Marina O’ Connor
Marina is a relationship and couples therapist with advanced Level 7 training in relationship psychotherapy and trauma therapy, and a postgraduate degree in clinical psychology. She is registered with COSRT, EATA and IARTA, and works with couples across the UK, Portugal and Europe.
Before training as a therapist, Marina spent close to fifteen years as a strategic marketing professional, serial entrepreneur and CEO, founding and scaling a VC-backed technology company. That experience gives her a rare, first-hand understanding of what ambition costs a relationship, and she now specialises in working with high-performing individuals, entrepreneurs, and leadership couples navigating exactly that strain.
Marina works actively and directly in the room. Her clinical approach integrates Transactional Analysis and Relational Life Therapy, focused on real behavioural and emotional change rather than insight alone. She works with couples to identify the exact moment conflict escalates, and guides them toward accountability, clarity, and repair, in real time, not just in retrospect.
Marina’s approach
Marina works with couples across a wide range of presentations, from communication breakdown and repetitive conflict to infidelity, betrayal, and the strain of expat and intercultural life. She specialises in couples who feel trapped in cycles of criticism, defensiveness, withdrawal, control, or escalation, identifying the protective strategies beneath the conflict, shame, fear, attachment injury, unmet needs, and helping both partners move beyond blame into accountability and relational honesty.
Her own background as a founder and CEO gives her a particular depth working with high-achieving and visible couples, where ambition, identity, and performance intensify relational strain, alongside her broader work supporting couples through infidelity, communication difficulties, and the specific pressures of expat life. She understands, from the inside as well as through her clinical work, how perfectionism, emotional withdrawal, or high-stakes conflict develop when success becomes fused with self-worth, helping couples separate performance from intimacy and rebuild the capacity to stay emotionally available even under pressure.
Marina also brings particular expertise to neurodiverse and mixed-neurotype couples, and to intercultural relationships, helping partners build shared language and understanding across real differences, without either partner being pathologised or sidelined.
Qualifications
Postgraduate Diploma in Trauma Therapy, Level 7
Advanced Diploma in Relationship Psychotherapy, Level 7
Relational Life Therapy Couples Therapist (2026)
Transactional Analysis Practitioner
Postgraduate Degree in Clinical Psychology