Intercultural & Mixed-Culture Couples Therapy in California
Intercultural couples therapy to help you understand each other’s worlds, work through the places where you get stuck, and build a relationship that makes room for both of you.
This space is for intercultural and mixed-culture couples, as well as individuals navigating life between cultures. In person in Pasadena and online throughout California.
You may love each other deeply and still find yourselves having the same arguments about family, money, traditions, communication, faith, boundaries, or what your future should look like. Sometimes it’s about what happened, but sometimes it’s about what that moment means because of the families, cultures, values, and experiences each of you bring into the relationship.
Maybe one of you grew up in a family where everyone talked about everything, while the other learned that some things should stay private.
Maybe one family is involved in a lot of your everyday decisions, while the other values more independence.
Maybe one of you learned that being direct is a way of being honest, while the other experiences that same directness as harsh.
Maybe love looked like words and affection in one home, and sacrifice, responsibility, food, work, or simply showing up in the other.
Sometimes We Love Each Other — and Still Don’t Fully Understand Each Other
Neither of you has to be “wrong” for these differences to hurt.
And when we don’t understand where the other person is coming from, it can be easy to start telling ourselves a story about what their actions mean:
“You don’t care about me.”
“Your family always comes first.”
“You’re too sensitive.”
“You don’t respect my parents.”
“Why can’t you just understand?”
In therapy, we can slow these moments down together.
Instead of only focusing on who said what or who was right, we can get curious about why this matters so much to each of you. What did you learn about love, family, respect, conflict, or responsibility? What happens inside each of you when these differences come up? And what do you want to do differently when they do?
We’re not trying to decide whose culture or way of doing things is better.
We’re learning each other’s worlds—and figuring out how to build a relationship that makes room for both of you.
When One — or Both — of You Has Had to Sacrifice
Intercultural relationships can involve beautiful forms of adaptation and partnership. They can also involve sacrifices that are easy to overlook.
Maybe one person moved away from family, learned a new language, adjusted to different traditions, entered a new faith community, changed how holidays are celebrated, or became the person constantly translating between worlds.
Sometimes those choices were made willingly and lovingly.
And yet they can still carry grief.
One partner may quietly wonder whether the other understands how much has changed for them.
The other may feel confused because they thought the choices were mutual.
We can make room for both.
Therapy does not turn sacrifice into a scoreboard. It can help you name what has been given, what is still needed, and how both partners can feel considered in the life you are building together.
Sometimes Our Families Come Into the Relationship With Us
When two people build a life together, they rarely arrive alone.
We bring our families, traditions, expectations, beliefs, histories, and ideas about what relationships are supposed to look like.
Questions can come up around how often you see family, how involved parents should be, or a range of important topics such as money, caregiving, holidays, religion, marriage, children, sex, gender roles, privacy, loyalty, and boundaries.
For some couples, setting a boundary feels straightforward.
For others, that same boundary can feel like rejection, disrespect, selfishness, or betrayal.
The goal is not to decide that one family is healthy and the other is unhealthy.
Instead, we can be curious and explore what each family taught you, what you want to carry forward, what you may want to change, and what the two of you want your own relationship to become.
We Can Learn Each Other’s Worlds
Intercultural therapy is not about memorizing a list of cultural rules. Even people who share the same ethnicity, language, religion, or country of origin can have completely different experiences.
Culture gives us context rather than criteria to judge.
In therapy, we can become students of each other.
What did respect look like in your home?
How did your family handle conflict?
What did you learn about asking for help?
What did love look like?
How did your family handle disappointment?
What does partnership mean to you?
These conversations can help couples move away from “Who is right?” and toward “Can I understand why this matters to you?”
We don’t have to erase differences to feel close.
What If I’m looking for Individual Therapy?
You do not have to come to therapy as a couple for culture and relationships to be part of the work.
Individual therapy can be a place to explore what it is like to move between cultures, navigate family expectations, date or marry across cultures, set boundaries, make decisions that your family may not understand, or figure out what you actually believe and want.
You may be trying to honor where you come from without losing yourself.
Or you may be realizing that some of the expectations you carry are not entirely yours.
We can make room for the complexity without forcing you to choose between your belonging and who you are becoming.
Meet Our Intercultural & Mixed-Culture Couples Therapists in California
There isn’t one “right” therapist for every intercultural relationship.
Sometimes it helps to work with someone who shares part of your cultural experience. Sometimes what matters more is finding someone who is curious about your world, understands how culture can shape relationships, and doesn’t assume they already know your story.
At Table Family Therapy, Emily, Somin, and Kim each bring their own backgrounds, experiences, and therapeutic styles to this work.
Information
Emily (Donavon) Tien
Information
Somin Kim
Kim Agramon (Agramon-Bai)
Kim grew up in the Philippines and moved to the United States as an adult. She is also in an intercultural marriage with a Chinese American partner.
Her lived experience gives her a personal understanding of some of the questions that can come with navigating different cultures, families, expectations, traditions, and ways of seeing the world.
