couples therapy

Couples Therapy: strengthen communication, connection, and intimacy

At Integrative Couples Therapy, we believe that all relationships—whether you are married, dating, or in a long-term committed partnership—can thrive with the right support. If you want to address recurring challenges, resolve specific issues, revitalize your sexual intimacy, or are seeking help during a relationship crisis, our services offer a compassionate and practical path toward lasting change. At our practice we specialize in couples therapy and have successfully counseled hundreds of couples.

Is Couples Therapy Right for You?

Are you and your partner:

  • Stuck in repetitive arguments or communication breakdowns?

  • Feeling disconnected or emotionally distant?

  • Struggling with infidelity or betrayal?

  • Seeking to rekindle sexual passion and intimacy?

  • Fighting frequently about parenting, finances, chores, household duties or other issues?

  • Wanting to build a stronger partnership and foundation for the future?

  • Unable to get on the same page regarding parenting and family dynamics?

  • Needing support related to anxiety, depression, ADHD or substance use?

If any of these resonate, couples therapy can help you and your partner communicate better while strengthening your connection. At Integrative Couples Therapy, we work with partners at all stages of their relationship to overcome challenges, increase understanding, and foster emotional and relational security.

Our Approach to Couples Therapy

Our therapists are trained in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT), which is evidence-based, and one of the most respected approaches to relationship therapy. Using EFCT, we help couples:

  • Transform negative interaction cycles that create conflict or distance.

  • Identify and directly express underlying emotional needs.

  • Repair trust and safety and closeness after relationship injuries.

  • Develop practical tools to navigate challenges with empathy and understanding.

  • Work as a partners to support each other with practical matters as well as nurturing hopes and dreams.

Through this process, couples experience better communication, greater emotional awareness, and an enhanced ability to ‘be there’ for one another. They discover how to work as a team to create the kind of relationship they truly desire.

What You Can Expect in Couples Therapy

Couples therapy involves several key stages:

Assessment

Therapy begins with a relationship assessment. In the first appointment, the couple attends therapy together. This session provides the opportunity for you and your therapist to determine if couples therapy is the appropriate service for your current challenges.

Identifying and Understanding Negative Patterns

One of the building blocks of couples therapy is discovering your interactional patterns (how you and your partner’s thoughts, emotions, needs, and behaviors interact) that contribute to disconnection, conflict and distance. Recognizing these patterns without judgement or blame sets the framework for making meaningful changes and creating new interactions that lead to more connection, healthy communication, and closeness.

Creating New Patterns of Interaction

As you gain a deeper understanding of your relationship dynamics, we work with you to actively shape new ways to communicate and bond. These new patterns strengthen your connection and lay the foundation for a long term secure and fulfilling relationship.

Building Emotional Intelligence and Bonding

Through facilitated conversations and experiential exercises, we guide you in processing and sharing deeper emotions. This builds empathy and understanding, allowing you to express your needs and vulnerabilities in ways that are clear and direct, while bringing you closer to your partner. As you strengthen your ability to understand and feel emotions, this will support you to navigate challenging moments outside of session with more grace.

Healing Pain from the Past

Your therapist will guide you in healing relationship injuries from the past and repairing any damage caused by conflicts. This process fosters deeper trust, emotional security, and the ability to move forward, creating the ability to co-create the relationship you desire.

Revitalizing Sex and Physical Touch

Your therapist will help you navigate challenges around sex and touch with care and understanding. Whether you're struggling with mismatched desire, feeling disconnected, or having difficulty communicating about your needs, we provide a safe space for you and your partner to explore these concerns. Our goal is to help you create a deeper, more satisfying sexual connection, and greater levels of affection, by fostering open conversations, addressing emotional barriers, and building intimacy that feels fulfilling for both of you.

Collaborative Problem Solving

With a secure emotional foundation and interactions in place, your therapist will support you in working together to solve problems and make agreements, whether they involve sex, parenting, extended family, finances, household duties or anything else you want to address.

Creating a Shared Vision

Your therapist will help you and your partner align your goals and work as a team to achieve your hopes and dreams, individually and as a couple. We believe that two are stronger than one, and when you share resources, skills, and strengths, you can create a powerful partnership that supports your shared vision. Through improved communication, collaboration, and understanding, we guide you in building a relationship where both of you feel empowered to pursue your vision— independently and together.

Who We Work With

Our couples therapy clients are typically married, engaged, or in long-term committed partnerships. We also work with couples that are dating or in new relationships that want to set their relationship up for success. We welcome all relationship structures and sexual orientations at our practice, including couples in traditional marriages, couples practicing consensual non-monogamy, blended or step families, and LGBTQ+ couples. We provide therapy for a wide range of relationship situations including:

  • Couples facing ongoing conflict or communication struggles

  • Partners working through infidelity or betrayal

  • Those preparing for marriage or living together

  • Partners navigating life transitions or major stressors

  • Couples looking to reignite emotional, sexual, and physical intimacy

  • Couples needing support with difficulties related to parenting and family dynamics

  • Couples wanting support with personal or family mental health challenges

Why Choose Integrative Couples Therapy?

At Integrative Couples Therapy, our goal is to help you and your partner create a relationship that is supportive, secure, and deeply fulfilling. Here’s what sets us apart:

  • Expert Guidance: We specialize in couples therapy. Our therapists are highly trained in evidence based couples therapy approaches, including Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. We are immersed in couples therapy and work with couples almost exclusively.

