Gottman Method & EFFT · Virtual · BC & 5 other provinces
Online Couples Therapy & Marriage Counselling
Online only · Free 15-minute consultation · $175 per 60-minute couples session · Evenings and weekends to 9 pm Pacific
Work on the relationships that matter to you, together or on your own.
Gottman Method couples therapy and marriage counselling online, joined from home in British Columbia and five other provinces.
Prefer not to create an account? Text two times that suit you to (519) 760-5211 and we will book it for you, or send them through the short form. We reply with two consultation times, usually within 24 hours. If you would rather work with a particular clinician, say so and it is arranged.
Opens our booking page. Choose "New Client Consultation (Telehealth) – 15 minutes", then pick a time — one of you books it, both of you can join. Jane will ask you to create a free account to confirm it. Nothing to pay for the consultation.
$150 individual · $175 couples · 60 minutes · direct billing with Pacific Blue Cross, CVAP and TELUS eClaims plans; an insurance-ready receipt for every other plan. Fees & insurance · Direct billing
Direct billing for couples sessions depends on whether your plan covers them — it varies by insurer; ask on the consultation call.
At a glance
Online couples therapy in Canada, at a glance. TEO Counselling provides couples therapy and marriage counselling online across British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador, using the Gottman Method and EFFT. It is provided by Mohamad Shabib, MACP, CCC (#11249205), who has completed Level 1 and Level 2 Training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy and sees couples in all six provinces in English or Arabic, and by Alison Shaji, MA Clinical Psychology, RCC (BCACC #22608), who has completed Level 1 and Level 2 Training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy and is trained in Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT), and sees couples in British Columbia. Appointments run 12:00 pm to 9:00 pm Pacific, seven days a week (3:00 pm to midnight Eastern). Couples sessions are $175 and individual sessions $150, each 60 minutes. No provincial health plan covers counselling in private practice; every session comes with an insurance-ready receipt, and direct billing is available with Mohamad and Alison for Pacific Blue Cross, CVAP (British Columbia) and TELUS eClaims plans; whether a plan covers couples sessions varies by insurer, so ask on the consultation call. The first step is a free 15-minute consultation, no referral needed.
Before you book together: if one partner is being hurt, threatened or controlled, couples counselling is not the right first step. Being honest in the room and then going home together can raise the risk rather than lower it, so individual support comes first. That is not a judgement about you, and it is not a door closing. Who couples work may not suit right now explains why and where to turn, and sheltersafe.ca lists 24-hour crisis lines in every province. In an emergency, call 911.
Is this how your relationship feels?
Relationships — especially the closest ones — are also the most demanding. If you recognize yourself in any of these, couples therapy or relationship counselling can help.
→Unheard, misunderstood, or dismissed by your partner
→Constantly arguing, or walking on eggshells to avoid conflict
→Disconnected — more like roommates than partners
→Unappreciated or taken for granted
→Anxious about where the relationship is heading
→Struggling to trust after an affair or betrayal
→Losing intimacy and not knowing how to get it back
→Dealing with differences in parenting, finances, or values
What we work on together
Communicating more effectively and calmly
Rebuilding trust and emotional closeness
Understanding and managing emotional triggers
Developing empathy and compassion — for each other and yourself
Strengthening intimacy and shared goals
Breaking recurring conflict cycles that feel impossible to escape
Working through infidelity, including emotional affairs
Session details
Takes about a minute · full fee details
Couples therapy or relationship counselling — which is right for you?
Both aim to improve your relationships — but they work differently.
Couples therapy
You and your partner work with a therapist together. It’s a shared space to understand each other’s perspectives, improve how you communicate, and address specific challenges in your relationship.
Consider it for
- Communication breakdowns and recurring conflict
- Trust issues and emotional disconnection
- Rebuilding intimacy after an affair
- Different parenting styles or life goals
- Considering separation — or working to avoid it
Relationship counselling
You work individually on how you relate to others. This is about understanding your own patterns, attachment style, and emotional needs — whether you’re in a relationship, recently ended one, or wanting to improve relationships more broadly.
Consider it for
- Understanding your attachment and relational patterns
- Processing a breakup or divorce
- Improving family or friendship relationships
- Recovering from emotional abuse or manipulation
- Preparing for a healthier relationship in the future
A therapist for relationship problems — together or on your own
A therapist for relationship problems does not require two people in the room. Couples sessions are the obvious route when both of you are willing, and they are where the Gottman and EFFT work described on this page is done in full. Individual relationship counselling is the other route, and it is a legitimate one rather than a consolation prize: one person working on the pattern they are in, with a clinician who is not a friend, a family member, or someone with a stake in the outcome.
