RELATIONSHIP COUNSELLING Barcelona
Strengthen your relationship/S with couples therapy
Reconnect and enhance communication and trust with couples counselling Barcelona or online across Europe and Spain, including Madrid, Valencia, Málaga, and Gran Canaria.
Life as an expat can change the dynamics between partners
It can make you resentful of the life and job you left back home (even though you agreed to the move).
Your different cultures impact daily life, perspectives and expectations. You feel like they’re to far apart to find a middle way in your intercultural relationship.
Your in-laws are a constant source of stress and conflict.
Our English speaking couples therapists can help.
Perhaps challenges are straining your relationship and making you unhappy
So you have talked things out, sworn to change and started over again. And again. But the relationship problems continue.
Your unhealthy patterns haven’t changed, and arguing may have become a habit.
Or you are drifting further and further apart.
There are serious trust issues.
You miss how it used to be.
RESPECTFUL. FUN. LOVING.
Or to make peace with the fact that the relationship isn’t going anywhere.
Or to safely explore the type of relationship you want.
You believe talking to a caring couples therapist would help you gain clarity and improve the situation.
You are not alone
Our couples therapy therapists are here to help you when you are ready Choose from therapy for couples in person in Barcelona or online couples therapy
Find out how marriage counselling in Barcelona can help you by clicking on the issue
Managing transitions
Life transitions test the strength of your relationship. They can feel like anything from tiny tremors to earthquakes.
Does your partner seem happy with the change whereas you are finding it difficult?
Has the transition made you feel uncertain and vulnerable, and perhaps your partner isn’t as supportive as you would like them to be?
Is being financially dependent on your partner taking a toll on your relationship?
Couples therapy can help you regard change as an opportunity to re-evaluate your relationship, while offering you guidance on your new path.
Improving communication
Do you feel that both of you are either on defence or attack mode? You tend to constantly argue about the smallest thing.
Maybe you are in an intercultural relationship and the cultural differences are starting to push you apart? You feel like you can’t communicate with each other or your values are not aligned?
Are you annoyed because you feel misunderstood? This may be creating a rift between you.
Does an unresolved past issue constantly crop up in your conversations? It feels like it will never be forgotten.
In couples counselling, we will work on empathy, finding ways to compromise and communicate positively, and helping you to understand each other better.
Enhancing physical intimacy and sex
There is no sex life or less than you need in your relationship? Do you feel more like flatmates than a couple?
Do you find it hard to talk about sex with your partner? Is this why you are not completely satisfied?
Is the loss of libido affecting your sex life?
Do you wish your partner understood that your need for intimacy doesn’t always mean you want sex?
Do you need to align degrees of commitment or norms regarding monogamy or non-monogamy?
Maybe you need to explore your sexuality, find out what satisfies you and transmit this to each other.
Navigating same sex relationships - LGTBIQ+
Are you at different levels of comfort with respect to being out of the closet?
Is the negotiation of roles and responsibilities at home creating conflict?
Do you need to align degrees of commitment or norms regarding monogamy or non-monogamy?
Couples counselling can help you navigate personal differences, providing tools for positive communication and strategies for reducing each other’s distress.
Enjoying Motherhood-Fatherhood- Or your Rainbow family
As an expectant mum, you might feel you have drunk a cocktail of excitement, worry and hormones. You are experiencing ups and downs and adjusting to the changes in your body.
As an expectant dad, you might be feeling like a spectator. Or you are trying to support your partner, but you feel at a loss.
If you are a Rainbow Family, you may feel overwhelmed by the need to manage differences day-to-day and negotiate things other families take for granted.
Becoming a parent can be overwhelming.
In relationship therapy, we will help you navigate pregnancy and your new roles after the birth of the baby in a supportive and non-judgemental space.
Enhancing parenting and family life
Does your partner’s job involve a lot of travelling to the point that you are single parenting? This is exhausting you.
Do you and your partner need to align parenting styles? Discrepancies may be putting your relationship to the test.
Have you lost intimacy and spontaneity since parenthood? You may feel you are no longer romantic partners, just parents.
