Online Couples Counseling in Vancouver & Greater Camas
Strengthen Your Relationship
Every relationship faces moments of distance or misunderstanding, but when communication breaks down, it can start to feel like you and your partner are on opposite sides instead of standing shoulder to shoulder, facing the problem together.
Couples therapy offers a way to slow down, make sense of what’s really happening beneath the surface, and begin to find your way back to each other. Couples often realize, sometimes with tears, that what felt like “losing each other” was really just a pattern pulling them apart — one that can be understood and reshaped.
Many of the couples I meet share the same longing: to feel seen, heard, and emotionally connected with the person they love most. Whether you’re trying to repair what’s been strained or protect what’s already strong, therapy becomes a place to slow down, understand what’s driving the pattern, and reach for each other in ways that truly land.
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Living Together or Exclusive Partners: Couples building a shared life and deep emotional bond, honoring commitment in a way that feels authentic; strengthening your shared foundation as you take next steps.
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Young Families: Couples overwhelmed by new roles and responsibilities, trying to stay connected through the demands of everyday life and the constant pull of everything that needs you; finding steadier footing and more closeness in the middle of the noise.
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Remarried Couples: Couples navigating the shifting landscape of trust, loyalty, and family relationships that can feel tender and complex; creating more emotional safety and clarity as you blend lives.
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Infidelity and Trust Repair: Couples working through a rupture where emotions run deep, and both partners are yearning to understand what happened; making room for repair so trust can feel solid again.
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Distressed Couples: Partners caught in recurring conflict, distance, or shutting down, who want to understand the pattern and find their way back to each other; restoring closeness and rebuilding intimacy.
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Pre-Marital, Pre-Commitment, and Enrichment: Couples who feel emotionally secure and want to stay intentional as they deepen commitment or move into a new season of life; protecting what’s working and staying connected through change.
Many of the couples I meet share the same longing: to feel seen, heard, and emotionally connected with the person they love most. Whether they’re working through conflict or nurturing an already strong connection, therapy becomes a place to slow down, explore the emotions shaping their patterns, and create moments of understanding that bring warmth and closeness back into reach.
Repair begins not when we agree, but when we can finally understand each other.
My Approach – Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
My approach to couples therapy is grounded in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT); a well-studied model that helps partners identify and shift the negative patterns that create distance. EFT recognizes that we are wired for connection, and when that bond feels uncertain or threatened, we often react in protective ways that unintentionally push us further apart.
EFT has been shown to be effective with many kinds of couples, including same-sex couples, and continues to show strong outcomes across diverse gender identities and relationship structures. At the heart of this model is a simple truth: all people, regardless of identity or self-expression, long to feel safe, seen, and valued by the person they love.
In our work together, I help you both slow down and notice the patterns that keep pulling you into the same painful place, while we gently listen for what is happening underneath. As understanding deepens, partners often begin to replace frustration and withdrawal with clearer, softer reaching, and you start learning how to move toward each other in ways that feel safer and more connecting. We also make room for repair, not by forcing agreement, but by helping each of you feel understood.
Over time, the work becomes less about “talking about” change and more about experiencing it. In session, we practice new moments of contact where one of you reaches a little differently and the other is able to respond in a way that truly lands, and those small experiences begin to steady the bond. We’ll use practical, emotion-focused tools that support clearer communication, rebuilt trust, and renewed closeness, so even hard conversations can feel more held and less overwhelming as you find your way back to a stronger sense of “us.”
There is often a gentle relief when couples see that their struggles make sense and that they haven’t failed each other, but have been caught in a cycle they can find their way out of together.
What to Expect
In the beginning, it is usually most helpful to meet weekly so we can build momentum, get to know your relationship, and begin to understand the patterns that keep showing up between you. As therapy progresses and things begin to feel more stable, we can thoughtfully space sessions out and decide together what pace feels right. Some couples begin to feel meaningful shifts in 6–12 sessions, while others benefit from 15–20 sessions or more; we’ll always tailor the pace to your goals and what your relationship needs.
Below is a general outline of how the first phase often looks in EFT-focused couples work:
Session 1 – Meeting Together
In our first session, we meet as a couple. I’ll invite you both to share what brings you in, how things have been feeling lately, and what you are hoping will be different. We begin to get a sense of your negative cycle (those familiar moments where the two of you get stuck) and start to name what each of you is carrying into the room.
Session 2 – Individual Session (Partner A)
In this session, I meet with one partner individually. This is a space to slow down and hear more of your story: important relationships, past experiences, and how you’ve learned to cope and protect yourself emotionally over time, including the ways you protect yourself when you feel hurt, alone, or not sure where you stand. We explore how these experiences shape the way you show up in your current relationship, always with care and without blame.