But Kim is also careful not to assume that because something feels familiar, she already understands your relationship.
“I want to learn about your relationship, not make assumptions about it.”
Kim especially enjoys helping couples understand the patterns underneath recurring conflict, learn how to communicate more clearly, and become more curious about each other’s worlds.
Let’s Understand What Happens Between You
Couples often come to therapy focused on the topic they keep fighting about. But underneath the topic, there is usually a pattern.
Something happens. One person feels hurt, dismissed, controlled, unimportant, criticized, or misunderstood. They react. The other person reacts to that reaction. And before long, both people are protecting themselves instead of connecting with each other.
Culture can shape what triggers the pattern, what each person tells themselves, and what feels safe or unsafe in conflict.
Therapy can help you slow the cycle down and ask:
What am I feeling?
What am I believing about myself, my partner, or our relationship?
How do I react when I feel that way?
What happens between us next?
Once the pattern becomes clearer, you can practice responding differently—with more awareness, regulation, honesty, and choice.
The goal is not to never disagree.
The goal is to understand each other well enough that differences do not automatically become disconnection.
Therapy may help with:
Recurring conflict and misunderstandings
Communication differences
Family expectations and involvement
Boundaries with parents or extended family
Different cultural values
Interfaith relationships
Money and financial expectations
Marriage and commitment
How Intercultural Couples Therapy Can Help
Parenting and raising multicultural children
Traditions and holidays
Immigration and acculturation
Identity and belonging
Different expressions of love and care
Gender roles and responsibilities
Grief, sacrifice, and resentment
Building shared values and traditions
Sexual intimacy
The goal isn’t to make you the same. It’s to help you understand each other well enough to build something that belongs to both of you.
Why Work With Table Family Therapy?
At Table Family Therapy, we see therapy as the process of building something strong and lasting together—like a table, able to not only stand on its own but also hold the weight of the things in our life.
In intercultural relationships, there may be many different parts of each person asking for a seat: family, culture, faith, language, identity, traditions, grief, hopes for the future, and the relationship you are trying to build together.
We don’t want one person’s world to have to disappear for the relationship to work.
Therapy can become a place where both of you get to bring more of yourselves to the table—and decide together what you want to build from there.
Our therapists bring different backgrounds and styles to this work, which also gives you options when choosing someone who feels like a good fit.
FAQs About Intercultural Couples Therapy
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No. “Intercultural” can include differences in family culture, socioeconomic background, religion, immigration history, or other meaningful ways of experiencing the world beyond just race or ethnicity..
What matters is whether those differences are important in your relationship.
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Yes.
This page centers couples because many intercultural concerns show up in relationships, but our therapists can also work with individuals navigating culture, family expectations, identity, belonging, boundaries, relationships, immigration, or mixed-background experiences.
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The goal is not to decide whose culture or family is right.
We want to understand the meaning each person is bringing into the relationship, identify the patterns that keep creating disconnection, and help you communicate with more curiosity and choice.
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Family involvement is often an important but also challenging part of intercultural relationships.
Therapy can make room for loyalty, love, obligation, boundaries, caregiving, expectations, and the complicated feelings that can come with trying to build a partnership while staying connected to family.
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Yes.
If faith is meaningful in your relationship, it can be part of therapy. That may include shared faith, different faith traditions, interfaith relationships, changing beliefs, family expectations around religion, or deciding what you want faith to look like in your home.
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You do not have to figure that out from a website alone.
A consultation can help us learn a little about what you are looking for, answer your questions, and help determine which therapist may be the best fit based on your needs, preferences, availability, and the therapist’s areas of experience.
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Yes.
Table Family Therapy offers online therapy throughout California, with in-person services available in Pasadena and San Francisco depending on therapist availability.
Couple’s therapy isn’t about determining whose culture is right. It’s about exploring and understanding each other’s worlds.
Find the therapist who feels like the right fit for your relationship.
Emily, Somin, and Kim are available as part of the Table Family Therapy team for intercultural and mixed-culture therapy, depending on fit and availability.
ResourcesNaeimi, H., & Impett, E. A. (2025). Navigating cultural crossroads: A thematic analysis of individuals' sacrifices in intercultural romantic relationships. Journal of Marriage and Family, 87(3), 1200–1223.McElroy-Heltzel, S. E., Davis, D. E., DeBlaere, C., Hook, J. N., Massengale, M., Choe, E., & Rice, K. G. (2018). Cultural humility: Pilot study testing the social bonds hypothesis in interethnic couples. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 65(4), 531–537.Pittman, P. S., Kamp Dush, C., Pratt, K. J., & Wong, J. D. (2024).Interracial couples at risk: Discrimination, well-being, and health. Journal of Family Issues, 45(2), 303–325.Leslie, L. A., & Letiecq, B. L. (2004). Marital quality of African American and White partners in interracial couples. Personal Relationships, 11(4), 559–574.