Couples work for internationals in the Netherlands
Relocation is hard on a relationship in a way nobody warns you about.
One person has the job, the colleagues, the reason to be there and a structure that fills the day. The other has the admin, the language class, the school run and the long afternoons. Within two years the distance between those two experiences can be very wide, and it is usually not discussed until something breaks.
Then there is the arithmetic nobody does in advance. You left the friends who would have absorbed an ordinary bad month. You left the family who would have taken the children for a weekend. What used to be spread across a dozen relationships now has to be carried by one, and that is a great deal to ask of a marriage.
What is brought here
Affairs, and what to do in the months afterwards. Sexual difficulty, including where it followed the move or the birth of a child. One partner’s drinking. A relationship that has become a well-run household with nothing inside it. Decisions about whether to stay in the Netherlands, go home, or go somewhere else, where the two answers do not match.
And the ordinary, serious things that are not about being abroad at all: illness, ageing parents in another country, a child who is struggling, money, and the slow accumulation of things not said.
The approach
Not a technique applied to a couple, and not a referee deciding who is right.
The work looks at the pattern the two of you make together, and at what each of you brought to it long before you met. Most repeated arguments are not about the subject they appear to be about. They are two histories meeting in the present, and they usually quieten once both people can see the shape of what is happening.
Dr Jacquet is a Jungian analyst with twenty-five years of clinical practice. That background means the work can go beneath the immediate conflict when the couple want it to, rather than only managing it.
How it works
Online by secure video, in English or French, on Dutch time. The Netherlands is one hour ahead of the UK, so evening appointments after work are straightforward.
No waiting list. Dutch services had more than 101,000 people waiting to begin treatment in October 2025, averaging twenty-four weeks. A first conversation here can usually be arranged within days.
Where one partner is dealing with burnout, addiction or trauma, individual work can run alongside the couples work.
Beginning
A first conversation is confidential and without commitment, and you are welcome to have it together or separately. Book here.
Back to psychotherapy in the Netherlands.
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 Professional Doctorate in Analytical Psychology 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
Can we be seen together online?
Yes. Couples work online is effective, and for two people in the same house it is often easier to arrange than travelling to a consulting room. Sessions can be together, individually, or a combination, agreed openly between all three of us.
What if only one of us wants to come?
That is common and it is workable. Individual work on a relationship is not second best; sometimes it is the only way in, and it frequently changes what is possible between the two of you.
Can sessions be in French?
Yes, including where one partner is more comfortable in French and the other in English. That situation is more common among international couples than people expect, and it is worth naming rather than working around.