Persian & Farsi Couples Therapist in Markham

Persian couples in Markham often live with a foot in two places. The city's western edge, the Markham side of Thornhill east of Yonge Street, touches the stretch of Yonge where Persian grocers, restaurants and services run north from North York through Thornhill into Richmond Hill. Head east into the rest of Markham and the picture changes: in the 2021 Census nearly half of Markham residents identified as Chinese and about one in six as South Asian, while the West Asian group, the census category that includes people of Iranian background, was under 3%.

That mix shapes a marriage in small, steady ways. Your children's friends, your colleagues and your neighbours may know little about Nowruz or ta'arof, while parents and cousins a short drive away are closely involved in your life. One partner may lean toward the Farsi-speaking circle along Yonge; the other may feel more at home in the wider city, or in a workplace where English is the only shared language. Neither is wrong, but the difference can become a running tug about where weekends go, whose friends you see and how Iranian your home should feel.

Children often bring the question into focus. Which language do you speak at the dinner table? How hard do you push Farsi lessons on a child whose friends at school speak everything but Farsi? When grandparents come from Iran for a long visit, whose routines give way? These are practical questions, but each one touches something deeper about loyalty, loss and what you hope to pass on, and couples can end up arguing about homework when the real subject is what it means to raise Iranian children far from Iran.

Couples therapy gives that tug somewhere to be talked about instead of fought over. Ghazal Sheikhtaheri, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), CRPO #21300, grew up in Iran and combines Emotionally Focused Therapy with Schema Therapy: EFT to see the cycle you fall into when one of you feels left out, Schema Therapy to understand the family rules each of you absorbed long before you met. Tina Abadi, RP, and Roya Dadollahi Sarab, RP, offer Emotionally Focused Therapy in the same two languages.

Sessions are online, so a couple on the east side of Markham and a couple a few blocks from Yonge have the same short trip: to a quiet room at home. Sessions can be in Farsi, English or both, and both partners do not need to speak Farsi. Answers to other common questions are on the Farsi couples therapy across Ontario page.