Relational Life Therapy for couples who are ready to stop managing the distance and start closing it.
The couples I work with haven't stopped loving each other. What they've lost is the ability to reach each other — the capacity to say what they really mean, to hear what their partner is actually saying underneath the words, to stop a fight before it gets to the place they both regret.
Most couples arrive in therapy after years of the same argument in different forms. They've tried talking it through. They've tried not talking about it. They've read books, listened to podcasts, given each other space. None of it has changed the pattern, because the pattern doesn't live in the behavior — it lives in the underlying relational dynamics that drive the behavior.
You can spend a lifetime being curious about the inner world of your partner, and being brave enough to share your own, and never be done discovering all there is to know about each other.
Most couples therapy is carefully neutral. The therapist sits between the partners, facilitates, validates, reflects. There is real value in that — but it is not what RLT does, and for many couples it is not sufficient. They have already had versions of the same conversation many times. What they need is not a better-facilitated version of the familiar impasse.
RLT is direct. I name what I see. I hold both partners accountable to the relationship, not just to their individual experience of it. I take sides when taking sides is what the relationship needs. But — and this is what makes RLT genuinely distinct from approaches that are merely confrontational — that directness comes from inside a stance of genuine warmth and positive regard. When I name a problematic behavior, I am not judging the person doing it. I hold them in warm regard even as I am clear about what is not working. And I am always curious about where it came from: what did you learn, early in your life, that made this way of being in a relationship feel necessary?
This means the work has two movements that happen simultaneously. One is accountability — being honest about the impact of behaviors that are harming the relationship, and expecting both partners to take responsibility for how they show up. The other is exploration — understanding the relational beliefs and survival strategies that were learned long before this relationship began. You are not reduced to your worst patterns here. You are understood through them.
RLT also understands couples conflict through the lens of three parts of the self: the Wounded Child (our earliest pain, held in the amygdala and deep limbic system), the Adaptive Child (the survival strategies encoded in subcortical habit circuits to protect that pain — the automatic behaviors that feel like self-protection but function as self-destruction), and the Wise Adult (the prefrontal cortex self, capable of genuine presence, accountability, and intimacy). Most conflict happens between two Adaptive Children. Healing requires bringing the Wise Adult into the room — and keeping it there when the pressure rises.
RLT identifies five patterns couples resort to when they're hurt or disconnected — patterns that feel natural but reliably make things worse:
Each of these has an antidote — a winning strategy that requires skill rather than just effort. Teaching those skills, and helping you use them in real time with each other, is the core of the work.
Sessions take place in my office in San Leandro, via video with both of you at the same location, or with each of you joining from a separate screen. In the first session I make two agreements with couples. The first: you can always answer any question I ask with "pass" — I'll honor it, and thank you for taking care of yourself. The second is about confidentiality: our sessions are confidential between the three of us, and I also offer each partner the option to contact me privately outside of sessions. Anything shared in those conversations stays between us. This allows me to be as fully informed as possible and to help each of you navigate what you're carrying into the work.
The couples who get the most from this work are those where both partners are willing to be honest, willing to be challenged, and willing to take some responsibility for how they show up. You don't need to arrive without defenses — the work will address those. But you do need to arrive.
I work with couples across a wide range of presentations: long-term partners who have drifted, newer couples in acute conflict, couples navigating infidelity, couples considering separation, and couples who are generally functional but ready for real depth. I am LGBTQ+ affirming and work with couples of all backgrounds, orientations, and configurations.