Keep your relationship.
Change your talk.
And don't let discomfort widen the gap between you both.
Henk will work with you, as a couple, to seek connection, transparency, and improved communication in the relationship you share. Delaying your first session allows the gap between you to widen.
Henk Ensing
NIRI IPRE
I work with couples and relationship issues in Frankton, Hamilton.
Meeting with me:
In each session, our conversation negotiates possible paths for you both through the challenging terrain of conflict towards a path of reconnection and healing.
The NIRI (Narrative Informed Relational Interviewing) session explores any possible ways that love can be restored, and past hurts can be healed by fostering connecting ways of moving forward within the relationship.
With an invitation to insight and a focus on improved ways of thinking about the relationship, each session offers to empower couples with ways to navigate their challenges and rediscover the love that brought them together in the first place.
On the Same Field: How Couples Can Win with Teamwork in Money Matters
Curious how the dynamics of a great soccer team can teach us about managing money in marriage? This post uses the familiar rhythm of the beautiful game to explore teamwork, trust, shared power, and smart financial collaboration. If you and your partner want to strengthen both your relationship and your financial foundation, step onto the field and discover how to play—and win—together. Read the post ...
When Porn Becomes a Third Partner
When intimacy feels distant, it’s tempting to look outside the relationship for connection—whether through emotional escape, fantasy, or viewing porn. But these detours can quietly erode trust, closeness, and the safety couples rely on. This post explores why turning outward for intimacy creates real harm, and how partners can begin rebuilding connection from the inside out. If you’re ready to understand the impact and move toward healthier relational intimacy, this is a valuable place to begin. Read more ...
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.
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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.
