Couples Therapy in Encinitas and Online throughout California
Helping couples heal and create relationships rooted in love, integrity and intimacy.
Many couples go through periods of conflict, tension, and disconnection. Couples therapy invites you to understand your relationship, yourself, and your partner and transform the patterns that keep you stuck.
Does This Sound Familiar?
Do you find yourselves caught in the same arguments, despite your best efforts to communicate clearly?
Do disagreements frequently leave you feeling ignored, misunderstood, defensive, or hurt?
Do you feel more like roommates than lovers and long for greater affection, connection, and intimacy?
Do you love each other but sense that something deeper is missing from your relationship?
Have past experiences or unresolved relational wounds made it difficult to feel close?
Has infidelity rocked the foundation of your relationship and you want to know if healing is possible?
Are you on the brink of divorce and wondering if your relationship and love can be restored?
Couples Therapy Services
Couples Therapy
Couples therapy offers ongoing support to help you strengthen your relationship, heal emotional wounds, and navigate challenges together. Sessions provide a dedicated space to deepen understanding, improve communication, and create lasting change. Couples typically meet weekly or biweekly for 55- or 85-minute sessions, depending on their needs and goals.
Couples Intensive
Private couples intensives are designed for partners who need more immersive support than traditional therapy sessions can provide. This extended time allows us to address significant challenges and work toward deeper understanding, healing, and connection. Couples can choose between a one-day or two-day format, with four hours of therapy each day.
Couples Workshop
Couples workshops bring partners together in an intimate group setting to learn, reflect, and grow alongside other couples. Through guided exercises, meaningful conversations, and experiential learning, you will explore the foundations of healthy relationships and develop practical tools for creating a more loving, secure, and fulfilling partnership.
Focus Areas
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I help couples communicate clearly, so each person feels heard and understood, rather than getting pulled into patterns of fighting or avoiding conflict.
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I support couples to cultivate emotional and sexual connection and revitalize their love through honest dialogue, action, and commitment to change.
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I help couples work as a team to navigate family, parenting, career, and household responsibilities - and create a life that supports hopes and dreams.
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Many couples struggle when trauma from their past shows up in the present. If we did not grow up with safe, loving, protective relationships, or if we experiences trauma in past relationships, our current relationship can suffer. Therapy provides the space for healing together.
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I help couples process emotional pain, cultivate security, and rebuild trust and integrity, whether they stay together or part ways.
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I guide couples to slow down, regulate emotions, and create the space for thoughtful conversations and decisions surrounding their marriage.
Meet Cristina Trette, LMFT
Hi, I am Cristina Trette. I have dedicated my career to helping couples renew their love, communicate more effectively, and cultivate greater intimacy. At the heart of my work is the belief that meaningful change is possible, even after years of disconnection, betrayal, or significant hurt.
My approach is based on Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy and attachment science, which offer powerful ways of understanding adult love relationships and marriage. In my work with couples, we go beyond surface-level problems to shift the underlying patterns that create conflict and distance.
I believe couples therapy should be active, direct, and highly engaged. I don't sit back and let couples fight, spend months rehashing the past, or simply listen and validate. Ultimately, my goal is to help people heal what has been painful and build relationships marked by greater love, integrity, intimacy and partnership.
You have options when it comes to couples therapy. Here is why my approach is different.
Couples Are My Specialty
Many therapists see some couples; I work exclusively with couples. I am deeply experienced in the common challenges couples face, from challenges with parenting and communication to sexless marriages and entrenched patterns of conflict. I am also well versed in relationship crises such as infidelity or facing the brink of divorce.
Extensive and Ongoing Training
I hold a Masters Degree in Marital and Family Therapy from the University of San Diego and am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. I have extensive training in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, an evidence-based and attachment oriented approach to relationship healing. The therapy you receive will be thoughtful, current and effective.
Professionalism and Maturity
I bring clinical depth, stated observations, and life experience (including parenthood, marriage, and divorce) to help you understand the patterns and behaviors that keep you stuck, and guide you towards positive, meaningful, and lasting change.
Warm and Personal Care
Operating a boutique solo practice enables me to be accessible, responsive, and engaged with my clients. I also coordinate care with individual therapists, family therapists, and psychiatrists to ensure my clients have a team of support when indicated. In addition, I have a network of professionals I regularly refer my clients to including financial advisors, mediators, and lawyers when requested.
