Terri DiMatteo (She/Her)

Approach Description: A romantic relationship is built for intimacy. When a couple still has a foundation of trust and safety, but there are constant battles, a distance that leaves them living like roommates, or a resentment that never quite goes away, it usually means something is in the way: a barrier to intimacy. Together, we find that barrier, understand it, and work through it, so you can return to peace of mind, closeness, and a sense of lightness with each other. Infidelity is different. An affair doesn't just put something in the way of intimacy; it strikes the foundation itself. Trust and safety, the ground the relationship stands on, are badly damaged. Couples arrive in crisis, their whole world upended, shattered to the core and unsure whether they will survive it. Our first task is to stabilize the crisis. The central aim of affair recovery is to restore that trust and safety. It is a tall order, and it isn't always possible. My approach holds two truths at once. Affairs rarely happen in a vacuum; they usually grow in a bond that had already weakened. But vulnerability is not causation. Responsibility for the relationship is shared. Responsibility for the affair is not. Holding both truths allows the betrayed partner's pain to be fully honored while the couple comes to understand what made the relationship vulnerable. When repair is possible, we rebuild trust step by step. When it isn't, the work still matters: it helps each of you leave with clarity, understanding, and dignity rather than more wreckage. And when one partner is narcissistic, the barrier isn't something two people can work through together. Repair requires both partners to look honestly at themselves and care about the other's experience, and narcissistic dynamics make that impossible. In those relationships, couples therapy can do more harm than good, so the work becomes individual: understanding the patterns of manipulation you experienced, trusting your own perceptions again, and building boundaries that protect your peace. Underlying all of this is The Intimacy Bond™, an attachment-based framework I developed from more than a decade of clinical work. It holds that a healthy romantic relationship is a mutual protective attachment built from two intertwined strands: emotional intimacy — being known, felt, understood, and responded to with care — and sexual intimacy — desire, touch, physical closeness, and the unmistakable feeling of being wanted. When both strands are strong, the bond becomes a genuine source of safety and protection. When one is chronically neglected, the whole bond becomes vulnerable to drift, resentment, betrayal, and disconnection. Rather than asking only who is right or who is at fault, I ask: what is happening to the bond itself? That question almost always gets us somewhere real, and somewhere useful, far more quickly than rehashing the surface conflict.