Restorative Practice for RELATIONSHIPS

What is Restorative Practice for COUPLES & POLYCULES?

Restorative Practice for Couples and Polycules is an approach I developed by adapting restorative conferencing—a structure I used for years in schools to help people repair harm and rebuild trust—for relationship work in families and units.

This model draws on restorative practice, which has a track record in schools and communities for repairing relationships and rebuilding trust after conflict. I've adapted that structure specifically for couples work; it's grounded in real practice and real theory, though this particular application hasn't been independently researched on its own. This model doesn't stand alone; it's part of a broader, eclectic approach I bring to couples work. Alongside the restorative structure, I draw on Narrative Therapy, Socio-Emotional Relationship Therapy, the Cultural Context Model, Just Therapy, and reflecting team practices, all through a liberation-centered, decolonizing lens. Together, these shape how I understand and respond to what's happening between partners.

As I use this model, I check in with the people I work with about what's actually helping, so I can keep refining it based on real experience, not just theory.

This model centers:

• Real, substantive work from both partners, not just one

• Power differences between partners, named and accounted for

• Safety for partners already carrying more risk or harm in the world around them

• Room for each person to stay whole, not shrink to fit

• Genuine mutual witnessing between partners

• Groundedness and dignity throughout the process

• Getting to what's actually underneath the conflict, not just calming its surface

Why did I create this model?

Many dominant couples counseling approaches start with conjoint sessions from the very beginning—sitting both partners down together—without accounting for real differences between partners, including:

• Varying readiness to do the work of couples counseling

• Different levels of social power between partners

• Both partners carrying real hurt and both wanting to be seen

• Varying levels of prior relational work already done

Without accounting for these differences, conjoint-first sessions can result in:

• One partner doing more of the emotional labor

• Further harm to the partner who is already minoritized in their community

• One partner shrinking themselves to meet a partner who hasn't done the work

• Sessions that feel like one partner witnessing the other do the work, rather than both

• Heated sessions where each partner competes for the counselor's attention and validation

• A bandaid on the presenting problem, without ever digging into the foundational issues

Restorative Practice for Couples Counseling was built to address this. Most couples counseling treats the joint session as where the real work happens: you sit together, and the therapist helps you talk it through in real time. This model works differently: most of the real processing happens beforehand, in individual preparation sessions at each partner's own pace. By the time you and your partner sit together in what we call the Circle, that work has already happened. The Circle isn't where the heavy lifting occurs — it's where you get to witness and be witnessed, not relitigate or convince.

What is the ultimate goal of this model?

Ultimately, the goal is for everyone in the room to feel like they don't have to make themselves smaller—whatever the outcome looks like, whether that's staying married, separating, or divorcing. Every person in the relationship needs their humanity recognized and felt by their partner. And whatever the next steps are, everyone should feel supported, not thrown into the deep end without transitional support or the skills to live the life they deserve to live, as their full selves.

What could this model look like for me?

Mode 1: Preparation

I meet with all parties individually for their own individual sessions. Together, we process deeply what you're experiencing in the context of your relationship, and the experiences that shaped that, including patterns your body has registered as wrong, long before you had words for them. We go through who you are in the context of being in a relationship, and what you ultimately want from it. I recognize that you are an individual within a couple dynamic. You and your partner are not one unit, and I want to make sure you don't lose yourself in this process.

Mode 2: Circle

This is where you and your partner come together. The objective here isn't to work things out in real time. It's witnessing. Whatever tools support that in a given session, the goal stays the same: each of you gets to have your experience recognized clearly, and hear your partner's the same way, without having to perform understanding on the spot or defend yourselves under pressure. Whatever comes next—an apology, a boundary, a new agreement—comes from two people who've each already done their own work.

time investment

We always start with preparation, and we don't move into the Circle until all parties are genuinely ready to be in that work together.

The work is best done in immediate succession. For example, Partner A does a 45-minute session, then Partner B does theirs in the same week. When we can schedule individual sessions close together and build momentum, we can often move to the Circle and reach an agreement within a short-term series, sometimes as little as 2–4 weeks.

Each session is 45 minutes, $195.

Wait, how does a former school counselor have knowledge on how to deal with conflict resolution among couples?

I want to highlight something about school counselors' expertise here: we're one of the most rigorously trained counseling groups in conflict resolution and relationship and community repair, and that expertise is underrepresented in the mental health field.

I've facilitated restorative practice conferences (a structured process for repairing harm and rebuilding trust after conflict) so consistently over the years that it's become part of my daily practice—well into the hundreds, likely more than I could accurately count. I've worked with conflicts ranging from peer issues and bullying, to what would be considered hate crimes among adults, to conflicts between students and staff, parents and staff, and situations involving violence, drug use, and family feuds within the community. Ensuring the safety of our most vulnerable students and community members—many of whom carry significant trauma—is core to that work, and school counselors carry substantial trauma-informed training as a result. I've worked in schools and districts heavily impacted by trauma throughout my career.

School counseling is one of the fields most aligned with liberation-centered therapy—an approach that pays close attention to power, oppression, and who's most vulnerable in a conflict, not just individual behavior. We're trained not just to use these approaches one-on-one, but to shape the systems and environments around us—a classroom, a school, a community—to actually protect the people most at risk. That systems-level lens is something I'm bringing directly into this couples model, including a specific approach designed to prevent further harm to whichever partner is more vulnerable or marginalized in the conflict.