Marriage counselling and couples therapy in Singapore
Marriage counselling in Singapore is a narrow market once you want it in English, with a practitioner who is not part of the same small expatriate circuit you both move in. Whether you call it marriage counselling, couples counselling or couples therapy, the work is the same and so is the difficulty of finding it discreetly. Sessions here are held online from a London practice, which solves both problems at once: the specialism without the proximity.
Couples therapy for international Singapore
Singapore is one of the world’s great expat pressure-cookers, and marriages feel it first. The careers are demanding, the hours long, the packages generous enough to remove every ordinary friction, and with the frictions go many of the ordinary intimacies: the cooking, the errands, the small shared work that quietly holds couples together. Add distance from family, the strain when one partner’s career brought you here and the other’s went quiet, and the intensity of being each other’s whole support system, and solid marriages begin to strain. I see it weekly, online from my London practice.
The three versions that arrive most often
The trailing-spouse marriage. One career brought you here and the other went quiet. The package is generous, the apartment is good, and one of you has lost the thing that organised their day and most of their sense of competence with it. That resentment is almost never stated directly, because it sounds ungrateful against a lifestyle other people envy. It arrives instead as irritability, as withdrawal, or as a slow disappearance of sex.
The marriage that works perfectly as a logistics operation. Two careers, helper, international school, a shared calendar that functions beautifully. Nothing is wrong. There is also almost nothing left that is not administration. Couples in this position often tell me they are more like colleagues who co-own a household, and that they are frightened to say so because there is no complaint that would sound serious enough to justify it.
The marriage where the drinking has become the subject. Singapore’s social life runs on alcohol, expensively and relentlessly, and the line between a hard-drinking posting and a problem is genuinely hard to see from inside it. Very often one partner has known for a year and said nothing. Addiction is one of this practice’s core specialisms, so that can be worked with in the room rather than referred away.
What usually has to happen first
Most couples arrive wanting the other person adjusted. That is not a criticism, it is simply how distress presents, and it is the first thing the work has to get past.
The useful early question is rarely who is right. It is what each of you is doing that makes perfect sense given your own history, and what it costs the other person that you do it. That question is harder to dismiss than an argument about the facts of last Tuesday, and it tends to be where the movement starts.
How the work goes
The approach is analytic and Jungian: we work at both levels at once, what is happening between you here and now, and what each of you brings from your own history into the pattern. A neutral, confidential space where what has never been said can finally be said, with a third person trained to hold both sides without taking either. Sessions are in English, in French, or in the mixture bilingual couples actually speak. For what an affair is really saying when that is the crisis: The Affair as Symptom. For the patterns that harm: The Toxic Relationship.
Practicalities
Sessions are by secure video on Singapore time, with Dr Philippe Jacquet, Jungian analyst with twenty-five years of experience, from Harley Street, London. In person in London when you travel. A first appointment is confidential and usually available within two days: book here.
Also available for couples in Europe: couples therapy in Lisbon.
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.
Part of the practice’s couples therapy service, in person in London and online worldwide.
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 couples therapy available online in Singapore?
Yes: Dr Philippe Jacquet works with couples in Singapore by secure video, in English, in French, and with bilingual couples in a mixture of both, scheduled to Singapore time from his Harley Street practice in London.
What brings expat couples in Singapore to therapy?
The pressure-cooker: demanding careers, long hours, helper-supported households that remove the ordinary frictions and with them the ordinary intimacies, distance from family, and the particular strain when one partner's career brought you both here and the other's went quiet. Solid marriages strain under this; it is common, and it is workable.
What if we are considering separating?
Couples therapy is not a guarantee the relationship survives. It creates the conditions for both people to understand what is truly happening between them, and then decide with clarity. Sometimes that strengthens the marriage; sometimes it allows a separation with less damage, which matters even more abroad.
How do sessions work from Singapore?
By secure video, with both partners together and individual sessions where useful. Singapore's evening is London's afternoon, which makes regular weekly sessions straightforward. In-person sessions are possible at Harley Street when you are in London.