The Alimond Show
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The Alimond Show
Susan Saint-Rossy - The Relationship Therapist: Healing Attachment Wounds Across Cultures
A fascinating journey from corporate management to relationship counseling unfolds as our guest, Susan Saint-Rossy shares her 25-year experience practicing therapy across five countries and working with people from more than 30 cultural backgrounds. Susan's unique global perspective reveals how relationship norms vary dramatically between cultures—from different views on monogamy to sleeping arrangements—challenging our assumptions about what makes relationships "work."
The heart of our conversation explores what couples truly struggle with: not knowing how to create safe, secure bonds. Many arrive at therapy with "communication problems" that manifest as escalating fights, emotional shutdown, or relationships reduced to mere logistics. Susan explains that the core issue is often a lack of understanding about vulnerability and collaboration. She teaches couples to recognize they're essentially "strangers" to each other who need curiosity rather than assumptions to build lasting connection.
We delve into the painful reality of "late bloomers"—individuals reaching their 20s and 30s without experiencing serious relationships due to childhood attachment wounds. The therapist describes how social media exacerbates these struggles by promoting unrealistic relationship models that bear little resemblance to the messy, beautiful reality of connection. Susan's most emphatic advice resonates with striking clarity: "Don't wait." Too many couples postpone therapy until they've spent years without intimacy or locked in conflict patterns, making the healing process unnecessarily difficult. Through her compassionate approach, she helps partners understand that successful relationships aren't about perfect harmony but rather the ongoing cycle of rupture and repair that builds trust over time.
I am a psychotherapist and the name of my business is the Relationship Therapist relationship-therapistcom. I mostly work with couples, so marital therapy, premarital therapy, couples who aren't married and then I also do relationship therapy with individuals, people who are recovering from divorce or a breakup, and what I call therapy for late bloomers, which is for people who are in their 20s or 30s and haven't ever been in a relationship, really a serious relationship, and are distressed about that. So mostly I work with couples, but I really enjoy also working with individuals and we are in Lansdowne Awesome, around the corner from the hospital.
Speaker 2:Perfect, how convenient. I would like to ask you how you got into your industry and what made you decide to want to work as a relationship therapist. Good question.
Speaker 1:Long, long, long time ago I was a management consultant and marketing director for a large international management consulting firm, and I really I did that for nine years, but I was really more interested in the people than in the management consulting work or the marketing work. So I realized it just wasn't the right career for me and I went back to school and got a master's in clinical social work so I could become a therapist, and it just took off after that. That was gosh. That was 25 years ago, and since then I've been a therapist in five different countries. Whoa, yeah, which ones? China, russia, botswana, india and, of course, here. Wow, congratulations to that. Yeah, my husband worked in an international job. Yeah, my husband worked in an international job, and so we came back to the States 13 years ago and I've been in this area ever since.
Speaker 2:What an incredible journey and the fact that you've been able to practice and do counseling or therapy for people from all parts of the world. Do you feel like that has influenced you or broadened your horizon in any way? Absolutely.
Speaker 1:You know, when you go to a new country, you're the alien right, that's right, and so you learn a lot. You have to learn a lot about other people's cultures and you know it broadens your horizons. You don't know what the norms are in families, and you have to learn that. So you have to have a really open mind. And I think I counted it up one time I think I've worked with people from more than 30 countries. Oh my goodness, because I worked mostly with expats in those countries who spoke English.
Speaker 1:So you know it was a lot of different kinds of people.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness. And have you noticed like a difference in relationships from different countries, like versus the United States, the way that they function or how they handle things?
Speaker 1:I think there's some general rules that apply across the board, but the norms are different in some countries and you just never know what the norm is until you work with somebody, For example, in European countries or I shouldn't make a broad statement, but in some European countries it's not necessarily normal to be monogamous, or it's accepted not to be monogamous, or it's accepted not to be monogamous in some cultures, and in other cultures married couples don't sleep together in the same bed or in the same room, and those are just a couple of examples. But you just don't know until you ask.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, no for sure, and I'm sure it's hard for some people to hear that because, like what, how can you do that? That's not something that you're supposed to do. But I don't feel like there should be like a hard fine print, say, of how a relationship should be. It's different for everybody. So you transition from roles in management, consulting and academia to becoming a relationship therapist in management, consulting and academia to becoming a relationship therapist. What are some things that have inspired you along the way from your previous jobs and your current job, in how you approach couples counseling?
