Couples therapy for intercultural relationships
A private, couples-only practice in Mornington, working also in Melbourne and online, for partners whose lives began in different places.
You do not need to explain the whole history in a first message.
When the difficulty is not simply between two people
Every couple negotiates difference. Intercultural couples negotiate it while also carrying two sets of assumptions about what a family is, what is owed to parents, how money should be held, how a disagreement is properly conducted, and what it means to be a good husband or a good wife.
Most of those assumptions were never chosen. They were absorbed long before you met, and they tend to stay invisible until they collide. What arrives in the consulting room is rarely described as cultural. It is described as one of you being cold, or controlling, or unreasonably attached to your family. Underneath, two people are often behaving impeccably by the standards they were raised in.
What commonly sits underneath
- Family obligation. One partner experiences a parent’s expectation as non-negotiable; the other experiences it as an intrusion into their marriage. Both are sincere.
- Conflict style. In some families difficulty is spoken plainly and loudly and then it is over. In others it is managed by withdrawal and restored by time. Each reads the other’s method as the problem.
- Migration and its arithmetic. One of you left a country, a language and a professional identity to be here. That is a large thing to have given, and it is often never counted aloud.
- Language. Arguing in your second language while your partner argues in their first is not a level exchange, however fluent you are. Precision drops exactly when it is most needed.
- Children. Language at home, schooling, religion, discipline, proximity to grandparents. Decisions that would be ordinary in one family become negotiations between two inheritances.
- Being read wrongly from outside. Assumptions from extended family or acquaintances about why you are together can settle quietly into a couple and become their own strain.
How this work proceeds
The task is not to decide whose culture is right, and I have no interest in adjudicating that. It is to make the invisible visible: to slow a familiar argument down until both of you can see what each is actually defending, and to distinguish what is genuinely a difference of value from what has simply never been said plainly.
The work draws on Gottman Method training to Level 3, an MA in Clinical Psychology, and attachment-based and depth-psychological practice. Sessions are ninety minutes, which matters here more than usual: an intercultural conversation frequently needs an unhurried hour before it reaches what it is really about.
My own life has been lived across countries and languages. I mention it not as a credential but because it means I am unlikely to mistake a cultural difference for a character defect, and I am unlikely to be surprised by yours.
Who this suits
Couples from different national, cultural, religious or linguistic backgrounds; couples where one partner has migrated and the other has not; couples raising children between two inheritances; and internationally mobile couples whose difficulties travel with them.
It suits people who want to understand the pattern rather than win the argument. It is not for everyone, and where a different kind of help would serve you better I will say so plainly and early.
If you are not safe. Couples work is not appropriate where there is violence or coercive control in a relationship, and cultural difference is never an explanation for either. In Australia, 1800RESPECT is available on 1800 737 732, and emergency services on 000.
Fees
- Ninety-minute session — AUD 350
- Three-day intensive — AUD 5,800 · five-day intensive — AUD 7,800
- Couples therapy is not covered by Medicare in Australia; the fees page explains
Every fee is published in full on the fees page. Sessions are held in Mornington, across Melbourne, or online — which suits couples who are often in different countries at different times.
Beginning
A first enquiry does not need to explain the cultural history, and it does not need both of you to agree on what the problem is. It is enough to say that something between you keeps not landing.
Enquiries are treated in confidence and receive a personal reply within one business day.
Related: couples therapy · recurring conflict · when one of you is unsure · couples intensives · marathon couples therapy