6 Los Angeles Premarital Counselors [No Waitlist]
You've found your person, and now the question isn't whether you want to build a life together, but how. Maybe conversations about finances keep circling back to the same impasse, or you're wondering how your different family backgrounds will shape the home you're trying to create. Maybe you simply want to ensure you’re doing all you can to lay a strong foundation for your future marriage.
At Therapy on Fig, our Los Angeles premarital therapists work with couples who are ready to do that honest, sometimes tender work of getting to know each other—and themselves—more fully before the wedding. Meet our team here to find the right fit for you and your partner, and reach out when you’re ready to begin.
Jump to a therapist
Emily Gaston: Good fit for those in ethically non-monogamous relationships
Michael Hung: Good fit for creative, bicultural, or highly sensitive partners
Grace Chan: Good fit for intercultural couples navigating faith, family expectations, or cultural differences
Janelle Malak: Good fit for couples in major life transitions or feeling emotionally disconnected
Gabriella Giorgio: Good fit for neurodiverse couples and those working through attachment patterns
Bret Hansen: Good fit for LGBTQ+ and queer couples
If you’re unsure which therapist is right for your situation, please contact us so we can thoughtfully match you.
Meet our Los Angeles premarital therapists
Emily Gaston
Good fit for those in ethically non-monogamous relationships
As someone who exists in queer community and the child of a deceased parent, Emily deeply understands and respects the importance of chosen family.
Where most premarital therapy focuses on the relationship between two people, Emily has a particular passion for supporting those in poly or ethically non-monogamous relationships. Her approach is rooted in IFS and psychodynamic lenses, giving her a distinct depth-oriented perspective to premarital counseling for people in all relationship structures.
If you need a therapist with both clinical rigor and a person-level understanding of your dynamic, Emily may be a match.
Credentials: Registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist #155211, Registered Associate Professional Clinical Counselor #19502
Specialty Areas: Queer community, polyamorous and ethically non-monogamous relationships, relational and family-system trauma, grief and loss, life transitions
Michael Hung
Good fit for creative, bicultural, or highly sensitive partners
Michael brings a depth of lived experience to his work with couples, working as a professional musician and film composer for over a decade before transitioning to a career as a therapist. This path gave him a felt understanding of what it means to work in creative, high-stakes environments while carrying something deeply personal underneath.
In addition to his background, what sets Michael apart is his training in IFIO (Intimacy from the Inside Out): a couples model built specifically on IFS that helps partners access the internal parts driving disconnection, reactivity, and guardedness, rather than addressing only what's visible on the surface. He also engages in twice-per-week supervision with an IFIO trainer, a collaboration that adds to his insights and offers additional perspective and expertise.
For highly sensitive, neurodivergent, or bicultural partners who have often felt too complex for conventional therapy, Michael offers a rare combination of specificity, depth, and personal resonance.
Credentials: Associate Marriage and Family Therapist #154058
Specialty Areas: Multicultural couples, entertainment industry, somatic-based trauma work, shame and self-criticism, body image
Grace Chan
Good fit for intercultural couples navigating faith, family expectations, or cultural differences
Grace holds formal training in PREPARE/ENRICH—one of the most widely researched premarital counseling programs available—which she integrates with IFS, Brainspotting, and experiential therapy to make that structured work feel genuinely alive and relational rather than like a premarital questionnaire to complete.
As a Malaysian-Chinese, third-culture adult and first-generation immigrant who is also deconstructing her own faith, she brings a rare and grounded fluency to the kinds of premarital questions that involve family loyalty, cultural difference, and inherited beliefs about what partnership should look like.
Couples who have felt unseen or flattened by therapists who missed the cultural complexity of their relationship tend to find Grace's approach to be a different kind of container for premarital exploration.
Credentials: Associate Marriage and Family Therapist #142670
Specialty Areas: Intercultural and interracial couples, religious and faith deconstruction, intergenerational patterns, entertainment industry, creative arts therapies
Janelle Malak
Good fit for couples in major life transitions or feeling emotionally disconnected
Janelle came to therapy as a second career, after becoming a parent and navigating the kind of life transitions her clients now bring into the room, which gives her work a groundedness that is hard to teach and easy to feel.
Trained in both Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) and the Gottman Method, she is equipped with two of the most research-backed approaches in the couples field, helping partners identify the attachment-driven cycles beneath their recurring conflicts and find new ways of reaching for each other.
Janelle also partners in a multiracial and neurodiverse relationship herself, and that lived experience shapes the nuance and specificity she brings to couples navigating different cultural backgrounds, neurotypes, or life-stage adjustments together.
Credentials: Associate Marriage and Family Therapist #144798
Specialty Areas: Couples, new and expecting parents, major life transitions, career and identity shifts, entertainment industry professionals, those experiencing estrangement
Gabriella Giorgio
Good fit for neurodiverse couples and those working through attachment patterns
Gabriella is herself a late-discovered autistic person, which means she understands from the inside what it takes to navigate a relationship when your nervous system, sensory experience, and communication style don't match the assumed defaults. She brings that understanding to couples where those differences are creating friction that neither partner has the language for yet.
Trained in the Gottman Method and in IFS (Level 1), she helps neurodiverse couples build a shared relational framework before marriage that accounts for the actual terrain— different attachment needs, different sensory thresholds, different ways of processing conflict—rather than a framework that will quietly break down the moment life gets harder.