Speaker 1:Well, that's sort of a hard question I'm thinking about. Well, one of the ways really that's been really helpful to me having that business background is a lot of therapists really struggle with the business side of private practice. We don't get any training at all at school in how to run a private practice. A private practice is a business. You have to get clients, you have to serve your clients, you have to send your clients away happy, and having that background in management, consulting and marketing obviously gave me some skills that I've been using forever to grow my practice and to get clients and to know how to use the systems behind the scene to organize the business. So that wasn't the exact question you asked me, but that's what occurred to me and it's like actually a lot of therapists these days are struggling because they're not having a success at getting enough clients to keep them fully booked. So I'm really thankful that I know what to do, yes, and feel comfortable doing it. Some people don't feel comfortable because it's like sales and you don't sell therapy right?
Speaker 2:No, absolutely not. And then what does your team look like? Or is it just you in your office? It's just me right now.
Speaker 1:And how are you handling that? Well, fine, I like being a solo entrepreneur, if you want to call me that. Yeah, I do. You know I don't. I used to manage people, Don't want to do that anymore. Occasionally I have a virtual assistant who helps me do certain things, but other than that, I really love being on my own and I have systems in place where that really handle a lot of my administrative work.
Speaker 2:So awesome, and can you talk to me about some of the problems that are currently happening or that you've noticed or maybe it's something that's been occurring more like a trend between couples and how you're able to resolve those issues?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I don't know if it's a trend, because this is just age old stuff right because this is just age-old stuff, right?
Speaker 1:Couples don't know what marriage is or what a long-term committed relationship looks like. I should say a safe and secure long-term committed relationship. A lot of couples well obviously the couples that come to me don't know, because they're not doing it. So many divorces. So many people grew up in single family households or combined households where people remarried, and also have grown up in families where the parents didn't really do the good stuff to make things safe and secure for them. So it's a lot of skill teaching. You know, I feel like I'm more of when I do couples therapy. I'm more of a coach and a teacher.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we do some like where did this come from? You know what happened when you were seven, kind of stuff, but mostly it's you know that's not working. So what do you think he needs to hear from you right now? What does he need? What does she need? Do you know why I help couples get vulnerable with each other? Because most of the time couples come in and they say we're having communication problems and that can be a lot of different things. Sometimes it's escalation of fights and arguments and people are just really, really tired of it. Sometimes it's people shutting down and not even talking to each other. Sometimes it's just we just have a logistical relationship.
Speaker 1:We are logistically raising our children together just have a logistical relationship, we are logistically raising our children together and sometimes it's all of those combined right. So you know, they want so much to have a good marriage and they just don't know how. They don't understand the principles that make a marriage safe and secure or a coupledom safe and secure. They don't understand that they need to have agreements about how they're going to behave with each other and how they're going to treat each other and what they're going to do in the house. You know, sometimes it's about chores and mess, Sometimes it's about sex, Sometimes it's about the kids, Sometimes it's about money and they don't know how to collaborate basically. So I teach people how to collaborate and how to collaborate in a vulnerable, open way so that they really know the other person that they're living with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I love that. That is a great answer. I feel like a lot of things have changed. Even just seeing it with some of my friends and their family versus my parents and how they were, it's kind of changed. And do you feel like social media has played a role in that? Just because it shows couples like, oh, look at us, we're this, we're picture perfect. And then you start thinking, oh, why don't we do that? Or oh, he doesn't do that for me? Or like I'm always getting this right it used to just be.
Speaker 1:Getting having the big wedding or the little wedding was the end of the fairy tale, right, and nobody knew what happened after that. You just make some assumptions based on what your parents, your aunts and uncles, your grandparents, were like. Now it's like this fantasy fairy tale on social media is showing people. Well, this is what your relationship should look like, and you know it's disappointing because people's relationships don't look like that. Relationships, long-term, safe and secure relationships, are just a series of ruptures and repair. Rupture and repair. With all the good stuff in between, right, yes, hopefully, with all the day-to-day stuff, their vacations, everything else.
Speaker 1:But it's really. You have to know that you're basically strangers to each other. You don't really know the other person and never really will, because they're not from the same family as you are. They may not even be from the same culture as you are. So you have to assume not that they think like you or want the same things that you want, but that you need to be curious about who this person is, who's in front of you that may have actually been in front of you for 25 years, funny enough. I say to my husband you know, you're fascinating. I don't know I, you know, I will never fully know you, because it's so true though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to touch on the topic of the late bloomers. I feel like, with that, that they haven't been in a relationship or been with anyone seriously.
