Finding Meaning in Relationship Struggles

You don’t have to know everything, to know something needs to change.

By Shannen Yee, LMFT Associate — Couples Therapy in Corpus Christi, TX

We don’t usually enter relationships expecting to lose sight of ourselves. Yet over time — between the logistics, the compromises, and the quiet accumulation of disappointments — something in the rhythm shifts. We start to wonder if the closeness we once knew is still there, or if we’ve simply learned to coexist in parallel lives.

As a couples therapist in Corpus Christi, I meet partners who arrive not because they’ve stopped caring, but because they can’t find their way back to what once felt natural. They want to understand how love can exist alongside resentment, or how two people can still feel alone together.

In logotherapy, Viktor Frankl wrote (a borrowed a phrase from a philosopher) “those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how.’” I think of that often in relationship work. When couples begin to explore not only how to fix what’s broken, but why they came together, they start to rediscover meaning in their shared life. The process isn’t about choosing who’s right or wrong — it’s about remembering the purpose that brought you into each other’s orbit in the first place.

Sometimes that means learning to tolerate the unknown, to soften the reflex to assign blame, and to speak from vulnerability instead of defense. Other times it means recognizing that love matures — and that commitment can evolve into something quieter but deeper than passion alone.

Therapy offers a space to pause the argument long enough to listen for what’s underneath it — the longing to be understood, the fear of distance, the wish to feel safe in one another’s presence again. When that space is tended to carefully, meaning begins to emerge.

If you and your partner are feeling lost, couples therapy can help you begin the conversation differently. I offer sessions in person and online throughout Corpus Christi, focused on helping couples rediscover connection, resilience, and purpose — together and individually.