Most couples who come to me are not arguing about what they think they are arguing about. The dishes, the phone, the money, the in-laws: these are the surface. Underneath is usually a pattern that has been running for years, where one person reaches and the other withdraws, and both end up feeling unreachable.
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy works on that pattern rather than refereeing individual arguments. It is an attachment-based approach, which means it treats the need to matter to your partner, and to be able to reach them when it counts, as the thing actually at stake.
What the pattern usually looks like
One partner pursues: pressing, criticising, asking again, because silence feels like being abandoned. The other withdraws: going quiet, shutting down, leaving the room, because the pressure feels like being told they are a failure. Each person is doing the thing most likely to trigger the other, and neither is doing it on purpose.
That cycle, not either partner, becomes what we work on. It is a considerable relief for most couples to stop being the problem and start having a shared one.
How the work goes
Broadly, in three stages. First we slow the cycle down enough to see it, and name what each of you is protecting. Then we work toward the conversations that usually cannot happen: the ones where the withdrawing partner says what they are afraid of, and the pursuing partner asks for what they need without armor. Finally we consolidate, so that when the pattern reappears, and it will, you can catch it between you.
Sessions are 50 minutes, usually with both partners present. I will not take sides, and I will not let either of you be the designated problem.
Does it work?
EFT is among the better-researched couples approaches. A 2019 systematic review in the Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work pooled nine randomised controlled trials and found substantial improvement in relationship satisfaction, sustained at follow-up in the four trials that measured it. Its authors describe this as preliminary support rather than a settled result, and that is the honest way to hold it. The International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy maintains the fuller research library if you want to read further.
What research cannot tell you is whether it will work for the two of you. That is worth finding out in a consultation rather than from a page.
When couples come in
Some arrive after an affair, or a betrayal that was not an affair but landed like one. Some have drifted into being efficient co-parents and roommates. Some are in the middle of the demands that quietly erode a relationship: a new baby, a startup, a diagnosis, a move. Some are deciding whether to stay.
You do not have to agree on what is wrong, or even on whether you want to be here, to start.
Practical details
Sessions are $260 for 50 minutes, in person in Los Angeles or by video anywhere in California. Payment is due after each session. Full details are on the rates page, and the telehealth page covers how online sessions work.
I also work with individuals using EMDR and Internal Family Systems, and it is not unusual for one partner to do individual work alongside couples sessions. We can talk about whether that makes sense for you.
Talk to me first
We can speak at no cost before either of you commits to anything. Call (310) 926-4001 or send a note through the contact page. It is fine for one of you to make the first call.