Speaker 1:It's complicated and it is. It's actually heartbreaking. It's actually heartbreaking. It is something that happens, I think, when people grow up in a family where I don't know if you know the word attachment, but there's this idea that there can be secure attachment between child and parent, or there can be insecure attachment between child and parent, or there can be insecure attachment and most people who become late bloomers, who don't find a serious relationship, have some kind of what we call attachment injury. And it could be a lot of different things. It could be an absent father, it could be some kind of violence in the home, it could be I can't think of other things it could be right now. And then social media does influence that, because I don't know what young men are getting these messages about what relationships should be like, and it's, you know, the trad wife thing.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, there's all kinds of messages out there that don't really have much to do with what a real relationship looks like. So you know, people have fantasies about it, and it's men and women, and the reality is that you know you're really lucky if you find somebody. Generally speaking, if you click with somebody, it means that there's something, some sub-psychological thing going on that makes them seem familiar to you, and then it's up to you really to create a relationship with a person who's actually available for one in a way that becomes safe and secure work, because we have to look at why has this happened and we have to heal those attachment wounds in order for somebody to really be brave enough to try. You know, some people won't even look at a dating app because they just don't have the courage, in a way, to put themselves out there. So I really love working with people like that because I see them over time actually get in relationships?
Speaker 2:Yay, that's what I was going to ask you about. Have you come out of this with some happy stories where they've been dating or they're now dating somebody for the first time? What was that like for you to be able to help them in that journey?
Speaker 1:It's really fun. I mean it's a sort of two steps forward, one step back process, because you never know who you're going to go out on a date with right and it can be devastating if it doesn't go well when you've put your heart into. This has got to happen. But I'm there, sort of to catch people when they fall and then we work on more courage and more deep psychoanalytical, psychodynamic work. That's a mouthful, yeah, and they do. They either start really, you know, dating one person and falling in love, or they're in a situation where they're not afraid to, you know, go on different dates and date several people at the same time. It's just, it's really great, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:And then is there anything that I have not touched on that perhaps you would like to share in regards to your therapy, your personal self or your industry. I want to take this moment to let you have the floor to talk about anything. That thing I'd like to say to people about couples work is don't wait.
Speaker 1:I have people who have come to me and they haven't been intimate in years and years and years. I have people who coming to me who have been fighting for five years Don't wait. Sometimes there'll be one person who's been talking about coming to couples therapy or marriage counseling for a few years and the other person has refused, and finally there's an ultimatum and they come. You know we can work and we can make it better after five years or 10 years, but it's so much better if you come when you first realize that you're not sure what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, and I'm sure there has situations where a couple comes to you and one of them is coming not by choice, but they're there. How do you eventually get them to open up or be okay with the idea of like sharing their personal feelings with, maybe, that person in the room, or maybe at least they can leave the room and they can talk to you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to start it today. I have my tricks, but really it's about me being the calming patient presence in the room and showing interest in that person in a way that they can accept it and start to trust the process. And you know, there's occasionally sometime when that doesn't work and they leave. But I have seen many people who have that coming in, who have that Either they don't think therapy works or they don't want to open up at all to a stranger, or lots of reasons. And we're trained hopefully people are trained who are therapists to know what to do to help those people feel safe, Absolutely, and then I kind of have like a sad question.
Speaker 2:Maybe not, or I'm not so happy one, but I'm sure there's times maybe where the solution is to not maybe be together anymore and they cannot comprehend or come to that conclusion themselves. And they cannot comprehend or come to that conclusion themselves and maybe they need that third person to step in and kind of say you know what you guys are not, this is not something that's going to work. How does that conversation go?
Speaker 1:I never say that, oh no, I tell them that the prognosis is not good. That's as far as I go.
Speaker 2:Whoa, I did not know that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure there are therapists that do say that, but I don't, because even if they are on the brink, something might switch in a moment and they may have hope again. But it does happen that people break up in my office I'm not saying it doesn't and then often not often, but when they do break up, a lot of times it's because one person actually came into the therapy knowing that they wanted to leave. But it's devastating for people and I try to help them process the grief about it. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for coming in here today and sharing a lot about your expertise and what's going on out there in relationships, women and men being single and navigating all those hardships with dating apps, social media. I really appreciate your time. So good to be here, thank you. You're so welcome.