Couples Therapy for Faith Deconstruction and Faith Transitions in Spokane
The Easiest Part of Your Marriage Used to Be Shared Faith. Now It’s One of the Hardest.
You married someone who believed the same things you did, who wanted the same kind of life, who prayed the same prayers. Faith was the easiest part of your relationship because you never had to negotiate it.
Now one of you has changed, and faith — the biggest thing that used to hold you together — feels like it's tearing you apart.
Maybe the shift happened slowly: doubts that got louder over time, questions that didn’t get satisfying answers, a growing sense that the beliefs you were raised with don't fit who you've become. Maybe it happened suddenly, after a specific event: your child came out, or one of your religious leaders was accused of a scandal.
Either way, you can't undo it, and your partner is standing on the other side of a gap that gets wider every time you try to talk about it.
In Spokane, faith and family often overlap almost completely. Your church community on the South Hill or in the Valley is also your friend group, your extended family’s social world, and your kids’ network. The couple you’d normally call when your marriage is struggling is the couple you sit with at service on Sunday.
Questioning your beliefs doesn’t just change your relationship with God, it changes your relationship with nearly everyone you know.
You can learn more about how I approach couples therapy when faith is part of the equation, including what makes it different from standard couples counseling, on my couples therapy for faith deconstruction page.
Why Faith Differences Are So Painful For Both of You
If you're the partner who stayed in the faith, this feels like watching your marriage become something you never agreed to. You were supposed to do this together: raise the kids in church, grow old in the same community, share the same foundation. Now you're carrying the family's spiritual life alone, sitting in the pew by yourself, wondering if this is just the beginning of your partner pulling away from everything.
If you're the one whose beliefs have changed, you feel trapped between honesty and loyalty. You can't be yourself without hurting the person you love. You can't talk about what's actually going on in your head because every time you try, your partner either gets upset, or says something judgmental. You've lost the community you grew up in, and the loneliness is overwhelming, especially in a place like Spokane where church connections run deep and alternative connections are sparse.
Both of you are grieving different things, and sometimes the grief feels so consuming that you can't see past your own pain to what your partner is going through.
Support Looks Different When You’re Questioning Your Faith in Spokane
Your church isn’t the only religious institution built into daily life here. Spokane has Catholic schools your children might attend, a Catholic hospital you were born in or work in, and Gonzaga, where you may have attended college and met your spouse.
In cities like Seattle or Portland, stepping back from your own congregation is akin to stepping away from organized religion altogether. But it’s not that way in Spokane, because religion influences institutions, like schools, healthcare, and higher education.
For a couple working through faith transitions together, the religious culture of Spokane adds a layer of complexity. The partner who is questioning their beliefs doesn’t get a full break from the religion they’re leaving, and the partner who still believes doesn’t experience their spouse’s questioning or doubt as a private decision, easy to set aside. It becomes public, and even shameful.
How Couples Therapy Helps When Faith Has Divided You
I use Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) as the foundation, combined with somatic and trauma-informed approaches. Our therapy sessions aren’t about deciding who’s right about God and religion. They are about helping you stay connected to each other while you hold different beliefs.
We slow down the moments when your partner's difference starts to feel like a threat to the marriage. When one of you says “I'm not sure I believe that anymore” and the other partner’s whole body tenses and they want to debate, we work with what’s really happening: the fear of losing each other, the grief of a shared life that will change in certain ways, and the anxiety that different beliefs mean the end of the relationship.
This means you can finally have the conversation that's been sitting between you for months — or years — without it turning into an ultimatum or a fight. You learn to hear your partner's fear instead of just their position. You stop trying to be right, and start trying to understand.
How Your Relationship Changes
You're sitting in the living room after the kids are in bed, and one of you says "I need to talk about the church thing" and the other stays on the couch instead of leaving the room. The conversation is hard, and nobody has the answers. But you're facing it together instead of alone, and that feels hopeful.
Your partner goes to church Sunday morning and you stay home. When they get back, they tell you about running into the Hendersons, about what the pastor said, and you listen without the wall going up. They ask what you did with your morning, and you tell them you went for a walk along the Centennial Trail and read at a coffee shop in Kendall Yards.
Your parents ask why the whole family hasn't been at mass or church lately, and instead of the usual scramble where one of you covers for the other, you figure out together what to say before the conversation happens. It doesn't go perfectly, but you walk out of your parents’ house feeling like a team instead of opponents.
