Most of what hurts in adult life happens between two or more people. So that's where we work — in the room, in real time, with the actual people. Not by talking about the relationship for fifty minutes alone.
We use evidence-based modalities (Gottman, EFT, IFS) the way a good cook uses a recipe — for structure, but not at the cost of taste. We translate the technical bits into language you can use at the dinner table.
Not aspirational, not on a poster. These show up in every session.
Two competing truths can be true at once. We help you stop arguing about which one wins.
Most of what couples fight about isn't the actual content — it's the loop. We name the loop.
Healthy couples rupture all the time. They just repair faster. We teach the repair.
Anger usually has a softer thing under it. We help you say the softer thing first.
What looks like a fight about laundry is often a fight about being unseen, dating back decades.
We're trying to work ourselves out of a job. Most couples graduate within 6–9 months.
You don't need to know what these mean before you walk in. But here's what's actually happening when we use them.
Forty years of research watching real couples in a research apartment, looking for what predicts staying together. Out of that came what they call the Sound Relationship House — friendship, conflict management, shared meaning.
In session, this looks like assessing your "Four Horsemen" (the four patterns most lethal to a relationship), building your love-map of each other, and learning specific repair attempts you can use mid-fight.
Emotionally Focused Therapy is built on attachment theory — the idea that adult partners function, biologically, like a kid and a parent. When connection is threatened, we either pursue it loudly or shut down entirely. EFT helps you see the cycle, then step out of it.
Most couples remember EFT sessions as the ones where they cried. Not because they were sad — because they finally felt their partner hear them.
Internal Family Systems treats the mind as a collection of parts: protector parts, exiled parts, and a calm core Self underneath. In couples work, IFS helps you notice when it's not you talking to your partner, but a defensive part — and gives you a way to step back and be the You you want to be.
It's especially useful when old trauma is showing up in a present-day relationship without you meaning for it to.
Demystified. No couches with clipboards.
What landed since last session, what didn't. Anything urgent. We're not rushing to "the work" — settling is the work.
You talk to each other, not to the therapist. We slow it down. We translate. We pause when one of you escalates and ask what just happened underneath.
What changed in the room. What you each felt. What you noticed about your own pattern. This is the part most couples remember a year later.
Not homework with a capital H — one specific repair, ritual, or check-in to try before next time. Five-minute commitment, max.
For most couples we see, 12–20 weekly sessions, then a few monthly tune-ups. Premarital is shorter (six sessions). Affair recovery is typically 16 sessions. We re-evaluate at session six and again at twelve.
No. If individual therapy is needed alongside the couples work, we refer out to trusted individual therapists. Keeping the dyad clean is part of the model.
Yes. Maya is a trained mediator. Some couples come for therapy and discover, together, that the kindest path is apart. We help with that exit too — including how to tell kids.
Session one is mostly listening. We ask each of you what brought you in, what's worked before, what your hope is, and what you're worried about. By session two we're already working.
Yes — affirming, well-trained, and not learning on you. Theo specializes in queer and polyamorous couples; the rest of the team has clinical training and a lot of practice.
The free 15-minute consult is exactly what it sounds like — a no-pressure phone call with one of our clinicians.
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