Emotionally Focused Couples therapy for marriages where one partner is deconstructing or has left the faith
Couples Therapy for Faith Deconstruction and Faith Transitions in Vancouver
Faith Was the Foundation of Your Marriage and Your Whole Life on the Eastside
Faith was the center of your life together. You met at church, or you chose each other because you shared the same beliefs about God, marriage, family, and how to live. Your community in Clark County — the people you spend holidays with, the families your kids grew up alongside, the couples you lean on — are all connected to your church.
Now one of you doesn't believe anymore, or your beliefs have changed enough that Sunday mornings feel dishonest, and the marriage that felt solid for years is on shaky ground.
In Vancouver and Clark County, this hits differently than it might somewhere else. The evangelical and conservative Christian community here is strong and close-knit, and your church isn't just where you worship; it's where your kids’ friends are, where your social life happens, where you volunteer, where people know you as a couple. Questioning your faith doesn't just affect your beliefs. It threatens every relationship you've built.
Learn more about how couples therapy for faith transitions works and what to expect.
Why this is so painful for both of you
If you're the partner who stayed in the faith, you feel like your spouse broke a promise. You built this entire life on shared beliefs — where you live, how you parent, who your friends are — and now your partner is pulling the foundation out from under all of it. You're sitting alone at church in Vancouver fielding questions about your spouse. You're terrified about your kids. You feel abandoned in the most important commitment of your life.
If you're the one whose beliefs have changed, you feel suffocated. Everything in Clark County feels connected to the church, and pulling away from your faith feels like pulling away from your entire world. You can't talk to your partner about what you're going through without them hearing it as a threat. You can't talk to friends because word will get back to the congregation. You're grieving your certainty, your community, and your sense of belonging, and you're doing it completely alone.
Both of you are grieving different things, and the grief is so consuming that you can't see past your own pain to what your partner is going through.
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. The work focuses on helping you stay deeply connected while holding different beliefs, a skill you never needed when you agreed about everything.
We slow down the moments when your partner's difference starts to feel like a rejection of you. When one of you says "I don't know if I believe this anymore" and the other hears "I'm leaving you and everything we built," we work with what's happening underneath: the grief and the fear that being different means being alone.
This means the conversation you've been avoiding becomes one you can actually have. You can talk about church attendance, about the kids, about what to say to your parents, about what holidays look like now, without it turning into a fight about who's right and who's wrong. You stop trying to change each other's minds and start trying to understand each other's hearts.
How Your Relationship Changes
You mention a podcast that has the term “exvangelical” in the title while you're making dinner, and your partner doesn't leave the kitchen. They ask about it. The conversation is short, a little uncomfortable, but it happens. You eat dinner together afterward instead of in silence.
Your mother-in-law in Camas brings up the family's church attendance at Thanksgiving, and instead of one of you deflecting while the other sits there fuming, you handle it together. In the car on the way home, you talk about how it felt. Nobody blames the other.
You sit down to figure out what to do about your son's confirmation, and for the first time you're listening to each other's concerns instead of lobbying for your own position. You find something you can both live with, and it feels like a decision you made together instead of one person winning and the other giving in.
Your partner goes to church in Vancouver on Sunday morning and you spend the time reading at a coffee shop in Uptown Village. When they get home, you ask about the service, and they talk about what the pastor said without it feeling like an invitation to come back. You mention what you read and they're curious instead of threatened. The morning feels normal instead of loaded.
You stop dreading every holiday, every family gathering, every moment where faith comes up. Those moments still require team work, but you navigate them as partners instead of opponents.
Who is this for?
This works for couples where one or both partners are going through a faith transition, deconstruction, or change in religious identity, and the marriage is struggling because of it. You built this relationship on shared beliefs and now those beliefs look different. The conflict may be about church, parenting, money, sexuality, extended family, or the social cost of being honest about where you are.
This works best when both of you want to stay in the relationship and are willing to learn how to be different from each other without it destroying your connection.
This won’t work well if one partner is using faith changes to justify leaving, if there's spiritual abuse or control happening, or if one person refuses to respect the other's right to believe differently.
Telehealth Couples Therapy in Vancouver and Clark County
I see couples throughout Vancouver and Clark County via telehealth. Sessions are available on Tuesdays and Wednesdays between 8am and 6pm.
For couples coming out of conservative religious 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 Vancouver and Clark County Couples via Telehealth
Including Camas, Washougal, Ridgefield, Battle Ground, Salmon Creek, 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 Vancouver, 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
Get In Touch
Contact Ingrid
Please complete the form, and I will be in touch within 48 business hours.
Office and mailing address:
19803 North Creek Parkway, Suite 205
Bothell, WA 98011
In-person in Bothell & online across Washington