  • Compassionate and Non-Judgmental Environment: We provide a confidential and safe space where both partners can feel understood and supported, regardless of the challenges they face and what brings them into therapy.

  • Personalized Care: Every relationship is unique, and we tailor our approach to meet your specific needs and dynamics. We provide a high level of service and care.

  • Confidentiality: As Licensed and Associate Marriage and Family Therapists that adhere to the professional guidelines that are set forth by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences and the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, we hold the highest level of confidentiality and privacy.

  • In-Person and Virtual Options: We offer both in-person sessions in Encinitas, CA, and virtual therapy for couples across California, providing flexibility and accessibility.

Take the First Step Toward a Stronger Relationship

If you’re ready to invest in your relationship, we’re here to help. Whether you’re navigating challenges or looking to enhance your connection, Integrative Couples Therapy provides the tools and guidance to help you thrive together.

Contact us today to learn more or schedule your first session. Let’s work together to create a relationship that brings greater joy, connection, and emotional security.

Frequently asked questions

  • Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFCT) for couples is a structured approach that enhances emotional bonds by focusing on emotions and attachment theory. Developed by Dr. Sue Johnson, EFCT helps couples identify and express emotions, understand underlying needs, and address attachment-related issues to form secure bonds. It works by de-escalating negative interaction patterns, creating positive communication cycles, and integrating new behaviors into daily life. EFCT is highly effective, with 70-75% of couples moving from distress to recovery and 90% showing significant improvements. Benefits include improved communication, stronger emotional bonds, and effective conflict resolution. EFCT is ideal for couples facing relationship distress, communication problems, emotional disconnection, trust issues, and infidelity. In every session, couples have the opportunity to bring forward specific challenges they are struggling with, such as conflict, sex, infidelity, parenting, or finances. 

  • All of our therapists hold Masters Degrees in Marriage and Family Therapy or Counseling and are Licensed or Registered Marriage and Family Therapists with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. In addition, engage in ongoing training in research based couples therapy models.

  • We have discovered that most couples communicate well during the times they are feeling secure and connected. Yet when couples experience conflict, their communication skills tend to go out the window. Communication is complex. The messages we send to others are influenced by emotions, verbal language, body language, thoughts, memories, facial expressions, past experiences, and tone of voice. Food, sleep, substances, and our general state of wellbeing also impact how we communicate. Therapy helps couples raise awareness, and shift, the underlying dynamics that drive their communication patterns. 

  • Absolutely. Couples therapy includes sex therapy. For most people sex is a vital aspect of their romantic relationship. The process of couples therapy begins with helping couples co-create a solid foundation and new ways of interacting with each other. Once this is solidly established we help our clients explore and enhance their sexual connection.

  • Yes, we can help. You are in the right place and we are here for you. We provide counseling that is direct while being non-blaming and non-shaming. Affairs are often considered a relationship crisis and post-traumatic stress symptoms are common. With therapy couples can recover, and stay together, if this is their goal.

  • Yes, if this is your goal. We help our couples meet their goals for therapy, whatever their goals may be. At the beginning of our work together we will help each partner articulate what it is they want to get out of the therapy process. The therapists at Integrative Couples Therapy are pro-relationship and align themselves with the goals that their clients bring to therapy.

  • This is a common dilemma that is best discussed in therapy. We cannot give direct advice on whether someone stays in their relationship or leaves the relationship. Generally speaking, good couples therapy helps most people create secure and fulfilling relationships. Many couples find peace of mind in knowing that they are trying everything they can to improve their relationship before making this decision. If you are seriously considering leaving your marriage, we encourage you to share this with your couples therapist and partner directly so you can begin address the challenges you are facing before making this decision. Some couples decide that the best thing for them is to end their relationship. If this is the decision you and your partner make, your therapist will support you to separate or divorce amicably.

  • Some couples begin therapy at a time when one partner is not interested in working on their relationship at this particular time. During the assessment process we will explore your commitment levels to the relationship and to therapy itself.  Therapy generally helps couples tap into energy and hope. The assessment process with your therapist can help you develop more clarity.

  • If you are being abused, whether this is physically, emotionally, mentally, financially or sexually, couples therapy is not safe. We encourage you to schedule individual therapy instead of couples therapy.  If you are already in couples therapy, contact our care coordinator and ask to schedule an individual therapy session with a therapist that is not your couples therapist. The individual therapist can help support you with next steps that will prioritize your safety. If you do not feel safe enough to bring this information forward to one of our therapists please contact another therapist outside our practice. To educate yourself on abuse in relationships at The Hotline website https://www.thehotline.org/.  Or visit the Community Resource Center https://crcncc.org/get-help/domestic-violence-services/ .

  • Yes. We work with couples practicing consensual non-monogamy, polyamory, swinging, and open marriages. Therapy can help you engage in meaningful dialogue, support each other during challenges, and keep connection strong while navigating the complexities of multiple relationships. 

  • Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) is an evidence based practice. Ninety percent of couples that move through the EFT process find that their relationship improves and seventy percent of couples move from a distressed state to a satisfied state. To learn more about EFT research visit www.iceeft.com