7 Highly Recommended Los Angeles Consensual (Ethical) Non-Monogamy and Polyamorous Therapists
Your capacity to love doesn't have to fit within someone else's definition of what a relationship should look like. Whether you're just starting to explore the possibilities of ethical non-monogamy or polyamory, or you've already been practicing relating to loved ones expansively, you may be experiencing difficulty holding inherited beliefs about love, patterns of attachment, stories about belonging or the isolation of walking a different relational path.
At Therapy on Fig, our Los Angeles ethical non-monogamy and polyamory therapists offer individual, depth-oriented therapy that honors your relationship choices while helping you understand the internal experiences shaping how you connect with yourself and others.
Note that in this piece, we will refer to non-monogamous relationships multiple ways: consensual non-monogamy (CNM), ethical non-monogamy (ENM), and polyamory. Although we believe there is nothing unethical about consensual non-monogamy, some people still use the term “ethical,” which is why we include the term.
Who we work with
Therapy on Fig welcomes individuals practicing or exploring polyamory, consensual non-monogamy (often referred to as ethical non-monogamy [ENM]), and other consensually non-monogamous relationship structures. We support:
Polyamorous individuals who value multiple meaningful connections but sometimes struggle to balance their emotional needs, boundaries, and capacity for intimacy.
People exploring ethical non-monogamy who feel curious about alternative relationship structures while navigating uncertainty, internalized expectations, or conflicting desires.
Individuals experiencing jealousy or attachment insecurity who intellectually embrace non-monogamy but find certain relationship experiences activate unexpected fears of abandonment or rejection.
Queer, transgender, and LGBTQIA+ individuals exploring sexuality, identity, and relationships outside conventional social expectations.
Highly sensitive or neurodivergent individuals who want to navigate non-monogamy in ways that honor their emotional processing styles, communication needs, and nervous systems.
People recovering from relationship loss or betrayal who want to understand painful experiences without questioning the legitimacy of their preferred relationship structure.
Individuals navigating cultural or religious expectations who feel torn between the relationships they desire and the messages they've internalized about love, commitment, and belonging.
You don't have to be certain about your relationship identity or have everything figured out before beginning therapy. We're here to help you explore what feels authentic to you.
Meet your Los Angeles ethical non-monogamy and polyamorous therapists
bert wright, AMFT
As a queer transgender, non-binary, and consensually non-monogamous therapist who came out in multiple ways later in life, bert understands what it means to question the identities, relationships, and milestones that society expects us to follow. They explicitly welcome people exploring polyamory, consensual non-monogamy, kink, and expansive expressions of gender and sexuality.
bert's approach draws from Internal Family Systems (IFS), Narrative Therapy, liberation psychology, relational-cultural therapy, and somatic practices. They recognize that the internal conflicts you experience around relationships don't exist in isolation from the cultural and social systems you've navigated. Together, you'll explore inherited expectations and protective patterns while developing greater freedom to build connections that reflect your authentic values.
Offers ENM and polyamory-affirming therapy ✓
Credentials: Associate Marriage and Family Therapist
Clientele: Adults, teens, and couples
Location: Los Angeles, CA 90042
Virtual therapy: Yes, in addition to in-person
Gabriella Elise Giorgio, AMFT
Gabriella brings a particularly personal understanding of ethical non-monogamy, having explored ENM in her own life. As a late-discovered autistic woman, she also understands how years of masking, people-pleasing, and adapting to others' expectations can make it difficult to recognize and advocate for your own needs.
Drawing from Internal Family Systems (IFS), Intimacy From the Inside Out (IFIO)-informed work, and trauma-informed approaches, Gabriella helps you understand the protective parts of yourself that emerge when you feel threatened, insecure, or disconnected. Rather than treating jealousy or attachment fears as problems to eliminate, she creates space to explore their origins and develop greater self-compassion, emotional regulation, and trust in yourself.
Offers ENM and polyamory-affirming therapy ✓
Credentials: Associate Marriage and Family Therapist
Clientele: Adults and couples
Location: Los Angeles, CA 90042
Virtual therapy: Yes, in addition to in-person
Marina Mendes, APCC
As a mixed-race Asian American queer woman, introvert, and Highly Sensitive Person, Marina understands the exhaustion that can come from constantly adjusting yourself to meet other people's expectations. For individuals practicing or exploring non-monogamy, this tendency can become especially complicated when you're trying to honor your needs while remaining attentive to those of multiple partners.
Marina integrates Internal Family Systems (IFS), mindfulness, somatic practices, and nature-based therapy to help clients reconnect with their intuition and develop a more compassionate relationship with themselves. Her approach to ENM therapy is particularly valuable if you're navigating a relationship transition, questioning internalized beliefs about what you should want, or learning to set boundaries without feeling responsible for everyone else's emotional experience.
Offers ENM and polyamory-affirming therapy ✓
Credentials: Associate Professional Clinical Counselor
Clientele: Adults
Location: Los Angeles, CA 90042
Virtual therapy: Yes, in addition to in-person
Emily Gaston, AMFT, APCC
Emily's work is shaped by her experiences within queer community, where chosen family, expansive identities, and flexible ways of building meaningful connections are celebrated. She understands that relationships and community connections can hold profound significance, even when they don't fit conventional definitions of family or partnership.
