A structured place to talk through what is happening in your relationship, at a pace you set, with a regulated clinician. Registered Psychologists, Registered Provisional Psychologists, Registered Social Workers, Certified Canadian Counsellors, Mental Health Therapists, and Student Therapists. Psychologists registered with the College of Alberta Psychologists (CAP). Certified Canadian Counsellors (CCCs) are regulated by the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA). Registered Social Workers are regulated by the Alberta College of Social Workers (ACSW). In-person at five locations in Edmonton and St. Albert, and virtual across Alberta. 50-minute sessions, daytime, evening, and weekend availability.

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You Might Be Wondering Whether Relationship Counselling Is Right for You

You may be asking yourself whether things are bad enough to bring to a therapist. Most relationships have rough stretches, and you might be measuring yours against something worse and deciding it does not qualify. That doubt is often the reason people wait a long time before making a call.

Some of what you are living with may be familiar. Having the same argument in slightly different words, month after month, and knowing exactly how it will end before it starts. Living alongside someone efficiently, sorting out the schedule and the groceries, while the part that used to feel close has gone quiet. Rehearsing a sentence in your head for days and then not saying it, because you already know how it will land.

These patterns tend to build slowly, and they say something about the pressure a relationship is carrying rather than about a flaw in either person. Relationship difficulties are recognized as a reason people seek health support, and they are not a diagnosis on their own (World Health Organization [WHO], n.d.).

You may want to read the rest of this page and see whether the kind of support described here matches what you are looking for. Nothing below asks you to decide anything today.

Who We Help

Relationship-focused counselling at Wholesome Psychology may be a reasonable fit if you are:

• a couple who wants a structured setting to talk through communication, recurring disagreements, or changes in closeness
• married, common-law, dating, engaged, long-term, or co-parenting partners
• one person who wants to think through a relationship concern on your own, whether or not a partner is involved
• partners working through trust concerns, or through what a change in the relationship has meant for each of you
• partners under pressure from parenting, blended family or extended family expectations, caregiving, health, money, culture, or a major life transition
• someone gathering information for a friend or family member who is struggling in a relationship
• partners trying to decide what comes next, including questions about boundaries, repair, or separation

This service may not be the right fit in these situations:

• Immediate danger or crisis. Scheduled counselling is not emergency care. Please use the resources in the next block.
• Court, custody, or legal processes. Therapy is not a legal service, an investigation, or a source of evidence. Psychological assessments, including parenting and custody assessments, are a separate service at this clinic and are not part of relationship counselling.
• Court-mandated programming for someone who has used violence. That work follows a different pathway, and the administrative team can point you toward appropriate services rather than booking you into relationship counselling.
• Safety concerns, coercion, or violence in the relationship. Joint sessions are not automatically the safest option in these circumstances. It is worth discussing the safest format with a qualified professional or a crisis service first.

If You Need Help Right Now

Wholesome Psychology is not an emergency or crisis service. Appointments are scheduled in advance, and clinicians are not available between sessions for urgent situations. If you or someone else is at risk, please use one of these instead:

• 911 if anyone is in immediate danger, or go to the nearest emergency department
• Alberta Mental Health Help Line: 1-877-303-2642, available 24 hours a day
• Family Violence Info Line (Alberta): 310-1818, available 24 hours a day, toll-free, with interpretation in many languages
• Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741741

What This Service Is

Marriage and relationship concerns counselling is a series of scheduled conversations with a regulated clinician about the patterns, pressures, and decisions in a relationship. You bring the topics. The therapist helps organize the conversation so that both perspectives get room, and so that the discussion moves somewhere rather than repeating itself.

Sessions can involve both partners together, or one person on their own. Some people start individually and move to joint sessions later. Some do the reverse. You can ask about format before you book, and you can change it as circumstances change.

It is worth being clear about what this service is not. It is not a legal service, an investigative process, or crisis intervention. It does not produce reports for court. Psychological assessments are a separate service at this clinic, and nothing on this page should be read as including assessment in relationship counselling. Counselling also does not take a side or work toward a predetermined outcome. Whether a relationship continues, changes shape, or ends is not the therapist's decision.