You sit down to talk about your daughter staying in the youth group. Your partner says "I'm scared she'll lose her friends if she stops going" and you say "I'm scared she'll absorb beliefs I don't hold anymore" and you sit with both of those fears instead of one person winning. You find a workable compromise.
The topic of faith stops being the thing that could blow up your marriage at any moment. It's still there, but you've learned how to hold it together as a unit, instead of letting it push you apart.
Who is this for?
This works for couples where one or both partners are going through a faith transition, deconstruction, or shift in religious identity, and the marriage is suffering because of it. You built your relationship on shared beliefs and now those beliefs have diverged. The conflict may be showing up around church attendance, parenting, extended family, holidays, money, your sexual relationship, or the fear that you're becoming strangers.
This works best when both of you want to stay together and are willing to learn how to be different from each other without it meaning the end of your connection.
This won’t work well if one partner is using faith changes as a reason to leave, if there's spiritual abuse or control happening, or if one person is unwilling to respect the other's right to believe differently.
Telehealth Couples Therapy in Spokane and Eastern Washington
I see couples throughout Spokane and Eastern Washington via telehealth. Sessions are available on Tuesdays and Wednesdays between 8am and 6pm.
For couples in small communities, telehealth offers something an office can’t: privacy. There’s no waiting room, no parking lot, no chance of running into someone from your former congregation. You do the work from home, on your own terms.
Serving Spokane and Eastern Washington Couples via Telehealth
Including Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake, Cheney, Airway Heights, Medical Lake, and surrounding areas.
Questions?
FAQs About Couples Therapy for Faith Changes
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Couples sessions are $350 for 50 minutes. I don't accept insurance directly. For couples work, I use a relational diagnosis code that most insurance plans won't cover even out of network, so sessions typically come out of pocket. If you have an HSA or FSA account, those funds can usually be used. I recommend checking with your plan administrator first to confirm.
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No. I don’t have an agenda for what you believe or where your faith lands. The deconstructing partner sometimes worries I'll pathologize their questions or try to bring them back to faith. The believing partner sometimes worries I'll side with the deconstructing one. Neither of those is how I work. My job is to help you stay connected to each other through this, not to decide who is right about God, faith, or religion. Both of your experiences are real, both of your fears are valid, and I hold space for both without steering either of you toward a particular conclusion.
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Most couples in this situation have already been to a pastor, a church counselor, or a general therapist who didn't fully understand the dynamics at play. Pastoral counseling often has an implicit goal of bringing the questioning partner back to faith. General couples therapy may address communication but miss the grief, identity loss, and nervous system responses that make faith transitions so destabilizing for a marriage. I specialize in this intersection — EFT for the relationship, somatic and trauma-informed work for what's happening in your bodies when these conversations go sideways, and a deep understanding of what deconstruction actually does to a couple. You don't have to explain what purity culture is or why leaving church feels like losing your entire world.
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That's a real possibility, and I won't pretend otherwise. The goal of this work is to help you see each other clearly enough to make a real decision about your future. Most couples I work with find that when they can actually hear each other’s fears instead of just each other’s positions, the gap between them is smaller than it seemed during the fights. But if you go through this process and decide you’ve genuinely grown in different directions, you’ll make that decision from a place of understanding rather than reactivity.
About Ingrid Johnston, LMFT, MDFT
EFT couples therapist in Spokane, WA
I’ve been working with individuals and couples since 2014, with specialized training in trauma, somatic therapy, and faith transitions. I hold a Master of Science in Marriage and Family Therapy and advanced certification in Medical Family Therapy and Collaborative Medicine from Seattle Pacific University.
My approach integrates EMDR, somatic therapy, and Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), evidence-based modalities specifically effective for religious trauma and complex PTSD. I’ve completed over 100 hours of specialized training in trauma treatment and body-based healing.
Beyond my clinical training, my work is informed by my own lived experience. I grew up immersed in traditional Christian faith. I’ve navigated my own path through chronic pain, somatic healing, and decades of mindfulness and meditation practices. I understand what it's like to rebuild trust in your body and intuition after being taught they couldn’t be trusted.
I’m a member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) and the Washington Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (WAMFT).
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist: Washington State License #LF61033631
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Contact Ingrid
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Office and mailing address:
19803 North Creek Parkway, Suite 205
Bothell, WA 98011
In-person in Bothell & online across Washington