Online Couples Therapy in Washington, DC

Couples therapy here means joint sessions, usually weekly, in which both partners work with one therapist on the pattern between them rather than on who is right. I am a licensed clinical psychologist and board-certified psychoanalyst with fifty years of work on marital, relationship and sexual conflicts. Sessions run 90 minutes, by secure video.

Couples rarely struggle over what they think they struggle over. Beneath the recurring argument — money, intimacy, children, attention — there is usually a pattern the two of you built together, each responding to the other in ways neither fully sees.

I also see families: parents and adolescents, adult children and their parents, and households where a conflict has hardened into a fixed shape. Individual sessions are arranged alongside the joint work when they would be useful.

“A marriage is the smallest group there is.”

Common reasons couples call

The same argument, returning for years
Distance, resentment, or loss of intimacy
Sexual issues neither partner can raise
Affairs and rebuilding trust
Parenting and family conflict
Deciding whether to stay together

The problem

Why the same argument keeps returning

Most couples who call have had the conversation many times. They know the script. They can each predict what the other will say, often word for word, and they have the argument anyway — which is the part that makes it feel hopeless, and also the part that shows the argument is not really about its subject.

What keeps it alive is that each partner is responding to something the other is not aware of transmitting. A tone lands as contempt when it was meant as fatigue. A withdrawal reads as punishment when it was self-protection. Both people are then reacting accurately — to the wrong thing. Around that misfire the couple builds a stable, exhausting loop, and each new round adds evidence for the version of the story each already holds.

This is also why advice from friends tends not to help, and why the two of you talking it through at midnight rarely resolves anything. You are both inside the pattern. Someone has to be able to see it from outside, and describe it without taking a side.

The method

How psychoanalytic couples therapy works

In a joint session, the pattern does not have to be reported to me — it happens in front of me. Within a few meetings the loop appears in the room: the remark, the flinch, the counterattack, the silence. That is the material. Once it can be named while it is occurring, it stops being simply what the two of you are, and becomes something you are doing, which is a very different thing to be able to change.

My part is to describe what I see without allocating blame, and to keep attention on the space between you rather than on the ledger of who did what. Where a reaction plainly has a longer history than the marriage — and it often does — we look at that too, because a pattern learned in one family tends to be re-staged in the next.

The approach draws on a career of scholarship on how emotion moves through groups, beginning with Analysis of Groups. A couple is a group of two, with all of a group's capacity to develop unspoken rules, assigned roles, and subjects that everyone agrees not to raise.

Where one partner's own difficulty is doing most of the work — a depression, an anxiety, a long-standing character pattern — individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy may be the better instrument, either instead of joint work or alongside it.

The process

What working together looks like

A free 15-minute consultation
Usually with both of you, though one partner often calls first. You describe the difficulty; I tell you honestly whether joint work is the right approach, and if it is not, what would be.
The first sessions
The history of the relationship — how you met, what changed, when the pattern started. I will often see each of you individually once during this stretch, then bring what matters back into the joint work.
Settling into a rhythm
A fixed weekly 90-minute time. The length matters for couples: it takes a while for the real conversation to start, and a 50-minute session tends to end just as it does.
The work itself
The loop appears in session and gets named as it happens. Partners begin interrupting it themselves, at first awkwardly and then more naturally. This is usually where the temperature at home drops.
Reviewing, and ending
We take stock periodically — what has changed, what has not, whether this is still the right form of help. Ending is a decision the three of us make together.

Expected results

What couples therapy can and cannot promise

No honest clinician can guarantee a particular outcome for a relationship, and I will not pretend otherwise. What I can describe is what tends to shift, and in roughly what order: the fighting usually changes shape before either partner feels differently about the other.

The argument loses its grip

The same disagreement still arises, but it stops escalating on rails and starts being possible to interrupt.

You hear each other again

What your partner is actually saying becomes audible under what you have long assumed they meant.

Closeness becomes possible

Intimacy and sex generally return as safety does — rarely on demand, and rarely as the first thing to change.

Clarity either way

Couples who do separate after this work tend to do it with far less damage, particularly where children are involved.

An honest caveat: joint therapy is not appropriate in every situation. Where there is ongoing intimate partner violence, or where one partner has already privately decided to leave and is using sessions to soften the landing, couples work can do harm. I raise this directly if I suspect it, and the free consultation is where such things are best said.

Your therapist

About Dr. John J. Hartman

Dr. John J. Hartman, licensed psychologist offering online couples and family therapy in Washington, DC

I have practiced psychotherapy and psychoanalysis for over fifty years, and have spent much of that time teaching it — at UCLA, Michigan, and the University of South Florida, where I am currently Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry. As a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the Florida Psychoanalytic Center, I am one of the analysts responsible for training other analysts. My scholarly work has centred on group and couple dynamics.

A.B. Harvard College, magna cum laude with highest honors, Social Relations
Ph.D. University of Michigan, Clinical Psychology
Certificate Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute
FABP Board-certified psychoanalyst, American Board of Psychoanalysis
Training & Supervising Analyst Florida Psychoanalytic Center
Licensed Washington, DC (PSY200001229) · Florida · Michigan
PsyPact Telehealth authorized in participating PSYPACT jurisdictions, including Maryland and Virginia

Full credentials and appointments · scholarship and publications

Fees

What couples therapy costs

First 15-minute consultation	Free
Couples session (90 minutes)	$475
Individual session (50 minutes)	$325

A sliding scale is available — ask whether you may be eligible. Payment by cash, check, Venmo, Zelle, or wire. I do not bill insurance, but if your plan covers out-of-network mental health care you may be able to submit my bills to your insurer for reimbursement. Office hours are Monday to Friday, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, by arrangement. Full fees and insurance details.

Common questions

For a plain-language guide to choosing between approaches, and when a joint session is the wrong first step, see my article .

Questions about couples and family therapy

What is couples therapy?

Joint sessions where both partners meet with one therapist and work on the pattern between them rather than who is right. My approach is psychoanalytic: we look at what each of you is responding to in the other, including what neither can quite see. Sessions run 90 minutes.

Do both partners have to want it?

Both have to be willing to come. They do not have to arrive equally hopeful, and they usually do not — one partner has often been asking for this for years while the other agreed reluctantly. That imbalance is workable, and is frequently the first thing worth understanding.

What if we are deciding whether to stay together?

That is a legitimate reason to come, and I do not treat staying together as the only successful outcome. Some couples find the relationship is worth more than either believed. Others reach a clear, mutual decision to separate, and reach it with less damage than they would have alone. Both are real results.

Does couples therapy work by video?

Yes, and it has some advantages. Partners can join from separate rooms or the same one, travel and childcare stop being obstacles, and the session happens in the environment where the difficulty actually occurs. All of my sessions are online; there is no in-person option.

Do you work with families as well as couples?

Yes. Parents and adolescents, adult children and their parents, and whole families where a conflict has settled into a fixed shape. Much of my scholarly work has been on how emotion moves through groups, and a family is a group with a long history and no exit.

Do you take insurance?

I do not bill insurance directly. If your plan covers out-of-network mental health care, you may be able to submit my bills to your insurer for reimbursement. A sliding scale is available — ask whether you may be eligible.

Online Couples & Family Therapy in Washington, DC