“I reach for you, and it feels like you’re already gone.”
“I go quiet, because everything I say only makes it worse.”
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, virtual across Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Missouri, and New Jersey
Virtual sessions only · by secure video
You are both trying. That’s what makes it hurt.
One of you keeps knocking on a door that feels locked, louder each time, because silence feels like an answer. The other keeps holding the door shut, not out of coldness, but because every knock sounds like a verdict, and you don’t know how to open it without failing again.
The argument is about the dishes, or the phone, or the tone. It is never really about the dishes. Underneath, two questions keep getting asked without words: Am I loved? Am I safe?
The cycle is the enemy — not each other.
Neither of you is the problem. You are caught in a pattern with a mind of its own: the harder one of you reaches, the further the other retreats, and the further one retreats, the harder the other reaches.
Most couples I meet have never seen it from the outside. Once you can see it, you can stop fighting each other and start fighting it, together.
What Emotionally Focused Therapy actually does
We slow the fight down until you can both see the steps. The sharp words and the shutdown sit on the surface. Beneath them are softer things that almost never get said out loud: the fear of not mattering, the fear of failing the person you love.
In Emotionally Focused Therapy, the surface pattern is called the negative cycle, and the softer feelings underneath are where change happens. That is why I say the feeling work is the practical work. Emotion is not the problem to manage. Emotion is the solution, when it finally reaches the right person.
Somewhere in the middle of this work, one of you usually says something like, “I didn’t realize you were scared — I thought you just didn’t care.” That moment is not the end of therapy. It’s the turn.
First, we calm the storm.
We map the cycle together until it stops running you.
Then, we build new moments of reaching.
The quieter partner learns it is safe to step forward. The reaching partner learns to ask from softness instead of alarm.
Finally, we make it yours.
Old problems get solved from a new place of connection, and you leave with a way back to each other that you can find on your own.
What our sessions will look like
Every session is virtual, by secure video, from wherever you are in the six states where I’m licensed. Many couples find they speak more honestly from their own living room.
We start together, in a 50-minute session, or in a 100-minute semi-intensive if you want a running start. Early on, I meet with each of you once on your own. That way I understand each side from the inside, and either of you can tell me privately what home is really like.
After that we meet together, usually weekly. Couples often feel the fog begin to lift in the first few sessions. Lasting change takes longer. The model was designed as short-term work, often 8 to 20 sessions, though some couples need more, and I’ll tell you honestly where we are as we go.
I practice Emotionally Focused Therapy because it is one of the better-researched approaches to couples therapy, and I have advanced training in it.
In Genesis, the first thing God asks after everything breaks is where the man is. The man says he was afraid, and he hid (Genesis 3:9-10). One reaching, one hiding: the pattern is that old, and so is the reaching. I believe marriage can be a covenant worth fighting for, and I’ll fight for yours. If faith matters to you, it’s welcome here. If it doesn’t, you’ll never be pushed. You don’t have to share my faith to do this work with me.
Considered group therapy?
Group Therapy Begins February 2027
Sometimes the softening starts in another room first. You say the hard thing out loud, to people who already understand, and nobody leaves. Then you bring that home.
Unafraid to Heal has a room for everyone in your family: single adults ready to love differently, women carrying more than anyone sees, and teenagers learning to trust themselves again. Unafraid doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid. It means you’re done letting the fear decide.
Real Men Heal is where a man keeps his strength and stops carrying the weight alone.
Questions couples ask before the first call
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Come anyway. One person changing their steps changes the dance. I’ll meet with you to understand the cycle from your side and, if it fits, help you invite your partner in a way that doesn’t sound like a summons.
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Here is the honest answer: I can’t know until I’ve met you both. Many couples arrive convinced it’s over and discover it was the cycle that was exhausted, not the love.
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Yes. We can begin with a short, structured season focused on one question. Not “how do we fix this?” but “do we both want to try?” Nobody has to pretend they’ve already decided.
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Yes: the side of the relationship. Neither of you is the problem, and both of you will be seen.
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Yes. An affair is a wound to the bond, and it has to be named, felt, and repaired, not rushed past. The partner who was hurt sets the pace for trust. The partner who broke it learns to stay present to the pain without defending. Accountability, not rejection.
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This work is for adult couples, 18 and older: married, engaged, or committed; in crisis, or simply tired of the distance.
It is built for couples who are hurting, not for couples where someone is unsafe. If either of you is afraid of the other — of being hit, threatened, tracked, controlled, or punished later for what you say in session — couples therapy is not the right first step. That is one reason I meet with each of you alone early on. If safety is a concern, I’ll help you find the right support first. That is accountability, not rejection.
If you are in danger now, call 911. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.
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A 2024 analysis that pooled 20 studies and 332 couples found that about 70% of couples were free of relationship distress by the end of therapy, and that the gains largely held in the studies that followed couples afterward (Spengler, Lee, Wiebe & Wittenborn, Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice).
One finding matters most to me. Couples did better when their therapist stayed faithful to the model. So I have invested in the training most therapists never take. I have advanced training in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: ICEEFT’s Externship and Core Skills.
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Here is the honest answer: most of the research on this model was done in person, and studies of online work are newer. What I see is that couples often speak more honestly from their own living room, and there’s no drive home to argue on afterward.
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No. Faith is my conviction, never your requirement.
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Yes. I can see both partners for individual therapy, provided my clinical assessment finds no contraindications.
You don’t have to arrive agreeing
You don’t have to agree on what went wrong. You only have to be willing to look at the cycle together. I’ll hold the room steady while you do.