Couples therapy can help you reconnect to each other and work on a new and changed relationship.
trust Issues
Do you find it hard to trust your partner/s? Are there trust issues in your relationship? You may be suspicious and feel they are bound to betray you because you’re not good enough.
Or have they already betrayed you? Although your partner has had an affair, you may be willing to try and save the relationship because you still love them.
Or perhaps you have found out that your partner is lying about something or being secretive? It is making you feel as though you cannot trust their word.
Maybe you have broken the trust? You’ve lied, or been unfaithful and now you need tools to rebuild the trust with your partner/s.
In relationship counselling, we will work on rebuilding broken trust.
Unlearning Unhealthy patterns
Relationship issues come in many different forms.
Has your partner become enmeshed with you and your interests to the detriment of their own?
Are you keeping your feelings to yourself for the sake of the relationship? They will be bottling up inside you.
Does your partner expect you to know what they are thinking or how they are feeling? When they see that you don’t, perhaps they become annoyed.
Are you sacrificing the time you need alone in order to avoid arguments?
Are there trust issues that need to be resolved?
After a disagreement, do you want to remain at a distance, while your partner’s attitude is “let’s talk it over right away”?
You need a therapist if you are starting to feel resentful in your relationship. You will be helped towards an objective point of view of the situation, encouraged to talk things out and guided into healthier patterns.
Recovering after an infidelity
Working through an affair is and trust issues is tough. There will be feelings of vulnerability and tremendous energy and patience are required, because the healing process might be long.
Still, you are willing to give it a try because you love your partner, you want to keep your family together, or perhaps you are not too sure of what you want to do at this point.
In relationship counselling, we will explore the roots of the infidelity and address possible underlying issues.
Together with your couples therapist, we will work on improving communication and regaining trust. You may well emerge stronger as a couple or gain the clarity required to move on in another direction.
Facing divorce and separation
Perhaps you need help in deciding whether you should divorce or remain married.
Or maybe you are divorcing and you are looking to establish healthy communication patterns. Your aim is to finish the relationship in peace.
In relationship counselling, you will work on conflict related to co-parenting, financial issues, and other concerns. This can help you minimise the impact on you and/or your children, providing you with tools to move on in a positive way.
Exploring Consensual Non-Monogamous Relationships
There is a growing openness to new types of relationships that resist oppressive structures often found in conventional monogamous relationship models.
Polyamory, Relationship Anarchy (RA), open relationships, non-hierarchical polyamory, ethical non-monogamy to name but a few. These new relationship forms open the way to consensually experiencing multiple intimate relationships at once.
In counselling, we can aid your exploration of what you want or of how to navigate the challenges of different types of relationships.
We can accompany you or you and your partners in managing stigma, and developing the trust, communication, respect, and self-soothing required to make your relationships work.
Whether there is a need for clarity in the making or remaking of relationships, of managing anxiety or jealousy or a renegotiation of parameters of the relationships, our couples therapists at Therapy in Barcelona can help.
Therapy in Barcelona has been helping expats since 2011, first as a solo practice and now as a group of English-speaking therapists in Barcelona.
Responsibility
We take our clients’ well being very seriously and help with intention.
Psychology-trained therapists Barcelona
All our couples counselors are qualified, with at least 7 years experience, and up to 18 years experience, and use evidence-based techniques.
Our couples therapy therapists can help you strengthen your relationship
Are you wondering whether you really need to go couples therapy?
Attending therapy is like going to the gym for an hour, except that you work on other “muscles”, namely your confidence, your sense of a couple and your skills for navigating challenges.
You can choose not to go to the “gym” and your “muscles” will continue functioning. But unless you “work” them, you will not be using them to their full advantage.
Therapy can enhance your well-being and help you be who you want to be.
What to expect of the relationship counselling process
Although we tailor-make every couples counselling process to suit our clients’ unique requirements, we can offer you some general guidelines.
1
It begins by completing the intake form or reserving a discovery call with our Intake Coordinator.
