Kyle Benson
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About Kyle Benson

Build a Strong Bond: Tips for a Secure Relationship

Hi, I’m Kyle.

This site is a large chapter in the book of my life’s work. I study how partners in healthy relationships intentionally talk to each other, have passionate sex, stay emotionally connected, and more to uncover the tools and perspectives that make love last.

Most of all, I write and talk about how to put these ideas into practice in your daily love life.

The research and ideas I write about aren’t my own. Rather I consider it my duty to find the helpful insights and simplify them in a way that is actionable and practical to understand. With the hope that this makes it easier for you to implement them into your intimate relationship(s).

I don't have all the answers and I still have a lot to learn, but I'm happy to share what I've understood so far. Additionally, my approach isn’t the only way to think about love and relationships, but it’s how I think about it. Hopefully, you’ll find it helpful as well.

This website started in the hardest and loneliest moments of my life. Click the button below to learn more.

Learn Why I Started This Blog

How This Site Will Support You In Improving Your Intimate Relationship(s)

This site is built for people working to make their relationships the best they can be. The content on this website will help you...

  • Transform difficult conflict into material to construct a stronger and more stable relationship
  • Understand the key ingredients to maintain and deepen the emotional connection
  • Learn about eroticism and how you can intentionally enhance your emotional and sexual intimacy
  • Develop and implement relationship habits that you'll actually use to make love last in your intimate relationship
  • Recognize your insecurities and learn new strategies to feel more secure within yourself and your relationship
  • Start the path of healing your relationship ruptures and injuries that have stopped your relationship from becoming what you want it to be
  • Find a couples or sex therapist who can support you in creating the relationship you need and deserve

To find articles and resources to help you improve your relationship(s) click here.

Topics Include

Conflict

Intentionally Intimate Relationships


I propose that love lasts when couples are intentional, deepen their capacity to be intimate, and are committed to each other.  

Intentionality: We often fall in love with someone and then forget to stand in love, to willfully create it. Intentionally loving your partner means being willing to cultivate emotional connection and spontaneity. This means prioritizing time together: dates, sex, conflict, and friendship.  

“If you do nothing to improve your relationship, but do not do anything bad, your relationship will get worse over time.”  

Intimacy: While most of us believe we need to be accepted to be loved, what we fear more is being our whole self in love. Intimacy happens when you stand on your own two feet as a unique person in a close relationship. In order to be deeply intimate, you have to grow, and growth can be uncomfortable.  

“Vulnerability is anything but romantic and yet it creates the deep feeling of being known, which is profoundly powerful and fulfilling.”  

Relationship: An unconditional and secure bond formed by two or more unique individuals who choose to invest deeply in one other. In a healthy relationship, partners value each other more than the discomfort of conflict and personal growth. Often the hard conversations are leveraged to build trust, intimacy, and a deeper understanding of each other.  

“Healthy relationships are anything but smooth.” 

A Secure & Safe Place For Every Body

My hope is to cultivate content that honors the human experience. At the heart of secure and healthy relationships is the freedom to be ourselves and create relationships that honor who we are and what works best for each of us. This site is welcoming of people who identify as LGBTQQIA+, non-monogamous and/or BDSM/kink.

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Deeper Connection.

Calmer Conflict.

Passionate Sex.

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Professional Experience

Gottman Method Couples Therapy Training:

  • Level One, Level Two, and Level Three.
  • Couples and Addiction Recovery
  • Treating Affairs and Trauma
  • Reliable SPAFF Coder for Dr. John Gottman's Love Lab
  • The 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work Leader Training
  • Bringing The Baby Home Leader Training 

Emotionally Focused Therapy Training:

  • Externship
  • Core Skills
  • Affairs Consultation Group

Sex Therapy Training:

  • Certificate in Sex Therapy at Antioch University
  • Clinical Work with Consensual Non-Monogamous Relationships
  • Applied Tantra for Practitioners

Additional Trainings:

  • Crucible Neurobiological Therapy: One-day Workshop
  • The Developmental Model of Couples Therapy
  • Certified Facilitator for Prepare-Enrich

I utilize research-proven methods to repair troubled relationships, heal old wounds, and strengthen bonds so love can last a lifetime.

