SERVICES ・ PARIS & ONLINE
Couples
Counselling
Relational work with couples — attending to what each person carries and what the relationship has become. In English and French, in Paris and online.
Nikos Marinos · Psychologist & Psychodynamic Psychotherapist
Most couples do not arrive at the first session in crisis. They arrive, more often, at a particular kind of fatigue — the fatigue of having the same conversation in different forms, of noticing a distance that neither person can quite account for, of feeling that the relationship has become something other than what either of them chose. Sometimes there has been a rupture — a betrayal, a loss, a decision that divided the room into before and after. More often the problem is harder to name than that: a slow erosion, a pattern that has calcified, an intimacy that still exists but has moved to a different register from the one where it began.
What brings a couple to therapy is rarely only what they name when they arrive. That naming — we don't communicate, we want different things, we've grown apart — is a beginning, not an explanation. The work of couples counselling, in the relational frame I bring to it, is to move carefully from the named problem toward what is actually happening: between the two people in the room, and within each of them in the presence of the other.
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THE APPROACH
There are three presences in the room in couples work. The first is each individual — with their own history, their own relational templates, their own attachment patterns formed long before this relationship began. The way one person experiences proximity, conflict, silence, or need will have been shaped by things that have nothing to do with their partner, and everything to do with what intimacy has meant in their own life until now. This is not an excuse for how one behaves in a relationship. It is an explanation — and explanations, honestly held, change things.
The third presence is the relationship itself. Relationships develop their own logic over time — their own weather, their own defensive patterns, their own ways of organising around certain silences and avoiding certain truths. What a couple has built together is not reducible to either person individually. It is something they have made between them, often without quite realising they were making it, and it requires its own attention.
My approach is relational and psychodynamic. I do not offer structured communication exercises or behavioural protocols, though I respect that these have their place. What I offer is a space in which what is actually happening — between the two of you, and within each of you in the presence of the other — can be looked at more honestly than it has been possible to look at it alone. I work to maintain an equal presence to both partners: not a judge, not an advocate for either person or for the relationship's continuation, but someone who can hold the full complexity of what is in the room without needing it to resolve into a verdict.
The goal of couples work is not necessarily to stay together. It is to understand more honestly what is happening, and what each person needs — which is sometimes the same thing, and sometimes not.
This is worth saying clearly: I do not assume that the right outcome of couples therapy is the preservation of the relationship. Sometimes the work clarifies that what each person needs can be found together; sometimes it clarifies that it cannot. What I can offer is a space in which that question is faced with more honesty and less damage than it would be faced without it.
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WHAT THE WORK CAN ADDRESS
Recurring conflict — the argument that changes form but never content, the pattern that both people can see and neither can stop
Disconnection and distance — the gradual erosion of intimacy, or the intimacy that has moved somewhere neither person intended
Rupture and repair — the aftermath of a betrayal, a loss, or a decision that divided the relationship into before and after
Different desires — about children, work, place, the shape of a shared life, or simply about what the relationship is for
Transitions — parenthood, bereavement, illness, professional change, or any shift that has altered the relational landscape
The end of a relationship — separating with as much clarity and as little damage as possible, especially where children are involved
Desire and intimacy — the difficulties of physical closeness, or its disappearance, or the gap between what is wanted and what is asked for
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
LANGUAGES
English and French.
Sessions are conducted in whichever language both partners prefer, or in the language that best fits each moment.
FORMAT
In person, Paris.
Online via secure video for couples not based in Paris, or where one partner is abroad.
SESSION LENGTH
75 minutes.
Couples sessions are longer than individual sessions to allow sufficient space for both people.
FREQUENCY
Typically, weekly, particularly in the early phase of the work. Spacing may adjust as the work develops.
FIRST SESSION
An initial consultation with both partners present — to understand what has brought you, and to consider together whether this is the right kind of work for your situation.
INDIVIDUAL SESSIONS
Where useful, I may meet with each partner individually at certain moments in the work. This is discussed and agreed together.
It is worth knowing that I also work individually with people navigating relational difficulty — partners of someone in individual therapy with another clinician, people in the aftermath of a relationship that has ended, or those who want to understand their own relational patterns in depth before or alongside couples work. If you are uncertain which kind of work is right for your situation, an initial consultation can help clarify that.
GETTING IN TOUCH