The Dutch public mental health system refers couples to approved providers with long waits and sessions in Dutch. Private English-speaking couples therapy exists in Amsterdam and The Hague but the options for depth-oriented work are limited.
I work with couples who need to work in English and are living in the Netherlands. The relocation that changed the balance. The relationship that was fine until the external structure was gone. Something that's been there for years and finally feels urgent. Something neither of you can trace to a beginning.
Couples work is about finding the cycle you're caught in, not adjudicating who's right. The move, the asymmetry, the same argument in different forms: these have a structure. When you can see it from outside, it stops feeling like fate.
The work
The work I do is relational and pattern-focused. I don't run through intake checklists or assign exercises between sessions. I pay attention to what happens in the room: what you're saying, what you're not saying, the moments when something shifts or goes flat or speeds up. That's the material we work with.
Most people arrive already knowing the story of their situation. They've told it to themselves a hundred times and always land in the same place. What's missing is a different angle, someone watching in real time who can name what's invisible from inside it. That's what I offer. Not interpretation from a distance, but attention in the room, offered as it happens.
I work with individuals and couples. Individual work is usually about finding the pattern underneath the presenting problem, the thing that keeps recurring in different forms across different circumstances. Couples work is about finding what the argument is really about, which is rarely what it appears to be about. Both come down to the same thing: seeing what you haven't been able to see, and from there, actually being able to do something different.
Being in the Netherlands as a couple
The Netherlands does something specific to couples who relocate here. The country works practically (the bike paths, the trains, the daycare, the labor protections), which removes the kind of external stress that often masks what is already happening inside a relationship. The cover comes off. Whatever was already there becomes more visible.
One pattern shows up over and over with couples I see in NL. One partner came for a job. The other came because the first one did. The recruited partner has structure: colleagues, salary in euros, an office, an obvious place in the country. The accompanying partner has the harder version of every administrative process, often a stalled career, often the slower social on-ramp that comes with not having a built-in workplace. Six months in, neither of you is sure why everything feels heavier than it should.
The Dutch culture itself adds something. The famous directness can land as a relief if you are wired for it and as a slow erosion if you are not. The threshold from acquaintance to actual friend is high and slow. For couples who relied on a wider social world back home, the shrinking can produce a reliance on each other that the relationship was not designed to carry.
What couples bring
The recurring arguments are usually not about what they look like. The fight about whose family to visit at Christmas is rarely about Christmas. The fight about whether to take the Dutch language seriously is rarely about Dutch. Underneath most of what couples bring is a slower question: whose life is this. The career that drove the move belonged to one of you. The social life that exists here was built around that career. The version of the relationship that worked in the place you came from may not survive the version of it that exists here without naming what got reorganized.
Beyond the move-specific material, I see what most couples bring: communication breakdowns that have stopped repairing, growing emotional distance, the aftermath of infidelity or a betrayal of trust, the question of whether to stay together. The work is the same in shape but specific in content to what is actually happening between you.
How couples therapy in English works in the Netherlands
Sessions are online via secure video. You can both be on the same screen at home, or in separate locations across Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven, or wherever you are. We meet weekly for 60 minutes. There is a free 15-minute call before we start so you can see whether this feels like a fit.
The work is psychodynamic and characterological. That means we look at the pattern underneath the recurring argument rather than teaching communication scripts. You probably already know how to have a productive conversation when you are not activated. The question is what makes you stop being able to do that with each other, which is rarely a skills problem and almost always a deeper one.
Fees are in USD. Payment is by card or bank transfer. There is no zorgverzekering involvement, no GP referral, no Dutch health record generated by our work together.