Intercultural couples: strengths and challenges, with Dr Reenee Singh
In this fourth episode, I sit down with Dr Reenee Singh, a leading international voice on intercultural couples and systemic psychotherapy. We explore why intercultural relationships shouldn't be pathologised, how class and language weave into cultural difference, how the meaning of home can shift across generations, and the visual tools she uses in her practice to help couples navigate difference.
What we talk about
I sit down with Dr Reenee Singh, one of the leading international voices on intercultural couples and systemic psychotherapy. The conversation touches me personally: I come from an intercultural couple, and I now live in one. But the themes we explore go far beyond individual stories.
Reenee reminds us that intercultural relationships shouldn't be pathologised: when partners learn to talk about their differences openly, cultural differences can be one of the deepest sources of strength and resilience in a couple.
A note on the clinical stories in this episode: they are anonymised, and where possible, Reenee obtained permission from the couples she refers to.
In this conversation, we explore
- What actually makes a relationship "intercultural", and why the definition is broader than most people assume
- Why couples come to therapy, and why the presenting issue is often not the cultural difference itself
- How family patterns and scripts get replicated (or radically rewritten) across generations
- Class as an intercultural difference, and what happens when class and culture combine
- The meaning of home, and how the pandemic and Brexit have shifted things for intercultural couples
- How AI has started showing up in the consulting room
- Intergenerational couples, and living in what can feel like two different cultures
- Language and emotional resonance, and why some things are easier to say in another language
- The odd day / even day intervention Reenee uses with bilingual families
- The "primary dyad" question: whose family is central, and how couples navigate very different answers
- Reenee's clinical tools: the culturegram, the cultural genogram, and emotion maps
- The therapeutic alliance, and how she builds it across cultural difference
- The strengths and resilience of intercultural couples, and a closing question they could ask each other this week
About Dr Reenee Singh
Dr Reenee Singh is a UKCP-registered Consultant Family and Couples Systemic Psychotherapist with over thirty years of clinical experience. She is based at Hampstead Psychology in North London and at the Child and Family Practice in London, where she is the Founding Director of the London Intercultural Couples Centre.
She is a former Editor of the Journal of Family Therapy and was the first CEO of the Association of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice. She is the author or editor of several books on intercultural couples, race, culture, and systemic practice, and teaches all around the world.
References mentioned in this episode
- Race and Culture, co-authored by Dr Reenee Singh (2018)
- "Home Is Where the Heart Is" (2020), a book chapter by Dr Reenee Singh
- The work of family therapist John Byng-Hall on replicative and corrective family scripts
- Rachel Hare-Mustin's idea that consulting rooms are mirrors of wider society
- Charlotte Burck's research on multilingual living
- Crazy Rich Asians (2018 film), referenced as a case study of class and culture
- The Culturegram, a visual tool used in Reenee's practice: demonstration video
- Emotion Maps, another of Reenee's visual tools: demonstration video
- The Intercultural Exeter Model YouTube channel
- Dr Reenee Singh's Fall 2026 course at the Ackerman Family Institute: Therapeutic Tools for Cultivating Resilience with Contemporary Couples and Families
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