Emotional Distance in Relationships: How Santa Monica Couples Therapy Can Help You Reconnect
- kalie03
- Sep 1
- 2 min read
Updated: Oct 30
You may still share a home, routines, and responsibilities, but the emotional closeness feels miles away. Many partners describe it as living side by side rather than together. Santa Monica couples therapy helps partners understand where the distance began and guides them toward reconnection.
Emotional distance often develops quietly. Maybe work stress, parenting, or unresolved hurt slowly pushed connection to the background. Or perhaps conflict became so painful that you both started protecting yourselves by shutting down. Over time, that self-protection starts to look like indifference.
In therapy, we slow things down and look at the pattern, not to assign blame, but to uncover the longings beneath the silence. Through an attachment-based and systems perspective, you’ll learn how each of you contributes to the current dynamic and how to shift toward openness.
Sometimes, I integrate EMDR to help process past hurts that continue to shape present disconnection, and mindfulness practices to re-establish safety in the body when emotions feel overwhelming. These tools help partners approach each other with curiosity rather than defensiveness.
Reconnection is less about grand gestures and more about small, consistent moments of presence (listening, noticing, softening). Santa Monica couples therapy provides the roadmap for those moments, helping you remember what it feels like to truly be on the same team.
If you’ve grown apart, it doesn’t have to stay that way. Therapy can help you find your way back.
Kalie Pham, LMFT (#156007), is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and the founder of Inner Compass Therapy in Santa Monica, California. She specializes in couples therapy, EMDR, and identity-focused individual work. Kalie blends attachment-based, narrative, and somatic approaches to help clients understand themselves, heal relationship patterns, and move toward more grounded connection.
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