Marriage counselling for expat Dubai
Dubai gives expatriate couples a lifestyle that looks like a reward and often works like a test. One partner’s career is demanding and consuming; the other’s is frequently suspended, with everything that does to identity and balance. The social scene runs on appearances, which makes difficulty feel shameful. Family is a flight away. And the city is transient: everyone is always arriving or leaving, which thins the friendships marriages lean on. Under the gloss, couples drift into parallel lives, and by the time it is named, it has usually been true for years.
Dr Philippe Jacquet works with exactly this, online by secure video from his Harley Street practice in London, in English and French, on Gulf time: a marriage counsellor entirely outside your circles, in a community where discretion is everything.
How the work goes
The approach is analytic and Jungian: what is happening between you now, and what each of you brings from your own history into the pattern. A neutral space where what has never been said can be said, with a third person trained to hold both sides without taking either. When an affair is the crisis: The Affair as Symptom. When the pattern itself is the problem: The Toxic Relationship.
Practicalities
Sessions by secure video on Gulf time; in person at Harley Street when you are in London. A first conversation is confidential and without commitment: book here.
Dr Philippe Jacquet is a UKCP registered psychotherapist, a Jungian analyst and an HCPC registered art psychotherapist, with twenty-five years of clinical practice. His Doctorate of Professional Practice at the University of Essex examined male eating disorders from the perspective of analytical psychology. Registration can be checked on either public register.
How the work is delivered from here
All international sessions are by secure video, in English or French. Online therapy is not a reduced version of consulting room work: it is the format that lets weekly work survive living abroad, travelling, or relocating. Sessions run in United Kingdom hours, which suits most regions, and if your time zone makes none of it workable, say so when you enquire rather than assuming it rules you out.
For clinicians and treatment services
Dr Jacquet supervises clinical teams in private residential addiction treatment and in a private psychiatric hospital. For treatment centres, psychiatric units and group practices looking for external clinical supervision, including in places where no supervisor of this seniority is available locally, team supervision is also delivered by video. For individual practitioners, see clinical supervision.
Common questions
Is marriage counselling available online in Dubai?
Yes: Dr Philippe Jacquet works with couples in Dubai and across the UAE by secure video, in English and French, scheduled to Gulf time from his Harley Street practice in London, with strict confidentiality.
Why work with a London counsellor rather than locally?
Discretion, above all: expat Dubai is a village, and marital difficulty is nobody's business but yours. An independent London practitioner sits entirely outside your social and professional circles. Nothing is disclosed to anyone, and nothing touches any local record.
What strains expat marriages in Dubai?
The lifestyle that looks like a reward and works like a test: one partner's demanding career, the other's suspended one; the social scene that runs on appearances; the distance from family; and transience, everyone always arriving or leaving. Under the surface gloss, couples can drift into parallel lives. It is common, and it is workable.
What if only one of us wants counselling?
That is frequent, and individual work on the relationship is still valuable: one person changing their part of the pattern changes the pattern. Couples work is stronger with both, but either way is a beginning.