Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples Seattle, WA. Seattle

Close Enough to Touch, But Miles Apart

Couples Therapy & Marriage Counseling

Online Therapy serving Seattle, the Eastside, and Washington State

Certified Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist

You're not in crisis. But you're not really okay either. Maybe the arguments come and go — frustrating, circular, never quite resolved — and in between there's a low-grade tension that is always there. Or maybe things have gotten quieter lately, not because anything got fixed, but because you're too scared to try.

Either way, there's a distance between you that you no longer want to tolerate like a bad house guest.

Conversations stay surface level. Connection feels like something you keep meaning to get back to, but don't. You reach for each other less. And somewhere underneath the daily routine, there's an ache that something important is slipping away.

This is how most relationships erode. Not in a single dramatic moment — but slowly, in the accumulation of small disconnections that never quite get repaired.

How we work together — and what will shift

We start by slowing down. Not to avoid the hard stuff, but to understand it. Most couples come in focused on the content of their arguments — who said what, who does more, whose version of events is accurate. In EFT we move underneath that, into the emotions and attachment needs driving the cycle. When we find those, the arguments start to make a different kind of sense.

As we work together you'll begin to recognize the cycle you're in — a pattern that developed for important reasons, and can be changed. You'll learn to slow it down in real time, to say what's actually happening underneath the frustration or the withdrawal, and to hear your partner in a new way.

What shifts isn't just communication. It's the felt sense of safety with each other. The ability to bring something hard to your partner and trust that they can hold it. To feel prioritized, valued, and genuinely known — not just coexisting in the same space.

Couples who do this work find their way back to each other. Not to a perfect relationship, but to one where the distance doesn't feel permanent, conflict doesn't feel catastrophic, and connection is something actually within reach.

EFT Helps With...

Couples who want to strengthen their relationship before marriage
Reconnecting after years of distance or growing apart
New parents navigating the strain of life with a baby or young children
Empty nesters rediscovering each other after the kids have left
Partners stuck in the same argument about chores, money, or parenting — on repeat

Rebuilding after infidelity or emotional betrayal
Couples burned out by the same painful patterns with no idea how to break them
Desire discrepancy and the relational disconnection underneath it
Navigating major life transitions — moves, career changes, loss, illness
Couples who aren't in crisis but know something is missing and want more

Couples who want to strengthen their relationship before marriage
Reconnecting after years of distance or growing apart
New parents navigating the strain of life with a baby or young children
Empty nesters rediscovering each other after the kids have left
Partners stuck in the same argument about chores, money, or parenting — on repeat
Rebuilding after infidelity or emotional betrayal
Couples burned out by the same painful patterns with no idea how to break them
Desire discrepancy and the relational disconnection underneath it
Navigating major life transitions — moves, career changes, loss, illness
Couples who aren't in crisis but know something is missing and want more

About the Approach

I use Emotionally Focused Therapy — one of the most extensively researched models of couples therapy — as the foundation of all my couples work. EFT is grounded in attachment science and focuses on the emotional bond between partners rather than surface-level communication fixes.

Want to understand more about how EFT works?

Learn more...

Ready to Close the Distance?

If you recognized your relationship on this page, you already know something needs to change. I can help you understand what's driving the distance, break the cycle that keeps pulling you apart, and build the kind of emotional security where both of you finally feel safe enough to come closer.

Schedule Your Consultation Call

How do you help couples who keep having the same argument?

We slow things way down. Because it's never really about the socks on the floor — it's about what those socks said about your partner, about how they feel about you, about the relationship. It's the same lava coming out through different volcanos. When we slow it down enough to see what's happening underneath the argument — what attachment patterns are being triggered, what each of you is trying to protect — that's when you can start engaging with each other differently instead of just cycling through the same fight again.

What if one partner is more motivated to be in therapy than the other?

It happens, and it doesn't have to derail the work. When one partner is holding back, there's almost always something underneath it — ambivalence, fear about what it might mean to really engage, worry about what gets uncovered. My goal is to make sure both of you feel seen and comfortable enough to be present. When we can understand what's keeping one partner on the sidelines, we can often find enough movement there to unlock something real.

How do you handle it when both partners have very different perspectives on what's wrong?

That's almost every couple I've ever worked with. But we're not going to court to figure out who's right — because there's no actual benefit to being right. What I'm more interested in is why being right feels so important. Usually it's because you need your pain to be seen and understood by someone who matters to you. That's the real destination. That's where we need to get to.