MARITAL AND PREMARITAL
Rebuild Love, Restore Connection-Expert Couples Therapy in Massapequa, NY
CREATING LASTING CHANGE IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP
Compassionate, evidence-based care helping Long Island families build
lasting and thriving relationships.
The most powerful couples work goes beyond quick fixes or communication tweaks.
Chronic conflict and surface-level fixes leave you feeling disconnected from the person you love most. Trapped in old patterns, and endless failing cycles, you feel exhausted and are losing hope. Over time trust fades, and repairing the relationship begins to feel impossible. The solution is finding an experienced, and skilled specialist who provides Couples Therapy in Massapequa & Long Island to help you rebuild trust and restore emotional safety.
The most effective approach gently uncovers how your childhood experiences, old conditioning, and hidden attachment injuries shape the way you connect (or pull away) right now.
Those knee-jerk reactions, the fears of expressing yourself and of fully being seen, or the way that trust feels fragile, all usually trace back to early patterns and attachments formed long before your met your partner.
The best therapy for couples creates a safe non-judgmental space to bring those deeper layers into the light and to heal your deepest relationship wounds, ultimately helping both of you to understand the why behind dysfunctional or unproductive behaviors.
Gain freedom, choice, and efficacy once you achieve clarity and understand why old hurts keep showing up. Together, we will uncover the unconscious motives driving your disconnect and develop practical strategies to regain your self-direction as a united team.
Learn how to finally heal together, and build a stronger, more secure bond that truly feels safe, vibrant, and fulfilling.
My name is Marialeen Martorella and I am a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, board certified, and licensed psychotherapist operating locally in Massapequa, NY, and serving the extended Nassau County area. Specializing in trauma-informed relational therapy for individuals and couples, and with over 20 years of experience, I am honored to have the opportunity to guide individuals and couples in uncovering the deeper stories of their life.
Together, we will improve relational patterns, heal attachment wounds, and ultimately move through pain toward personal growth and a secure relationship. By integrating Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, attachment-based work, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), and the Gottman Method, our work together will foster deeper understanding of self and other, and guide you toward achieving the intimacy, trust, and meaningful connection you desire. You don't have to navigate this painful season alone.
Clarity, Competency, Connection
All relationships involve an endless dance of
harmony, disharmony,
and repair. "
Getting to the heart of your biggest relationship struggles means identifying this dance, accepting it as part of a mature love, and learning the steps to repair and restore.
We are all wired for love & connection.
Our most basic needs of feeling nurtured, understood and protected show up the very first moment of our life, and extinguish only when we cease to live.
Our relationships become the foundation of our identity, a source of satisfaction, and part of our sense of purpose and innate worth.
Yet, there exists a sort of art when it comes to loving and being loved; one that honors our natural drive toward connection, acceptance, intimacy, trust and vibrancy.
Beginning to see your partner as a mirror, understanding your own wounds, and how enduring conflict hold vital information for growth, learning the skills to communicate effectively, and rebuilding the friendship, all add up to learning the art of loving consciously.
Compassionate Marriage Counseling for Long Island Couples
We spend our entire lives seeking out safe emotional harbors. The innate desire to feel nurtured, valued, and deeply understood is a constant thread that weaves through every stage of the human experience.
Our relationships become the foundation of our identity, a source of satisfaction, and part of our innate worth.
When those basic needs are unmet in a partnership, it causes immense distress.
My goal is to provide compassionate care that restores multidimensional satisfaction, regardless of what stage your relationship is in.
Couples & Pre-Marital Counseling (Dating, Engaged & Domestic Partnerships)
Ensuring you are entering your future with clarity and confidence is the single best thing you can do before saying "I do."
My pre-marital counseling and couples therapy sessions provide a safe space to address communication breakdowns before they become permanent resentments. Together we will identify your core values, allowing your to create a shared sense of meaning before marriage. This lays a powerful foundation for your relationship; one that will help you align on what truly matters, ensure you are a "right fit," and navigate future decisions with unity. You will learn the skills to build a marriage or long term relationship that grows stronger with life's transitions, rather than drifting apart.
Navigating Long-Term Commitments
When you have years or decades of history together, the conflicts are often deeply rooted. My specialized marriage counseling is designed for spouses who are feeling like distant roommates, navigating the aftermath of betrayal, or struggling with parenting disconnects.
