Couples Therapy in Seattle, WA & online throughout Washington & Oregon

You can have intimacy and connection again.

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Are you longing for love and connection, and tired of feeling like you and your partner are strangers living side-by-side?

Disconnection and hurt have become your norm. You’re stuck in what feels like an endlessly repeating cycle of arguments without resolution—and each time it happens again, it makes your heart ache.

  • You feel so lonely, like you’re the only one trying to make the relationship better.

  • You’re anxious, walking on eggshells every day, afraid to say the wrong thing and start another argument.

  • You worry about the future of your relationship. These days, there’s so little sex or emotional connection that you might as well be roommates.

  • You’re losing hope. You’ve tried everything, but your relationship just keeps getting worse.

  • You feel unwanted, deprived of intimacy, touch, and even affection. The distance between you and your partner is all you can think about.

Your relationship doesn’t have to be on the brink of falling apart to try couples therapy. 

There are so many valid reasons to take time to improve your relationship.

  • Things start off fine in the morning—but then there’s a communication miss. You made a benign comment, but your partner heard something completely different. Without the tools to work through the miscommunication, it becomes a rift that lasts all day. You each walk out the door feeling disconnected and misunderstood. And over time, this pattern has started to erode what used to be a healthy, happy relationship.

  • Once upon a time, your partner was your best friend, the one you could talk to about anything. But these days, it’s become hard to be vulnerable. You find yourself holding back, like you can’t say what’s really on your mind. You don’t know what changed, but you want the old closeness again.

    Or maybe one or both of you have experienced relational trauma, and being vulnerable feels too scary. You’ve tried it before, only to be met with defensiveness, sarcasm, or feeling tuned out or shrugged off. So you’ve closed off and armored up—but now, you can’t move your relationship forward anymore.

  • One of you wants to run from conflict the moment it comes up, but the other keeps pushing, desperate to work through it no matter how heated things get. The more you try to get your partner to hear your side, the more they pull away from you. The more they pull away, the louder and meaner you get because you’re desperate to feel close again, and you don’t know any other way to reel them back in. Or maybe you’re the one shutting down; you know your partner feels abandoned, but the conflict is just too overwhelming for you to stay in it.

  • Life has been good—but it’s about to change. You’re planning for your wedding, preparing to move in together, or about to welcome a child into your family. Or maybe it’s a big career shift, a cross-country move, or entering retirement or the empty-nesting years. You want to do everything you can to protect and strengthen your relationship through this important time.

  • You have a beautiful shared history, you’ve built a life you love, and you appreciate all the strengths your relationship has. Everything feels pretty good right now. But you value taking time to do regular maintenance on the relationship—pop the hood and do a tune-up, so you can thrive through the next thousand miles together.

 Wherever you are, no matter how much it hurts right now, you can rediscover fun and love.

You can repair and build trust.

You can learn to communicate with more vulnerability.

And I can help you get there.

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What if you could get your relationship off this scary roller coaster that feels like it’s about to throw you off—and get your relationship onto the kiddie ride, 

where the bumps are small.

nobody feels out of control,

and you can enjoy the ride instead of wanting to get off?

Couples therapy can help you…

 

Get back to feeling:

  • Like you can have fun with your partner

  • Like you’re both on the same team

  • Respected, appreciated, at ease, and secure

  • Emotionally, physically, and sexually connected

  • Confident about your future together because you have the tools you need to handle the hard days

Or for the very first time feel:

  • Like you know exactly how to engage with your partner to resolve conflicts

  • Able to let your walls down and trust that your partner really understands

  • Confident that you can say anything without fear of getting sucked back into your old conflict pattern

  • Faith that your relationship will only continue to get stronger, no matter what life throws at you

My Approach

I’ve dedicated my career to understanding individual attachment styles, how they intersect, and what keeps people from having the safe, secure, stable, fulfilling, and meaningful relationships they long for. 

I’ve worked with new couples, long-term off-and-on-again couples, pre-marital couples, newlyweds, new parents, hetero and queer relationships, monogamous and polyamorous relationships, and interracial or cross-cultural relationships. 

My approach to couples therapy starts with understanding the dynamics going on between partners. I won’t place blame on any one individual. Instead, my job is to help you understand how you both, as a dynamic unit, get caught up in the music you don’t want to be dancing to.

