We are a couples therapy practice in Denver, grounded in Emotionally Focused Therapy — the most researched model in couples therapy. We work with couples who want to go deeper, couples in crisis, couples navigating infidelity or addiction, and couples who are not sure there is anything left. It is all we do.
Something has gone wrong between you and the person you chose. Maybe it happened slowly — a long stretch of feeling alone in the same room. Maybe it was sudden — a discovery that cracked everything open. Either way, you are here because something needs to change.
We work with couples who are stuck. Couples who have been fighting about the same things for years. Couples who have stopped fighting altogether and aren’t sure what is left. Couples sitting in the aftermath of infidelity — whether it was a one-time thing, a long pattern, or something they are not even sure counts — trying to figure out if there is anything to rebuild. Couples where addiction has become the third presence in the relationship. Couples whose sex life disappeared and neither one knows how to talk about it. Couples navigating a major life transition that exposed fault lines they didn’t know were there. And couples who aren’t in crisis at all — they just know something is off and don’t want to wait until it gets worse.
We have sat with all of it. Whatever brought you here, the chances of it being something we haven’t seen before are low. We are not here to judge what happened. We are here to help you figure out what to do next.
Most couples who come to us have already tried that. They have read the books, taken the quizzes, maybe even seen another therapist who gave them tips about using “I statements” and taking timeouts. And it worked — for about a week. Then something happened. Your partner said something that hit you in the gut, and every technique you learned disappeared.
This is not a failure of effort. You yell, or nag, or go silent because your partner never responds to you — and those ineffective behaviors are the only ones that your flooded brain can come up with. Most other therapies try to teach you how to behave as if your partner is already responsive. They are managing the symptoms while the actual problem keeps running. We address what is underneath — and when your partner starts becoming more responsive, the behaviors will change on their own.
Our approach is built on Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), a research-backed model that gets underneath the arguments, the shutting down, and the distance. Instead of teaching you to manage conflict better, we help you understand what is actually driving it — and that is almost always about connection, not communication.
We work with couples across a wide range. Some are barely hanging on. Some just want to get ahead of a problem before it becomes one. Here is the range of what we see:
Couples who fight constantly and can’t stop the cycle. Couples who have gone quiet — where the fighting stopped but so did everything else. Couples dealing with infidelity — whether it happened last week or has been sitting unaddressed for years. Couples navigating a major life transition — a move, a career change, a new baby — that exposed fault lines they didn’t know were there. And couples who are genuinely doing okay but want to go deeper.
We don’t treat you differently based on where you fall on that spectrum. The work is the same — get underneath the surface, find the cycle, and help you reach for each other in ways that actually land.
EFT is one of the most researched models in couples therapy. According to the research, 70–73% of couples who go through EFT move from distress to recovery, and about 90% show significant improvement.1 Those numbers hold up across different populations, different kinds of problems, and different lengths of relationship.
But numbers are abstractions. What you would actually notice is this: the way you talk to each other starts to change. Not because you learned a script, but because something shifted in how you experience each other. The person who used to shut down starts showing up. The person who used to push starts softening. Not because someone told them to — because their partner is actually responding.
When you believe your partner will respond to you, you talk to them. When you don’t, you yell at them, or you stop trying and go on your phone. EFT helps partners better respond to each other, so the belief that their partner will be there is deeply felt based on that new relational reality. Wiebe et al. (2017) tracked couples for two years after EFT and found that the single strongest predictor of lasting satisfaction was exactly this — a shift in whether each partner believed the other would actually respond.2
The Colorado Center for Couples and Families is a small, focused practice in south Denver. Our office is at 3600 S Yosemite St, Suite 1050 — easy to reach from Cherry Creek, the DTC, Greenwood Village, Centennial, Englewood, Highlands Ranch, and surrounding neighborhoods.
We are a private-pay practice. Most insurance plans don’t cover couples therapy, and since couples therapy is all we do, taking insurance was never a practical fit. We can provide superbills if you want to pursue out-of-network reimbursement.
Sessions are 75 minutes. Most couples come weekly, especially early on. The typical course of therapy varies — some couples see meaningful change in 8–12 sessions, others need longer, particularly when there is infidelity or deep-seated patterns involved.
