Intimacy requires truth.
The capacity to reveal it. The capacity to receive it.
You can love each other deeply and still build a relationship around what neither of you knows how to face.
I work with individuals and couples to understand what their patterns are protecting them from, bring what's difficult to see or say into the light, and expand their capacity to navigate what's real, even when what's real is hard.
About Monica
Recovery is not theory for me. It's my life.
Read the full storyWhat lies underneath sexual addiction, betrayal, and self-defeating relationship patterns?
You may understand your behavior and still repeat it. You may want to be known and fear what being known would change. You may know the argument by heart and still not be able to say what's actually at stake.
Sometimes what stays out of the conversation is the very thing that runs the relationship under the surface.
- You want honesty freely given, but find yourself living a second life as a private investigator, full of fear and uncertainty.
- You keep returning to a behavior you promised yourself you would stop, repeating the cycle of shame and despair without understanding what it helps you escape.
- You have lost trust in yourself. You feel lost to yourself.
- You love each other, but certain questions have become too costly to ask.
These patterns have an architecture.
They developed for a reason, and something keeps them in place. The work is looking directly at how they formed, what they protect, and what sustains them, so you can build different conditions for your life and relationships.
Understanding a pattern doesn't excuse harm, and it doesn't make you responsible for someone else's choices. It is the only way to make meaning of the pain, create a new blueprint, and live differently.
How I Work
Ownership, not shame.
Clients tell me what feels different is my steadiness. I'm calm in intensity, precise in my language, and willing to name the pattern others miss. When someone gets defensive, shuts down, or goes into shame, I name it, and we work with what's happening in the room. The responsibility to provide safety for someone to be real is sacred.
Sessions with me are real-time intimacy practice: being seen, staying present, speaking honestly, developing and repairing healthy connection, and taking personal responsibility for our role in relationships.
Services
How I Can Help
Individual Coaching
For people who are outwardly capable yet feel disconnected, reactive, or stuck in their intimate lives.
Focus
Emotional, relational, and sexual capacity
Requires
- Honest self-examination
- Responsibility for impact, not just intentions
- Consistent practice between sessions
- Staying engaged when challenged
Couples Coaching
For couples navigating infidelity, sexual betrayal, or addiction.
Focus
Understanding what broke trust and what real repair requires
Requires
- Stabilizing after betrayal
- Creating conditions for honesty
- Rebuilding through consistent action
- Developing new relational skills
Group Programs
In development, for couples and for individuals interested in learning intimacy skills and building community.
Coming soon. Send me a message if you want to be first to hear about it.
Sessions are online from anywhere, or in person in Sparks or Fallston, Maryland.
My Approach
How Coaching Works
This is coaching, not therapy. It assumes you're a capable adult who wants to grow.
Collaborative, Not Expert-Driven
You are an active participant in your own growth. We work together to understand your patterns and practice new ways of responding.
Forward-Focused
We look at how your patterns developed so you can change what keeps them going. Understanding serves action: the focus is what you do differently now.
Strength-Based
Responsibility is central. Shame is not. Even behaviors that have caused harm are approached as learned strategies, not evidence of defectiveness.
Practice and Skill-Building
Change happens through repetition and application. Concrete skills: emotional regulation, honest communication, boundary-setting, and repair after rupture.
Pricing & Commitment
Structure Creates Change
Continuity matters more than frequency. Most clients meet one to two times a month in an ongoing relationship, returning to the work when it's needed, not only when it's urgent. You decide what works for you, based on where you are and what you need.
Individual Coaching
$200 / 60 minutes
$275 / 90 minutes
Couples Coaching
$250 / 60 minutes
$350 / 90 minutes
Initial Consultation
Free · 30 minutes
By video or in person
Limited capacity to ensure depth.
Each client receives a private digital notebook with access to session notes after each session, including resources, reflections, homework, and optional journaling or brief notes between sessions to capture what's happening.
What This Work Asks of You
You don't have to know how to say it yet. You may feel ashamed, angry, uncertain, or sure the problem is completely outside of you. We begin where you are.
I ask for your willingness: to examine your own experience, consider what you can't yet see, and practice something different. It can and will be imperfect.
I won't decide in advance that your partner is the problem, that your relationship must be saved, or that understanding your behavior excuses it. I can't work harder than you on your life, or fight harder than you will for your connection. But I'll be right there in it with you for as long as you are.
This is not crisis management. It is character work, and it is intimate.
A Different Standard
Shame is not treatment.
Compliance is not intimacy.
Avoidance is not strength.
Desire is not the problem.
Suppression is not the answer.
Responsibility is not a weapon.
Anger does not have to be feared.
Power does not have to be abusive.
Addiction does not have to be forever.
Presence. Responsibility. Repair.
Comfort is not the goal.
Integrity is.
About Me
I came to this work through my own life. My husband and I began our intimacy recovery in 2008, individually, together, and in groups, and we're still doing the work of expansion. We learn, and then we learn some more. I know what it costs to stay engaged, and yet I know what's possible on the other side.
Years of group work with men and long-term work with individuals and couples showed me the same patterns: people out of crisis but not thriving, couples stabilized but still disconnected, sexuality feared or pathologized, and a consistent and disempowering pattern of waiting on partners to change. Across sexual addiction and sexual health models, I watched people get pulled to extremes, pathologized on one side and minimized on the other.
My personal experience led me to my purpose. I explore intimacy in my coaching practice, and organizational intimacy through a systems lens as Chief Flourishing Officer at DTC.
I have come to understand that relief is not the same as a life well lived. I do not want to help you reach neutral. I want to help you live a big life.
I integrate multiple disciplines in my work because I believe that is what the complexity of human work requires.
Credentials & Training
- Board Certified Coach
- Certified Addiction Coach
- Certified Executive Coach
- Certified Relationship Coach
- Certified Resilience Trainer
- Sexuality & Sexual Addiction Coach Training
- Gottman Couples & Addiction Recovery Trained
- Certified Positive Psychology Practitioner
- Master's, Forensic Psychology
- Post-Master's, Counseling
Ready to Begin?
Free 30-minute consultation, by video or in person in Sparks or Fallston, Maryland. I reply to every message within 24 hours.
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