Couples therapy – MELBOURNE | ONLINE
Two people, one country,
a thousand invisible pressures
Couples therapy for intercultural and immigrant relationships — Australian and Brazilian, Latinas and international, same-sex and straight. For any relationship carrying more than it shows. In Melbourne and online, in Portuguese, Spanish, and English.
Why couples therapy?
Immigration changes everything, including love.
You came here together, or you found each other here. Or you met someone from this country, or from a third country entirely, and you are trying to build something that holds across languages, backgrounds, and two completely different ways of understanding what love, family, and home are supposed to look like.
An Australian and a Brazilian. A Colombian and an English. A Brazilian and another Brazilian, each carrying a different version of what it means to be from the same place. Two immigrants from two different countries, both navigating a third.
Whatever the combination, you are building a shared life in the space between two worlds. That takes extraordinary effort. And that effort, carried long enough, leaves marks on a relationship.
Maybe you’ve noticed the distance growing. The conversations that circle the same arguments without resolution. The intimacy that used to come easily now requires effort you don’t always have. The sense that you’re two people building two slightly different versions of the same life, and the gap between them is widening.
Or maybe things aren’t bad — but you know they could be better. Deeper. More honest.
Couples therapy at Talking Works creates a space for both of you to be heard and for the patterns between you to begin to be understood.
Is this for you?
Couples therapy might be for you if…
You don’t have to be on the verge of separation to come to couples therapy. Many couples come before things reach that point, and that is usually when the work is most effective.
- You feel like you’re having the same argument in different forms, over and over
- Immigration put pressure on your relationship that you never fully processed together
- You and your partner come from different cultures, and the gap between you feels harder to bridge than you expected
- You feel more like flatmates or co-parents than partners
- One of you has changed since moving to Australia and the other is still catching up
- There are things you can’t seem to say to each other, even though you want to
- You love each other, but something has been lost, and you’re not sure how to find it
- You want a space that belongs to both of you, not just one person’s therapy that the other attends
- You are navigating an intercultural relationship and want support from someone who understands what that actually involves
- You want to work with someone who is LGBTQIA+ affirming, culturally literate, and not going to pathologise your relationship
If any of this resonates, a free 15-minute introductory call is available. Send us a message.
The weight of immigrant relationships
What immigration does to relationships
Most couples counselling talks about communication and conflict resolution. These things matter. But for immigrant and intercultural couples, something else is also happening underneath.
Immigration is a loss event. Even when it is chosen, even when it is the right decision, it involves leaving behind a version of yourself, a community, a language, a home. That grief doesn’t disappear just because the practical life is going well. It lives somewhere in the relationship — often unspoken, often unnamed.
When you grieve at different speeds
One of the most common and least discussed dynamics in immigrant couples is asymmetrical grief. One partner adapted more quickly. The other is still mourning. One misses home acutely. The other has found their footing here. This asymmetry can look like conflict, but it is often two people in different phases of the same loss.
When culture creates invisible expectations
You may have come from the same country and still have profoundly different expectations about gender roles, family, money, intimacy and emotional expression. These expectations were formed in childhood, long before you met each other. In the pressure-cooker of immigration, they surface in ways that can feel like personal attacks — but are often the collision of two worlds that were never made explicit.
When the language gap is more than words
For couples where partners have different levels of comfort in English, Portuguese or Spanish, language can become a source of inequality in the relationship. One partner navigates the new country more fluently and carries a heavier practical load. The other feels dependent, infantilised, or invisible. This is not a communication problem — it is a structural one, and it deserves to be named.
When one person changes and the other doesn’t
Immigration changes people, sometimes in ways their partners don’t recognise, or didn’t agree to. The woman who becomes more independent, more professionally ambitious, more feminist in her thinking. The partner who feels left behind, threatened, or confused by who she is becoming. These are not personal failings. They are the natural consequences of being two separate people navigating the same upheaval at different speeds.
Our approach
How we work with couples
Couples therapy at Talking Works is grounded in Gottman’s method with a psychodynamic relational perspective, which means we are interested not just in the surface conflict, but in what is driving it from beneath.
We work on your Sound Relationship House theory, the patterns between you, whilst looking into your patterns as a couple – how they were formed, what they are protecting, what they might be costing you both. We look at what each of you brings from your history: your families of origin, your early relational experiences, the models of love and conflict you absorbed before you were old enough to question them.
We work through a feminist and intersectional lens — which means we take seriously the power dynamics that exist within relationships, shaped by gender, culture, race, and migration. We do not assume that both partners are equally positioned, and we do not ask people to pretend otherwise.
This is not about taking sides
Couples therapy is not mediation, and it is not about deciding who is right. It is about creating a space where both people can be genuinely heard — often for the first time — and where what is happening between you can be seen clearly enough to change.
LGBTQIA+ affirming
Talking Works is an explicitly LGBTQIA+ affirming practice. All couples are welcome. We do not approach same-sex or gender-diverse relationships with different assumptions, additional scrutiny, or a heteronormative framework. The work is the same: creating a space where both people can be known.
Sessions in your language or across languages
Couples sessions are available in Portuguese, Spanish, and English. For intercultural couples where partners have different first languages — one English-speaking, one Portuguese or Spanish-speaking — sessions can be conducted in the language that works best for both, including mixed-language sessions where that is what the couple needs. We discuss what arrangement works best for your specific situation before we begin.
