Couples Therapy

in Fredericksburg, Virginia

“We cannot dance with a partner and not touch each other’s raw spots.  We must know what these raw spots are to be able to speak about them in a way that pulls our partner closer to us.” 

Dr. Sue Johnson

Couple holding hands during EFT couples therapy session in Fredericksburg Virginia

Emotionally Focused & Trauma-Informed Relationship Counseling

Do you and your partner find yourselves having the same arguments over and over again?

Does it feel like your partner just doesn’t understand you — no matter how clearly you try to explain?

Deep down, do you miss the closeness you once had and wonder how to get back there?

You are not alone. Many couples come to therapy feeling stuck in painful cycles of conflict, distance, or emotional shutdown — unsure how to change the pattern but longing to reconnect.

Struggles You May Be Facing

Maybe your relationship feels fragile due to infidelity, betrayal, unresolved trauma, or difficulty setting boundaries. Perhaps you’re engaged and noticing more conflict than you expected. Or maybe you’ve been married for years and the connection you once shared now feels strained or distant.

You might find yourselves:

  • Repeating the same unresolved arguments

  • Feeling unheard, misunderstood, or emotionally alone

  • Struggling with parenting differences

  • Recovering from betrayal or broken trust

  • Navigating the impact of individual trauma on your relationship

When couples reach out for therapy, it’s often because the negative cycle feels stronger than the connection.

Different Conflict Styles — Same Underlying Need

In many relationships, one partner may withdraw or shut down during conflict, while the other pursues resolution more directly. Over time, these different coping styles can create frustration, resentment, and emotional distance.

What often goes unseen is that beneath anger, withdrawal, or defensiveness is a deeper longing — the desire to feel secure, valued, and emotionally connected.

There Is Hope for Your Relationship

At We Thrive Together, our team of couples therapists specializes in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) — a research-based, attachment-centered model shown to help couples move from distress to connection.

EFT was developed by Drs. Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg and is considered one of the most effective forms of couples therapy available. Research indicates that 70–75% of couples move from distress to recovery, and approximately 90% show significant improvement.

All of our couples therapists are:

  • Trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)

  • Trauma-informed clinicians

  • EMDR-trained therapists

This means we understand how individual trauma, attachment wounds, and past experiences can deeply impact your relationship. When appropriate, we integrate trauma-informed approaches to support both relational healing and individual emotional safety.

Trauma-Informed Couples Therapy

For couples navigating betrayal, infidelity, attachment injury, or shared trauma, healing requires more than communication strategies. It requires emotional safety.

Our trauma-informed approach helps couples:

  • Slow down reactive patterns

  • Identify the deeper emotions driving conflict

  • Rebuild trust after betrayal

  • Strengthen emotional responsiveness

  • Create secure, lasting connection

We work with couples who are dating, engaged, married, or in long-term committed relationships.

How We Work

Most couples therapy focuses on communication — how to fight better, how to listen more carefully, how to say what you need more clearly. These things have value. But in our experience they skip something essential.

Before couples can really hear each other, each partner needs to slow down enough to understand what is happening inside themselves. Not in a self-absorbed way — but honestly. What am I actually feeling right now beneath the anger or the silence. Why does this specific thing affect me so deeply. What am I trying to get and why does my way of going after it keep failing.

That kind of self-understanding changes everything. Because the moment you can really see yourself — your pattern, your reaction, what you are actually afraid of — you almost involuntarily start to see your partner differently. Not as someone doing things to you. As someone with their own internal world, their own fears, their own failed attempts to feel close to you.

We also help couples see something most have never been shown clearly: what you do affects me and what I do affects you. The cycle, the distance, the pain — we built it together. And what we built together we can change together.

Every person who comes through our door has good reasons for the patterns they developed. Understanding those reasons does not excuse the impact. But it opens a door that blame keeps permanently shut.

Rebuild. Reconnect. Strengthen.

If you and your partner are ready to move out of the negative cycle and toward deeper connection, our team is here to guide you.

Couples therapy at We Thrive Together provides a structured, compassionate space to do the hard but meaningful work of rebuilding trust, increasing emotional safety, and strengthening your bond.

You don’t have to keep repeating the same argument.

You can change the dance.

Specialized Couples Services

Every relationship is different. Some couples come to us in the middle of a crisis. Others are trying to understand patterns that have quietly shaped their relationship for years. Some are not sure whether to stay or go. And some want to build something strong before life gets hard.

We have specialized training for each of these moments.

High Conflict Couples Therapy

When the same fight keeps happening — and couples therapy has either failed before or made things worse — something different is needed. Beth Collins holds specialized EFT training specifically for highly conflicted couples — designed for relationships where standard approaches don't reach the level of reactivity and pain in the room. If you've been told your relationship is too far gone, or if previous therapy left you more frustrated than when you started, this is where to begin.

Learn More About High Conflict Couples Therapy

Therapy for Narcissistic Relationship Patterns

Some relationships have a pattern that's hard to name but impossible to ignore — one partner walking on eggshells, accountability that only goes one direction, a slow erosion of confidence in your own perceptions. Beth Collins holds advanced training in Relational Life Therapy — developed specifically for couples where narcissistic or high-control patterns are present. This work is for both the partner experiencing harm and the partner willing to look honestly at their own behavior.

