Couples Therapy
Relational, depth, and change-oriented couples therapy is within reach.
Trained in
Services
Couples Therapy
For couples who feel stuck in conflict, distance, resentment, or recurring patterns.
Understand recurring relationship cycles
Build a realistic path forward
Navigate conflict without losing connection
Sex Therapy
For individuals and couples navigating intimacy, desire, sex, and emotional connection.
Explore differences in desire and create more fulfilling intimacy
Work through sexual anxiety, shame, avoidance, or disconnection
Address performance anxiety and compulsive sexual behavior
Intercultural Couples Therapy
For couples navigating different cultures, identities, family systems, and expectations.
Understanding cultural differences (and history) beneath conflict
Navigate family, gender, religion and values
Build a shared relationship culture together: Your Micro Culture
You’re together, but something isn’t working.
You may find yourselves having the same argument over and over, struggling to understand each other, or feeling increasingly disconnected despite genuinely trying to make the relationship work.
Couples therapy isn't simply about learning to communicate better. Couples counseling and relationship therapy can help you understand the deeper patterns underneath conflict—including attachment, family history, past wounds, and the ways each partner has learned to protect when we feel hurt or misunderstood.
Therapy can help you understand what's happening underneath the conflict so you can begin relating to each other differently.
Approaches That Inform My Couples Work
Different couples need different kinds of support. I integrate practical, research-backed modalities with deeper relational and attachment-focused work to help couples understand what is happening—and actually shift it.
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One of the most researched approaches to couples therapy, developed from decades of studying what makes relationships succeed or fail. Gottman’s research has predicted divorce with over 90% accuracy.
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A direct, action-oriented approach developed by Terry Real that helps couples break stubborn patterns. This is the “get in the weeds” kind of therapy—especially useful for couples who have already tried therapy but still feel stuck.
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Helps couples understand the protective “parts” that get activated during conflict. Similar to inner child work, both understand and update old internal operating systems that may no longer serve us in our adult relationships.
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Esther Perel’s work explores desire, intimacy, eroticism, infidelity, autonomy, and the tension between security and freedom in long-term relationships. Her framework informs how I think about intimacy, attraction, and the role of novelty in relational dynamics.
What Couples Therapy Can Help With
Communication & recurring conflict
Breaking out of arguments that seem to repeat themselves, even when the topic changes.
Feeling disconnected
Rebuilding emotional closeness, friendship, affection, and a sense of being on the same team.
Intimacy & sex
Navigating differences in desire, physical intimacy, affection, vulnerability, and sexual connection.
Trust & relationship injuries
Working through betrayal, infidelity, broken trust, resentment, or experiences that have changed the relationship.
Major life transitions
Navigating marriage, parenthood, relocation, career changes, the death of a family member (grief), separation, or other transitions that put pressure on a relationship.
Family & boundaries
Working through differences around extended family, in-laws, boundaries, roles, and expectations.
Intercultural relationships
Understanding how culture, family, language, religion, identity, and different ideas about relationships can shape the way you experience one another.
Premarital counseling & relationship planning
Getting clearer about values, expectations, commitment, finances, family, children, and the kind of partnership you want to build.
Considering whether to stay together
Creating space to understand what isn’t working and what each of you wants before making decisions about the future.
Getting Deeper
When culture is part of the relationship
Every relationship is a meeting of two different worlds. We bring our own ways of communicating, handling conflict, expressing love, relating to family, and understanding partnership—all shaped by our families, histories, communities, and cultures.
I have a particular passion for working with intercultural and international couples. Together, we explore how culture, family, language, religion, and identity shape each partner’s expectations and experiences. Rather than deciding whose way is “right,” we work toward creating a shared relationship culture that feels authentic to both.
Couples Therapy Is More Than Communication
Most couples who come to therapy say they want to “communicate better.” But communication is often only the surface of what is happening.
Underneath conflict are attachment patterns, family-of-origin dynamics, old wounds, expectations, cultural differences, and the ways each partner has learned to protect themselves.
In our work together, we may look not only at what you are fighting about, but at the cycle that keeps pulling you back into the same fight.
How I Approach Couples Therapy1.
Understand the cycle
We identify the patterns you repeatedly fall into and what each partner is protecting underneath them.
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Build emotional safety
We work toward greater vulnerability, responsiveness, and the ability to stay connected during difficult moments.
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Increase self-awareness
Each partner begins recognizing their own triggers, defenses, nervous system tracking, attachment patterns, and family-of-origin material.
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Learn new ways of relating
Communication tools become useful once you can recognize what is actually happening underneath the communication.
About Stef Palumbo
My style is warm, direct, and relational. I’m engaged in the room and interested not only in what couples are arguing about, but in the attachment patterns, family histories, defenses, and unmet needs underneath the conflict.
Before becoming a therapist, I worked across creative industries, startups, and founded my own SaaS company, which shapes how I enter the room: I’m solution-oriented and a believer that most things are “figureoutable.”
I also bring a global perspective to couples work. I grew up in a multilingual, multicultural context, have lived internationally, and am in a cross-cultural partnership myself. That lived experience informs my particular interest in getting clear on the “blueprints” each partner brings into a relationship. I have also experienced firsthand the fulfillment that can come from personal growth and building relational skills within the context of a partnership.
Is Couples Therapy Right for You?
Couples therapy isn't only for relationships in crisis. You may come because you are repeatedly having the same conflict, recovering from a rupture, deciding whether to stay together, preparing for marriage, navigating a major transition, or simply wanting to understand each other more deeply.