What we work with
What couples bring to sessions
Communication breakdown
When you’ve stopped saying the things that matter, or when saying them always leads to the same place. We work with what is being said and what isn’t.
Intercultural difference
When your backgrounds create invisible expectations about gender, family, money, intimacy, or emotional expression that keep colliding.
Migration and grief
The asymmetrical grief of immigration: one partner adapted, one is still mourning. One misses home. One has found home here. Creating space for both to be true at the same time.
Intimacy and disconnection
When the emotional and physical closeness that once came naturally now requires effort you don’t always have or has disappeared without a clear moment you can point to.
Conflict and rupture
The recurring arguments that never fully resolve. The things said in anger that linger. The patterns of attack and withdrawal, or silence and distance.
Trust and repair
Including recovery from infidelity, betrayal, or significant ruptures — and the painstaking, often underestimated work of rebuilding something that felt destroyed.
Life transitions
Parenthood, career change, relocation, loss — the transitions that reveal what a relationship is made of, and sometimes expose fractures that were always there.
Growing apart
When you love each other, but you’re not sure you still know each other and you want to find out whether the relationship can grow into what it needs to be.
frequently asked questions
FAQs about couples therapy
Do I need a referral to do couples therapy?
No. Medicare rebates are not available for couples sessions; Medicare covers individual psychological therapy only. Couples therapy sessions are charged at a private fee rate.
Do both partners need to attend every session?
In most cases, yes. Couples therapy works with the relationship, which means both partners need to be present. In some cases, we may suggest individual sessions alongside the couple’s work, but the primary format is therapy with both partners together.
What if my partner is reluctant to come?
This is very common. Sometimes one partner is more ready than the other. If your partner is reluctant, you are welcome to book a free 15-minute call to discuss the situation. Sometimes talking through what to expect makes the prospect less confronting. Alternatively, you are welcome to start individual therapy yourself, which sometimes creates enough change in the dynamic that a partner becomes more open.
Can we do couples therapy if we speak different languages?
Yes. This is one of the situations Talking Works is specifically set up for. If one partner is more comfortable in Portuguese or Spanish and the other in English, sessions can be conducted in a way that works for both. This might mean predominantly English sessions with Portuguese available when needed, or a genuinely bilingual session format. We discuss what works best for your specific situation before we begin. The goal is that neither partner feels linguistically disadvantaged in the room.
Is couples therapy confidential?
Yes. What is discussed in sessions is confidential, with the same exceptions that apply to all therapy (risk of harm to self or others). Within the couple’s work, we do not share information disclosed in individual sessions with the other partner without permission.
Is couples therapy covered by Medicare?
No. Medicare rebates are available for individual psychological therapy only. Couples sessions are charged at a private fee rate. Please contact us for current fee information.
Do you work with LGBTQIA+ couples?
Yes, explicitly. Talking Works is an LGBTQIA+ affirming practice. All couples are welcome, and we do not apply a heteronormative framework to same-sex or gender-diverse relationships.
We come from different countries. Is couples therapy still relevant for us?
Very much so. Intercultural couples, a relationship with persons from different countries, face a specific set of pressures that most couples therapy doesn’t address directly. Different cultural models of gender, family, emotional expression, and love create invisible friction that can be hard to name and harder to resolve without a framework that understands where it comes from. This is exactly the work we do.
What if we decide to separate during therapy?
This happens, and it is not a failure. Sometimes the work of couples therapy is understanding clearly and honestly that the relationship has run its course and finding a way to end it with care rather than destruction. We can support this process or refer to appropriate individual support for each partner.
We're not in crisis. Is couples therapy still for us?
Yes. Many couples come before things reach a crisis point – when something feels off, or when they want to go deeper, or when they can see a pattern forming that they don’t want to repeat. Coming before the crisis is usually when the work is most effective.
What to expect
How couples therapy works in practice
The first session
The first couples session is a space for both of you to share what brings you here — from each of your perspectives. It is also a space to ask questions, get a sense of how we work, and decide whether this feels right. There is no obligation to continue.
We work through a feminist and intersectional lens — which means we take seriously the power dynamics that exist within relationships, shaped by gender, culture, race, and migration. We do not assume that both partners are equally positioned, and we do not ask people to pretend otherwise.
The structure
Couples sessions are 60 minutes, usually fortnightly — though some couples prefer weekly, particularly in the early stages of the work. The rhythm is something we establish together.
In some cases, we may suggest one or two individual sessions with each partner alongside the couple’s work — not instead of it, but to create space for things that are difficult to say in each other’s presence.
How long does it take?
Couples therapy is not a quick fix, and we won’t present it as one. Some couples find a significant shift in 7 appointments. Others work for longer. What we can say is that couples who come with a genuine commitment to the work — both of them — tend to experience real change. The work tends to open things that were closed, which is uncomfortable before it is relieving.
Does couples therapy mean the relationship will survive?
Not necessarily. And that is an honest answer worth having upfront. Sometimes, the work of couples therapy is understanding clearly that the relationship has run its course and finding a way to end it with dignity and care rather than bitterness. This is not a failure of therapy. It is sometimes exactly what the work needs to do.
Ready to begin?
After receiving your message, we aim to get back to you in 24 hours. Feel free to contact us if you require a faster response.