Different From Traditional Couples Therapy​

Many couples arrive having already tried couples therapy — sometimes more than once — only to feel more discouraged, polarized, or misunderstood. This is often not because they failed the therapy, but because the therapy model was not designed to hold the complexity of their relationship and not delivered from a place of lived experience.

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Traditional couples therapy often focuses on:

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• Communication skills and conflict management

• Behavioral agreements and compromises

• Symptom reduction rather than root causes

• One therapist tracking two nervous systems

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While these approaches can be helpful, they're often insufficient for couples navigating attachment trauma, blended family dynamics, new children, identity shifts, or long-standing relational patterns.

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Our work is fundamentally different.

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A Depth Approach To Helping Couples​

Rather than teaching techniques or refereeing conflict, we focus on understanding the underlying emotional, relational, and systemic forces shaping your relationship.

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We work at the level of:

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• Attachment reactivity and nervous system regulation

• Unconscious patterns you're unaware of and the protective parts you each hold that get you stuck in the same cycles

• Family-of-origin and intergenerational dynamics that take up too much space

• Meaning, identity, and relational roles

 

This allows conflict and disconnection to be understood not as a failure of communication, but as an expression of unmet needs, unprocessed experiences, and competing survival strategies.

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Two Practitioners, One Integrated Perspective​

Working with us means working with two experienced professionals simultaneously, each tracking different dimensions of the relationship in real time, who have lived experience as a couple themselves.

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One of us attends closely to emotional safety, attachment patterns, and relational repair, while the other listens for the narratives, beliefs, archetypal roles, and unspoken agreements driving the dynamic. Together, we create a container that is:

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• More nuanced than single-therapist work

• Less prone to triangulation or imbalance

• Better equipped to hold complex family systems

• Especially effective for blended families and second partnerships

• Embodied by a couple with shared lived experience who understand exactly what you're going through

 

This dual presence allows couples to feel deeply seen — without either partner feeling pathologized, blamed, or aligned against— with each partner feeling understood and supported by each of us.

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A Sophisticated, Integrative Couples Approach

Our approach integrates depth-oriented, Jungian psychology, attachment science, and relational neuroscience with transpersonal and archetypal perspectives. This allows us to work simultaneously on:​

• Deep emotional healing

• Nervous system regulation

• Attachment repair

• Relational patterns that repeat across partnerships and families

• Identity, purpose, and inner authority

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For couples seeking relationship support — particularly those in blended families — this work is especially powerful. Relationships often activate old attachment wounds, loyalty binds, parenting conflicts, and unspoken grief. We help individuals and couples slow down, understand what is happening beneath the surface, and build secure, resilient relational foundations that support both the partnership and the family systems they exist in.

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We have decades of advanced research and training in couples relationships, family of origin, parenting, and its impact on us. As well as advanced training in specific therapy models:

• Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT; Dr. Stan Tatkin): an attachment based couples approach that supports the nervous system and integrates developmental science.

• Internal Family Systems (IFS; Dr. Richard Schwartz): a depth-oriented, parts work based approach integrating mindfulness, meditation, and inner child work to build consciousness.

• Intimacy from the Inside Out (IFIO; Toni Herbine-Blank): an extension of IFS to relationships to help partners understand and tend to the "parts" of our inner world — such as protective, reactive, or vulnerable parts— that show up in our relationships.

• The Gottman Method (Drs. Julie & John Gottman): longest standing, most researched model known for skill building to strengthen intimacy, connection, communication, and long-term partnership.

• Thousands of hours in Jungian training, supervision/consultation, and coursework​​.

• Two decades of research, writing, teaching, and training in family of origin, couples relationships, parenting, attachment and mental health.

• Lived experience as a couple in a blended family ourselves.

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Couples In Transition & Blended Families Require A Different Lens

Most couples therapy models are built for nuclear and traditional families, not modern ones who are inherently complex. 

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Modern couples and blended families bring additional layers:

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• Loyalty binds between partners and children

• Grief and boundary navigation from previous relationships

• Parenting asymmetries and role confusion

• Differing attachment histories and expectations

• Different values and relationship practices

• Attention to LGBTQ+ identities

• Attachment work related to non-monogamous or polyamorous relationships

 

We treat these challenges as systemic realities and consciously integrate them into our work. Our work helps couples disentangle what belongs to the relationship, what belongs to the family system, and what belongs to the past — so the partnership is no longer carrying weight it was never meant to hold.

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From Problem-Solving To Relational Maturity

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Traditional couples therapy often asks, "How do we fix this problem?"

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We ask:

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• What is this conflict trying to protect?

• What old pattern is being reactivated here?

• What does this relationship need in order to grow?

• Where are we avoiding communication, vulnerability, and intimacy?

 

Our work supports the development of relational maturity — the capacity to stay connected under stress, to repair rather than withdraw or attack, and to move through life transitions with greater resilience and mutual respect.

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For Couples Seeking More Than Tools

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This work is not quick, prescriptive, or formulaic.

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It's best suited for couples who:​

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• Want depth rather than surface-level techniques

• Are willing to explore themselves as well as the relationship

• Understand that meaningful change requires investment

• Value privacy, nuance, and high-level professional care​

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For couples ready to move beyond surface-level solutions and engage their relationship as a living system — one capable of growth, repair, and transformation—this work offers a different path forward.

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