Polyamory & Ethical Non-Monogamy Therapy in Pasadena, CA

Open relationships and polyamory can invite people to question assumptions about exclusivity, ownership, commitment, partnership, sexuality, family, and whose relationships are permitted to matter. It can create space for more honest conversations about desire and allow people to build relationships that fit their lives, rather than automatically following an inherited, dominant script.

It does not, however, make attachment needs disappear.

People in polyamorous and open relationships still need to know that they matter. They may still long for responsiveness, dependability, tenderness, consideration, and a meaningful place in the lives of the people they love. They can stil experience abandonment fear, jealousy, grief, shame, betrayal, exclusion, or the painful sense that someone else’s needs and relationship are consistently receiving more protection than their own.

These experiences do not necessarily mean that a diverse relationship is failing or used as evidence that someone has not “done enough personal work.”

Sometimes jealousy is an understandable response to uncertainty, inequity, or a loss of connection. Sometimes a request for reassurance reflects an attachment need rather than an attempt to control another person. Sometimes distress is connected to earlier trauma. At other times, the relationship system itself may be asking one person to tolerate conditions that are not emotionally sustainable.

Therapy helps us become more precise. Rather than immediately labeling an emotion as insecurity, codependence, possessiveness, or avoidance, we slow down and ask what the response is communicating and what is happening around it.

Consensual non-monogamy, often abbreviated as CNM, is an umbrella term (and often one used in the research realms) for relationships in which the people involved knowingly and voluntarily agree that sexual, romantic, intimate, or otherwise significant relationships with more than one person may occur.

People use many different words for their expansive relationship, including polyamory, ethical non-monogamy, open relationships, swinging, monogamish relationships, solo polyamory, relationship anarchy, polyfidelity, hierarchical or nonhierarchical polyamory, and other forms of expansive relating.

These terms can be useful, but they do not tell us everything we need to know. Two people may both describe themselves as polyamorous while holding very different beliefs about commitment, hierarchy, autonomy, disclosure, family, sexuality, or the responsibilities partners have toward one another.

We Use the Language That Fits Your Relationships

You do not need to arrive with the perfect label or a fully formed relationship philosophy.

Some clients experience polyamory as an important aspect of identity or orientation. Others understand non-monogamy as a relationship practice, agreement, value, or choice. Some feel deeply connected to polyamorous community and language. Others are exploring openness tentatively and are unsure whether any particular term belongs to them.

We will never decide what non-monogamy is supposed to mean for you. Rather, we will help you examine what you value, what you desire, what you are consenting to, what responsibilities you hold, and what kind of relational life feels both authentic and sustainable.

Clarifying the Treatment Relationship

When therapy involves more than two people or occurs within a larger relationship network, clarity at the beginning matters.

We discuss who is considered the client, who will attend, what the goals of treatment are, how confidentiality will be handled, and whether separate meetings are clinically appropriate. We also clarify expectations regarding information shared outside sessions and coordination with individual therapists.

Not every person connected to the system needs to attend every session. The structure of therapy should reflect the relationship being treated rather than forcing everyone into one room without a clear purpose.

Mapping Your Relationships & Recurring Cycles

We take time to understand the history and structure of the relationships, including important transitions, agreements, ruptures, attachment bonds, and sources of support or strain.

We then begin mapping the emotional cycle & looking at the role of differentiation, that is the capacity to hold onto a clear sense of self while remaining open, connected, and responsive to a partner who may feel, want, or experience something differently.

One partner may raise a concern urgently because they are afraid of being deprioritized. The other may hear control or criticism and defend their autonomy. That defensiveness increases the first person’s fear, leading them to become more intense or restrictive. A metamour may then feel blamed for a conflict they did not create, while the hinge becomes increasingly avoidant and unreliable.

Once the pattern becomes visible, the problem no longer needs to be reduced to one person being jealous, controlling, avoidant, irresponsible, or too demanding. There is a cycle and systemic pattern at play.

Slowing Down Attachment Threat

We help clients recognize what happens in the body and nervous system when a relationship feels endangered.

That might include racing thoughts, monitoring, compulsive comparison, anger, shutdown, appeasement, dissociation, or the urge to create an immediate rule. We become curious about what the response is trying to protect and what kind of reassurance, boundary, information, or behavioral change may actually be needed.

