Couples Therapy in Burlington

Burlington has an older age profile than most other GTA municipalities, with a large share of residents over 65. That shapes what couples bring to therapy here. There are young families, of course, but also many long partnerships: people who raised children in the same house and now find it quiet, couples working out what retirement will look like when one of them is ready and the other is not, partners who have run a household well together for decades and are less sure how to simply be together once the running stops.

Then there is the middle of life, when many couples are caring in two directions at once. A parent needs more help, the children still need rides and tuition, and the two of you become an efficient team with no time left for each other. Resentment in these years rarely arrives as a fight. It builds as a quiet ledger: who drove to the appointment, who took the call, who has not had an evening off since spring.

Work adds its own geometry. Plenty of people here work locally, but many partners also head east each morning toward Oakville, Mississauga or Toronto, by car or on the Lakeshore West GO from Aldershot, Burlington or Appleby, or west into Hamilton. When one of you leaves early and gets home late, the weekday conversation shrinks to logistics and the weekend has to carry everything else.

Emotionally Focused Therapy works with exactly these patterns: the pursue-and-withdraw cycle that grows out of tiredness and unspoken need, and the distance that settles in when two capable people stop reaching for each other. Ghazal Sheikhtaheri, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), adds Schema Therapy, which helps each of you see the older expectations you brought into the relationship, about duty, independence or being looked after, and how they collide in this chapter of it. Tina Abadi, RP, also offers EFT-based couples work, more structured and practical in style. Roya Dadollahi Sarab, RP, also offers Emotionally Focused Therapy, with a culturally responsive lens.

Couples in Burlington come from many backgrounds, and expectations about marriage, gender roles and how involved the wider family should be do not always match, even between two people who love each other. Ghazal immigrated from Iran herself and is used to holding two cultures in the room, and sessions can move between English and Farsi if one of you thinks and feels more easily in Farsi.

Sessions are online, so nobody has to rush home for an appointment or look for parking after work. You join from home, together, at a time that suits you both, including evenings, in English, Farsi or a mix of the two. If one of you is not ready yet, the other can begin with individual sessions and start shifting the pattern from one side.