Relationship And Marriage Counseling Therapy For Conflict

Being part of a relationship takes work, whether you’re married, engaged, or in a committed relationship. You may be able to get through a lot of life’s stressors and issues as a team, but others can cause strain and damage to your relationship. When that happens, couples counseling is a way to help you successfully work through any issues and rebuild your connection.

Through in person couples sessions at my office in Westlake Village or online virtual sessions, I can help you and your partner work through issues of intimacy, financial infidelity, communication, affairs, and many other problems you may be experiencing. I provide a compassionate and caring approach that helps you achieve greater emotional intimacy and happiness in your relationship. 

My goal is to earn your trust and to help you feel freer, more spontaneous, and better able to love and be loved by those you care about. 

What Does Relationship Counseling Treat?

Often, the problems in your relationship stem from past issues that have nothing to do with the issue you come to therapy for. That’s why it’s so important to get to the root of early life traumas that may be impeding your ability to have a successful intimate relationship.

Through couples counseling, I can help you explore these traumas along with any other inhibitions and anxieties you have about your relationship. We work together to openly discuss what’s coming between you and your partner and help you both learn to better communicate your needs so you can have a more successful partnership. 

When there’s a breach of trust, like an affair or financial infidelity, we can work on repairing your relationship and rebuilding trust. It may seem impossible to come back from infidelity, but many couples do and come out stronger.

Couples counseling can also help with issues related to:

• Parenting
• Financial alignment
• Power struggles 
• Communication 
• Anxiety
• Pre-marital issues
• Affairs 

With ongoing couples counseling, you can move past your relationship issues to a healthier partnership. 

What Treatments Are Used In Relationship Counseling?

Effective treatment of marital and relationship problems requires a high level of trust between you and your partner. Because conflict often has multiple causes, treatments can’t be universally applied — what works for one couple may not work for another. 

An effective treatment plan will address and manage the cause of your conflict and then build and strengthen communication between you and your partner. Treatment may include communication counseling and therapy with a goal of building your emotional well-being.

I primarily use two approaches in our couples counseling sessions: Emotionally Focused Therapy and the Gottman Method Couples Therapy. I am extensively trained in both therapies, which are proven to help couples turn toward each other rather than away. 

Take the First Step Towards Change

Many clients choose to address stress through couples therapy, where we work directly on the relational patterns driving emotional overload.

Contact Marina Edelman, LMFT, today for a confidential consultation.

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Learn More About Marina Edelman’s Services

• Couples Counseling & Marriage Therapy
• Individual Therapy
• Intensive
• Mediation

You can also find more information on her Psychology Today profile: Marina Edelman – Psychology Today. Or explore resources on the AEDP Institute website: Marina Edelman – AEDP Institute

Most therapeutic approaches focus primarily on understanding — helping you make sense of your patterns, your history, and your pain. AEDP does that too, but it goes a step further. It works directly with emotion as a vehicle for change, not just as something to manage or talk about.

What I find most meaningful about AEDP after years of practice is its orientation toward healing. Rather than organizing treatment around what is wrong, AEDP asks: what is already right? What strengths, resources, and moments of connection can we build from? That shift — from pathology to possibility — changes the entire texture of the therapeutic relationship. Clients often describe feeling genuinely met in sessions, not just assessed.

Both are evidence-based, highly effective approaches to couples therapy — and both are approaches I am extensively trained in. EFT, developed by Dr. Sue Johnson, focuses on identifying and shifting the emotional and behavioral patterns that create disconnection — helping couples form a more secure attachment and turn toward each other rather than away. The Gottman Method, grounded in 40 years of research with thousands of couples, works to disarm negative communication patterns, remove gridlock, and build empathy, intimacy, and understanding. In practice, I draw from both — because the most effective couples therapy is not rigidly fixed to a single framework. I use what the clinical picture calls for, tailored to you and your partner specifically.

Many couples not only recover from infidelity but come out of the process with a more honest and deeply connected relationship than they had before the affair. The discovery of infidelity produces a genuine crisis — a rupture in the fundamental safety of the partnership — and it requires structured, skilled support to heal. It is not a process that happens quickly or without difficulty. But broken trust is not the same as irreparable trust. With both partners genuinely committed to the work, and with the right clinical guidance, rebuilding is not just possible — it is something I have witnessed consistently throughout my clinical practice.

Both are valid paths, and the right answer depends on what is driving the difficulty in the relationship. If the primary presenting concern is the dynamic between you and your partner — communication, conflict, distance, trust — couples therapy is almost always the most direct and effective starting point. If one or both partners are carrying significant individual trauma, mental health concerns, or personal history that is affecting the relationship, individual therapy may be a valuable complement to the couples work. In many cases, I work with couples in joint sessions while also recommending individual therapy for one or both partners where it is clinically indicated. A consultation is the best way to determine what combination of support makes the most sense for your specific situation.

The timeline varies depending on the complexity of what has brought you to therapy and how consistently both partners engage with the work. Some couples experience significant progress within eight to twelve sessions. Others — particularly those navigating affair recovery, longstanding conflict patterns, or deeply rooted relational dynamics — benefit from longer-term engagement. The clearest signs that the work is producing real change are not dramatic — they are the quieter shifts that accumulate: conversations that de-escalate instead of explode, a growing ability to hear each other without defensiveness, moments of genuine connection that feel different from anything before. Progress in couples therapy is always something we track together — and you will always have a clear sense of what we are working toward and how far you have come.