For couples where one or both partners have spent years masking, adapting, or being misread, Gabriella offers something rarer than technique alone: the particular safety of being understood by someone who genuinely gets it.
Credentials: Associate Marriage and Family Therapist #140682
Specialty Areas: Neurodiverse couples, highly masked autistic women, attachment and relational injury, anxious people-pleasers, identity and self-trust, postpartum and parenting transitions, highly sensitive mothers
Bret Hansen
Good fit for LGBTQ+ and queer couples
Bret is an EFT-trained therapist and gay man who brings something to LGBTQ+ premarital work that training alone can't produce: a firsthand understanding of the context and lived experience of navigating dynamics that are unique to queer partnerships alongside universal relationship challenges.
Before becoming a therapist, he spent decades as a creative director in design, publishing, and branding, and he carries that background into sessions as a refined ability to help couples name what's actually happening beneath the surface—identifying the emotional patterns and protective strategies that feel like personality but are really learned responses to earlier experiences of not quite belonging.
For couples who are creative, sensitive, or queer and have sat with therapists who were technically affirming but missed the specific texture of their experience, Bret's combination of EFT, Hakomi somatic work, and genuine personal resonance makes him a uniquely grounding presence.
Credentials: Associate Marriage and Family Therapist #155624, IFS Level I Trained
Specialty Areas: LGBTQ+ and queer couples, creatives and artists, emotionally sensitive individuals, adults navigating major life transitions
What sets our practice apart from other Los Angeles premarital counseling providers
At Therapy on Fig, we offer something more tailored than traditional premarital counseling: a relational, parts-based approach that honors the fact that no two couples are walking in with the same histories, cultures, or nervous systems.
All of our premarital therapists are trained in or deeply informed by Internal Family Systems (IFS), a model that helps partners understand the internal parts driving their behavior—not just the behavior itself.
Multiple clinicians hold specialized training in Gottman Method, EFT, and IFIO, giving couples access to the most research-supported approaches in couples therapy.
We offer in-person sessions in Highland Park, Los Angeles, as well as virtual sessions for couples anywhere in California.
Our team includes therapists with lived experience in intercultural, interracial, neurodiverse, queer, and non-traditional relationships.
We hold a non-pathological, identity-affirming stance, meaning we are not here to fix you—we are here to help you understand yourselves and build something intentional together.
What to expect from the therapy process
1. Free phone consultation
After filling out our contact form, you’ll hear from our Client Care Coordinator. She can answer initial logistical questions and help connect you directly with a therapist. From there, you can opt for another consultation with your chosen therapist before committing to the process.
2. Your first session together
The first full session is a chance for your therapist to begin understanding each of you individually and as a unit, including your relationship history, the strengths you're already building on, and the areas you most want to explore.
3. Ongoing weekly sessions
Most couples meet weekly to start, which creates the momentum and relational continuity that deeper work requires. Sessions are around 50 minutes and designed to move between structured exploration and the kind of open, honest conversation that builds trust over time.
4. Support that lasts as long as you need
There's no fixed endpoint for premarital therapy. Some couples come for eight to twelve sessions with a specific focus; others choose to continue longer. Your therapist will check in with you regularly about how the work is landing.
FAQs about premarital therapy
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Research consistently shows that couples who participate in premarital counseling report higher relationship satisfaction and lower rates of divorce than those who don't. Outcomes can vary depending on both partners' engagement and the quality of the therapeutic relationship, but we’ve seen firsthand how helpful it can be.
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There's no wrong time, but beginning at least six months before your wedding gives you enough runway to do meaningful work without the pressure of an approaching date. Starting earlier also means you have the time to implement what you're discovering, and to see how those changes actually land in the relationship. With that said, it’s typically never too late to get support for your relationship.
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Premarital therapy is an invitation to get honest about the assumptions, patterns, and unspoken expectations you're each carrying into the marriage. Sessions can cover a range of territory, including:
Communication styles and conflict patterns
Finances, spending values, and financial goals
Family-of-origin dynamics and what you're each replicating or consciously departing from
Parenting values and expectations
Intimacy, emotional and physical
Cultural, spiritual, or religious differences
Individual identities and how they'll continue to be honored within the partnership
How you each experience stress, and what you need from your partner during hard seasons
While premarital counseling won’t “fix” a relationship or guarantee that future issues won’t come up, it can help you build enough fluency with each other that the harder conversations feel possible.
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We approach premarital work from a non-pathological, IFS-informed lens. This means we're not treating your relationship like a problem to correct, but rather as two full human beings, each with their own internal world, learning how to build something together. Our therapists also integrate research-backed methods like Gottman and EFT with a relational depth and cultural attunement that makes the work personal rather than prescriptive.
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Premarital therapy gives couples a structured, supported space to surface dynamics that often don't become visible until much later in marriage: the patterns around money, conflict, intimacy, and family that tend to emerge most sharply under pressure. By naming those patterns before they calcify, couples build both the tools and the trust they'll need to navigate difficulty together with more grace.
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In most cases, premarital counseling is not covered by insurance because it is not tied to a clinical diagnosis. We accept Cigna and Aetna for qualifying individual therapy, and we provide monthly superbills for clients with PPO plans seeking out-of-network reimbursement. You can check your benefits directly through our benefits checker.