Jonathan Zalesne, LPC — an ICEEFT Certified Therapist and Supervisor — leads the practice alongside our therapists, who are here because they want to learn how to do couples work in the EFT model, and this is what Jonathan does — he is an EFT therapist, teacher, and supervisor. Our team tapes their sessions, reviews them with him, and receives additional clinical supervision from Misti Klarenbeek-McKenna, who cofounded the practice and is herself a highly experienced EFT supervisor. Every therapist here is being closely developed, not just credentialed.
You don’t need to know what is wrong or have the right words for it. You just need to show up. We will figure out the rest together.
You don't have to know whether you want to stay or go. You just have to be open to the process.
It depends on what you’re bringing in. Most couples notice real shifts in 8–12 sessions, but some stay longer — particularly couples working through infidelity, long histories of disconnection, or deeper attachment wounds. In controlled research settings, Johnson (2003) found that 70–73% of couples improve after 12 sessions of EFT, with about 90% showing significant improvement after 15–20. In practice, it usually takes longer — real life is messier than a research protocol — but the trajectory is the same.
We aren’t a 6-session “skills program.” EFT moves at the pace of the relationship, not a curriculum. After the first few sessions we’ll have a much clearer sense of scope, and we’ll tell you what we think.
No. We’re a private-pay practice. Most insurance plans don’t cover couples therapy at all — they require a mental health diagnosis on one partner, which couples work doesn’t fit neatly into. Since couples therapy is all we do, taking insurance was never a practical fit.
We can provide superbills if you want to pursue out-of-network reimbursement through your plan.
Seventy-five minutes, both partners in the room (or on the video call), and your therapist working with what’s actually happening between you — not handing out homework or scripts.
Early on, we spend time understanding the cycle you get caught in — the pattern of reaches and reactions that shows up whenever something matters. Once that’s visible, the work is helping you both step out of it and into something more honest.
Both. Our office is at 3600 S Yosemite St, Suite 1050, in south Denver — easy to reach from Cherry Creek, the DTC, Greenwood Village, Centennial, Englewood, and Highlands Ranch.
We also offer telehealth for couples anywhere in Colorado. Many couples mix the two — in-person when schedules allow, telehealth when one partner is traveling.
This is more common than you’d think. One partner is ready and the other is uncertain, skeptical, or flat-out resistant. That’s not a dealbreaker — it’s often where the work starts.
If your partner won’t come in at all, we also offer EFT-informed individual therapy for relationships, where you work on the dynamic from your side. It’s real work, not a consolation prize.
Yes. A large portion of our practice is couples in the aftermath of an affair — recent or years old, discovered or confessed, emotional or physical. Jonathan has worked with well over a thousand couples, a significant share of them through infidelity recovery.
We have a whole dedicated page on how we approach it, including the crisis phase, the meaning-making phase, and rebuilding trust.
Most couples therapy is some version of communication training — teaching you how to fight better, listen better, ask for what you need. That can be useful, but it treats the surface. When the next real fight happens, most of those techniques evaporate.
Emotionally Focused Therapy works underneath that. We help you see the cycle you get caught in — the deeper emotional push and pull driving the arguments — and then help you shift it. It is the most researched model in couples therapy, with decades of outcome data behind it. A 2024 meta-analysis by Spengler et al. across 20 studies found EFT produced significantly better outcomes than alternative couple therapies — and that the changes held at two years.
That is worth pausing on. Most couples worry that therapy is a temporary fix — that they will feel better for a while and then slide back into the same patterns. The research shows the opposite. Couples who go through EFT don’t just hold onto what they gained. Many continue improving after therapy ends, because the way they experience each other has fundamentally shifted.
Sometimes, yes. If one or both partners have fully checked out — made the decision emotionally and are just waiting for logistics — therapy usually can’t un-do that. And if there’s ongoing untreated addiction, active abuse, or an ongoing affair, we can’t do the work until those are addressed first.
But if there’s still something there — some thread of caring, some willingness to try — it is almost never too late. Couples come in after 20 years of the same fight and find their way back to each other. Not always, but often.
