RELATIONSHIP THERAPY FOR LATE BLOOMERS
You are not too late. You are not broken. And love is not beyond your reach.
You’ve spent your life watching love happen to other people. Your life looks like:
Over eggs benedict at Le Diplomate, you listen as your friend bemoan the latest douche-bag guys they’ve been texting with on Bumble. Another friend complains playfully about their partner of three years, describing their idiosyncratic taste in action films with loving criticism.
Several of these friends have slipped away from home to have eggs benedict and a latte before going home to supportive partners and toddlers or kindergartners or more.
You smile inside when you see how tired their eyes look (a bit of consolation for the envy you actually harbor).
Your friends know you’re single, but they don’t know the whole story.
You sometimes tell what you’d like to consider “tiny white lies” about being between situationships, but guilt oozes out of your pores every time, and you try to think of other ways to describe your relationship status without lying.
They don’t know that you have almost no experience with relationships. Zilch.
That dating makes you anxious.
That deep down, you feel like there’s something wrong with you for not having figured this out by now.
You never tell them that you have spent years with quiet, impossible crushes on the “unavailable”—work colleagues who flirt with you even though they are attached, your cousin’s friend who is taking a break from a long-term partner to figure things out—because they were safe.
The Unavailable (as you think of them) took up your time with fantasy, but they never required you to risk anything real.
By now, the thought of stepping into a real relationship—of allowing someone to truly see you—feels overwhelming. And so you hesitate. You wait.
You tell yourself you’ll try later, when you feel more ready. But every month, every year that passes makes it harder. Once again you go home from a brunch gathering, full of hollandaise sauce and despair.
Underneath it all, there’s a deeper fear:
Maybe love isn’t meant for me.
Even though you are good at almost everything else without a lot of effort or angst, you are just not good at love.
In your work life, social life, and inside your family of origin, you show up as competent. You actually excel. No one questions your abilities; people heap on more responsibilities. You wear a facade of nonchalant optimism and pleasantness.
People don’t realize that the cluttered cellar of your heart holds many sad remnants of disappointment and pain. You don’t let anyone go down the basement stairs to see what’s there. You don’t even want to go down to see what’s really there.
And you’ve been holding this feeling all by yourself.
You ruminate. You wonder why no one is interested in you romantically and why you can’t even find someone who is truly available.
Then you blame yourself.
Something needs to change.
This is your mantra:
“I am a monster: unlovable.”
You work, you come home and watch Ted Lasso (for the third time–it still makes you laugh and cry simultaneously) with a bowl of Whole Foods chopped salad in your lap. You pet your cat, who has indeed missed you during the day and longs for a cuddle.
Oprah has told you (and millions of others) that in order to find love, you need to love yourself first.
Self-help books have encouraged you to be brave, put yourself out there, push through your relationship anxiety, and understand your attachment style.
You feel like you are taking action by reading all the books, but you just can’t convince yourself that anything will change, even if you do all the things.
You don’t do the things.
So you’ve been thinking about relationship therapy.
At your core, both your heart and your brain are telling you that all the superficial advice and deep thinking about this lack-of-relationship situationship is not going to change your life.
Something heart-deep is going on.
Maybe a “good therapist” can go down there (to that cluttered basement) with you and help you understand what's been holding you back from the intimacy of a love relationship.
Relationship therapy for late bloomers is not just any old generic psychotherapy.
This is deep, effecitve therapy with a therapist who knows the ins and outs of relationships from working with many, many couples over decades.
It’s designed to help you finally step into the love you’ve been longing for.
You tell yourself you’re fine. You’ve built a good life, a successful career, deep friendships. You’re independent, capable, and self-sufficient. But there’s a quiet ache beneath it all—a longing for something more.
You wonder if you missed your window for love, if the right person already passed you by without you even realizing it.
Maybe you’ve never had the kind of relationship you wanted. Or maybe you’ve been burned—by heartbreak, by disappointment, by years of feeling like you’re just not the kind of person relationships work out for.
