LIFE TRANSITION · CALIFORNIA
Navigate change together — without losing each other.
Major life transitions don’t just change your circumstances — they change your relationship. Therapy to help you move through change with clarity, connection, and your relationship intact.
IS THIS FOR YOU?
You may be ready for transitions therapy & counseling if…
Major life transitions are reshaping your relationship — and you don’t want to lose each other in the process. Whether the change is welcome, unwanted, or somewhere in between, therapy gives you a space to navigate it together. If any of these sound familiar, we should talk.
Major changes/transitions is straining your relationship
You’re adjusting at different speeds and feeling distant
Loss, illness, or upheaval is hard to talk about together
You feel like strangers in this new chapter of life
WHAT TO EXPECT IN THIS THERAPY JOURNEY
Your path forward, step by step guide for life transitions
Before we begin, you’ll complete the Gottman Relationship Checkup — a research-based assessment of 480 questions covering friendship, intimacy, conflict, values, trust, and more. Your weekend is built around what we learn.
- Process the emotional impact of the change together
- Identify what each partner is carrying underneath
- Restore basic communication patterns and connection
- Create a temporary structure during uncertainty
- Uncover the deeper patterns surfaced by the change
- Rebuild connection across different paces of adjustment
- Develop tools for the hard conversations ahead
- Strengthen empathy and shared meaning-making
- Build your shared new chapter together
- Strengthen long-term resilience as a couple
- Establish rituals that hold the relationship steady
- Leave with a clear path forward — together
MEET YOUR THERAPIST
Couples Therapist in California
Marina Edelman didn’t always plan on becoming a therapist — and that’s exactly what makes her one.
Before she ever sat across from a client in a therapy room, Marina was sitting across from executives in a boardroom. She began her career as a financial analyst for a Fortune 500 company, working in the kind of high-pressure, high-stakes environment where performance is everything and vulnerability is rarely an option. That world gave her something most clinicians simply don’t have: a firsthand understanding of what it feels like to carry professional stress, navigate complex power dynamics, and still be expected to show up fully every single day.
But Marina wanted to do more than analyze numbers. She wanted to help people.
Driven by a desire to create real, meaningful change in people’s lives, she made the pivotal decision to transition into psychology — earning her Master of Arts in Psychology from Phillips Graduate Institute in Los Angeles. In 2006, she opened her private practice in Westlake Village, California, and she has never looked back.
Nearly two decades later, Marina has built TrueMe® Counseling into a practice defined by the same qualities that have shaped her entire career: rigor, empathy, and a refusal to settle for surface-level solutions.
Marina specializes in couples therapy, affair recovery, and relationship repair, drawing on a carefully integrated set of evidence-based approaches:
- Gottman Method
- Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- AEDP
Her counseling is best suited for couples and individuals seeking structured, research-backed support for relationship repair, affair recovery, anxiety, communication challenges, and premarital or marriage counseling — in person or via telehealth across California.
THE APPROACH
I draw from the most well-researched approaches in couples therapy — combined and adapted to fit your unique situation.
Gottman Method
Built on more than four decades of research with thousands of couples by Drs. John and Julie Gottman, this method provides the structural backbone for repairing conflict, deepening friendship, and rebuilding trust. We'll use it to map the patterns driving your hardest fights — and replace them with research-backed tools that strengthen connection over time.
Watch a brief overviewEmotionally Focused Therapy
Developed by Dr. Sue Johnson and grounded in attachment science, EFT helps couples decode the cycle that keeps them stuck — and reach the softer, more vulnerable emotions hiding underneath. The goal isn't just to argue less. It's to rebuild a secure, lasting bond where both partners feel safe enough to be fully themselves.
Watch a brief overviewAttachment-Based Therapy
The way you were loved early in life shapes how you reach for love now — often without your awareness. This approach gently traces those early relational blueprints, showing how they're playing out in your relationship today. With awareness comes choice: a chance to move from old, reactive patterns toward a more secure, conscious way of loving.
Watch a brief overviewCognitive Behavioral Therapy
The stories we tell ourselves shape what we feel — and how we react. CBT helps each partner identify the unhelpful thoughts that fuel anxiety, resentment, and disconnection, and replace them with more accurate, compassionate ones. It's practical, structured, and effective for transitions where one or both of you is caught in a mental loop that's making everything harder.
