In cases where I am seeing you and your partner for couples counseling, I view your relationship as my client. Nevertheless, I may determine that it is beneficial to hold individual sessions with one or both of you. In this situation, I will inform you of my reasoning and we will make the decision about this together, exploring the benefits and risks of such a situation. However, if we do hold individual sessions, it is critical for you to understand and consent to the following: Information disclosed during your individual session may be revealed by me to your partner at a subsequent joint or individual session (i.e. individual session information is not confidential from your partner). In making the determination of what information would be disclosed, I use the categories of "private information" vs "secret information."Private information is that which may be hurtful to share (e.g. "I sometimes wish I had married someone else."), but is not having an ongoing negative impact on your relationship and/or undermining our work in couple’s counseling. On the other hand, secret information is that which is currently having a negative impact on the couple relationship, and/or that would have such an effect if discovered, and/or is undermining our work in couples counseling (e.g. having an ongoing affair while trying to work on the relationship in couple's counseling; trying to work on your couple sexual relationship when an unrevealed sexual fetish is contributing to your and your partner's sexual difficulties). At times, distinguishing between private information and secret information is difficult, and I will always discuss the determination with the revealing party. I will also work with the revealing party on the least harmful way to deal with the revealed secret. In sum, please be aware that I cannot work effectively with a couple in which secret information (as defined above) is maintained and I thus reserve the right to disclose information revealed to me during an individual session to your partner and I thus reserve the right to disclose information revealed to me during an individual session to your partner and/or to terminate couples counseling (with or without revealing the reason for termination). In cases of termination, I will provide referrals for both individuals to other therapists.