Through a relational, depth-oriented, and IFS-informed approach, Emily helps individuals explore how early experiences of trauma, loss, and family dynamics influence their current relationships. Her work may be particularly meaningful if you're grieving the end of a partnership, navigating changes within your chosen family, or trying to understand why certain relational experiences activate feelings of abandonment, disconnection, or uncertainty.
Offers ENM and polyamory-affirming therapy ✓
Credentials: Associate Marriage and Family Therapist and Associate Professional Clinical Counselor
Clientele: Individuals, couples, and families
Location: Los Angeles, CA 90042
Virtual therapy: Yes, in addition to in-person
Grace Chan, AMFT
As a Malaysian-Chinese, third-culture adult, first-generation immigrant, and someone reconstructing her relationship with faith, Grace understands how difficult it can be to separate your authentic desires from the expectations you've inherited. You may intellectually embrace non-monogamy or polyamory while still carrying internalized messages about what commitment, loyalty, or a successful relationship is supposed to look like.
Grace integrates Internal Family Systems (IFS), Brainspotting, and creative arts therapies to help you explore the beliefs and protective patterns shaping your sense of identity. She's particularly attuned to people who have spent years prioritizing family harmony, mediating conflict, or making themselves smaller to maintain connection. Your work together can help you distinguish which values you want to carry forward and which no longer reflect the life you're creating.
Offers ENM and polyamory-affirming therapy ✓
Credentials: Associate Marriage and Family Therapist
Clientele: Teens, adults, couples, and families
Location: Los Angeles, CA 90042
Virtual therapy: Yes, in addition to in-person
Bret Hansen, AMFT
As a gay man, lifelong artist, and former creative director, Bret understands the experience of feeling different and developing protective strategies to navigate environments where your authentic self isn't always fully welcomed. Even when you've found relationships and communities that affirm who you are, those earlier experiences can continue influencing how safe you feel expressing your desires and emotional needs.
Bret's relational and emotionally focused approach helps individuals understand the patterns that emerge around intimacy, including people-pleasing, withdrawal, self-doubt, and difficulty trusting connection. Integrating Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Hakomi mindful somatic psychotherapy, he offers a warm, gently challenging space to explore how you can remain connected to others without losing your sense of self.
Offers ENM and polyamory-affirming therapy ✓
Credentials: Associate Marriage and Family Therapist
Clientele: Adults and couples
Location: Los Angeles, CA 90042
Virtual therapy: Yes, in addition to in-person
Janelle Malak, AMFT
As someone who made significant life changes in her late 30s and is part of a multiracial, neurodiverse relationship, Janelle understands the tension between following an expected path and creating a life that genuinely fits. She works with people who find themselves questioning long-held assumptions about relationships, identity, and the future they've imagined.
Janelle integrates EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS)-informed work, and attachment-based perspectives to help clients understand the internal conflicts that arise during major transitions. Her work may be especially valuable if you're looking for ENM and polyamory therapy while carrying unresolved relationship trauma, struggling with fears of abandonment, or trying to distinguish what you genuinely want from what feels safest or most familiar.
Offers ENM and polyamory-affirming therapy ✓
Credentials: Associate Marriage and Family Therapist
Clientele: Adults and couples
Location: Los Angeles, CA 90042
Virtual therapy: Yes, in addition to in-person
How ethical non-monogamy and polyamory therapy can help
Understand jealousy and attachment fears without judging yourself
You might feel genuinely happy that someone you love is building another meaningful connection while simultaneously experiencing jealousy, fear, or insecurity. These conflicting feelings can be especially confusing when your values around non-monogamy don't seem to align with your emotional reactions.
Rather than trying to reason yourself out of discomfort, individual ENM therapy in Los Angeles helps you understand the protective parts of yourself that become activated during moments of uncertainty. You can explore where these responses originated, what they're attempting to protect, and how to offer yourself reassurance without dismissing your legitimate needs for care and connection.
Develop boundaries that honor your needs and autonomy
When you care deeply about multiple people, it can be easy to confuse being a supportive partner with being endlessly available. You might find yourself agreeing to arrangements that don't feel sustainable, minimizing your discomfort, or taking responsibility for emotions that aren't yours to manage.
Los Angeles ENM therapy offers space to examine why setting boundaries may feel threatening, particularly if you've learned that maintaining connection requires self-sacrifice. As you build a more compassionate relationship with yourself, you can begin expressing your needs and making decisions without being governed by guilt or fear of disappointing others.
Explore your identity beyond inherited relationship expectations
Even if consensual non-mongamy is your orientation to relationships, you may still carry messages about exclusivity, commitment, sexuality, and what makes someone worthy of love. These beliefs can be especially complicated when they intersect with cultural expectations, religious upbringing, queer identity, or previous experiences of rejection. Our Los Angeles ENM and polyamory therapists can help you begin distinguishing your authentic values from the expectations you've absorbed.
