Lesbian Adventures In Love

09/22/2026

In 2014, I asked 498 le***ans the questions nobody else was asking: how often they were having s*x, how satisfied they were with that, and whether "le***an bed death" was fact or folklore. It became my doctoral research.

Fourteen years later, I'm curious if the answers have changed. Culture has. Have we?

Eight quick questions, two minutes, completely anonymous. Results update live, so you can see exactly how you compare to everyone else who's answered. What I learn here benefits the work I do with le***an couples every day.

SURVEY LINK IS IN THE FIRST COMMENT.

09/21/2026

I might be biased, but I do think our Puerto Vallarta retreat that starts January 17, 2027, is the best retreat available for le***an couples. Of course, I think that about every retreat we offer. This one is just extra magical.

And...WE ONLY HAVE ROOM FOR ONE MORE COUPLE.

I've heard so many people talk about going to Puerto Vallarta who have never been to Zona Romantica. That's like going to San Francisco and skipping the Castro. Puerto Vallarta is already one of the gayest cities for North American travelers, and Zona Romantica, where our retreat is based, is the neighborhood that gives PV that reputation.

Our work focus is communication. Come prepared to have meaningful, connected conversations that help you move the needle on your toughest topics.

Our fun focus is on whale watching, ATV tours, incredibly well-produced drag entertainment, relaxing in the infinity pool that overlooks Banderas Bay, and taking in the Zona Romantica shopping and nightlife.

If you want to join us in January, be sure to grab the last seat available to couples.

Here is the link: https://www.le***anloveadv.com/PV2027-1

09/19/2026

In 2020, my practice was overflowing with couples struggling under the weight of the pandemic which put couples and families under the same roof, restricted to the same four walls, 24/7 for months on end.

The stress of not having additional supports and outlets put an unbearable strain on many couples, driving them to counseling. Because of this, many couples could not find quality care, and in other cases, they could not afford it.

In an attempt to offer these couples support, I sat down with the most helpful resources I turn to when working with couples. For me, these include my training as a Certified Imago Therapist, my training in all three levels of the Gottman Method, the courses I took with Sue Johnson on Emotionally Focused Therapy, as well as the skills taught in Nonviolent Communication, by Marshall Rosenberg.

Eventually, this morphed into a six-week online course for the le***an couples with whom I work. It has been six years since I developed that course, and I am currently teaching my 24th course. While the course is billed as a communication class, The Art of Wholehearted Communication, it is more than that - more like a deep dive in relating to one another in ways that work (which is communication, but often we think of communication as how we talk to each other). This course is that, and so much more.

However, this course could not capture all of the essentials of how we relate to each other in just six weeks. So, I have been aware for some time that I need another class to add to the foundation set by The Art of Wholehearted Communication. Yesterday, I put the final finishes on that new course, and today I'm putting it out into the world.

The new course is Breaking the Conflict Loop. This course will help couples identify the dance of interaction that develops over time. How to learn the respective "moves" you make during your dance of conflict, how to improve your steps to get a better outcome, and the way to make meaningful and effective repairs when you show up in ways that your intentions don't match the impact your partner experiences.

What you can expect to learn in Breaking the Conflict Loop is:

Week 1: Rethinking Conflict: We start by taking the shame out of disagreement, and teaching you to check your bandwidth before you dive in.

Week 2: Breaking the Loop
Learn to spot the conflict loop while it's happening, catch the tension before it becomes a wound, and use WIN (a repair strategy) to repair the ones that already did.

Week 3: Know Your Move
This week helps you name your specific defense, and your partner's, so you can see and stop them before they run the whole interaction.

Week 4: Tracing the Roots
This week explores where these patterns were built in the first place, so you can respond to what's happening here and now, rather than being hijacked by wounds from the past.

Week 5: Us vs. the Problem
This week teaches you to turn and face the problem together, side by side, instead of on opposing teams.

Week 6: Practice Lab
Here we'll put it all together and give you an opportunity to use your skills in real time.

If you are a le***an couple and would like to take this course, click on the image below.

The cost is $187 per couple for a 6-week, online course, or you can opt to pay weekly at $35/week. The next class starts October 15, and I anticipate this class will fill. So grab your seats now.

Conflict Resolution for couples

09/18/2026

Most of us walk into a fight convinced the problem is our partner, or leave one thinking something's broken in us.

It's usually neither. It's a pattern, and patterns can be interrupted.

Breaking the Conflict Loop is a 6-week course for le***an / q***r couples who keep having the same fight, with a new topic each time. You'll learn to spot the loop as it happens, name your go-to defenses and learn hers, and turn toward each other instead of against each other.

Six Consecutive Thursdays. Starts October 15, 2026 8pm ET/ 7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT

https://www.le***anloveadv.com/breakingtheconflictloop

09/08/2026

How often do your conversations turn into tense silence or explosive arguments? Or how many times do you avoid having the conversation you know you need to be having? If you and your partner are stuck in the same loop over and over, you are definitely not alone.

Effective relationships require skill, not just love.
This 6-week course is a live, online experience for you and your partner to gain these skills without the high cost of ongoing counseling (all for 24% less than the cost of one couples therapy session).

