Couples counseling and marriage counseling in Los Altos
Private, Discreet Support for High Net Worth Couples
The hardest part is usually admitting it out loud: the marriage that holds everything else up isn't doing well. The fights repeat, the distance grows, and both of you are too capable and too busy to deal with it, until it stops being ignorable. I'm Dr. Jené Verchick, a licensed psychologist with 26+ years helping Los Altos couples do something about it.
What Brings Los Altos Couples In
Two demanding careers and a marriage running on fumes. A conflict loop where one of you pushes to talk and the other goes quiet, and both of you lose. Money and equity changing faster than the partnership can renegotiate. Trust shaken by something one of you did, or slowly eroded by years of not quite choosing each other. And sometimes nothing dramatic at all: just the realization that you've become excellent co-managers of a household and strangers to each other.
Couples Are the Core of My Practice
I'm a doctoral-level clinical psychologist, and couples work isn't a service line for me; it's been the center of my practice for 26+ years. That depth matters with long-running patterns, with anxiety or depression tangled into the marriage, and with smart couples who can out-argue any therapist who isn't paying close attention.
How I Work
Actively. I don't watch you have the same fight you have at home and call it progress. We slow down the exact moments where things break, the tone, the withdrawal, the counterattack, and rebuild them live, in session, until the new pattern starts holding on its own. You'll leave sessions with something to do, not just something to discuss.
What to Expect
No preparation, no homework before you start. First session, each of you lays out how you see it, and both versions get equal room. I'll tell you honestly what I see and what the work looks like. We meet weekly to start, and most couples feel the temperature drop within the first month: shorter fights, faster repairs, fewer landmines.
Before You're Married
For engaged couples in Los Altos, premarital work is the single best-leverage investment you can make in the marriage: money, families, conflict styles, expectations, all handled while they're still small.
Common Questions
What percentage of couples stay together after couples therapy?
Most couples who do the work stay together and report being genuinely happier, with research on structured approaches showing meaningful improvement for roughly 70 to 75 percent. The couples who beat the odds share one trait: they started before indifference set in.
What is the Gottman six-hour rule?
Research found that couples who improved their marriages invested about six extra hours a week in small things: real greetings and goodbyes, appreciation, affection, a weekly date. The lesson isn't the number. It's that marriages run on small, consistent deposits, not grand gestures.
We can barely find one free hour a week. How does this work?
By video, scheduled around your reality, early or late when needed. One protected hour a week is the whole ask, and most couples find the hour pays for itself in how much smoother the rest of the week runs.
What if only one of us is ready?
Start anyway. One partner changing their half of the pattern changes the pattern, and reluctant partners usually join once they see the work is fair and concrete.