Strengthen your sense of self within intimate relationships
Being deeply connected to other people doesn't have to mean losing touch with who you are. Yet relationship changes, new romantic connections, and shifting emotional dynamics can sometimes activate old patterns of comparison, self-doubt, or fear of being replaced. Polyamory-affirming individual therapy helps you recognize the difference between your sense of self-worth and the reassurance you receive from others.
Common reasons why individuals seek ethical non-monogamy and polyamory therapy
Questioning whether your interest in polyamory reflects your authentic desires or whether you're pursuing it to maintain an existing relationship.
Comparing yourself to a partner's other partners and feeling pressure to prove that you're equally desirable, interesting, or worthy of love.
Struggling to recognize your emotional capacity when navigating multiple relationships, competing commitments, and limited time for yourself.
Finding yourself agreeing to relationship arrangements or expectations that don't feel right because you're afraid of disappointing someone you love.
Experiencing emotional reactions that feel disproportionate to the situation, particularly around changes in communication, availability, or intimacy.
Wrestling with internalized beliefs about monogamy, sexuality, and commitment that conflict with your consciously chosen values.
Feeling isolated because friends, family members, or previous therapists don't understand or affirm your relationship structure.
Navigating the intersection of polyamory with neurodivergence, high sensitivity, queer identity, or cultural and religious expectations.
Processing grief after the end of a romantic relationship or changes within a polycule, chosen family, or broader support system.
Struggling with attachment anxiety, fear of abandonment, or emotional withdrawal that seems to repeat across different relationships.
Wanting to cultivate greater self-trust and emotional independence without sacrificing closeness, intimacy, or interdependence.
What to expect from the therapy process
We begin with understanding your internal world
In our initial sessions, we'll explore your experiences with relationships and the different parts of yourself that emerge around intimacy, autonomy, and connection. You might notice a part that welcomes expansive love, another that fears abandonment, and another that questions whether your needs are too much. Our Los Angeles ENM therapists approach these experiences with curiosity rather than judgment, recognizing that even conflicting feelings often develop for understandable reasons.
We explore the origins of your relational patterns
Together, we'll examine the experiences and internalized beliefs that shape how you connect with others. This may include attachment injuries, childhood family dynamics, cultural or religious messages, and experiences of having your identity or relationship choices misunderstood. Our goal is to understand how protective strategies that once helped you navigate relationships may now be limiting your choices.
We cultivate greater self-trust and emotional freedom
As you develop a more compassionate relationship with your internal experiences, you can begin responding to difficult emotions with greater awareness and choice. Rather than relying exclusively on external reassurance or trying to suppress uncomfortable feelings, you'll develop more capacity to recognize your needs, communicate authentically, and make relationship decisions that reflect your values.
We adapt our work as your needs evolve
Your relationship experiences, identity, and priorities may continue changing throughout therapy. Some sessions may focus on a recent emotional experience, while others explore longstanding patterns or deeper questions about who you are becoming. Our approach is collaborative and responsive. We typically begin with weekly sessions and adjust the frequency as you develop greater internal resources and clarity about your goals.
FAQs about ethical non-monogamy and polyamory therapy
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Absolutely. You don't need to attend therapy with a partner or have an active romantic relationship to benefit from ENM-affirming therapy. In fact, working individually offers space to explore your emotions, identity, attachment patterns, and relationship desires without having to consider another person's perspective in every conversation. At Therapy on Fig, we focus on helping you develop a stronger connection with yourself, which can positively influence how you engage in your relationships.
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You don't need to arrive at therapy with a fixed relationship identity or a clear decision about non-monogamy. We recognize that your curiosity, excitement, uncertainty, or discomfort may all carry important information. Rather than encouraging you toward polyamory or monogamy, we'll help you explore your motivations, emotional needs, and internalized beliefs so you can make choices grounded in self-trust rather than fear or external pressure.
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There isn't a predetermined timeline because the length of therapy depends on your experiences and what you're hoping to understand or change. Some people seek support during a specific relationship transition, while others want to explore longstanding attachment patterns, trauma, or identity-related concerns. We typically begin with weekly sessions and collaboratively reassess your goals as your understanding of yourself deepens.
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Some Therapy on Fig therapists can bill Aetna and Cigna directly for eligible individual therapy services, depending on your specific mental health benefits. We also work with individuals who have PPO or out-of-network coverage and can provide documentation for potential reimbursement.
You can use our insurance benefits checker to explore your benefits before beginning therapy. Please note that we don't accept Aetna or Cigna EAP plans, and coverage varies depending on your policy. We encourage you to verify your benefits directly with your insurance provider.
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Therapy on Fig may be a good fit if you're looking for ENM or polyamory therapy that affirms your relationship choices while helping you better understand yourself. Our therapists offer a depth-oriented, trauma-informed approach that explores attachment patterns, emotional experiences, and the beliefs shaping your relationships. We welcome diverse identities and relationship structures, with a focus on helping you develop greater self-trust, emotional safety, and authentic connection. A free consultation can help you find a therapist whose experience and approach align with your needs.