We will work to untangle years of past conditioning, dismantle defensiveness, and rebuild the deep friendship and intimacy that brought you together in the first place.
Restoring Trust and Intimacy
"Healing is not about erasing the conflict. It is about learning how to safely reconnect after the storm."
TARGETED RELATIONSHIP THERAPY FOR COUPLES
True intimacy requires stepping out of old patterns and actively choosing to build a stronger foundation. Whether you are feeling disconnected, overwhelmed by conflict, or navigating a massive life shift, you do not have to figure it out alone.
COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN
Learn to replace the “four horseman” with healthy interactions. Disarm destructive communication patterns and equip yourselves with skills you can use long after therapy ends. Learn to express vulnerable emotions safely, and rebuild secure emotional bonds.
LOSS OF INTIMACY
Increase intimacy, repair a sexless marriage or bridge severe emotional distance. Increase respect, and affection. Create safety and security that promotes true healing and reignites magnetic polarity and passion.
REBUILD TRUST
Recover from infidelity, betrayal, trauma, or broken promises. Repair past hurts and foster empathy. Use a proven three step therapeutic model of atonement, attunement, and attachment to deeply repair trust after infidelity and move forward together with hope and resolution.
ON THE BRINK OF SEPARATION
Finally understand, and break the negative cycles that keep you stuck, defeated, and exhausted. Transition from the consumption of chronic conflict and the brink of divorce to enjoying a renewed sense of friendship, admiration, and deeply restored intimacy.
HEAL ATTACHMENT WOUNDS
Learn to identify and express unmet needs without blame or shame. End re-traumatizing cycles and rebuild the secure, lasting emotional connection you both deserve–together, in a safe space where vulnerability is met with understanding and trust can finally be restored.
MAJOR LIFE TRANSITIONS
Navigate the severe relational stress of career change, loss, financial hardship, relocation, or entering a new stage of parenthood as a united front.
It is a specialized form of psychotherapy and a guided process where both parties work together with a skilled therapist that begins with understanding attachment styles, calling out faulty relational patterns, and continues on a path toward healing emotional wounds, improving communication, learning the skills to resolve conflict, and ultimately building a stronger, more secure and vibrant connection.
I like to begin couples therapy with a through assessment of your relationship. I will listen deeply to both of you: what hurts right now, what patterns keep repeating, and what each of you need to feel safe and seen. This will help us to understand your relationship strengths and weaknesses, as well as relational patterns--or how and why you love, trust, and connect the way you do.
From there, the work is customized around three core areas that almost always matter most:
- Conflict resolution-learn practical moment-to moment ways to de-escalate arguments, express needs without blame, and turn heated moments into opportunities for understanding and connection.
- Heal trauma-gently uncover how past wounds (from childhood, previous relationships, or life experiences) show up in the present-those automatic triggers, shutdowns, and protective modes-so you can finally process and release them together rather than letting them continue to drive the pain.
- Build secure attachment-creating new emotional presence that is accessible, responsive, and engaged. Here vulnerability begins to be met with consistent care, trust is rebuilt step by step, and both partners start to feel truly secure knowing that past defenses and exit routes are no longer active. This is a solid, sensible and compassionate approach toward healing and unlocking your true relationship potential.
You will learn about your partner and yourself. You will begin to see each other in a new light. This means, maybe for the first time, you will hear and understand their earliest pains, losses and disappointments. You will learn about the underlying dynamics of their behavior, the ways they communicate, and why they handle conflict the way they do.
You will learn about their deeper feelings of abandonment or trust governing their relational patterns. You will learn the importance of understanding and respecting each other’s inner world. You will become better able to identify their cues, needs, fears, and hopes. With all of this, you can begin to move toward each other with compassion and love, setting the stage for a healing that take place side by side.
- How to create intimacy, revive passion and nurture the fondness, admiration and joy of the underlying friendship.
- How to communicate effectively and lovingly, without blame, shame or judgement.
- How to identify and articulate your deepest needs to each other in way that feels safe, supportive and establishes shared meaning.
- How to tell the truth to your partner in a way that actually makes you closer.
- How to rebuild trust after a major trauma like an affair, addiction, or chronic emotional abandonment.
- How to truly listen with your guard down and connect at a deep, emotional and authentic level.
- How to accept conflict and approach it in a way that promotes constructive change versus becoming damaging or overwhelming.