I offer Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), which is the gold standard of treatment for couples, according to the American Psychological Association. I also incorporate aspects from the Gottman Method, another highly effective, well-researched form of treatment for couples in distress.

With these methods, I’ll help you:

  • Explore one another’s internal worlds and attachment styles to better understand each other’s needs and communication styles

  • Identify your unique patterns of conflict and learn how to communicate in new ways to get the results you want—so you can both feel heard, understood, and loved.

It’s time to reconnect.

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This service is for couples where both individuals are motivated to work on their relationship. If one or both of you is not sure about the marriage or whether couples therapy can help, click here.

Couples Therapy FAQs

  • Couples therapy can look different depending on your unique situation—and how we spend each individual session might look different from week to week. I’ve been trained in multiple couples-focused modalities (such as Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy and the Gottman Method) and I pull from several approaches to meet your specific needs and goals. 

    When we start out, we’ll meet all together in one session. Next, I’ll schedule an individual meeting with each of you, to get a more in-depth view on each person’s perception of the problem(s) in the relationship. After that, we’ll have the remainder of our sessions with everyone present together.

    I recommend meeting weekly, especially in the beginning of treatment, so that the two of you can really feel some progress in your relationship. Meeting irregularly, or at less frequent intervals, can lead to slower therapeutic gains, which can be discouraging and ultimately keep you in therapy for longer.

    We will always begin by forming a solid therapeutic relationship between each of you and myself. I take this seriously, as I want you to feel safe in our connection during all of our work. And I always encourage feedback about ways to make your experience better!

    Recording couples therapy sessions is becoming the standard of care. It’s impossible for any therapist to be aware of everything that’s happening with each client at all times. By reviewing my recordings, I’m able to notice things that I might have missed in the session and address them going forward. If you’re uncomfortable with recording sessions, please let me know; however, recording sessions will improve the care I’m able to provide you.

  • It really depends on what your needs and goals are. I’ve worked with some couples for a short period of time (6-10 sessions), and with others for much longer (15+ sessions). When we have more complex and painful pieces of your history to work through (e.g., infidelity, domestic violence), it’s not uncommon to meet for six months to a year. Some couples prefer to meet with me for an extended period of time, to process multiple difficult events or issues in the relationship, or simply to have a safe space to come back to as needed when they get stuck in another point of conflict.

    If you want to decrease the overall time you spend in therapy and make progress quickly, I recommend you consider a couples intensive.

  • The results will differ, depending on what your goals are. Past clients have reported feeling like they understand one another better, feeling more confident in their ability to communicate or resolve conflict, feeling closer and more at ease with each other, feeling a deeper sexual connection, and finding the relationship enjoyable (and even fun!) again. The primary focus of the modalities I use is to increase your emotional connection by strengthening the security of your attachment, helping you attune to one another’s emotional states more effectively, and staying focused on each other’s primary emotional needs rather than getting lost in the details.

  • I have really enjoyed my work with queer couples! I’ve received training in using Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) specifically with LGBTQ+ couples, and so I understand that there are unique dynamics at play in queer relationships. I won’t impose heteronormative expectations on your relationship, and I will always let you be the experts on what you’re working toward and what fits your relationship best. I also regularly deepen my own knowledge by seeking out consultation with therapists in the queer community.

  • I welcome any polyamorous relationship structure or dynamic, whether that’s an open marriage, a closed polycule, or something else altogether. I am fully affirming of Ethical Non-Monogamy (ENM), and I’ve helped many people navigate the transition to ENM from monogamy. I also love coming alongside people already practicing ENM; I focus on harnessing the unique strengths of a healthy ENM practice to work through the unique challenges that come with it. I’m not here to pathologize polyamory or tell you what relationship structure will work best for you. 

    While couples therapy is traditionally seen as only for “couples,” I recognize that this doesn’t accurately describe everyone’s experience. I’m happy to welcome into sessions any other significant members of your relationship (e.g., other partners/metamours) who can enhance the therapeutic work we’re doing.

  • I’m excited to support you on your journey toward building a stronger, more connected relationship! We’ll start with a 20-minute consultation, so we can meet and see how we connect. I truly believe that the connection between therapist and clients makes the difference between a great experience and a mediocre one, so if any of us decides we’re not the best fit, I’m happy to provide you with referrals.

 

Couples therapy in Seattle, WA

Services also offered virtually throughout Washington & Oregon