Couples Therapy in Pasadena & Studio City
We provide couples therapy in Los Angeles, including Pasadena, Studio City, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, and surrounding communities.
Relationships can become painful and disconnected even when both partners care deeply about one another. Whether you're struggling with recurring arguments, rebuilding trust, or feeling more like roommates than partners, couples therapy can help you understand what's happening between you and find a different way forward.
What to Expect in Couples Therapy
Couples therapy is an opportunity to slow down and understand what's happening between you, especially when conversations at home seem to lead to the same painful places.
Rather than focusing on who's right or wrong, we help you recognize the patterns that keep you stuck and understand the emotions, fears, and unmet needs beneath them. You may begin to see how one partner's attempts to feel closer can leave the other feeling pressured, or how withdrawing to avoid conflict can unintentionally deepen feelings of rejection.
Our approach combines insight into these deeper relationship dynamics with practical tools for improving communication, navigating conflict, rebuilding trust, and strengthening emotional intimacy.
Depending on your needs, therapy may draw from Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), the Gottman Method, and Relational Life Therapy (RLT). Sessions are tailored to your relationship, whether you're navigating recurring arguments, the transition to parenthood, emotional distance, or uncertainty about your future together.
You don't have to be in crisis to benefit from couples therapy. Sometimes the most meaningful work begins when both partners recognize that they want something to feel different, even if they're not yet sure how to get there.
Finding your way back to each other, or understanding what comes next
Relationships can be among the most meaningful and complicated parts of our lives. Even couples who love each other deeply can find themselves feeling lonely, misunderstood, or caught in patterns they don't know how to change.
Perhaps you're having the same argument over and over, with neither of you feeling heard. Maybe one of you longs for more closeness while the other feels overwhelmed by the pressure to connect. Or perhaps the conflict has quieted, but in its place is a growing distance that feels just as painful.
Sometimes it's difficult to identify exactly what's wrong. You may simply have the sense that something important between you has been lost.
Couples therapy offers a space to slow down, become curious about what's happening between you, and begin to understand each other in new ways.
Understanding the Patterns That Keep You Stuck
Often, the difficulties couples face aren't simply about the things they're arguing over. They're about the emotional patterns that emerge when each person feels hurt, afraid, disappointed, or misunderstood.
One partner may become critical or demanding in an effort to feel closer, while the other withdraws to protect themselves from feeling inadequate or overwhelmed. Both may feel increasingly alone, even as each is trying, in their own way, to preserve the relationship.
Over time, these patterns can become so familiar that it feels impossible to imagine relating differently.
In couples therapy, we work to understand not only what happens between you, but why. We explore the feelings, fears, expectations, and experiences each partner brings into the relationship, including those that may be difficult to recognize or put into words.
The goal isn't to determine who's right or wrong. It's to create enough understanding and emotional safety for something different to become possible.
What Can Couples Therapy Help With?
Couples seek therapy for many reasons, including:
Recurring arguments and difficulties communicating
Emotional distance, loneliness, or disconnection
Differences in needs for closeness, intimacy, and independence
Parenting disagreements and the transition to parenthood
Betrayal, broken trust, or infidelity
Resentment and unresolved hurt
Major life transitions and changing relationship roles
Uncertainty about the future of the relationship
You don't need to be in crisis to benefit from couples therapy. Sometimes the most meaningful work begins when partners recognize that the relationship they've built no longer feels quite like the relationship they want.
Making Room for Both Partners
A relationship is shaped by two people, each with their own history, vulnerabilities, hopes, and ways of protecting themselves.
Our approach to couples therapy is grounded in attachment, relational, and psychodynamic perspectives. We are interested in the ways early experiences and unconscious expectations influence how we love, communicate, and respond to one another.
Therapy offers an opportunity to understand what lies beneath familiar conflicts, express feelings that have been difficult to share, and develop greater compassion for both yourself and your partner.
This work can help couples move beyond simply managing disagreements toward a deeper understanding of themselves and each other.
When You're Not Sure Whether to Stay Together
Not every couple enters therapy with the same hopes or certainty about the future.
Sometimes one partner is more invested in repairing the relationship. Sometimes both are exhausted, ambivalent, or unsure whether meaningful change is possible.
Couples therapy doesn't require you to arrive with all the answers, or even with the same goals. It can be a place to explore what has happened between you, understand what each person needs, and consider what a more honest and fulfilling future might look like.
Our Couples Therapists
Tracy Bitterolf, AMFT
Tracy works with couples navigating communication difficulties, recurring conflict, emotional disconnection, and major relationship transitions. Her approach integrates Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Relational Life Therapy (RLT), and the Gottman Method, with an emphasis on helping partners recognize unhelpful cycles, rebuild trust, and strengthen emotional connection.
Sarah Wright, MA, AMFT, APCC
Sarah brings a depth-oriented, psychodynamic, and attachment-based approach to her work with couples. She is interested in how our earliest relational experiences shape the expectations, fears, and patterns we bring into intimate relationships, often outside of our awareness. Her work invites partners to approach themselves and each other with curiosity, creating space for deeper understanding and new possibilities for connection.
Getting Started
Reaching out for couples therapy can feel vulnerable, particularly when you've been struggling for a long time or aren't sure what to expect.
Whether you're hoping to reconnect, work through longstanding difficulties, or gain clarity about your relationship, we welcome the opportunity to learn more about what brings you here.
Schedule a Free 15-Minute Consultation
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