- How to change the attack/defend system, and de-escalate fights through repair attempts, responsiveness and turning toward each other.
All relationship struggles are a culmination of reciprocal play between each partner. While the intention to harm is most often not present, we can inadvertently create pain through unconscious motives. While I do not act as a judge or referee in sessions, I will identify and call out faulty or destructive patterns that need to be extinguished.
I utilize a method where each partner is equally important, accountable, and empowered to fully commit to the process of repairing the relationship. My goal is to help you see your dance with clarity, entirely free of bias.
My practice involves an integrative approach combining psychodynamic, systemic, trauma-informed care principles, along with cognitive behavioral therapies. We will focus on emotion, identify attachment wounds, and examine the history of your relationship. Beyond emotional exploration, we will practice specific techniques and use occasional homework to spark lasting change, build couple efficacy, and increase your deep connection.
The Gottman Method is a highly effective, research-based approach to couples therapy. Backed by over 40 years of scientific study with couples, it focuses on building a strong "Sound Relationship House" by strengthening three key areas: friendship, conflict management, and shared meaning.
It helps couples disarm negative communication patterns, increase intimacy and affection, repair hurts, and create a deeper sense of connection and purpose together.
Research shows that evidence-based approaches like Emotionally Focused Therapy or the Gottman Method have a 70 to 75 percent success rate in moving couples from distress to recovery, with 90 percent showing significant improvement.
Many report significant improvements in relationship satisfaction, including lasting results such as healthier communication, less blame cycles, deeper emotional connection, and restored trust. Success is driven by the “therapeutic alliance” - which is a combination of the therapist’s skill, and the patient’s confidence in them.
I am an out of network provider. This means that marital therapy or couples counseling services will be covered according to your specific out of network benefits. As each plan is unique and different, it is often impossible to determine the exact percentage of coverage until after a claim is filed and processed. I will happily submit all out of network claims on your behalf to your insurance carrier for reimbursement.
A standard couples session rate is $395 for a 55 minute session. These sessions are carefully structured to ensure both partners have ample time to be heard and understood.
Please note that couples therapy is often viewed as a relationship-focused service rather than medically necessary treatment for a diagnosable mental health condition in an individual. Relationship distress itself is not considered a medical illness or disorder that qualifies for standard coverage.
For these reasons, many insurance companies do not cover marital therapy unless one partner has a diagnosable mental health condition and treatment is specifically focused on that diagnosis. Further, many couples choose to pay privately for therapy rather than using insurance to protect complete privacy and confidentiality, avoid requiring a mental health diagnosis for one partner, and allow fully customized sessions focused on your relationship-rather than insurance-approved limits.
The Power of Vulnerability
Vulnerability is your superpower. Where your relational experiences have failed you, you may believe it is unsafe to show all of yourself, or worse, if you did, you wouldn't be loved or accepted. You wouldn't be enough, or you would be too much! Yet the truth is that you should never have to work to be chosen, validated, or loved.
The passion, intimacy and commitment you seek is found only in the experience of feeling seen, heard, and known by another, with all your flaws, imperfections, fears, and beauty. Utilizing safe, evidence-based interventions for couples therapy, my goal is to guide you back to that authentic connection.
Rebuilding through awareness.
Understanding where your beliefs about self and other have originated from, and how your relational strategies have forged is the first essential step toward beginning again. Together with your partner you can decide for yourselves what really is yours to carry forward, and what you are ready to let go of .
Authentic connection to yourself is the first step in establishing whole-hearted connection with another. Being stuck means you are not loving and reacting from a place of consciousness. Instead you are allowing old pain, associations, and fears to guide you, many of which are not acknowledged or understood. Connecting with your authentic self frees you to develop a clear and directed path toward your partner and in establishing the love you are meant to experience.
"Loving consciously means choosing you first, loving yourself fully, and being ready to enter your relationship aware and whole."
At the heart of strong, intimate connections is a view of yourself as worthy, despite your faults. It is knowing what you need and asking directly for it. It means staying committed to your own progress and growth. It means operating from a place of giving in order to receive. It means not looking for someone to complete you, but instead showing up ready to offer all of you with honesty, self love, vulnerability and truth.
You can have authentic, free flowing, healthy, beautiful love. It all begins with you.
Our conversation is just getting started.