Couples Therapy in San Marino & South Pasadena: Rebuilding Emotional Connection for Lasting Love

Rediscover Connection-No Matter Your Relationship Structure

Small green grass growing through cracks in a stone or concrete surface with blurred background of a wall and fabric.

Healthy relationships are essential to emotional well-being and shape how we manage stress, understand ourselves, and feel connected. When a partnership is strong, daily life often feels more stable. When disconnection or ongoing conflict sets in, it can impact every area of your life.

If you’re searching for couples therapy or marriage counseling, you may be looking to rebuild emotional connection, improve communication, and create lasting relationship satisfaction. Whether you’re navigating conflict, adjusting to parenthood, or feeling more like roommates than partners, couples therapy can help you reconnect, clarify needs, and strengthen your relationship

Common Reasons Couples Seek Therapy

Many partners seek couples counseling for concerns like:

  • Communication breakdowns or constant arguments

  • Emotional distance or loneliness within the relationship

  • Parenting stress and postpartum relationship strain

  • Infidelity, betrayal, or breaches of trust

  • Growing apart or feeling more like co-parents or roommates

  • Considering separation but unsure what’s next

These are common challenges—and you don’t have to face them alone. Therapy provides tools and support to navigate tough seasons and move toward deeper connection.

How I Work With Couples

I provide couples therapy and marriage counseling using a systems-based, attachment-informed approach grounded in PACT (Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy) and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). Drawing on the work of Stan Tatkin and Sue Johnson, I help couples build secure functioning, strengthen emotional bonds, and take shared responsibility for the health of their relationship. We look at how attachment history, nervous system responses, emotional needs, and learned patterns shape conflict, distance, and closeness-and we focus on changing the interaction cycles that keep you stuck, rather than going in circles assigning blame.

My style is collaborative, direct, and nonjudgmental, with a strong emphasis on emotional safety. Using core PACT and EFT principles, I help couples slow reactivity, increase emotional awareness, and communicate more clearly. With PACT, you learn what the real problems are and how to de-escalate conflict without avoiding it or sugarcoating it so you can calm your nervous systems, reconnect, and get back on the same team. You may still disagree at times, but you’ll develop the ability to repair quickly and deeply, using presence, timing, and attunement to move forward together.

In our work, you’ll learn to better understand attachment styles, uncover unconscious relationship dynamics, and build a more intentional, secure partnership rooted in authenticity. The goal is not perfection, but the capacity to stay emotionally engaged, responsive, and aligned—even during stress. This approach supports rebuilding trust, deepening intimacy, and creating long-term relationship stability.

Click to Schedule Your No risk 50 minute consultation

Therapy for Couples Navigating Parenthood

As a therapist, a parent, and a former workaholic chef, I understand how caregiving, career demands, and personal identity shifts collide in modern partnerships. Parenthood in particular can rewire the entire relationship system at incredible speed.

I specialize in working with new parents, including dads navigating postpartum shifts who are adjusting to the emotional, physical, and logistical demands of this life stage. In therapy, we address issues like emotional availability, parenting teamwork, sexual intimacy, and identity loss after children.

Some issues that bring couples to therapy are:

  • Transitioning to parenthood

  • Dating or premarital counseling

  • Long-term relationship facing stagnation

  • High-conflict partnerships or betrayal recovery

  • Deciding whether to stay or part ways respectfully

  • Addiction/Partner Addiction Support

  • Balance (Work/Life/Family)

  • Blended Families

  • Chronic Illness

  • Divorce

  • Extended Family

  • Intimacy

  • Mental Illness

  • Pornography

  • Sex and desire discrepancies

Whether you're hoping to reconnect, repair, or gain clarity, therapy offers a space to work through uncertainty with guidance and compassion.

Is Couples Therapy Right for You?

Building emotional safety and trust

  • Increasing empathy and mutual understanding

  • Navigating conflict without escalation

  • Repairing wounds and rebuilding intimacy

  • Clarifying boundaries, needs, and shared goals

  • Strengthening communication skills that last

In Couples Therapy, We Focus On:

Relational Healing is Possible

Relationships can be repaired. Emotional intimacy can be restored. With the right support, couples often rediscover a sense of safety, humor, and mutual care they thought was lost. Whether you stay together or separate with grace, therapy helps illuminate what’s possible.

I offer couples therapy in San Marino, South Pasadena, and nearby communities including Pasadena, Alhambra, and the greater San Gabriel Valley. Virtual therapy sessions are also available for couples throughout California.

Book a Zero-Risk Consultation

Take the first step by scheduling a 50-minute zero-risk consultation. If we’re a good fit, we’ll continue. If not, there’s no charge. Either way, you’ll leave with more insight into your relationship.

Let’s tend to what matters—together.

Click to Schedule Your No risk 50 minute consultation