LGBTQ+ Couples Therapy

🌈 LGBTQ+ Couples Therapy in Santa Barbara

Affirming, Compassionate Support for Love, Identity, and Connection

Every relationship deserves to be seen, understood, and celebrated for its authenticity.

For LGBTQ+ couples, that path toward love and connection often includes unique layers of experience — navigating identity, family expectations, social pressures, and the impact of bias or marginalization.

LGBTQ+ Couples Therapy offers a safe, affirming space to explore those experiences together. Here, your relationship and identities are fully respected, and your love is honored as something to be strengthened, not explained or defended.

In my Santa Barbara practice, I specialize in supporting couples of all genders and orientations who want to build deeper communication, trust, intimacy, and joy — while integrating the lived realities that shape who you are as individuals and as partners.

A Safe and Affirming Space for All Relationships

Affirming therapy goes beyond “acceptance.” It means creating a therapeutic space where you don’t have to educate your therapist, code-switch, or worry about judgment.

My approach honors the full diversity of relationships, including those that are:

• LGBTQ+, queer, trans, or gender expansive

• Polyamorous, open, or exploring non-traditional structures

• Intercultural or interfaith

• Navigating identity transitions or family changes

Whether you’re deepening your connection, healing after conflict, or exploring identity changes within your partnership, therapy offers a compassionate space to strengthen your bond while honoring each person’s truth.

My Approach: Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy & The Gottman Method

I combine two research-based, highly effective approaches — Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) and The Gottman Method — to support emotional safety, effective communication, and genuine intimacy.

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT)

EFT helps couples understand and transform the emotional patterns that keep them feeling disconnected. Based on attachment theory, it supports partners in identifying the fears and needs beneath conflict and learning how to respond to one another with empathy instead of defense.

Through EFT, couples learn to:

• Recognize their recurring “cycle” of conflict or withdrawal

• Express underlying emotions with honesty and care

• Rebuild trust, security, and responsiveness

• Deepen emotional and physical intimacy

EFT is especially powerful for LGBTQ+ couples, who may have learned to guard their emotions in response to societal rejection or past trauma. It helps rebuild a sense of belonging and safety — both within yourself and within your relationship.

The Gottman Method

The Gottman Method, grounded in over 40 years of relationship research, offers clear, practical tools for maintaining a healthy and lasting relationship.

Together, we’ll focus on:

• Strengthening friendship and admiration

• Managing conflict constructively

• Building rituals of connection and shared meaning

• Navigating stress and difference with empathy

• Rekindling affection, playfulness, and intimacy

For LGBTQ+ couples, the Gottman framework helps balance the emotional depth of EFT with concrete communication tools, creating both structure and safety in your relationship.

Working with Identity, Intimacy, and Sexual Connection

For many queer couples, intimacy and sexuality are deeply tied to identity, safety, and belonging.

Exploring those themes with compassion and curiosity can help you reconnect not only as partners, but as whole, authentic selves.

In therapy, we can address:

• Emotional and physical intimacy challenges

• Differences in desire, libido, or comfort

• Reclaiming sexuality after trauma or shame

• Navigating gender transitions within partnership

• Building trust and pleasure through open communication

This is gentle, trauma-informed, sex-positive work. You set the pace. My role is to guide you toward self-acceptance, mutual understanding, and shared intimacy that feels aligned and alive.

Healing the Impact of Trauma and Minority Stress

Many LGBTQ+ individuals carry the effects of minority stress — the chronic strain of navigating prejudice, rejection, or fear of being misunderstood. These experiences can affect how partners communicate, trust, and connect.

In therapy, we explore how past experiences may be showing up in your relationship today — perhaps through conflict avoidance, emotional shutdown, or fear of vulnerability.

A trauma-informed lens helps both partners build awareness and compassion for these patterns. You’ll learn tools for co-regulation, emotional safety, and healing — individually and together.

Integrating Somatic and Mindfulness Practices

Because trauma and emotion live in the body, I often incorporate somatic awareness and mindfulness into couples work. These practices help partners stay grounded and present, especially during moments of tension or intimacy.

You’ll learn to:

• Recognize when your body is in defense or shutdown

• Use breath and grounding techniques during conflict

• Reconnect to your body as a source of pleasure and safety

• Feel more present during affection and intimacy

Bringing the body into therapy helps transform connection from something intellectual to something felt and embodied — essential for intimacy and trust

Common Themes in LGBTQ+ Couples Therapy

Couples come to therapy for many reasons, including:

• Communication breakdowns or recurring conflicts

• Navigating identity shifts or transitions

• Coping with family rejection or lack of support

• Disagreements about boundaries or relationship structure

• Differences in sexual needs or expectations

• Healing from infidelity or trust breaches

• Balancing individuality with togetherness

Whatever brings you to therapy, we’ll move at your pace — honoring both your relationship and the broader social context that shapes it.

Couples Therapy with Me

As a licensed marriage and family therapist in Santa Barbara, I bring a humanistic, evidence-informed, and trauma-sensitive lens to couples work. My therapy dog, Sophie, sometimes joins sessions to offer calm presence and warmth.

My style is both gentle and direct — creating a balance of empathy, curiosity, and accountability.

I want you both to feel seen, supported, and empowered to grow into a relationship that reflects your values and truth.

Together, we’ll blend emotional depth, practical skills, and authentic communication to create meaningful, lasting change.

When to Reach Out

You don’t need to be in crisis to benefit from therapy. Many couples seek support when they:

• Feel emotionally or sexually disconnected

• Want to strengthen communication and closeness

• Are navigating identity, transition, or coming out together

• Need guidance rebuilding trust or commitment

Therapy can be a place of growth, repair, and renewal — a space to reclaim joy, safety, and connection.

Ready to Begin?

If you’re looking for LGBTQ+ couples therapy in Santa Barbara, I would be honored to support you. Whether you’re building a foundation for lasting love or working to reconnect after hardship, this space is here for you — affirming, safe, and guided by compassion.

Reach out today to schedule a consultation and begin the next chapter of your relationship together.