Session 3 – Individual Session (Partner B)
In this session, I meet individually with the other partner. The focus is similar: understanding your history, how you experience closeness and distance, what feels most vulnerable for you, and the ways you’ve learned to protect yourself emotionally using protective patterns that helped you get through hard experiences but may now get in the way of feeling close and safe with your partner. These individual meetings help me hold both of your inner worlds with more clarity and compassion.
Session 4 and Beyond – Ongoing Couple Sessions
We return to meeting together as a couple. Using what we’ve learned, we begin to map your negative cycle more clearly, give language to the emotions underneath it, and create emotionally safer ways to reach for and respond to one another. Over time, these conversations help you move from feeling stuck and alone in the cycle to feeling more understood, more connected, and more able to turn toward one another for comfort and support. We practice new moments of connection until they start to feel natural again.
Healing begins the moment
you feel seen
and are no longer
alone in your struggle.
Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples in Washington
Strong, lasting relationships don’t happen by chance, they grow through shared understanding, feeling emotionally safe with each other, and intentional effort.
Pre-Marital | Pre-Commitment Counseling
Pre-Marital / Pre-Commitment Counseling offers couples a steady, supportive place to prepare for the next stage of commitment with clarity, intention, and emotional depth. Whether you’re engaged, planning a future together, or thoughtfully exploring commitment, this work helps you strengthen the bond you already share.
Using your Prepare/Enrich results as a roadmap, we explore communication habits, emotional needs, expectations, and the hopes you carry into your partnership. Therapy becomes a space to slow down, understand each other more fully, and build a foundation that feels secure, steady, and aligned with your values.
Pre-Marital / Pre-Commitment Counseling helps you:
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Strengthen emotional closeness
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Build skills for navigating conflict without losing each other
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Explore values, roles, and vision for the future
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Create a sense of “us” that feels steady and connected
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Name and shift the patterns that could derail you later
This work gives you more than tools and it gives you a shared emotional language to rely on as your relationship grows.
Relationship Enrichment
Relationship Enrichment is designed for couples at any stage whether your connection is strong and steady or you’re noticing subtle shifts that you want to tend to with care. These sessions offer a dedicated space to reconnect, tune into one another, and stay emotionally aligned as life evolves.
Enrichment work is especially meaningful for partners who are:
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Adjusting to parenthood
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Navigating blended family dynamics
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Recovering from stressful or demanding seasons
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Strengthening intimacy that has faded over time
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Reconnecting after long-distance or demanding schedules
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Supporting one another’s growth while maintaining shared goals
Relationship Enrichment helps you:
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Stay connected through change
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Renew understanding and learn how to reach for each other in ways that actually land
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Strengthen warmth, trust, and closeness
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Protect the sense of partnership that anchors your relationship
Whether you’re celebrating your bond or rediscovering one another after years together, enrichment work helps you keep your connection intentional and alive.
The Prepare/Enrich Assessment
To support meaningful conversations in both Pre-Marital Counseling and Relationship Enrichment, I use the Prepare/Enrich assessment, a research-supported tool that offers a clear, compassionate snapshot of your relationship.
Each partner completes the assessment online, and we review the results together with curiosity and care. The assessment shines a light on where your relationship is already strong, as well as the recurring themes where misunderstandings or distance tend to arise.
When couples can anticipate these themes, they’re better able to stay gentler with each other around potential disconnects and stay anchored in the strengths that support them through tender moments.
The assessment explores three core areas:
Communication & Conflict Patterns — how you express needs and respond when emotions rise
Connection, Roles & Daily Life — intimacy, routines, stressors, finances, and family/cultural influences
Values, Beliefs & Future Orientation — the hopes and guiding principles that shape your life together
It also highlights each partner’s personality — the steady, long-term patterns that influence how you move through the world. In many ways, this is the part of each other you’re truly committing to, because personality changes very little over time. Seeing these patterns clearly often brings relief and understanding about why certain misunderstandings repeat.
Key personality traits that shape relationship dynamics include:
Assertiveness
Pleasing tendencies
Mood and emotional expression
Organization and structure
Couples often find that recognizing these traits softens frustration and increases empathy and helps them see that many recurring tensions arise from natural personality differences rather than a loss of connection, making those moments easier to navigate with understanding and care.
As part of this process, you’ll receive a personalized PDF of your Prepare/Enrich results which are prepared with charts, graphs, and summaries you can revisit anytime. Many couples value having a tangible map of their strengths and growth areas, a reminder of what steadies them and where they can continue supporting one another with intention.
A Resource You Can Keep Returning To
