Couples Therapy · Cascais
Couples Therapy in Cascais
Most couples who contact us have already tried to fix things on their own. They have had the same argument enough times to know how it ends. They have agreed to be kinder, and been kinder for about four days. What they usually cannot do alone is slow the argument down enough to see what is actually happening inside it.
Not verdicts, not sides — a third person in the room who can stop the sequence at the moment it turns and ask what just happened.
Couples counselling in Cascais — how sessions run
Sessions last 70 minutes and usually take place weekly at the start, then every two weeks as things settle. We see both partners together. Occasionally we will suggest one individual session each, early on, so that each person can say something without managing the other's reaction — but the couple, not the individual, stays the client.
The first meeting is longer. We map the recurring conflict, ask what each of you has already tried, and agree what would count as progress. If we do not think couples work is the right fit — for example when there is untreated addiction or ongoing violence — we say so in that first meeting and help you find the right service instead.
What couples come to us with
- One partner wants to leave and has not said so out loud yet
- An affair, disclosed or suspected, and the question of whether to stay
- Sex that has quietly stopped, and the conversation about it that never happens
- A move to Portugal that was supposed to help and did not — see our page on couples counselling after relocation
- Different answers to the question of where the family will live in five years
- Money, especially when one income disappeared during the move
- Parenting conflict, often sharpened by the first year at a new school
- Partners from different cultures negotiating whose normal wins
Marriage counselling for international couples on the Linha
Cascais couples are rarely both from the same place. One partner may be Portuguese, one Dutch; both may be American and neither may have family within a three-hour flight. That changes what a relationship has to carry. Without the usual network — parents nearby, old friends who knew you before, a language you both dream in — the partnership becomes the only load-bearing wall in the house.
We work with that directly. Not as a cultural curiosity, but as the practical reason two reasonable people end up shouting about the dishwasher.
Whether you look for a marriage counselor Cascais or marriage counseling Cascais — the terms are used interchangeably here, and both describe the same weekly work with the two of you.
Practical details
- Where
- Praceta Marquês Pombal 1, 2755-247 Cascais
- Getting here
- By car via the A5 or the N9 (Avenida de Sintra). Around 10 minutes from Cascais centre, 10 from Estoril, 5 from Birre or Manique
- Parking
- Free, on the street, directly outside. You will not be circling for twenty minutes the way you would in Cascais centre
- Language
- Sessions in English
- Length
- 70 minutes
- Fee
- €120 per session
- Invoices
- Issued with your NIF for insurance reimbursement
- Online
- Available across Portugal when one of you travels
Trial Period · Diagnosis
How we begin
- 1. Book a session
- Describe the problem you're struggling with as a couple when you book. If your situation allows it, make the effort to write that description together.
- 2. First couple session
- Both of you together, so we can hear the shared picture and how you each experience it.
- 3. Individual sessions
- Each partner meets with the therapist separately, one session each.
- 4. Joint plan
- We come back together, agree on what we'll work on, and both partners commit to that plan — or we stop here.
Before you book
You do not both have to be sure. It is extremely common for one partner to book and the other to arrive sceptical. Scepticism is workable. What is not workable is a decision already made in private — if one of you has firmly decided to end the relationship, say it in the first session, because the work then becomes something different and equally worth doing.
Our Lisbon practice covers the theory behind our couples work in more depth.