Watch a brief overviewAccelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)
Developed by Dr. Diana Fosha, AEDP is an experiential, emotion-focused approach that works with what is already healing inside you. Rather than analyzing pain from a distance, we move toward it together — gently and safely — so the emotions that have been stuck can finally move. The result is transformation that's felt in the body, not just understood in the mind. AEDP is especially powerful for couples processing grief, trauma, or the deep relational ruptures that come with major life change.
Explore the AEDP seriesTHE INVESTMENT
The relationship you rebuild, together after the transitions
A meaningful investment in your relationship — and a fraction of what traditional weekly therapy costs over the same period.
The Outcome:
- A shared language for the hard conversations
- Tools to navigate change at different paces
- Renewed emotional and physical connection
- Clarity on what each of you actually needs
- Repair patterns that keep you stuck
- Confidence in your relationship's foundation
- A deeper understanding of each other
- A felt sense of being a team again
FROM PAST CLIENTS
Real couples, real change
To those who shared their experiences here — my deepest and most sincere gratitude. It is the privilege of my professional life to be trusted with your stories, and it is an honor to be even a small part of your journey.
My wife and I sought Marina’s support to help us overcome a serious breach of trust in our marriage.
She helped us move through the anger and betrayal to rediscover that underneath it all there remained deep love and purpose in staying together.
Through his guidance we were able to clear the rubble that was blocking us from continuing together and find a clear path to rebuild trust.
Marina Edelman truly helped save my marriage in a surprisingly short amount of time.
She has an exceptional ability to get straight to the crux of the matter while making both people feel heard and understood. Her insight is sharp, direct, and incredibly effective. With her guidance, my husband and I are learning so much and growing together in ways that would not have been possible otherwise. I’m deeply grateful for her help and highly recommend her.
I cannot recommend Marina Edelman highly enough.
As the best marriage therapist I have ever worked with, she stands out due to her extensive training and experience, which far surpasses that of a typical therapist. Marina’s approach is refreshingly honest and straight to the point, which has been incredibly effective in our sessions. What truly sets Marina apart is her genuine care and dedication to her work. The more you work with her, the more evident it becomes how seriously she takes her role…
In keeping with HIPAA and the ethical standards of the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, all client testimonials are anonymized and shared only with signed authorization. Names, dates, and identifying details have been changed or removed.
FAQs about Intensive Therapy Getaway:
What kinds of transitions do you specialize in?
I work with couples navigating every kind of major life change — becoming parents, losing parents, relocations, career shifts, retirement, empty-nesting, fertility journeys, health diagnoses, grief, and the quieter transitions like a partner’s identity shift or the slow realization that your life no longer fits. If a change is reshaping who you are or how you relate to each other, this work can help.
Do we have to come as a couple, or can I come alone?
Both work. Many couples start with one partner who reaches out first, and that’s completely okay. Sometimes the work begins individually — processing your own experience of the transition — and the partner joins later. Other times couples come in together from the start. There’s no right way to begin.
How long does transitions therapy usually take?
It depends on the transition and where you’re starting from. Some couples come for a focused stretch of 8–12 sessions to work through a specific shift. Others stay longer, especially when the transition is ongoing — a chronic illness, a long grief, the multi-year arc of becoming parents. We’ll talk about what’s realistic for your situation in our first conversation, and you’re always in control of the pace.
What does a typical session look like?
Sessions are 50 minutes, weekly to start. We’ll explore what’s actually happening underneath the surface arguments — the grief, the fear, the disorientation that comes with change — and develop concrete tools you can use between sessions. I draw from the Gottman Method, Emotionally Focused Therapy, and 20 years of clinical experience to meet you where you are.
What can we realistically expect to have accomplished by the end of the weekend?
I’m an out-of-network provider, which means I don’t bill insurance directly. However, I have partnered with Mentaya to make it easier for my clients. Check out my Fees Page to check if you are eligible. We’ll discuss fees during our complimentary consultation.
TAKE THE FIRST STEP
Not sure if this is the right fit? Let's talk.Every working relationship begins with a complimentary consultation. It’s an opportunity to share what brings you in, ask questions, and decide together whether this is the right next step. No pressure, no commitment.