What I’ve Learned Sitting With FF Couples

I didn’t plan for FF couples to become one of the most common dynamics in my practice, but somewhere along the way, they did.

Couple after couple arrived in my room, on my screen, and I began to notice the threads that kept weaving through their relationships. This has become some of the most tender and alive work I do, and I want to share a little of what I’ve learned.

When I say FF, I mean couples where both people were assigned female at birth and live with a female hormonal cycle, women and non-binary folks alike. I name it this way because so much of what we work with grows out of that shared bodily experience, and it shapes these relationships in ways that are often overlooked.

Knowing your cycle

Most of us were never properly taught about our own hormones, and it influences our relationships far more than we realise. Part of my work is simply education, helping each of you understand the four phases of your cycle, its inner winter, spring, summer, and autumn, and what each season asks of you in rest, food, movement, and connection.

Now imagine two cycles living inside one relationship. One partner may be in her inner summer, wanting closeness and conversation, while the other is deep in autumn, tender and short on capacity. In sessions, we often map each person’s cycle so that instead of taking each other’s shifts personally, you can anticipate them, make room for them, and care for each other through them.

PMS and PMDD

For many, the days before a period bring irritability, tenderness, or overwhelm, and for some, through PMDD, these changes become far more intense, with deep sadness, rage, or hopelessness that lifts once bleeding begins. So many people live with this for years without a name for it, and so many partners quietly brace for “that week” without understanding why. We bring education and compassion to both partners, and where PMDD might be present, I encourage working alongside a GP or women’s health practitioner too.

Hormones and ADHD

Something I see often is the overlap between ADHD and hormonal cycles. Many people with ADHD notice that their focus, emotional regulation, and sense of capacity change across the month, often becoming harder in the days before a period, and for some, changing again through perimenopause.

When one or both partners have ADHD, these shifts can ripple through the relationship as forgotten plans, quick flashes of frustration, or a sudden need to withdraw. We explore these patterns together so that each of you can meet the other with understanding rather than blame, and so the person living with ADHD can feel less alone with something that so often goes unseen.

Roles, dynamics, and polarity

Every couple settles into roles, and FF couples are no different. Someone tends to lead and someone tends to hold, someone initiates and someone receives, someone carries the emotional weather and someone carries the plans. Sometimes these roles grow naturally out of who you each are, and sometimes they’re inherited, or slipped into without much choosing at all.

We look at the dynamics you’ve settled into and the polarity between you, that pull of difference that keeps attraction alive. Polarity isn’t tied to gender, and in FF relationships it can move and shift in beautiful ways, but it can also flatten over time when two people become too alike or too merged.

Gently bringing these roles into awareness lets you ask whether they still feel chosen, and opens room to play with them again.

Queerness and family

How your families feel about your queerness, and where each of you stands with it, can quietly live inside your relationship.

One partner may be fully out and celebrated at home, while the other is still holding secrecy, distance, or old shame. There may be grief for an acceptance that hasn’t come, tension around holidays and visits, or pride that one family has grown to love you both.

We make space for all of it, and for how it shapes the way you hold each other, because these experiences rarely stay outside the relationship, even when we try to keep them there.

Finding yourself within the “we”

Many of the people I work with have always been in relationship, or have always been with their person. When love has been the container for most of your adult life, it can be genuinely hard to know where you end and your partner begins. Preferences blur, friendships become shared, and a quiet question can begin to grow underneath it all: who am I when I’m not part of us?

We spend time on individuality, on each of you discovering who you are on your own, what you need, what you love, and what you’re seeking.

This isn’t about pulling apart. It’s about making sure there are two whole people in the love, because a relationship tends to feel more alive, and more chosen, when each person is their own.

Slowing the conversation

FF couples often talk a lot, feel deeply, and are very much in with each other, which is one of the most beautiful parts of these relationships. It can also mean that conversations move fast, emotions build on emotions, and things spiral into conflict before either of you has noticed what happened.

So we slow it down. We practise giving each other space, letting one person speak while the other really receives, and naming emotions as they arise rather than after they’ve taken over. It can feel unfamiliar at first, even a little awkward, but over time many couples find that slowing down is exactly what lets them feel heard.

Coming back into the body

So much of connection lives beneath words, which is why my work is rooted in the body. We often work with regulation tools tailored to each of your nervous systems, and practise pausing, moving, and being in your bodies, which tends to deepen your connection with yourselves and with each other.

When you can feel what’s happening inside you, you’re far more able to stay present with your partner, especially in the moments that matter most.

Pleasure, desire, and intimacy

From the body, we often move into pleasure. Part of this is understanding how each of you is wired, whether you’re more energetic, sensual, sexual, drawn toward the taboo, or a mix of them all, and whether your desire tends to arrive spontaneously or responsively, once touch has already begun. When two people are wired differently, it’s easy to feel unwanted, when really you’ve simply been speaking different erotic languages.

From there, we may explore anatomy awareness, breast massage, and intimacy practices grounded in loving presence, getting to know each other’s bodies with curiosity and tenderness, and letting intimacy become something you return to, slowly and with devotion.

Underneath it all

Every couple who comes to me is unique, and none of these themes look the same twice. But underneath every looping argument, every rupture, and every hard conversation, there are usually two people who want to be met.

If you’re in an FF relationship and something here stirred a quiet recognition, perhaps begin there.

Reach out.

With love,

Narla