Couples therapy and marriage counseling for multicultural couples
The fight was about Thanksgiving, and of course it was not really about Thanksgiving.
Underneath it was the question of whose family gets the holidays. Under that, whose obligations count as non-negotiable. And under that, whether one of you is slowly agreeing to live inside the other's world. It keeps coming back because nobody has said it out loud yet.
I'm Dania Uritskiy, LICSW, a bilingual, bicultural Latina therapist. I offer couples therapy and marriage counseling at my office in Edmonds and online anywhere in Washington, and much of that work is with multicultural, interracial and bilingual couples. Most arrive stuck in some version of the same argument, each sure the other is being unreasonable, when really two internally coherent family systems have met a situation neither was built for.
Why intercultural marriage is personal for me
I'm married to a Russian immigrant, which is where the name Uritskiy comes from. My family is Salvadoran. So my own marriage has two families, two languages, and three cultures if you count the American one we both live in, each with its own ideas about holidays and about how close is close enough.
Some of the translating in a marriage like that is literal. Most of it isn't. A sentence can arrive in perfect English and still land wrong, because each family would have heard it differently. That second kind of translation, explaining what something means in the family it came from, is most of what I do with couples.
I mention my marriage here once, so you know where my interest comes from. It stays out of your sessions. Your relationship is the subject.
The couples I see
Many of the couples who find me fit at least one of these, and plenty fit more than one:
One of you grew up here and the other immigrated as an adult, so "normal" means something different to each of you.
You're an interracial couple who loves each other and has never found a way to talk about race at home.
One of you is arguing in a second language, and losing arguments you were right about.
Your families live on two continents, and both expect to come first.
You were raised in different religions, or one of you is religious and the other isn't.
You're about to marry or have a first child, and you can feel two sets of family expectations arriving at once.
I also do relationship counseling in the ordinary sense, for couples having the same fight on repeat or feeling more like roommates. Every couple brings two family histories into the room, whether or not those families came from different countries.
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When one partner's family expects weekly presence, money sent home and a say in major decisions, and the other's expects a phone call at Christmas, "how much do we owe our families" becomes a daily question. Holidays, remittances and who visits whom are where the bigger differences actually get decided.
I part ways with a lot of popular advice here. The usual line is that a couple should set firm boundaries with the in-laws and present a united front. For many intercultural couples, that advice is itself one side of the argument. In one family a mother who calls every day is close. In the other she's intrusive. Before we talk about limits, I want each of you to understand what the daily call means to the person who grew up with it. For partners who are immigrants or children of immigrants, there's more on my page about immigrant and first-generation therapy.
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Interracial couples counseling often starts with a belief that love should make race irrelevant. The intention is generous. In practice it tends to work as avoidance, leaving one partner carrying something alone while the other stays comfortable. We talk about race directly, including comments from family and the tiring work of always being the one who explains your own experience. I've written about why race shouldn't be ignored in an interracial relationship.
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Fighting in someone's second language is an uneven fight. The partner with less fluency loses arguments on vocabulary, and both of you start to believe the outcome.
Then there's how feeling gets expressed. One of you raises your voice and means it as engagement, and the other hears volume as danger. One of you goes silent out of respect, and the other reads silence as abandonment. Neither of you is bad at communicating. You learned two different grammars of emotion long before you met.
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Which language you speak at home, whose rules about discipline hold, and how to prepare a child for bias without handing over your fear along with it. Religion is often the hardest, because it can't be split down the middle the way the holidays sometimes can. If you want to read first, love across cultures is a good start.
What intercultural marriage counseling tends to be about
Inside a couples therapy session
The first session runs longer, and most of it is me listening to the two of you describe the same event in two different ways. The gap between your two versions is what we'll work with, so I don't try to close it on day one. I'll also ask each of you what you grew up understanding about conflict and about money, because those answers are usually where the fight actually lives.
From there the work gets concrete. We take one recurring argument (the holidays, your mother's phone calls, how much money goes home each month) and slow it down until both of you can see the exact point where it turns. There is almost always a specific moment. One of you says something completely neutral in your family and insulting in theirs, and the next ninety seconds are unrecoverable. Once you can both name that moment, you can start to catch it while it's happening.
I also push for translation over compromise. Splitting the difference on a value neither of you chose tends to leave both people resentful. It goes better when each of you can explain what something does for you, why weekly presence isn't optional or why an unannounced visit feels like a violation, and then you decide together what you'll actually do.
My approach is relational and attachment-based. Underneath the logistics, most couples are asking some version of "are you still with me?" A good part of the work is helping each of you hear that question inside the other's anger or distance, and answer it.
"Working with Dania has been genuinely transformative and almost certainly saved my marriage. She helped us move beyond surface-level arguments to understand the deeper patterns underneath. She is gentle but direct, deeply empathetic, and exceptionally intuitive." — Amy P., Google review
Sessions are by video or in my Edmonds office. Rates are on my fees page.
What partners worry about before marriage counseling
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No, and it's a fair thing for your partner to wonder. Whoever booked the consult, my job is to make each of you understandable to the other. If either of you starts to feel I'm leaning, say so in the session. That conversation is often useful in its own right.
The one place I do take a position is harm. Contempt, or one partner absorbing every accommodation, gets named whichever of you it comes from.
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Yes. You're half of every pattern in the relationship, and when your half changes, the pattern has to change with it. Reluctant partners sometimes join later, once it's clear the sessions aren't an ambush. I've written about how to choose between individual and couples therapy.
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It depends on how long the fight has been running and how much hurt has piled up on top of it. A couple who comes in early, over one recurring argument, may feel a real shift within a few months. Years of resentment take longer.
I usually start weekly, because momentum matters in couples work. There's more in how long therapy takes.
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Sometimes it helps to hear from each of you alone early on. If we do that, I'll be clear beforehand about secrets: I won't hold onto something one of you is keeping from the other if it affects the work we're doing as a couple.
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Yes. Plenty of couples arrive with one foot out the door. The work then is getting clear, together, about whether you want to rebuild, and I won't push you toward staying or going.
If you do separate, couples sessions can help you do it with less damage, which matters most when you share children.
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It can, though rebuilding trust is slow and asks something different of each partner. The one who had the affair has to tolerate questions without getting defensive. The one who was betrayed needs room to be angry without the anger becoming the only thing in the room.
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Not always. If one partner is afraid, being honest in a joint session can make home more dangerous once the session ends. If that's your situation, tell me privately by email or phone. I'll suggest individual support first, and couples work only if and when it's safe.
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Often it doesn't. Many plans only reimburse therapy that treats one person's diagnosed condition, and couples work frequently falls outside that. I'm private pay and out of network and can provide superbills, but call your insurer and ask about couples sessions specifically before counting on reimbursement. How reimbursement works is laid out on my fees page.
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Yes. Couples of any gender are welcome, and you don't need to be married or living together. You don't need to come from two cultures, either.
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Sí. Muchas parejas mezclan los dos idiomas, a veces en la misma frase. Si uno de ustedes entiende menos uno de los idiomas, lo hablamos al principio, y yo voy cuidando que nadie se quede fuera de la conversación.
What happens next
You pick a time for us to meet directly on my calendar. 20 minutes, free, video or phone. You don't have to have the words ready or fill out long forms, I understand the first step can be difficult.
The three of us meet virtually and talk about what's going on. I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right fit, and if I'm not, I'll point you toward someone in my network who is.
If it feels right, we schedule your first full session, usually within a week. I see clients at my office in Edmonds on the waterfront, or virtually across Washington State.