On your own, the work looks at what you actually do when the familiar argument starts, what you are asking for underneath it, and what you have quietly stopped saying. It also looks at the part that predates this relationship — the attachment pattern that shows up with every partner, the reaction that is out of proportion to the moment. If that pattern is pulling away whenever someone gets close, a therapist for avoidant attachment works with it directly. Some people use it to decide whether to raise counselling with their partner at all, and some use it to work out whether they want to stay.
Either way the practical side is the same: a 60-minute session at $150 for one person or $175 for two, online, with the same clinicians. If the relationship problem you are carrying is the aftermath of an affair, the infidelity counselling page describes that work specifically.
Couples therapy or individual relationship counselling here is online, with Mohamad or Alison (Alison works with British Columbia clients only), and Gottman couples therapy is the approach the couples work draws on. A relationship therapist looks at the pattern between you rather than taking a side. After an affair, affair recovery counselling with an infidelity therapist usually starts with both partners, but counselling after infidelity can also begin with one of you alone, and a therapist for betrayal trauma works at the pace of the partner who was hurt.
Marriage counselling
What is marriage counselling?
Marriage counselling is therapy in which a married couple meets with a trained therapist together to work on communication, recurring conflict, trust and emotional connection in their marriage. At TEO Counselling, marriage counselling is delivered entirely online in 60-minute sessions at $175, across British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland & Labrador, and it starts with a free 15-minute consultation rather than a referral.
How is marriage counselling different from couples therapy?
In the room the skills overlap almost completely — both are about the cycle two people get into and how they get out of it. What differs is the weight around the conversation. A marriage carries a legal tie, sometimes children, sometimes shared property and debt, in-laws with opinions, and a promise that was made publicly. Couples therapy is the broader term and covers people who are dating, engaged, common-law, in a long-distance arrangement, or separated and still co-parenting. Marriage counselling is that same work with those particular stakes on the table, which changes what a decision costs and can change how long people wait before making one.
When should you start marriage counselling?
Couples can arrive later than they meant to — after the same argument has run on a loop for a long time and stopped producing anything new. Some starting points are a betrayal that has just come to light, a silence that has settled in and made two people polite housemates, a decision looming that neither can face alone (a baby, a move, a separation), or one partner saying plainly that they are close to done. Earlier is easier, because there is more goodwill left to work with. Late is not disqualifying. There is also no minimum level of trouble required to book: some couples come before a wedding, or during a hard year, precisely so it does not get to the loop.
What does the Gottman Method contribute to marriage counselling?
The Gottman Method was built by Drs. John and Julie Gottman out of decades of close observation of married couples, and what it contributes to marriage counselling is structure. It gives the work a map: an assessment of the friendship underneath the marriage, of how conflict is actually conducted, and of whether the two of you still share a sense of where this is going. It names specific behaviours that corrode a marriage — criticism, contempt, defensiveness, withdrawal — so they can be worked on as habits rather than argued about as character. And it puts real weight on repair: what you do in the twenty minutes after a fight rather than during it. Both Mohamad and Alison have completed Level 1 and Level 2 Training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy. What the method does not do is decide whether you stay married. That remains yours.
What if only one partner wants marriage counselling?
Then start on your own. One partner declining is one reason marriage counselling never begins, and it is not a dead end — a great deal of useful work can be done by one person alone, and a reluctant partner may join later once they see what a session is actually like. It is worth reading the fuller answer further down this page before you decide the question is closed.
After an affair
Marriage counselling for infidelity is a specific piece of work rather than a variation on the usual sessions. The order matters: first enough stability for the two of you to be in the same conversation, then an honest account of how the affair happened without it becoming an excuse, and only then the question of whether to rebuild. Whether that answer is yes or no, the sessions are for both of you, and the infidelity counselling page describes that work in full.
