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 keep telling yourself things aren't that bad.

You're still functioning. You're getting through the week. Maybe you still laugh together, have good days, take care of the kids, make plans.

But something between you doesn't feel right anymore.

Maybe you keep having versions of the same argument (money, chores, parenting, sex, family) and somehow nothing ever really gets resolved.

Or maybe you've stopped having the argument altogether.

You've explained how you feel. You've tried saying it differently. You've tried letting things go. And after enough conversations that went nowhere, it became easier to stop bringing things up.

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

You talk, but not about the things that matter. You reach for each other less. Maybe you feel more like roommates than partners. And it's possible to sit right next to the person you love and still feel incredibly alone.

Eventually, you start wondering what all of this means.

Do they understand how much this is hurting me? Do they care? Is this just what long-term relationships become? Can we actually get back to each other?

Relationships rarely fall apart in a single dramatic moment. More often, distance grows through the accumulation of hurts that don't get resolved and attempts to connect that somehow keep pushing you further apart.

How we work together — and what will shift

You've probably already tried communicating.

You've explained what you need. You've chosen your words carefully. You've tried having the conversation when you're both calm. Maybe you've promised each other that next time you'll handle it differently.

And somehow, you keep ending up back here.

That's because the problem often isn't simply what you're talking about. It's what starts happening between you when something important is at stake.

In Emotionally Focused Therapy, we slow those moments down enough to understand the pattern underneath them: what happens inside each of you, how you respond to protect yourselves, and how those responses inadvertently trigger the other person.

Once you can see that pattern, the arguments start to make a different kind of sense.

As we work together, you'll begin to recognize the cycle while it's happening instead of only understanding it afterward. You'll learn to slow it down, say what's actually happening underneath the frustration or withdrawal, and hear what your partner is trying to communicate beneath their reaction.

What shifts isn't just communication. It's what happens when you reach for each other.

You can bring something hard to your partner without immediately bracing for defensiveness, shutdown, or another argument. You can trust that your feelings matter without fighting so hard to prove that they should. And both of you can begin to feel like you're on the same team again.

Couples who do this work find their way back to each other.

Not to a perfect relationship. To one where you can talk about what matters, repair when you hurt each other, enjoy being together again, and trust that when something hard happens, you'll know how to face it together.

EFT Helps With...

Having the same argument over and over without ever really resolving it
Feeling more like roommates than partners
Reconnecting after months or years of distance
Feeling like you're the only one trying to fix the relationship
Struggling to talk about something important without defensiveness or shutdown
New parenthood and the strain of raising young children

Desire discrepancy and loss of physical or emotional intimacy
Rebuilding after infidelity or emotional betrayal
Recurring conflict around chores, money, parenting, family, or other everyday issues
Major life transitions: moves, career changes, loss, illness, or children leaving home
Preparing for marriage and wanting to build a strong foundation
Wondering whether what you're experiencing is norma, or whether something needs to change

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 (EFT) as the foundation of my couples work. EFT is grounded in attachment science and focuses on the emotional bond between partners — helping couples understand and change the patterns that keep leaving both people feeling hurt, alone, or unreachable.

Want to understand more about how EFT works?

Learn more...

Ready to Find Your Way Back to Each Other?

You don't have to wait until your relationship reaches a breaking point.

If you've tried talking, explaining, giving it time, or hoping things would get better on their own, and you're still ending up in the same place, I can help you understand why.

Together, we'll identify the pattern that's keeping you stuck, change what happens in the moments you lose each other, and help you build a relationship where both of you can reach, and be reached, again.

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.