Based on my book, Couples Communication Cure, this course is designed to help le***ans bridge the gap between loving each other and understanding each other.

This is a learning opportunity, not a therapy group. This is skill-building, not processing. Most of us in relationships were not given the skills to transform our love into outstanding relationships, and it is even more true for le***ans. This course is specifically designed with our relationships in mind.

Together, from the comfort of home, in a live, online environment, you will learn to break down the steps necessary to move away from reactivity and learn to talk about what matters in a way that actually works.

🔗 Tap here for full details and enrollment: https://www.le***anloveadv.com/le***ancouplescourse

08/18/2026

You know what I love?

When I walk in the house and I see the blue dot on the dishwasher that signals the dishes are clean, and when I go to empty it, discovering that it has already been done. That. Is. The. Best. Thing. Ever.

At least as far as dishwashers are concerned.

Not everyone is so lucky to have a partner who is an exceptional dish-washer-emptier like I do. So, what happens when your partner forgets to empty the dishwasher?

Again.

For most humans, one of two thoughts shows up automatically, and you don't get to pick which one, it just arrives:

"She's so lazy."
or
"She had a rough week."

Couples everywhere experience the same unemptied dishwasher. Unless you don't have one, of course. But what's strange is that not every partner responds to it the same way.

Our minds are meaning makers. We are all automatically and instantly assigning explanations for everything we experience to make sense of our world, and the dishwasher is no exception. The question is, what meaning are you giving your partner’s behaviors.

Partners in distressed relationships, consistently reach for a more generalized character-based explanation. "She's lazy." "She's selfish." "She never thinks of anyone but herself."

Partners in satisfied relationships instinctively reach for explanations that include their partner's context. "She had a rough week. She's stretched thin right now. This isn't like her."
The kind of story your brain reaches for first is one of many predictors researchers have found of whether a marriage survives. Not how often you fight. Not how nice you are to each other on your best days. Not even how much you love her. Whether you've decided her issues come from who she is or from what she's going through.

"She's lazy" is a story about who she is. "She had a rough week" is a story about what she's coping with right now. Same dishes. Two completely different marriages.

This is also why learning to communicate is about so much more than finding the right words. It doesn't matter what words you string together if you're still thinking, "here we go again with her laziness." The story happens before the conversation even starts. Before the words leave your mouth, part of the damage is already done.

So you might be thinking, great, I'm doomed because of my automatic instinctive thoughts about my partner's character.

Not true.

The good news is that these stories aren't fixed. They're a habit, which means they're trainable, the same way any other habit is. You can start to notice your thoughts. Catch yourself in the act: do I believe this? Is this who she really is, or is there more to the story here?

This is the kind of work we do in Wholehearted Communication, teaching couples to catch the story before it hardens into fact. So the next conflict doesn't just get handled better, it gets understood differently - starting with the stories you are telling yourself about each other.

If you've ever caught yourself building a case against your partner's character over something small, it’s worth taking a closer look. If you want help with it, join me for my next 6-week communication course, starting September 1, 2026. Click here for more information.

Michele O’Mara, PhD is the author of Couples Communication Cure and the creator of immersive retreats for le***an couples who want to interrupt conflict, shutdown, and emotional distance and reconnect in ways that last.

08/09/2026

You shared dinner and watched a show. Then, before you know it, you're standing in the kitchen with your arms crossed and she's on the couch staring at her phone, replaying whatever just happened.

You don't even remember how it started. Something about dishes, weekend plans, or the tone she used when she said: "fine." But now you're both locked in a loop that is all too familiar: she pulls back, you push forward, someone says something they regret, and an argument about the dishes turns into a fight about how "unbelievable" you are.

Sound familiar?

Maybe you've tried couples counseling. For some, you hit the lottery, and you develop the skills to see and understand each other. For others, you're not so lucky. You sit on a couch, take turns talking while a therapist nods, and leave feeling hopeful. But later that night, you end up right back in the same kitchen having the exact same fight.

Here is why that happens: roughly 80% of therapists offer couples counseling, but only about 12% come from a discipline that requires any courses in couples work at all, let alone additional specialized training.

Most traditional therapy will facilitate your conversations while in session, without ever helping you learn how to connect more effectively on your own. They help you process the fight of the week. This puts your counseling sessions on repeat, indefinitely, and you never learn how to break the cycle of your conflicts or find your way back to each other in between sessions.

Talking is the easy part. The real work is learning to read each other's nervous systems, recognizing the unmet needs behind the silence and the outbursts. The goal is to learn an effective way to disagree while reliably restoring emotional safety when one or both of you feel defensive.

You WILL disagree. You WILL have conflict. That is good and normal. The question is, can you do these things without harming your relationship or each other, AND find your way back to each other over and over again? After nearly 30 years of working exclusively with couples, I wrote Couples Communication Cure and built a specialized framework to address exactly this gap: made for le***an couples, not adapted from tools built for straight ones.

If you're ready to stop recycling the same argument and start better understanding and responding to each other, I have a few private coaching spots available.

Click below to grab a session.