Work With Kyle

Who am I:

  • Professionally: Couples and Sex Therapist, Relationship Science Nerd
  • Personally: Husband, father, cat and dog caregiver, brother, son, best friend, Crossfit lover, poet, espresso drinker, and an anxious overachiever who loves driving a golf cart while listening to reggaee music
  • Identities: Cis-gender male (he/him pronouns), Norwegian heritage, immune compromised, and book nerd.

Deep Personal Work

It is my core belief that I can only take others as deep as I have gone myself. As a result, I do individual therapy every week in addition to group programs, supervision, and more.  

To be present with others in the darkest moments of their lives requires me to be able to tolerate mine. Furthermore, being aware of my baggage allows me to see what my clients are going through without my baggage getting in the way.

Stay Connected.

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My Recommended Reading List For Relationship Health

Why I started KyleBenson.net

I write about creating secure-functioning relationships because I know what it’s like not to have one.

I have struggled with being honest with my partners. I have struggled with being emotionally closed off, as well as incredibly clingy. My past relationships caused me to believe I was unworthy of love unless I achieved some measure of success. So I worked 100 hours a week, and I struggled to sleep more than a few hours a night.

In fact, my insecurities were so inflamed and my anxiety was so overwhelming that my body shut down entirely (see picture above). Since then, I’ve spent the last 6 years recovering from severe health issues.

I lost 30 pounds in six weeks, and I felt as if I would pass out if I walked more than a city block without a break.

I still remember the moment where I was sitting in a chair in my own misery. My mind began to highlight my insecurities and the way in which I continued to settle for toxic relationships; not only with others but also with myself.

So after reading Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller and What Makes Love Last? by Dr. John Gottman, I became obsessed with transforming my relationships. I wanted to feel loved as I actually was. I was tired of feeling inadequate and unimportant. I was tired of hiding from myself. I was tired of settling for insecurity.

The pain of my suffering had finally become greater than the pain required to change my relationships.

In that moment, I made an oath to myself that no matter how hard the road would be, no matter how much I had to confront my insecurities, or how many times I had to risk rejection, I would hold onto myself. I would allow the best parts of myself to stand up. I would learn to become a secure romantic partner.

Transforming myself has been incredibly hard. But I have gone on a long journey that has not only put me in the most fulfilling intimate relationship I’ve ever had but also saved marriages from the brink of divorce. If you want to learn more about the work I do, visit here.

Since I started this site, I’ve learned that the quality of our relationships are the bedrock of our existence. Not only do our closest relationships shape who we are, they shape our life story. They shape the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

They shape our inner narrator who tells us how worthy we are. What we deserve. This is the same narrator that drives us to continually find ourselves in unhealthy relationship after unhealthy relationship.

It took a hard look at my life story to truly change the type of partner I would attract and love. It took lots of emotional processing to remain calm while my partners complained about something I did that they didn’t like. I’ve grown a lot from studying healthy relationships so far, and I plan to learn much more.

I want to help people who are struggling to go from feeling the way I did to feeling the way I do now. I feel happier, more secure, and healthier than I ever have before.

Whatever relationship battle you are in, I want you to know I am here to help. I am here to work alongside you to cultivate the relationship you deserve.

If an artist takes pains with the plaster that he is forming so that it may harden into a shape of beauty, what care should we take of the relationships which are shaping our minds, our bodies, and our souls?

If you want to be a masterful artist in the way you love, then you’d love our community.

The newsletter is packed with research based tools that will transform the way you communicate and love (Plus you’ll get behind-the-scenes stories of my own life.)


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