Couples Therapy in Los Angeles
Modern, depth-oriented therapy for couples ready to stop having the same fight—and start actually being seen by each other.
In-person in Encino and Studio City. Virtual across California, Nevada, and Oregon. Prefer one focused block of time? See Couples Intensives.
I draw on Internal Family Systems (IFS), psychodynamic and attachment-based therapy, and practical tools from CBT.
You love each other.
That's not the question. The question is why love alone hasn't been enough to fix the dynamic you've both gotten stuck inside.
The same argument keeps surfacing in different costumes. Conversations that should be simple keep ending in distance. One of you over-explains while the other goes quiet. One of you presses; one of you retreats. You're sleeping next to a person you genuinely care about and feeling lonelier than you should.
This is what most couples come in for. Not a single dramatic problem—a pattern. A loop. A way of being together that worked for a while and stopped working somewhere along the line.
“Most couples I see still love each other. What they've lost is a way to stay on the same side when things get hard. That's what we rebuild.”
Tanya Samuelian, LMFT
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A focused conversation to explore your goals, assess fit, and determine next steps for working together.
Who I Work With
My couples therapy practice in Los Angeles is focused on a specific kind of couple:
High-functioning partners who are competent everywhere else and somehow lost the thread with each other
Young couples and newer relationships building the foundation for something real—premarital work, early relationship growing pains, navigating moving in or moving forward
Long-term partners and married couples working through a season of disconnection, conflict, or transition
The common thread: two people who genuinely want to do the work, even when the work is hard.
For couples whose schedules or privacy needs require it, couples therapy is also available through my concierge practice—including in-home sessions across Westside LA, Greater LA, Malibu, Calabasas, and Westlake Village.
→ Learn more about concierge sessions
For specific situations: Premarital counseling · Intercultural couples · Couples with demanding careers.
What I Help Couples Work Through
A non-exhaustive list of what tends to come up in couples therapy:
Communication breakdowns — when conversations keep collapsing before they finish
Recurring conflict patterns — the same argument, different costumes
Emotional disconnection — sleeping next to someone and feeling distant from them
Trust ruptures and repair — after a breach of trust, secrecy, or a difficult chapter
Attachment dynamics — anxious-avoidant cycles, fear of abandonment, fear of engulfment
Differences in intimacy, sex, and desire — including mismatches in libido, emotional intimacy, or physical connection
Life transitions — career changes, moving in, getting married, having children, blending families
Cultural, religious, and family-of-origin dynamics—including blended families, intercultural relationships, or in-law complexities
Identity shifts in long-term relationships — when one or both of you have changed and the relationship hasn't quite caught up
If your situation isn't on this list, that's fine. The work isn't issue-specific—it's pattern-specific. What matters is what's happening between you, not what category it lives in.
How Couples Therapy Actually Goes
A few things distinguish modern couples therapy from the version most people picture.
We work with the pattern, not the personalities.
Most couples come in convinced the other person is the problem. Both are usually right, and both are usually wrong.
What's actually happening is a dynamic—a pattern that emerges between you, shaped by both of your histories, attachment styles, and nervous systems. The work isn't about figuring out who's right. It's about understanding what's happening between you that neither of you, alone, can change.
I'm not neutral. I'm balanced.
Therapy that's perfectly neutral often isn't very useful. My job isn't to referee. It's to track what's actually happening, name what each of you is doing (and not doing), and help both of you see the pattern clearly—even when that means saying something hard.
I'll advocate for both of you. I'll also push back when one of you is sidestepping something important. That's what good couples work requires.
We slow conversations down so they can actually land.
Most couples' conflicts move too fast. By the time you're three minutes into a familiar argument, both nervous systems are activated and neither of you is actually hearing the other.
Couples therapy is one of the few places where conversations can move at a speed that allows real understanding. Where the moment something gets activating, we can pause. Look. Name what's happening. Try again, differently.
Over time, that capacity transfers home.
We work with individual histories, not just the relationship.
Most patterns between couples have older origins. The way you respond to conflict was shaped before you ever met your partner. So was theirs.
Without flattening either of your individual stories into something pathological, we look at how each of your histories is showing up in the room—because that's often where real change becomes possible.
Illustrative Couples Experiences
“We could turn the smallest thing into an argument. And somehow it always ended up being about something completely different. I think what helped most was finally understanding why we were both getting so upset over things that seemed so minor.”
“We weren't necessarily fighting all the time. We just weren't really connecting anymore. It felt like we were living separate lives in the same house. Therapy gave us a place to actually talk about things we'd both been avoiding for a while.”
“My husband wasn't exactly thrilled about going to couples therapy. I think we both expected someone to tell us who was right and who was wrong. It wasn't like that at all. We started realizing how much we were misunderstanding each other, even when we thought we were being clear.”
WHAT TO EXPECT IN SESSIONS
What couples sessions actually look like
Sessions are fifty minutes, weekly or biweekly depending on what the work needs, in-person in Los Angeles or virtual across California, Nevada, and Oregon.
Private-pay, with superbills available for potential out-of-network insurance reimbursement. Fees are discussed in the initial inquiry.
Early sessions typically include:
An initial joint session to understand what's been going on
Sometimes one or two individual sessions with each of you (depending on the situation)
Mapping the pattern between you—the cycle, the triggers, the recurring loop
Identifying what each of you brings to the dynamic
Setting working goals you both feel aligned on
HOW LONG THIS TAKES
How long couples therapy usually takes
It depends on what you're working with and what you both want.
Initial shifts in awareness and de-escalation often within the first 4–8 weeks
Meaningful change in your dynamic—where the old pattern starts losing its grip—generally within three to six months
Deeper structural work in attachment, individual histories, and long-standing patterns tends to unfold over a longer arc
Maintenance and integration—sometimes at a less intensive cadence—often continues beyond that
What I can tell you is this: when both partners are genuinely willing to do the work, couples therapy has strong research behind it.
AFTER THE WORK
Maintenance sessions
When weekly therapy or an intensive has done what you came for, you don't have to stop cold. Some couples book a maintenance session every three months: one session to look at what's holding, notice an old pattern early, and adjust before it settles back in.
It's the same work at a lighter rhythm, on the calendar in advance, so it doesn't wait for the next hard week.
What Couples Therapy Actually Is
Couples therapy is a structured process where the pattern between you, not who's right, becomes the focus, with a trained third person who can see what neither of you can from inside it.
It's not:
A space where the therapist takes sides
A series of communication "tips" that don't survive the first real argument
A place to win
An indication that something is irreparably wrong
It is:
A way of understanding the deeper dynamics underneath the surface conflicts
A process that, when it works, makes the relationship more itself—not different, more honest
Not ready to book yet?
The Year in Review, for Two
$27 · Instant download
Two evenings for the two of you: look back on your own, compare notes, then plan the year ahead together.
See the planner →A NOTE ON WHEN TO START
Most couples wait too long.
Many wait years after problems first surface. By the time they arrive, the patterns have entrenched, the resentments have layered, and the work is harder than it needed to be.
You don't have to be in crisis to come in. Some of the most generative work I do is with couples who aren't in trouble—they're just paying attention to dynamics that, left unaddressed, would have become trouble.
If you've been noticing something between you and putting it on a back burner, this is your reminder that back burners have a way of becoming front burners.
How to access → in-person in California and virtual in California, Nevada, and Oregon.
Related reading
Why You Keep Repeating the Same Relationship Patterns ⟶
Relationship Anxiety: When Love Starts Feeling Like Pressure ⟶
Begin with a conversation.
A complimentary 15-minute phone consultation to talk through what's bringing you in and whether working together is the right fit.
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