Where we offer marriage counselling
Every session is online, so what matters is the province you are sitting in, not the city. Couples join from Vancouver, Kelowna and Nanaimo in British Columbia; from Toronto and Ottawa in Ontario; from Calgary and Edmonton in Alberta; from Saskatoon and Regina in Saskatchewan; from Winnipeg in Manitoba; and from across Newfoundland & Labrador. There is nowhere to drive to in any of them and no waiting room — you join from home, or from anywhere private with a door that closes. For two people with different working days and a commute each, that can be the difference between attending the same hour every week and not attending at all. Sessions run seven days a week from noon to 9pm Pacific, which reaches into the evening in every province served.
Gottman Method & EFFT
The Gottman Method
Developed by Drs. John and Julie Gottman after decades of research on thousands of couples, the Gottman Method is a structured approach to couples therapy. It focuses on building friendship, managing conflict constructively, and creating shared meaning.
- Identifies the communication patterns Gottman research links to relationship breakdown
- Works on how partners express appreciation and repair after conflict
- Practical tools that couples use between sessions
- Research-backed — developed from observing real couples over decades
EFFT — Emotionally Focused Family Therapy
EFFT is an attachment-based approach that helps partners and family members understand the emotional patterns driving their conflicts. It focuses on creating secure emotional bonds — working on negative cycles so there is more room for connection and responsiveness.
- Addresses the underlying emotional needs behind conflict
- Helps partners become a secure base for each other
- Works with families as well as couples
- Works with the emotional patterns underneath recurring conflict
Curious what sessions actually look like? Read our guide: What to expect from couples therapy in BC.
What if your partner will not come
This is one reason couples work never starts, and it is worth answering properly rather than pretending it does not happen.
You do not need your partner in the room to work on the relationship. A great deal can be done individually — understanding the cycle the two of you get into, noticing your own part in it, changing what you do at the moment it starts. Relationships are systems, and one person moving differently can change the pattern whether or not the other person has agreed to anything.
A reluctant partner sometimes joins later. People who refuse the idea of counselling in the abstract sometimes agree once they have seen that it is a conversation rather than a tribunal, and that nobody is being assigned blame. If that happens, moving from individual to couples sessions is straightforward.
What individual work cannot do is fix a relationship on its own, and you will not be told otherwise here.
What sessions cost
Couples counselling is $175 per 60-minute session. Individual sessions are $150. The first conversation is free — 15 minutes, with no referral needed — and either both of you or just one of you can be on that call.
No provincial health plan in Canada covers counselling in private practice. Reimbursement through an extended health plan depends on the designation your plan covers: some list a Canadian Certified Counsellor, some a Registered Clinical Counsellor. Direct billing is available with Mohamad and Alison for Pacific Blue Cross, CVAP and plans on the TELUS eClaims network (Canada Life and Manulife among them); where your plan is not one we can bill, you receive an insurance-ready receipt after every session. Where two partners have separate plans, it is sometimes possible to claim across both.
Sessions run seven days a week from noon to 9pm Pacific, which is late enough in every province served to fit around two people's working days. Full detail is on the fees page.
Who you would be working with
Mohamad Shabib, MACP, CCC has completed Level 1 and Level 2 Training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy, as well as Advanced EMDR, Internal Family Systems (Levels 1 and 2) and CBT for Trauma (Levels 1 and 2). He is a Canadian Certified Counsellor with the CCPA, and he sees couples across all six provinces the practice serves. Sessions in English or Arabic.
Alison Shaji, RCC has completed Level 1 and Level 2 Training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy as well, plus EFFT — a model built directly on attachment theory — along with EMDR, CBT and DBT. She holds the Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC) designation with the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors, so she works with couples in British Columbia. Sessions in English, Hindi or Malayalam.
Common questions
Are we too far gone for this to be worth trying?
Nobody can answer that from the outside, and anyone who tells you otherwise on a website is guessing. What the free consultation can establish is whether the two of you still want the same thing, which is the more useful question. Sometimes couples work ends in a decision to separate, and doing that deliberately rather than by attrition is a legitimate outcome.
Will you take sides?
No, and the work does not depend on establishing who was right. A recurring argument is better understood as a cycle than as a fault — one person pursues, the other withdraws, and each response makes the other more likely. Working on the cycle is more productive than adjudicating the last argument.
What happens in the first couples session?
The first session after the free consultation is a joint 60-minute online conversation where both partners describe the relationship as each of you experiences it — what brought you in, how conflict tends to unfold, and what you each want to be different. Nobody is blamed, and nobody is asked to relive the worst fight in detail on day one. From there, the assessment phase can include a brief session with each partner individually, along with structured questionnaires drawn from the Gottman assessment tools, before you meet together again to go through what the assessment found and agree on a plan. You will know what the work involves before you commit to it.