We then either match you to a relationship therapist and book a session or schedule a session with your preferred couples therapist.
2
First session
We will review the factors and relationship problems that led you to couples therapy and discuss the details of informed consent to begin to structure the marriage counselling.
3
Initial sessions (2-4)
You will build a mutual rapport, explore your skills, identify unhealthy strategies, delve into past and current struggles, and set your couples counselling goals. Your couples therapist may have an individual session with each of you to understand your unique histories.
4
Work-change session (5+)
You will analyse and dismantle unhelpful strategies, learn skills and practise methods, as well as reflect on deep insights.
5
Wind down and end
You will probably decrease the frequency of the relationship counselling sessions. You will connect to your natural supports, reinforce your gains and develop a follow-up plan to maintain growth once couples therapy has ended.
Our fees:
Once you are matched to a couples counsellor, we will let you know their fees and preferred payment method
Do you still have some questions?
Yes. We regularly support couples working through communication breakdown, trust issues, and the aftermath of infidelity, using approaches like the Gottman Method and Imago Couples Therapy. Sessions focus on rebuilding trust and developing practical tools you can use outside of the session, not just talking through what went wrong.
Yes, most of our couples therapists speak two or more languages. Please let us know your languages and we hope to be able to accommodate this.
It is important that both partners want to try and engage in the couples therapy. You can try individual sessions first and later have couples counselling with another relationship therapist from our team.
Yes. Your couples therapist will be a different therapist to your individual counsellor but they can both be from our team at Therapy in Barcelona.
Yes. Your couples therapy therapist will send you a link with information on how to join an online couples therapy session from different locations.
Easy! You just found our couples counselors at Therapy in Barcelona. We work in-office AND online, so if you cannot make it in office, we can meet you from anywhere you are online.
Yes, most of our couples therapists speak two or more languages. Please let us know your languages and we hope to be able to accommodate this.
It is important that both partners want to try and engage in the couples therapy. You can try individual sessions first and later have couples counselling with another relationship therapist from our team.
Yes. Your couples therapist will be a different therapist to your individual counsellor but they can both be from our team at Therapy in Barcelona.
Yes. Your couples therapy therapist will send you a link with information on how to join an online couples therapy session from different locations.
Easy! You just found our couples counselors at Therapy in Barcelona. We work in-office AND online, so if you cannot make it in office, we can meet you from anywhere you are online.
Are you ready to start seeing positive changes in your relationship/s?
To assess what is going on or what is holding you back, to work on it and strengthen your connection with a trained couples counsellor?
We will contact you within 24-48 hours.
FAQ
Couples Therapy FAQs
Couples therapy at Therapy in Barcelona is specialised counselling for couples designed to help expat and intercultural couples navigate relationship challenges. Our therapists understand the unique pressures of international life and cultural differences that can impact relationships.
We help couples with communication problems, cultural misunderstandings, intercultural relationship challenges, financial disagreements, intimacy issues, parenting disagreements, in-law problems, infidelity, stress from moving abroad, and feeling disconnected from your partner.
Yes, we specialise in couples counseling for expat and intercultural couples. Our couples therapy therapists understand the complexities of navigating different cultural backgrounds, family expectations, and the stress of living abroad together. A couple of our couples therapists are in intercultural relationships too.
Couples therapy typically involves both partners attending sessions together, though individual sessions may sometimes be recommended. We focus on improving communication, building conflict resolution skills, and strengthening your relationship bond.
We use evidence-based approaches including Gottman Method Couples Therapy, Imago Couples Therapy, and other integrative techniques proven effective for relationship counselling.
The duration of couples counseling varies depending on your specific concerns and goals. Many couples notice improvements within the first few couples therapy sessions, while others benefit from longer-term couples counselling to address deeper relationship patterns.
As of 2025, couples therapy sessions range from €90-€170 depending on session length (50 or 90 minutes) and the couples therapist. Please see our fees page for detailed pricing.
Yes, we offer both in-person couples counseling and online couples therapy sessions to accommodate your needs when you are looking for a couples therapist near you.