The pace belongs to you. There is no requirement to disclose anything before you are ready, and no session where you are obliged to cover a particular topic. What you discuss is confidential, with specific legal exceptions that your clinician will explain at the start. The confidentiality section below sets those out in detail.

Clinicians work within their scope of practice. If something raised in sessions falls outside that scope, for example a medical concern, a legal question, or a need for specialized assessment, your therapist will say so and discuss a referral instead of continuing past the boundary.

Signs Relationship Concerns May Be Affecting You

There is no threshold you have to cross before counselling is reasonable. Some readers find it useful to see the everyday shapes this takes:

• the same disagreement returning in a new form, with the ending already familiar
• editing yourself before you speak, or leaving things unsaid to avoid the reaction
• a drop in physical closeness or affection, or discomfort talking about it
• feeling more like housemates or co-managers than partners
• replaying conversations afterwards, or rehearsing the next one for days
• tension in your body when you hear the door, the car, or a particular tone of voice
• sleep, appetite, or concentration shifting alongside stress at home
• pulling back from friends or family because explaining the situation feels like too much
• uncertainty about whether you want to work on the relationship, leave it, or wait

Recognizing several of these does not mean something is permanently wrong with you or with your relationship, and it does not amount to a diagnosis. These are common responses to sustained relational pressure. A structured conversation, with someone whose job is to keep it useful, is one way people work out which parts can change and which parts they are deciding about.

How Treatment Works Here

• Find your therapist. You can browse Our Therapists to read individual profiles, or use the Match with a Therapist tool. If you would rather talk it through, the administrative team can be reached at 780-904-4880. Availability changes, so it is worth confirming current openings rather than relying on a profile alone.
• Book your first session. You can book online or by phone. The first session covers informed consent, how confidentiality works and where its limits sit, what brings you in, and what you would like to be different. If you attend as a couple, this is also when you can ask how the therapist handles information shared separately by each partner.
• Build your plan together. Goals are set through conversation, not assigned. You can say which topics are off the table for now. A plan that does not fit can be revised.
• Ongoing sessions. Sessions run 50 minutes, typically weekly or every second week at the start, and are adjusted as things settle. Some people meet less often over time.
• Progress check-ins. Your therapist reviews with you whether the work is going anywhere useful. If it is not, that is information worth acting on, whether by changing the focus, the format, or the clinician.

There is no fixed number of sessions, and no standard course that everyone completes. This is collaborative work, and your view of whether it is helping carries weight at every stage.

Evidence and Approaches

The research base available for this page is limited, and this section describes it plainly rather than making it sound stronger than it is. Where a source could not be checked, that is stated instead of covered over.

Couple and Relationship-Focused Counselling

What it helps with: Working with a partner on communication, recurring disagreements, closeness, trust concerns, and decisions about what comes next.

Evidence summary: Couple interventions for marital distress have been examined in a published systematic review and meta-analysis (Evidence Pack E2). The extract available for that review confirms its subject but does not report methods, effect sizes, or conclusions. This page therefore describes the approach as a structured setting for discussing patterns and goals, not as a treatment with a known success rate.

Limitations: Because outcome data was not available, no claim is made about effectiveness for any particular couple or concern. Responses differ between people and relationships.

Couple-Based Approaches Studied in Specific Clinical Contexts

What it helps with: Situations where one partner is also managing a separate mental health concern and the couple is considering whether a joint format makes sense.

Evidence summary: Cochrane has published a review of couple therapy for depression, which indicates that couple-based formats have been studied in defined clinical populations (Cochrane, 2018). The extract available here does not report that review's findings, so this page notes only that such research exists.

Limitations: That research concerns a narrower population than a general relationship counselling page, and it does not follow that relationship counselling treats depression or any other condition. Whether a joint format suits a specific situation is a clinical question for a first session.

Individual Counselling Focused on a Relationship Concern

What it helps with: Thinking through a relationship on your own, when a partner is not attending or when separate space is what you want.

Evidence summary: The source set for this page contains no studies comparing individual and couple formats for relationship concerns, so no comparative statement is made. Relationship problems are recognized in the International Classification of Diseases, 11th Revision, as a reason people come into contact with health services (WHO, n.d.). That supports treating the concern as a legitimate topic for counselling rather than as a diagnosis.