Can we do this if we live in different places?
Yes. Sessions are online, so partners can join from separate locations if work or travel means you are apart. Both of you do need to be somewhere private.
What if we have already tried couples counselling and it did not help?
Worth saying on the consultation call, along with what specifically did not work. A previous experience that went nowhere is useful information rather than a reason to expect the same again — and if a different kind of support would serve you better, you will be told that directly.
How much does marriage counselling cost?
Marriage counselling at TEO Counselling is $175 for a 60-minute couples session, and individual sessions are $150. The first conversation is a free 15-minute consultation with no referral needed. Fees elsewhere vary by clinician and registration. No provincial health plan in Canada covers counselling in private practice; reimbursement through an extended health plan depends on the designation your plan covers (CCC, RCC or RSW), and you receive an insurance-ready receipt after every session.
How long does marriage counselling take?
There is no fixed number of sessions, and anyone quoting one before meeting you is guessing. Some couples come for a defined piece of work over a few months; others stay longer, particularly after an affair or where the same conflict has been running for years. How long to continue is reviewed with you as you go rather than decided in advance.
Do we have to be married to book marriage counselling?
No. The same sessions are open to couples who are dating, engaged, common-law, married for decades, or separated and still co-parenting. Some couples book before a wedding rather than after a crisis, and that is a legitimate reason to come. Not married yet? See premarital counselling online.
Can I see a therapist for relationship problems on my own?
Yes. Individual relationship counselling is a 60-minute session at $150, and it does not require your partner to know about it or to agree with it. The work looks at the pattern you are in — what you do when the same argument starts, what you are asking for underneath it, and what you have stopped saying — and at what you want to do about it. If your partner later decides to join, moving to couples sessions is straightforward.
Is couples or marriage counselling covered by insurance in BC?
MSP does not cover it. Some extended-health plans reimburse couples sessions with a CCC or RCC — check your plan's wording. Direct billing with Mohamad and Alison is available for Pacific Blue Cross and TELUS eClaims plans; CVAP does not fund couples work.
A free tool for this
The Couples Communication Kit is a free printable on the soft start-up, repair attempts mid-argument, and the fight you have already had eleven times — useful on its own or between sessions.
Longer pieces on couples work
Written for people who are still deciding whether to raise it with their partner.
Does Couples Therapy Work? An Honest Look at the Evidence
Named studies and honest caveats — why timing and dropout matter more than the model, and what that means before you book.
Couples Therapy in British Columbia: What to Expect and How to Get Started
The first few sessions in order, and the questions BC couples may have about coverage.
Couples Counselling Online in Ontario: What to Expect
How two people share one online session, including when work or travel means you are in different places.
How Couples Rebuild Connection in Session
Written for the Okanagan, and useful anywhere: how the repair work is paced once the same argument has been running for years.
You might also need
- Attachment-based therapy — when the same pattern keeps repeating across relationships
- Infidelity counselling — after an affair, whether or not you stay
- Breakup and separation support — individual work when it has ended
Therapy is not a crisis service
- 9-8-8 Suicide Crisis Helpline — call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7)
- Kids Help Phone (for young people) — 1-800-668-6868, or text CONNECT to 686868
- Hope for Wellness Help Line — 1-855-242-3310 (24/7)
If you are in immediate danger, please call 911.
Start with a conversation.
Book a free 15-minute consultation. We’ll talk about what’s happening between you, how we’d work with it, and whether we’re the right fit — before you spend anything. You can book together or on your own.
Book a Free ConsultationOr text (519) 760-5211
Where we work
In British Columbia? See online couples counselling in BC. In Ontario? See online couples counselling in Ontario.
Couples sessions run online, so partners can join from one room or from two different cities. Couples book from Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Mississauga, Burlington, Oakville and Guelph in Ontario; Vancouver and Nanaimo in British Columbia; Calgary and Edmonton in Alberta; and Winnipeg in Manitoba.
Couples sessions are $175 per 60-minute session, with an insurance-ready receipt after every one and direct billing available with Mohamad and Alison for the plans we can bill.
Prefer not to create an account? We can book it for you.
Send your name, a way to reach you and a few times that usually suit you. We will book your free 15-minute consultation at one of those times, or offer the nearest open one, and confirm by email or text, usually within 24 hours.