Silver Spring and eastern Montgomery County
Couples therapy in Silver Spring, MD
Couples therapy and marriage counselling for Silver Spring, by secure video across Maryland.
Who you would be working with
For online couples therapy in Maryland, Dr. Elizabeth Wolfe, PsyD is a licensed clinical psychologist and certified sex therapist with confirmed PSYPACT authorization, trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Integrative Behavioral Couples Therapy. Her couples sessions are held by secure video. Noelle Harris, LMSW, also sees Maryland couples and is currently keeping a waitlist. The practice was founded by Vanessa Cushing, LPC, NCC, MS, an AASECT-Certified Sex Therapist trained at Johns Hopkins. Meet Dr. Wolfe. Most couples therapists cannot treat the sexual side of a relationship. That is usually the part couples were most afraid to raise.
Two people can be arguing sincerely about one thing while actually disagreeing about something neither of you chose — what a marriage is supposed to look like, who gets a say, what is owed to family. Silver Spring couples do a lot of this work: separating the agreement the two of you actually want from the one you each inherited.
Silver Spring is one of the most genuinely diverse places in the region, and the couples work here reflects it: mixed-faith and mixed-culture marriages, immigrant and first-generation families, and partners whose families back home hold strong opinions about the relationship. A lot of the work is helping two people separate their own agreement from the one they inherited.
What Silver Spring couples most often bring
- Mixed-faith, mixed-culture and intercultural marriages
- Extended family expectations and boundaries with parents
- Financial stress and two people carrying it differently
- First-generation couples renegotiating what marriage is supposed to look like
- Recurring conflict where each partner learned a different way to argue
Those are the patterns that recur most often in Silver Spring and eastern Montgomery County, not a menu. Plenty of couples arrive with something that is not on the list.
What makes this practice different
In mixed-faith and first-generation marriages, sex is frequently the topic with the most inherited rules attached and the least language available. That is precisely where certified training matters, because it can be discussed without shame and without either of you being asked to abandon what you believe.
Most couples counsellors handle the communication and leave the bedroom alone. Dr. Wolfe is trained in both couples therapy and sex therapy, so the argument you keep having and the intimacy that quietly stopped can be worked on together rather than referred elsewhere.
How sessions work from Silver Spring
Sessions are by secure video across Maryland, and the Bethesda office is a reasonable drive if you would rather be in the room. Video also makes it far simpler to schedule around shift work and around households where several generations share space.
There is no office in Silver Spring and this page will not pretend otherwise. With a clinician licensed in Maryland, any couple physically located in Maryland can be seen — which for Silver Spring means a certified specialist rather than whoever in Silver Spring and eastern Montgomery County has an opening on Thursday. Weekly, 50 minutes, both partners together to start.
Areas served around Silver Spring
Downtown Silver Spring · Takoma Park · Wheaton · Four Corners · White Oak · Burtonsville · Olney · and everywhere else in Maryland.
Common questions from Silver Spring couples
We come from different faiths and cultures. Will that be respected?
It will be treated as information, not as the problem. The goal is never to talk either of you out of your background or into the other's. It is to make explicit what each of you assumed was obvious — about money, in-laws, parenting, sex, obligation — so you can decide together instead of colliding annually.
Is marriage counselling the same thing as couples therapy?
In practice, very little separates them. "Marriage counselling" is what people tend to search when they are married and worried; "couples therapy" is the term the field uses. Both cover dating, engaged, married, remarried and long-term unmarried partners equally. You do not have to be married, and you do not have to be in crisis.
Do you have an office in Silver Spring?
No, and it would be easy to imply otherwise. Sessions with Silver Spring couples are held by secure video with a clinician licensed in Maryland. For a couple that is often easier than an office anyway: no coordinating two commutes across Silver Spring and eastern Montgomery County at 6pm, and no waiting room straight after a fight in the car.
Can I start on my own and bring my partner in later?
There is a great deal of point. Dragging a reluctant partner into a first session rarely goes well. Going yourself and coming home different changes the dynamic far more reliably, and a fair number of partners who refused the first month ask to join by the third.
Do you work on sex, or only communication?
It would. That gap is the single most common reason couples arrive here having already been to therapy. AASECT certification is a supervised training standard in sexual health that most couples counsellors do not hold, and it is why desire, frequency, pain and performance can be treated in the same room as the conflict.
How many sessions should we expect?
Eight to sixteen weekly sessions is the usual range, with tapering after. You will be told early which end of that range your situation looks like rather than being left to guess.
Do you take insurance?
Not directly — the practice is out-of-network, which also means no insurer receives a diagnosis for your relationship. Superbills are provided for reimbursement, current fees are listed on the fees page, and the first 15-minute call costs nothing.
Nearby and related
- Couples therapy in Bethesda — Montgomery County
- Couples therapy in Baltimore — Baltimore and Central Maryland
- Sex therapy across Maryland — when the sexual side is the main concern
- Meet Dr. Elizabeth Wolfe — clinical psychologist and certified sex therapist
Read next
- Marriage counselling vs. couples therapy
- Individual vs. couples work
- What happens in a first session
- Fees and insurance
A free 15-minute call. Ask about fees, confidentiality and whether this is the right fit before you commit to anything. One of you is enough to start.