You tell yourself you’re too set in your ways, too used to your independence, too busy to deal with the vulnerability and uncertainty of love. And yet, you still catch yourself staring a little too long at couples in coffee shops, at the easy way they seem to belong to each other.
You want connection, but the thought of dating—of putting yourself out there, of risking rejection—feels overwhelming. You don’t know where to start, so you don’t.
You stay on the sidelines, watching life move forward for everyone else.
And in the quiet moments, when no one is around to distract you, you wonder: Is it too late for me?
Before relationship therapy
Something shifts. You stop waiting for love to just happen and start creating the life and relationships you actually want.
You stop telling yourself that you’re too old, too complicated, too much, or not enough. Instead, you start recognizing that love isn’t something reserved for other people—it’s something you’re fully worthy of, too.
You start dating—not out of desperation or fear, but from a place of curiosity and confidence. You no longer contort yourself to fit what you think others want. Instead, you gradually show up as your full, unfiltered self—and that’s more than enough.
You let go of the shame, the stories that kept you stuck, the belief that it’s “too late.” You understand that love is not a timeline. It’s an experience. And it’s still available to you.
You trust yourself more. You recognize red flags without second-guessing. You allow yourself to be seen, to be chosen, to be loved—not just for the role you play in someone’s life, but for who you truly are.
You feel resilient enough to contintue looking for love until you find the person who fits.
Your life doesn’t just feel full—it feels connected.
After relationship therapy
This is how love comes to a late bloomer.
You might not like to hear this, but this kind of therapy takes time. You’d love quick results. Not going to happen. You’d like it to be easy.
It’s hard emotional work (the kind of work you most likely have never done).
It’s circular, spiral, sometimes chaotic work, not linear.
We may laugh, maybe a lot, but you (and sometimes even I) will cry and find out why.
If you can tolerate the hard work and persevere, we will examine your shattered heart, work through the fears, beliefs, and emotional wounds that have kept love at a distance, and prepare your heart for love. This isn’t about “getting out there” or “fixing” yourself. It’s about becoming the version of you who can step into love in spite of fear.
I know you may think you are too far behind. That you will never catch up. That no one will want you once they know your truth.
But that voice in your head—the one telling you that you are too late, too inexperienced, too different—that voice is lying to you.
You are a late bloomer. It may take time for your flower to open to the sun, but with consistent psychological work, you can bloom.
Waiting won’t make this change. Doing this work will.
Therapy for Late Bloomers is:
A place to express all of your thoughts and feelings, no matter how dark and confusing.
An arena where you can get curious about how you got here without a partner and what is going on in your brain and your heart.
A place to let your guard down (only when you feel like it), be challenged, and experiment with new approaches to thinking, being, and doing a relational context.
A way to heal, feel more of who you really are, eventually find the courage to find and show up in a committed love relationship that has the potential to feel safe and secure.
Therapy for Late Bloomers is not:
A pity party.
Someone just helping you think differently about your situation and asking you to have positive thoughts.
A way to work on strategies to entice unavailable people to date you.
A place to rant forever about your family of origin and what you didn’t learn there about relationships (though that might be a part of the process).
A way to jump over the hard stuff and just get yourself quickly out there to develop a love relationship.
So how do we begin?
Schedule a consult (click on any button on this page)
Even if you have to do it through your tears, book your free 15-minute video consultation. For many, taking just this step is a strong message to your heart that you are ready to heal and move forward toward love.
Fill out your pre-consultation questionnaire
After your consultation time is confirmed, you will receive via email a link to answer some questions that will help us use our consultation time wisely. This should take only a few minutes.
Chat with Susan
You will receive a link to the video meeting via email before time for the consultation. We will take a look at your situation and see if we are a good fit to work together. If we aren’t a good fit, I will gladly offer up the names of some other therapists who might work better for you. You can leave the consultation and think about it, or we can schedule your first session at the end of the meeting.