I’m Michele O’Mara, a licensed clinical s*xologist, le***an relationship expert, (le***an couples therapist, coach and counselor) and author. If you are searching for a “le***an couples therapist near me,” you’re in the right place, as I offer couples care to le***ans across the United Sta...

07/04/2026

Mexico is 100% our favorite place to host le***an couples retreats. In January we're hosting our sixth Mexico adventure in Puerto Vallarta, and this might be the best one yet.

The thing about this experience is that it's so much more than a vacation. You know that fight you keep having, the one where nothing gets resolved, it just goes on pause until it flares up again? Or the disagreements where one of you gets LOUD, and the other one shuts down and neither of you feels good afterward? Or old hurts that never healed, they just got quiet and stuck around? This retreat is built so you leave with actual skills, not just a tan. Oh, and don't be surprised if you make new friends for life. It happens at most of our retreats.

Speaking of tans, we're tucked into a private villa overlooking Banderas Bay. January's our favorite month to be there, whale watching plus 80°/62° and dry. If you've never been, PV is considered the gay capital of Mexico. So, grab her hand and walk safely through the Zona Romántica or along the boardwalk, the Malecón. No one will look twice.

Each couple gets their own bedroom and bathroom. We keep it small on purpose, 6 couples max. And we offer a payment plan because this should be accessible, not a luxury only some of you can reach for.

We'd love to have you join us in January. Grab your seat here: https://www.le***anloveadv.com/PV2027-1

Le***an Relatioship Coach offering lgbt counseling and le***an couples retreats

06/17/2026

06/01/2026

Your partner is amazing. She listens to you talk about how work is falling apart, aligns with you when your mother said that thing again, and shows up when you just need someone in your corner. You chose her for good reasons.

And then she hurts you.

Sometimes she's unaware, other times she knows it the second it happens. Either way, it's usually a surprise to both of you because no partner sets out to ruin a perfectly nice afternoon. And yet it happens. Something she does unintentionally sets off an alarm in your nervous system, and the impact on you is surprising to both of you. Once this happens, both of you feel powerless, and that's when things go sideways.

Because powerless people don't sit still. They reach for the same move that once worked, even if it no longer does.

For one of you, that move is more. More words, more reassurance, more closeness, certain that if you could just get the other person to talk, the alarm would finally switch off. For the other, the move is less. Less talking, less eye contact, less of you in the room, certain that if you could just get a little air, the alarm would finally switch off.

So one of you presses in. One of you pulls back. And the more one reaches, the more the other retreats, which makes the first one reach harder, which sends the second one further out of range. You could set a clock by it.

(Two people, both certain they're the ones being left.)

This isn't just your relationship. Bowlby and Ainsworth named these patterns decades ago, watching how small children either reached for or braced against the very people meant to keep them safe. Hazan and Shaver showed the same wiring follows us straight into adult love. And the research keeps turning up the same strange little fact: the one who reaches and the one who retreats find each other with almost suspicious reliability, then spend years each convinced the other one is the problem.

Good news. She is not the problem. You are not the problem. The dance is the problem.

I have names for these two moves. The Bumblebee buzzes in close, looking for reassurance. The Turtle pulls into the shell, looking for room. They are reaching for the exact same thing. They are using the exact opposite strategy to get it. (And when one person runs both programs at once, craving closeness and dreading it in the same breath, I call that the Turtlebee, which is as tiring to live inside as it sounds.)

Your attachment style is not a sentence you're serving. There's a name for what happens when two people learn to read the pattern instead of living inside it. Earned secure. It's the unglamorous term for becoming the Ladybug, the one who can stay close without smothering and stay calm without vanishing. Secure is not a trait you were handed or denied at birth. For some it's the byproduct of important others who were available enough, often enough, that the world came to feel more safe than not. For everyone else, it's earned, built later, on purpose, in relationships that prove the old rules wrong.

Full disclosure: I am the Turtle. When something between us trips that alarm, my whole system urges me to reach for the exits. I want to go quiet, get distracted by something else, anything else. I tell Kristen "I'm fine," in the voice which means 'please believe me so I can skip a conversation I don't have the energy for right now.' And I'm not fine. Not because I stopped loving her. Because less is what I know. It took me an embarrassing number of years to learn that the quieter I got, the louder she had to knock.

Kristen is the Bumblebee. We are not unique. This is the most common dance there is. The turtle and the bumblebee.

The distance you feel when one of you reaches and the other disappears is not proof you chose wrong, or that you're too much, or that you'll always be like this. It means two nervous systems are running old programs written long before you ever met. Programs get rewritten. I've spent nearly thirty years in the room while people rewrite theirs.

Attachment Styles, Made Simple is a five-week course where you learn your own pattern, recognize it in the people you love, and stop blaming yourself or anyone else for wiring you never picked. Week by week you'll meet the Turtle, the Bumblebee, the Turtlebee, and finally the Ladybug, and you'll walk away with real tools for the regulation, communication, and repair that turn the dance into something you can step out of while it's still happening.

It works whether you're partnered, single, or somewhere in the interesting in-between. You don't need to bring anyone. You only need to bring you.

More info: https://www.le***anloveadv.com/TBL