Learn More About Therapy for Narcissistic Relationships

Affair Recovery & Infidelity Therapy

Betrayal changes everything. Healing from infidelity requires more than trust — it requires a structured, trauma-informed process with a therapist who has specific training for this work. Beth Collins holds training in AIRM — Affair Recovery through Emotionally Focused Therapy — and Broken Bonds Attachment Injury Resolution through EFT, and is currently completing her certification as a Couples Infidelity Repair Specialist. Very few therapists in the Fredericksburg area bring this combination of specialized credentials to affair recovery work

Learn More About Affair Recovery Therapy

Military Couples & First Responders

Chris Biddix is a retired Navy veteran with 20 years of service who provides couples therapy specifically for military families and first responders. He understands this world from the inside — and you will not have to explain yourself to him.

Learn More About Military Couples Therapy

Parenting as Partners

When a child's diagnosis, mental health challenges, or parenting differences are quietly straining your relationship — Beverly Lemmons offers a dedicated space specifically for the two of you to get on the same page and find your footing together. This is not family therapy. It is couples work focused on the parenting relationship.

Learn More About Parenting as Partners Couples Therapy

Couples at a Crossroads

When one partner is considering leaving and the other wants to stay — or when both of you are simply not sure — standard couples therapy is not always the right first step. We offer a structured, reflective process specifically for couples at a crossroads — not to save the marriage and not to end it, but to help both partners slow down, gain clarity, and make whatever decision comes next from a grounded place rather than a reactive one.

Premarital Counseling

The couples who navigate the hard seasons of marriage well are the ones who built a foundation before those seasons arrived. Our EFT-based premarital counseling goes deeper than communication checklists and conflict inventories — it helps couples understand their attachment patterns, emotional needs, and relational vulnerabilities before the wedding, so that what gets built lasts.

Learn More About Premarital Counseling

Meet Our Couples Therapy Team

We offer couples therapy at two experience levels — both grounded in Emotionally Focused Therapy and trauma-informed care.

Beth Collins, LCSW, CTT — EFT Specialist Over 25 years of clinical experience. Advanced training in EFT, AIRM Affair Recovery through EFT, Broken Bonds Attachment Injury Resolution, EFT with Highly Conflicted Couples, Hold Me Tight Workshop Facilitation, and Relational Life Therapy for narcissistic relationship patterns. Currently completing certification as a Couples Infidelity Repair Specialist. 60-minute — $230 | 90-minute — $320 | 120-minute — $410 | Intensives available

Beverly Lemmons, LCSW — EFT-Trained Couples & Family Therapist EFT Core Skills and Externship, EMDR, Family Systems Theory. Strong fit for emotional distance, communication breakdown, conflict cycles, and Parenting as Partners work. 60-minute — $175 | 90-minute — $245 | 120-minute — $310 | Intensives available

Chris Biddix, LPC — EFT-Trained | Military & First Responder Specialist Retired Navy veteran, 20 years of service. EFT Externship and EMDR. Especially suited for military couples and first responders. 60-minute — $175 | 90-minute — $245 | 120-minute — $310 | Intensives available

Not sure who is the right fit? Reach out and we will help guide you. Our team responds within one business day.

Not sure which is the right fit?

Reach out and we'll help you figure it out. Tell us a little about what you're navigating and we'll point you toward the approach that makes the most sense for your specific situation. Our team responds within one business day.

Connect with Questions or Schedule a Couples Therapy Session Today

Questions About Couples Therapy

  • Research on Emotionally Focused Therapy — the approach we use at We Thrive Together — shows that 70 to 75 percent of couples move from distress to recovery, and approximately 90 percent show significant improvement. Couples therapy works best when both partners are willing to show up and do the work — even if one of you is more hesitant than the other at first. The fact that you're here reading this is already a sign that you care about your relationship.

  • This is very common. Many couples start therapy with one partner more willing than the other. We don't require both partners to feel equally ready — we just ask that both are willing to try. Often the partner who was most reluctant becomes the most invested once they feel safe in the process. If your partner is hesitant reach out anyway — we can talk through how to approach the conversation together.

  • Most couples therapy focuses on communication skills and conflict resolution strategies. EFT goes deeper — it looks at the emotional patterns and attachment needs underneath the conflict. The argument isn't really about the dishes or the finances. It's about feeling unseen, unvalued, or unsafe. EFT helps couples identify and change those deeper patterns — which is why the results tend to be more lasting.

  • Yes. Healing after betrayal is some of the most important and meaningful work we do. Affair recovery requires more than rebuilding trust — it requires understanding what happened in the relationship dynamic, addressing the attachment injury, and creating a new foundation of emotional safety. This work is difficult and it takes time — but couples who commit to it often describe their relationship after recovery as stronger than it was before.

  • Couples therapy at We Thrive Together is offered on a private pay basis. Insurance does not typically cover couples therapy. Under very specific circumstances they may see it as medically necessary - please discuss this with your therapist at your first session to determine if you may fall into this category. We can provide a superbill after each session that you may submit to your insurance company for possible out-of-network reimbursement depending on your plan. We have opted out of Medicare entirely — if you are a Medicare recipient we can help connect you with alternative providers. See our full fees and insurance information on the FAQ page.