Limitations: Individual counselling is not equivalent to couples counselling, and this page does not present it as a substitute. No effectiveness claim is made for either format.

Wider Canadian Context

Relationship distress is treated as a recognized topic by Canadian professional and public education bodies. The Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) has published a public fact sheet on relationship distress (CPA, 2021), and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) publishes a public resource on couples counselling (CAMH, n.d.). The full text of both was unavailable in the source set for this page, so they are cited here as indications that the topic is recognized, not as support for any clinical claim.

A Statistics Canada publication links satisfaction with family relationships to positive well-being (Statistics Canada, 2024). The available extract does not report measures or causal findings, so this is an association only and should not be read as evidence that counselling changes well-being. Public mental health promotion material from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC, n.d.) provides general context and is not specific evidence about couples counselling. No Canadian prevalence data on relationship distress was available for this page.

What Results to Expect

Change in relationship work is rarely a steady climb. People often describe a period where things feel more raw before they feel clearer, because conversations that were being avoided are now happening in the room.

Some people notice shifts within a few months. Others find that longer-term work suits their situation better. The honest answer is that this varies, and the evidence available for this page does not support any statement about how quickly change happens or how likely it is. Nobody at this clinic can guarantee an outcome, and no therapy can.

Several things influence how the work goes:

• what is happening in the relationship and how long the patterns have been in place
• current circumstances outside the relationship, such as work, health, money, or caregiving
• whether both partners are attending, and what each person wants from the process
• the fit between you and your therapist

That last one matters more than people expect. If the fit is not right, the work tends to stall regardless of the approach. Changing therapists or changing the format is always available and does not require a justification. Counselling also does not aim at one particular ending. Some couples come out of it with a clearer sense of how to be together, and some with a clearer sense of how to separate well. Both are legitimate results of the process.

Confidentiality and Privacy

What you say in session stays between you and your clinician. Psychologists at this clinic are registered with the College of Alberta Psychologists (CAP) and practise under CAP's Standards of Practice and the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists.

Two pieces of Alberta legislation govern how personal and health information is collected, used, and disclosed: the Health Information Act (HIA) and the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA). Which one applies in a given situation depends on the type of information involved and the context in which it is collected. Your clinician can explain how records are kept and how you may access your own information.

Confidentiality has legal limits. It is not accurate to say that everything is confidential in every circumstance. A clinician may be required to disclose information when:

• there is a risk of serious harm to you or to another person
• there is reasonable suspicion that a child is being abused or neglected, which carries a mandatory reporting duty under Alberta law
• a court orders the release of records or testimony

Your clinician will walk through these limits in the first session, before you share anything personal. Couple sessions raise an additional question about how information shared by one partner separately is handled, and clinicians differ in how they set that up. You are entitled to ask exactly how your therapist manages it, and to ask any other question about privacy, before you begin.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to describe everything that happened in detail?

No. You decide what to say and when. Plenty of useful work happens by looking at present-day patterns, such as how a conversation goes wrong or what happens in the hours after a fight, without a detailed account of past events. If a topic feels like too much right now, you can say so and the session moves on. Therapists working this way expect that and will not push.

Is what I share kept private?

Yes, within defined legal limits. Psychologists are bound by CAP Standards of Practice. Certified Canadian Counsellors (CCCs) are regulated by the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA), and Registered Social Workers are regulated by the Alberta College of Social Workers (ACSW). Clinicians are also bound by Alberta privacy legislation, specifically the Health Information Act and the Personal Information Protection Act. Disclosure may be required where there is a risk of serious harm, a reasonable suspicion of child abuse or neglect, or a court order. The Confidentiality and Privacy section above sets this out in full, and your clinician will review it with you before you share anything personal.

How many sessions will I need?

There is no set number, and anyone who quotes you one without knowing your situation is guessing. Some people come for a short stretch to work on something specific. Others continue over a longer period. Progress is reviewed as you go, so this is a decision you revisit rather than one you make up front. The evidence available for this page does not support a typical figure, so none is offered here.

What if the therapist is not the right fit?

