Tumee Hugginson — couples therapist, Mornington Peninsula and Melbourne
I am a psychotherapist and couples therapist. I see couples, and only couples, from a private suite on Main Street in Mornington and online across Melbourne and Victoria.
Enquiries are confidential and answered within one business day.
That is a narrower practice than most, and it is deliberate. The ninety-minute session, the small caseload, the room itself — all of it is arranged around two people and what happens between them.
A practice that sees only couples
Couples therapy, marriage counselling, relationship counselling — the words vary; the work here does not. Couples are all I see.
Most practices hold couples work alongside individual therapy, family sessions and a general caseload, and there is nothing wrong with that. But couples work asks something particular of a therapist: the capacity to sit with two people who want different things, often in the same moment, without quietly taking a side. That capacity is built by doing the work often, and by doing very little else.
Seeing only couples also changes what happens in the room. I am not carrying one partner’s individual history into a session you are both in. Neither of you is my client in a way the other is not. The relationship is what I am attending to.
How I work
Three bodies of work sit behind most of what I do, and they do different jobs.
Gottman Method
I am trained to Level 3 in the Gottman Method, the method’s highest clinical certification. It gives a practical, research-informed framework for understanding how a relationship functions day to day — how conflict starts, how it escalates, how repair gets attempted and missed. Where it is useful I use the Gottman relationship assessment, one of the most extensively validated instruments in couples therapy, so that we are working from something steadier than a first impression.
Emotionally Focused Therapy
EFT attends to attachment: what each of you needs, what each of you fears, and how those needs arrive dressed as criticism or withdrawal because the plainer version feels too exposing. Much of this is helping partners recognise, express and respond to the deeper emotional need underneath the argument — for some couples, for the first time in years.
Jungian and psychodynamic depth work
My training is Jungian and psychodynamic, and it is what I bring to the parts of this work that sit below the level of communication. Not every pattern in a marriage is available to reason, and some of the most persistent ones are inherited rather than chosen.
What it is like in the room
Most couples arrive braced for something adversarial — a referee, a verdict, or a therapist who has already worked out which of them is the problem. That is not what happens.
A first session runs ninety minutes and it is quieter than most people expect. I want to know what state each of you is actually in, what is already known between you, and what is being asked. Nobody is asked to arrive composed. Distress is not a failure of preparation; it is usually the most accurate information in the room.
I will interrupt. A couple who have been having the same argument for years can reproduce it in front of me within minutes, and letting it run its full length is rarely useful to either of you. I will slow it down, and I will often ask about something that seems beside the point at the time.
There is no preferred outcome here. There is only a preferred way of arriving at one. I do not steer couples towards staying, and I do not steer them apart. You should leave a first session with three things: a clearer sense of what is actually in front of you, an agreement about how the coming weeks will be handled at home, and an honest answer about whether this is the right room. If it is not, you will be told so plainly.
Where the work happens
Sessions are held at Suite 4, 346 Main Street, Mornington — a private Main Street suite, chosen for discretion. Couples come from across the Mornington Peninsula: Mornington, Mount Eliza, Mount Martha, Frankston and the coastal villages further south.
Online sessions are available to couples in Melbourne and across Victoria, and to partners who are apart — travelling, posted overseas, or living in different cities for a season. Online work is held to the same standard of care and confidentiality as the consulting room.
Consulting hours are Monday to Saturday, 11am to 5pm.
Training and qualifications
- Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology
- Gottman Method Couples Therapy — Level 3
- Jungian Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
- Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
My clinical perspective has been shaped by education, advanced psychotherapy training and professional experience across the United States, Germany, Ireland and Japan. Working across those settings makes one thing hard to forget: a great deal of what a couple take to be a character flaw in their partner is a difference in how the two of them were taught to handle closeness, money, family and disagreement. It is one reason intercultural and bilingual couples find their way here.
What this work does not promise
Outcomes in therapy are never guaranteed, and I will not tell you otherwise. Some couples rebuild something better than what they had. Some arrive at a considered decision to part, and are glad to have reached it carefully rather than in the worst week of their lives. I cannot tell you in advance which you will be.
What I can tell you is what the work consists of: serious, structured attention, ninety minutes at a time, from one therapist in a practice kept deliberately small. The enquiry reaches me, the sessions are mine, and there is no intake team between you and the work.
Beginning
A confidential consultation is the place to begin. It is a conversation about what has been happening, what each of you is hoping for, and whether this is the right room — for both of you, not only for the partner who made the call. It is common for one person to enquire first.
Weekly sessions run ninety minutes at AUD 350. Where weekly work is too slow for what a couple are carrying, there are three-day and five-day intensives. Couples therapy is not covered by Medicare in Australia; the fees page explains.
Or call 03 5939 4984. Enquiries are confidential and answered within one business day.
You can also read about couples therapy, couples therapy after an affair, or the practice in Mornington and Melbourne.