance that it is not OK for you either. This does not mean that you both always get your way on every issue. It does mean that if your partner is not OK with something, you will not ignore their pain, hurt, sorrow, or preferences.
In a marriage, you need to come together and jointly co-construct a path forward that attends to both of you. It means collaborating to find a way to address the difficulties each, or either, of you is facing. You need dialogue. Collaboration. Co-construction.
Whether the issue is about finances, sex, or something else, choose not to be OK with anything your partner is not OK with. If it’s not OK for one of you, then it’s not OK for both of you.
In marriage, kindness invites us to come together to heal the hurts our partner is experiencing. It paves the way to a relationship of consent, where shared power, transparency and honesty are foundational principles.
Make a Time
Carve out 60 minutes to stop the widening gap. Book your session together. Think of it as your weekly date!
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Prioritize keeping the relationship by not allowing your relationship session to get derailed.
Open a Conversation
In the session Henk will invite a conversation about the relationship.
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Feel heard again in equal power-sharing conversations about the relationship.
Negotiate ways to talk, and ways to get relational space from each other, with consent. Where there's no following. Make intimacy possible again. Begin the process of connecting. Stop the widening gap.
Meet with me at the Good News Community Centre,
78 Breckons Avenue, Nawton, Hamilton 3200.
Henk Ensing
Postliminary Studies
IPCs, CEUs, & full semester studies.
Certificate | Advanced Skills in Narrative Practice: Narrative-Informed Relational Interviewing (NIRI) with Conflicted Couple Relationships (2023). CECs recognised by Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA). Vancouver School of Narrative Therapy (VSNT)
Behavioral Health: Process Addictions and Behavioral Compulsions (In Training)
Currently undertaking professional studies through AllCEUs in the Sex and Pornography Addiction Studies (SPARC) program, leading toward advanced certification in addictions counseling (2025-2026).
Youth and Porn: Understanding and Navigating the Issues — At the NZAC Webinar (Nov 2024), sex therapist Jo Robertson explored how online pornography affects young people in Aotearoa, offering practical ways to build resilience and promote open, shame-free conversations.
Helping Clients Cope and Heal from Sex Addiction–Intimacy Anorexia (SA–IA) — This 2024 training, presented by psychologist Dr. Janice Caudill, introduced therapists to intimacy anorexia, its connection to problematic sexual behaviors, and effective therapeutic approaches for individuals and couples.
Working with People Facing Despair, Unworthiness, and Suicidal Thoughts (2024) CEU Certificate — Postliminary Intensive through the Narrative Therapy Initiative (NTI, Medford, MA, USA), focusing on moving beyond risk assessment toward stories of resistance and hope.
Multidimensional Partner Trauma Model Training (2021) CEU— Completed through the Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists (APSATS), a U.S.-based nonprofit providing professional training and support for partners affected by sexual betrayal and trauma.
Conflict Resolution – Restorative Approaches (2019) ICP — University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ. A full-semester paper covering mediation, restorative practices, and the application of a narrative perspective to facilitate collaborative conflict resolution.
Same-Gender Attraction, Pornography Addiction, and Integrative Behavioural Couple Therapy (IBCT) — A 2013 training by Family Services presented by Michael Satele and Paulo Bisogno, registered psychologists.
Undergraduate Degrees
- Associate of Science (AS), BYUH
- Bachelor of Education (BEd), University of Waikato (UoW)
Link to Abbreviations, Glossary, Terms Definitions and Meanings.
Code of Ethics
I adopt the Code of Ethics constructed by the organisation of which I hold membership - the International Association of Marriage and Family Counsellors (IAMFC).
My work is compliant with The Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003 (HPCA Act).