Fit is a practical matter, not a judgment about anyone. If it is not working, you can change clinicians without explaining yourself. The administrative team at 780-904-4880 can help you find someone else, and the Match with a Therapist tool is another way to narrow the options. New clients may access their first session at 50% off to help find the right therapeutic fit.

Can I attend sessions online?

Yes. Virtual sessions are available anywhere in Alberta, and the same confidentiality standards apply as they do in person. Some people prefer virtual for scheduling or privacy reasons, and some couples in different locations use it to attend together. You will need a private space and a reliable connection. You can switch between virtual and in-person as your circumstances change.

Do both partners have to attend?

No. Some people attend individually to think through a relationship concern, whether or not their partner knows they are doing so. Others want joint sessions from the start. A single partner attending alone is a common starting point and does not mean the work is one-sided. You can discuss format with the administrative team before booking, and it can change later.

What if I do not feel safe in my relationship?

Please raise this before booking a joint session. Where there is coercion, control, or violence, attending together is not automatically the safest choice, and a joint session can make some situations harder. The Family Violence Info Line at 310-1818 is available 24 hours a day and can talk through options with you confidentially. The administrative team can also point you toward the clinic's abuse and family violence services, which are set up differently from relationship counselling.

Meet Your Clinicians

The clinical team includes Registered Psychologists, Registered Provisional Psychologists, Registered Social Workers, Certified Canadian Counsellors, Mental Health Therapists, and Student Therapists. All psychologists are registered with the College of Alberta Psychologists (CAP), the body that sets standards of practice and handles complaints for the profession in Alberta. Certified Canadian Counsellors (CCCs) are regulated by the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA). Registered Social Workers are regulated by the Alberta College of Social Workers (ACSW). Registered Provisional Psychologists have completed their graduate training and practise under the supervision of a senior registered psychologist while completing registration requirements.

Many clinicians here have training relevant to relationship and couple work, communication difficulties, infidelity, separation, and family transitions. Areas of focus differ from one clinician to another, and current availability changes, so the individual profiles are the reliable source.

You can read profiles on Our Therapists, use the Match with a Therapist tool, or call the administrative team at 780-904-4880 for help choosing. The Getting Started with Therapy page explains the process end to end.

Children and Youth

Relationship difficulties between adults are often felt by the children living alongside them, even when the adults work hard to keep it away from them. Children may show it through sleep, school, irritability, clinginess, or by becoming unusually careful around the house.

Wholesome Psychology offers counselling for children, adolescents, and young people as a separate service. Clinicians working with younger clients use approaches suited to the child's age and stage, which for younger children often means play and activity rather than sustained conversation. Clinicians also work with caregivers, since what changes at home usually matters more than what happens in the session room.

If you are wondering whether a child in your family would benefit from their own support, the administrative team at 780-904-4880 can talk through the options, or see the Child and Youth Counselling service.

Where to Start

If you have read this far and something here matched your situation, these are the ways in:

• Book a session online
• Match with a therapist
• Call 780-904-4880 to talk with the administrative team
• Email info@wholesomepsychology.ca
• Read Getting Started with Therapy for what the process looks like

You may also find these related services relevant: Couples Counselling, Communication and Negotiation, Dealing with Infidelity, Divorce or Separation Support, and Family Violence Counselling.

New clients may access their first session at 50% off to help find the right therapeutic fit.

Starting the conversation is enough.

References

• Cochrane. (2018). Couple therapy for depression. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Published June 8, 2018; modified April 28, 2025.
• Canadian Psychological Association. (2021). Relationship distress [Fact sheet].
• Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. (n.d.). Couples counselling.
• College of Alberta Psychologists. (2023). Standards of practice (effective May 31, 2023).
• College of Alberta Psychologists. (2026). Interpretive guide: Privacy legislation in Alberta (revised January 23, 2026).
• Canadian Psychological Association. (2017). Canadian code of ethics for psychologists (4th ed.).
• Effectiveness of couple interventions in marital distress: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PubMed Central.
• Public Health Agency of Canada. (n.d.). Mental health promotion.
• Statistics Canada. (2024). Being satisfied with family relationships is related to positive well-being.
• World Health Organization. (n.d.). ICD-11 for mortality and morbidity statistics: QE51, problems associated with interactions with spouse or partner.