The goal is not to eliminate emotional intensity. It is to create enough space that people can respond intentionally rather than allowing alarm to organize the entire relationship system.

Supporting More Direct and Vulnerable Conversations

When there is enough safety, we help people communicate the experiences underneath their protective reactions.

Instead of arguing only about a calendar change, a partner may be able to express how easily they become afraid that their place is conditional. Instead of defending their autonomy through distance, another may begin to speak about the fear that commitment will require surrendering important parts of themselves.

These conversations are not scripted performances. They are slowed down so each person has a better chance of being understood and responding differently, and serve as experiments to help you relate in new ways.

Creating Agreements That Can Evolve

Relationships change. New partners arrive, needs shift, children grow, health changes, people move, and agreements that once offered stability may become too restrictive or too vague.

We help clients develop practices for revisiting agreements rather than treating the original conversation as permanent consent. This may include discussing how changes will be proposed, how much processing time different people need, what information must be shared, and how the impact on less powerful members of the system will be considered.

The goal is not a flawless relationship contract. It is a relational process capable of holding change with honesty and care.

Palomares Therapy is a boutique psychotherapy practice specializing in complex relationships, attachment trauma, neurodivergence, sexuality, and relational repair.

Danielle Palomares, LMFT, is a Certified Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist with advanced training in EMDR, attachment trauma, complex trauma, sex therapy, and parts-oriented approaches. Her work is especially interested in how attachment-based relationship therapy can become more responsive to relationship diversity rather than relying on assumptions built around one exclusive couple. Danielle and her team are passionate about supporting clients who often carry many layers, marginalized identities, and complex lived realities.

We understand that working skillfully with consensual non-monogamy requires more than general couples therapy training and a willingness to be nonjudgmental. It requires attention to multiple attachment bonds, systems of power, sexual ethics, consent, trauma, identity, neurodivergence, and the ways several relationships influence one another.

You should never need to defend your relationship structure before therapy can even begin. You should also be able to expect a therapist who is willing to engage its complexity honestly.

COUPLES & RELATIONSHIP THERAPY

Our couples therapy services support partners navigating conflict, emotional distance, trust, intimacy, major transitions, and attachment injuries across all relationship structures.

ATTACHMENT TRAUMA THERAPY

Individual or relational attachment trauma therapy may be helpful when fear of abandonment, shutdown, hyper-independence, people-pleasing, shame, or earlier relational injuries are shaping present relationships.

AFFAIR RECOVERY & BETRAYAL RECOVERY

Agreement violations, hidden relationships, sexual-health deception, and other ruptures may require more focused betrayal-recovery work within the context of CNM. 

SEX THERAPY

Sex therapy can support conversations about desire, sexual agreements, kink, orientation, shame, sexual trauma, health, pleasure, and differences across relationships.

NEURODIVERGENT COUPLES THERAPY

Neurodivergent-affirming relationship therapy can help partners work with communication differences, sensory needs, executive functioning, emotional regulation, rejection sensitivity, and mixed-neurotype dynamics.

LGBTQIA+ AFFIRMING THERAPY

We provide affirming therapy for LGBTQIA+ individuals and relationships, including clients navigating the intersections of gender, sexuality, non-monogamy, family, culture, and community.

INDIVIDUAL THERAPY

Individual therapy can provide space to explore relationship orientation, identity, jealousy, boundaries, attachment, grief, and the kind of relational life you want to build.

Therapists may encounter CNM cases that extend beyond conventional dyadic couples frameworks. Questions may arise about defining the treatment unit, handling confidentiality, working with metamours, addressing hierarchy and power, distinguishing attachment needs from control, or adapting EFT to a multi-partner system.

Danielle offers consultation for therapists seeking an attachment-focused, trauma-informed, and relationship-diversity-affirming perspective on complex relational work.

Palomares Therapy offers in-person polyamory and consensual non-monogamy therapy from our Pasadena office on South Orange Grove Boulevard. We serve clients from Pasadena, South Pasadena, San Marino, Eagle Rock, Glendale, Alhambra, Monrovia, and throughout greater Los Angeles.

We also provide online polyamory and ENM therapy throughout California. Telehealth can be particularly helpful for polycules, metamours, or partners who live in different parts of the state.