I help individuals, partners, and relationship systems develop the five core capacities that make healthy relationships possible. Not through rules or scripts—through genuine growth.
Whether you're single, dating, married, or navigating multiple partnerships—healthy relating requires the same core capacities. These same capacities strengthen parenting, friendships, and professional relationships too.
Most relationship advice fails because it treats symptoms instead of causes. It gives you scripts to follow and rules to enforce. But you can't script your way to genuine connection. And you can't control another person into an authentic relationship with you.
I practice Relational Capacity Therapy (RCT)—a framework I developed that operationalizes Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology into five measurable capacities. Adler understood something that most modern therapy has forgotten: mental health is fundamentally about how we relate.
This isn't about learning communication techniques or memorizing "I statements." It's about developing the internal capacities that make healthy connection possible in the first place—and discovering the patterns that have been getting in your way.
"All problems are interpersonal relationship problems." — Alfred Adler, as presented in The Courage to Be Disliked
Healthy relationships are partnerships between equals—horizontal, not hierarchical. No one above, no one below.
Rules are imposed. Agreements are negotiated. One creates resentment; the other creates partnership.
Your patterns aren't fixed. They're habits that made sense once—and can be updated with awareness and practice.
RCT identifies five interconnected capacities that together create the foundation for healthy relating. But the real depth comes from understanding how each capacity breaks down—and how they combine into the characteristic strategies you actually run.
Most assessments give you a single score or type. The Relational Maturity Index goes deeper. Each of the five core capacities comprises five sub-capacities—25 distinct dimensions of relational functioning that reveal exactly where your strengths and growth edges lie.
More revealing still is the gap between what you can do and what you reliably do. Most people can be vulnerable, or regulate, or repair—on a good day. The RMI measures access and reliability separately, because the distance between them is what tells you whether a capacity is genuinely yours or only available when nothing is at stake.
From self-disclosure to shame tolerance, from emotion regulation to repair skills—pinpoint exactly where to focus your growth.
The single developmental axis—how much choice you have about running your pattern when it counts.
Recognizable strategies for managing vulnerability, each with characteristic strengths, blind spots, and growth edges.
The underlying beliefs driving your patterns—made explicit so they can be examined and updated.
The capacity to be genuinely seen
Sharing your authentic self, admitting struggles, letting others affect you. Without vulnerability, relationships stay surface-level regardless of their duration. Sub-capacities include emotional disclosure, asking for help, admitting uncertainty, receiving care, and authentic self-presentation.
The capacity to work skillfully with emotions
Understanding your own emotional landscape, reading others accurately, regulating without suppressing. Sub-capacities include self-awareness, other-awareness, emotion regulation, emotional articulation, and empathic attunement.
The capacity for joy in others' happiness
Finding genuine delight in others' success, growth, and connections—even when they don't directly benefit you. Not the absence of envy, but freedom from the kind that corrodes. Sub-capacities include joy in others' joy, celebration without reservation, freedom from destructive envy, abundance mindset, and generosity of spirit.
The capacity for stable self-worth in connection
Secure presence without needing constant validation or fearing abandonment. The internal foundation that allows other capacities to function. Sub-capacities include inherent worth, criticism resilience, rejection tolerance, identity stability, and self-compassion.
The capacity to navigate the business of relationships
Setting boundaries, handling conflict, negotiating repairs, respecting autonomy. The logistics that all relationships require. Sub-capacities include clear communication, negotiation, reliable follow-through, repair capacity, and renegotiation capacity.
Patterns aren't personality types. They're adaptive strategies for managing vulnerability—each one brilliant when it formed, each one potentially limiting now. Every pattern developed for good reason and brings genuine strengths.
You're not just one pattern. Most people recognize a primary pattern—the one that describes something you've been doing your whole life without quite noticing—and often a secondary pattern that activates under particular conditions, like stress, intimacy, or conflict. The four Fortress patterns manage vulnerability by managing the self. The four Bridge patterns manage it by managing other people.
Manage vulnerability by managing the self.
Manage vulnerability by managing other people.
Integration isn't a ninth pattern. It's the axis every pattern moves along—how much choice you have about running yours when it actually costs something. Integration doesn't replace your pattern; it transforms it. A Guardian doesn't stop being a Guardian. A Guardian becomes an Open-Hearted Protector. The original gift stays. What changes is that it becomes one color in a palette rather than the only pigment available.
Understand your patterns, see the dynamic you and your partners keep recreating, and get a roadmap for moving along the integration axis.
Book a Consultation →The RMI is the assessment instrument behind RCT. It isn't a quiz you take once—it's administered and interpreted in session, and delivered back to you as a series of written reports across the course of our work together.
After Cornell's Hotel School, I moved to Las Vegas and spent years in the casino industry—working on loyalty programs, VIP services, and the psychology of what keeps people coming back. It was a fascinating education in human motivation: understanding the gap between what people say they want and what they actually respond to, watching how behavior can be shaped by the right incentives, and learning what I came to call "the language of bullshit"—the performance of sincerity that certain environments require.
Eventually I moved into tech and managed sales teams in San Francisco. But I kept running into the same problem: I couldn't be authentic with my teams while also playing the political games that advancement required. I kept choosing genuine connection over career climbing, which cost me several jobs but taught me something important about what I actually valued.
That realization led me to Columbia for my MSSW. During my studies, I stumbled upon The Courage to Be Disliked—a book that introduced me to Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology and fundamentally changed how I understood relationships. Through that time, I also worked with Dossie Easton, co-author of The Ethical Slut, which deepened my understanding of how the principles of ethical non-monogamy apply to all relationships. Everything I'd learned—about motivation, influence, authenticity, and connection—came together in Relational Capacity Therapy.
I'm queer, polyamorous, and practice what I teach. I see clients at San Francisco Counseling Collective—individuals, partners, and relationship systems of all kinds who are ready to stop fitting into boxes and start building something that actually works for them.
Not every therapist is right for every client. Here's how to know if we'd be a good fit.
The logistics of working together.
Yes, both. In-person sessions are available at San Francisco Counseling Collective in the Castro and the Flood Building in Union Square. Virtual sessions are available throughout California. Either works well—choose whatever fits your life.
I'm in-network with Carelon, Kaiser, Optum, Sutter, and United. For other plans, I provide superbills that you can submit for out-of-network reimbursement. Many PPO plans cover 50-80% of session costs this way.
No. The Relational Maturity Index is part of the work, not a prerequisite for it. If we decide to use it, I administer and interpret it in session, and you receive written reports as the picture fills in. We can also work without it.
All sessions are 50 minutes. If you have specific needs that require a different arrangement, we can discuss that.
It depends on what you're working on and how deep you want to go. Some people get what they need in a few months; others stay for a year or more. We'll check in regularly about whether the work is still serving you.
All sessions incorporate the RCT framework. The assessment results become a shared language for your growth.
Understand your relational patterns, develop underdeveloped capacities, and become the person who can have the relationships you want.
Understand the dynamic your two patterns produce together, identify where you complement and where you clash, and build the skills for navigating difference. No pairing is hopeless and none is effortless—what moves is integration.
Navigate the complexity of multiple relationship dynamics, build sustainable structures, and develop compersion at the system level.
Reach out for a free 15-minute consultation to see if we're a good fit. No pressure, no commitment—just a conversation.