Two people who can still be in the same room, and cannot get through the same conversation.
This page is about who the couples in my practice actually are. If you want the structure, the fee and what a session contains, the couples therapy page covers that instead.
Almost nobody arrives here early. That is not held against you.
Couples usually reach me after a long period of trying to sort it out privately, sometimes years of it, sometimes a single week that changed everything. Either way, by the time you are reading this you are probably not looking for communication tips. You want to know whether this is fixable and whether the person you would be handing it to knows what he is doing.
I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California, trained in the Gottman Method, and a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist. That last part matters if hidden sexual behavior is part of your situation, because I work with both halves of it: men on the behavior itself, and partners on what finding out has done to them.
My loyalty in the room is to the honesty of the relationship rather than to either person’s comfort. In practice that means neither of you will be handed a verdict on the other, and both of you will hear something you did not want to hear.
You may each recognize a different line. That is normal.
Four situations that make up most of my couples caseload.
- Who I see
After a discovery
Hidden sexual behavior, an affair, or a pattern one partner had no idea about. You are in the first weeks or months and nothing feels stable.
- Who I see
Long-term couples who stopped talking
Fifteen years in, competent at logistics, no longer able to have the conversation that matters. Nobody did anything wrong and it is still not working.
- Who I see
Couples deciding whether to continue
One or both of you is not sure. You want to know whether this is repairable before spending another two years finding out.
- Who I see
Couples where one of you carries most of it
One partner manages the emotional life of the relationship and is exhausted. The other does not know how to enter it and has stopped trying.
Structured, even-handed, and slower than you want.
Sessions are directed. When a conversation starts doing damage, we stop it and look at the mechanics rather than letting it run to its usual ending: repeating a destructive argument in front of a therapist is rehearsal, not therapy.
A good deal of the hour is the two of you talking to each other while I coach in the middle of it. Reporting to me about your partner is comfortable and mostly useless. The skill has to be built between you.
If there is something undisclosed, we handle it through a structured therapeutic disclosure rather than allowing information to leak out over eighteen months, which is the single most damaging pattern I see.
In person in Long Beach or by telehealth anywhere in California. Se habla español.
You are not two people arguing about the dishes. You are two people making a request the other cannot hear yet.
Usually asked by whichever of you is doing the research.
Frequently Asked Questions
Couples therapy, written for where you are
Couples arrive at this differently depending on where their week happens. These pages say how.
One of you can make the call
A free 15-minute phone consultation. It commits your partner to nothing, and it is a reasonable first step even if you are undecided.