Cross-cultural couples often live in two worlds at once: the bond between two people, and the unseen histories, traditions, and emotional patterns each partner brings. Family expectations, cultural values, language, and identity all shape how you love, argue, and repair.

Cross Cultural Couples Therapy in Los Angeles

Couples Therapy for Cross Cultural Relationships in Hermosa Beach and Los Angeles

In cross cultural couples therapy, we’ll make space for both of those realities: the connection between you and the stories that live beneath it. Together we’ll slow down and notice the ways your differences show up, not to erase them but to understand their impact. Maybe one of you grew up believing that love means sacrifice, while the other learned that love means open self-expression. Perhaps one of you was raised to “talk it out,” while the other learned to “keep it in the family.” These differences aren’t about right or wrong; they reflect the rhythms your nervous systems grew up with, the ways you each learned closeness, safety, and repair. So much conflict in cross-cultural relationships comes from feeling like you need to defend who you are rather than being fully embraced. In therapy, we’ll explore what’s underneath the surface irritations, often tender questions like “Do I still matter to you?” or “Can I be fully myself here?” Our work together is about transforming tension into understanding and creating rituals that honor both of your backgrounds, so your relationship feels less like a battleground and more like a home where you both belong.
Couples Therapy for Cross Cultural Relationships in Hermosa Beach and Los Angeles

Bridging Cultures, Deepening Connections...

INDIVIDUAL THERAPY

Couples Therapy for Cross Cultural Relationships in Hermosa Beach and Los Angeles

We might be a good fit If...

You love your partner, but sometimes it feels like you're navigating two entirely different worlds. The misunderstandings aren’t just about who does the dishes or how you spend money; they’re layered with cultural expectations, unspoken rules, and emotional habits shaped long before you met.

We might be a good fit If...

You want to understand what exactly you fight about when you fight about who does the dishes or how you spend money. You also want to learn how to repair and reconnect afterward.

We might be a good fit If...

You’re noticing different values or expectations around things like parenting, money, gender roles, boundaries, or emotional expression, and you want to approach these conversations with more care and less blame.

We might be a good fit If...

You feel caught between loyalty to your family or community and your relationship, and you’re not sure how to honor both.

We might be a good fit If...

You’ve realized that love isn’t enough when there are unresolved wounds, unspoken assumption or power dynamics shaped by race, gender, class or culture, and you’re ready to face those layers together with support.

We might be a good fit If...

You're ready to shift the focus from who's right or wrong to: "What are we both protecting here? What do we both need?"

We might be a good fit If...

You want to find a way to move forward that doesn’t require one of you to shrink, erase your background, or carry the emotional labor of “explaining” all the time.

We might be a good fit If...

You’re carrying complex grief, shame or confusion about your past, and you are looking for a safe place to unpack what’s been too overwhelming to hold alone.

Cross-cultural love carries both tenderness and tension: the tenderness of expanding each other’s worlds, and the tension of not always knowing how to bridge the gap. What feels safe and familiar to one of you may feel foreign or even unsettling to the other. There’s no rulebook for how to navigate this, and you’re creating the rhythm of your relationship as you go. In therapy, we slow down enough to notice those rhythms, honor where they come from, and turn the moments of disconnection into places of curiosity. Over time, what once felt like a wall between you can become a doorway into deeper trust, closeness, and a shared sense of belonging.

Cultivating intimacy and emotional safety

Communicating with clarity and care

Creating shared meaning

Resisting and modeling

Healing ruptures rooted in identity, bias, or power

Turning conflict into connection

Making the invisible visible

We’ll name the unspoken rules, roles, and relational blueprints you each bring into the relationship, and how they’re playing out in real time. This helps shift blame to understanding and lets you rewrite patterns instead of reenacting them.

Instead of getting stuck in cycles of criticism, withdrawal, or misattunement, we’ll slow things down to explore the deeper feelings underneath the conflict, so you can respond to each other with more empathy and less reactivity.

We’ll gently explore how external systems (like racism, patriarchy, colonization, or classism) may be impacting your dynamic, and we will work to repair emotional injuries without minimizing or avoiding the hard stuff.

We’ll get curious about the behaviors you’ve internalized from your families of origin: what you’ve chosen to model, what you’ve vowed to never repeat, and where you might still be acting from unconscious scripts. The goal isn’t perfection; it’s consciousness and choice.

We’ll identify your shared values and goals so you can start to build a relationship culture that honors both of your backgrounds and not one over the other.

We’ll practice tools for repair, boundary-setting, and navigating hard conversations with more intention so neither of you is left feeling dismissed, misunderstood, or emotionally alone.

 We’ll strengthen the emotional connection between you, so that you both feel secure enough to take risks, be vulnerable, and truly show up for each other.

Couples Therapy for Cross Cultural Relationships in Hermosa Beach and Los Angeles

What we’ll work on in therapy

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