Couples Therapy in Santa Monica & Online Throughout California
Creating space to understand your relationship, the patterns you get caught in, and the ways you want to connect.
Relationships can bring some of the most meaningful parts of ourselves to the surface—and sometimes the most difficult ones. I work with couples who want to better understand the patterns between them, communicate more openly, repair disconnection, and create a relationship that feels more secure, connected, and authentic.
In-person couples therapy in Santa Monica & West Los Angeles, and online throughout California.
The Couples I Tend to Work With
I work with couples who care deeply about one another but find themselves caught in patterns they don't quite know how to change. Sometimes the relationship feels disconnected or stuck; other times, the same arguments keep resurfacing despite both people wanting something different.
Many couples I work with are navigating questions around intimacy, communication, trust, boundaries, commitment, or how to remain connected while each person continues to grow and change.
I also work well with couples who are curious about their relationship beyond a particular crisis including people who want to better understand how their individual histories, attachment patterns, and ways of protecting themselves come together within the relationship.
I welcome couples and individuals across the spectrum of gender and sexuality, including queer, LGBTQ+, and gender-expansive clients. My work is informed by feminist and gender-affirming perspectives, with attention to the ways gender, sexuality, culture, power, and social expectations can shape our relationships with ourselves and one another. I approach identity with curiosity and respect, creating space for you to explore who you are and how you want to relate without having to fit yourself into a prescribed role.
My role isn't to determine who is right or wrong. It is to create a space where both people can feel heard, understood, and able to become curious about what is happening between them.
What Brings Couples to Therapy
Communication & Conflict
When conversations repeatedly turn into criticism, defensiveness, withdrawal, or misunderstanding, it can become difficult to feel heard by one another. We can slow these interactions down and begin to understand the patterns underneath them.
Attachment & Relationship Patterns
Our early relationships can influence how we experience closeness, trust, conflict, and emotional safety. Exploring these patterns can help couples understand why certain dynamics feel so familiar and create new ways of relating.
Intimacy & Vulnerability
Emotional and physical intimacy can become complicated when one or both partners have difficulty expressing needs, receiving care, or feeling safe enough to be vulnerable. Therapy can create space to explore what makes closeness possible—and what gets in its way.
Disconnection & Repair
Sometimes couples love each other deeply but feel far apart. We can work with the hurt, resentment, loneliness, or disappointment that can accumulate over time and develop more meaningful ways of repairing after moments of disconnection.
Boundaries, Needs & Individuality
A healthy relationship requires both connection and a sense of self. We can explore boundaries, people-pleasing, overfunctioning, hyperindependence, and difficulty expressing or honoring individual needs within the relationship.
Transitions & Change
Relationships evolve. Couples may seek therapy while navigating engagement, marriage, parenthood, relocation, career changes, family dynamics, infidelity, loss, or other significant transitions that change the shape of the relationship.
A Relational & Emotionally Focused Approach to Couples Therapy
I believe the relationship itself is an important source of insight and healing. Rather than focusing only on what happens during an argument, we can become curious about the emotional patterns underneath it and what each person is longing for, protecting, fearing, or trying to communicate.
My approach is trauma-informed, attachment-based, and person-centered, drawing heavily from Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and integrating psychodynamic, relational, somatic, and evidence-based approaches. I also draw from attachment history and attachment models to understand how each partner has learned to experience closeness, safety, trust, and vulnerability.
I use Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to help couples develop greater clarity around what they are feeling and needing, and to practice communicating those needs in ways that make room for both partners. Rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all formula, I tailor our work to the unique dynamics, history, and needs of each relationship.
Emotionally Focused Therapy
EFT helps us understand the emotional cycles that couples can become caught in—such as pursuing and withdrawing, criticism and defensiveness, or disconnection and avoidance. Together, we work toward identifying the deeper emotions and attachment needs underneath these patterns and creating new ways of responding to one another.
Attachment & Relationship History
Our earliest relationships can shape what we learn about trust, closeness, vulnerability, and whether it feels safe to depend on others. Understanding each partner's attachment history can help illuminate patterns that emerge in the relationship today.
Relational & Psychodynamic
We can explore the individual experiences, unconscious patterns, defenses, and expectations that each partner brings into the relationship—and how these shape the space between you.
Nonviolent Communication
NVC offers a framework for expressing observations, feelings, needs, and requests with greater clarity and compassion. It can help couples move away from blame and toward communication that creates more possibility for understanding and connection.
Somatic & Emotional Regulation
Because conflict happens in the body as well as the mind, we may also pay attention to physiological responses, nervous-system activation, and the ways each partner responds when feeling threatened, overwhelmed, or disconnected.
What you're moving toward
Couples therapy isn't about creating a perfect relationship or eliminating conflict. Conflict is part of being in relationship. The work is often about developing a different relationship to conflict and to one another.
Over time, our work may support:
Greater understanding
Recognizing the deeper needs, fears, and protective patterns beneath your interactions.
More honest communication
Being able to express what you actually feel and need without losing connection.
Greater emotional safety
Creating a relationship where vulnerability, difference, and difficult emotions can have a place.
More secure connection
Developing greater trust, intimacy, responsiveness, and confidence in your ability to navigate challenges together.
A stronger sense of self within the relationship
Learning how to remain connected to yourself while also making room for your partner.
Greater capacity for repair
Learning how to move through rupture without allowing disconnection to become the defining story of your relationship.
In-Person & Online Therapy
Therapy in Santa Monica & Online Throughout California
In-Person Therapy in Santa Monica & West Los Angeles
I offer in-person psychotherapy from my office in Santa Monica, serving individuals and couples throughout the Westside and surrounding Los Angeles communities.
Online Therapy Throughout California
I also offer secure telehealth psychotherapy to clients throughout California, allowing us to work together from wherever you feel most comfortable.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Couples therapy can help with communication difficulties, recurring conflict, emotional disconnection, intimacy, trust, attachment patterns, boundaries, life transitions, and other challenges within a relationship. It can also be helpful for couples who aren't in crisis but want to deepen their connection and better understand their relationship.
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Yes. Recurring arguments often reflect a larger relational pattern rather than simply the topic of the disagreement. We can slow the cycle down and explore what each partner is experiencing underneath it, including the needs, fears, and protective responses that may be contributing to the pattern.
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Yes. Attachment is an important part of my work with couples. We may explore how each partner experiences closeness, distance, trust, vulnerability, and emotional safety, as well as how earlier relationships may influence the way each person responds within the relationship.
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Yes. Communication is often about more than learning what words to use. We can explore what makes it difficult to express needs, hear one another, stay present during conflict, or communicate without becoming defensive or withdrawn.
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Couples may seek therapy following betrayal or other significant ruptures in trust. Therapy can provide a structured space to understand what happened, process the impact, explore accountability and boundaries, and determine what repair or moving forward may look like for the relationship.
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Yes. Couples may experience emotional or physical disconnection for many reasons. Therapy can provide space to understand what has changed, what each person is longing for, and what may be making vulnerability or intimacy difficult.
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Yes. I offer secure online couples therapy throughout California, as well as in-person couples therapy in Santa Monica and West Los Angeles.
How to contact me:
info@therapywithsloane.com
(424) 788-0885
1460 7th St #300
Santa Monica, CA 90401