Find Your Way Back:
Expert in Couples Therapy San Francisco
Figs & Teale offers couples therapy San Francisco that heals relationships, not just manages symptoms. We combine the proprietary Empathi Method with research-backed Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) to help Bay Area couples move from stuck to securely connected. Founded by Figs O’Sullivan, LMFT endorsed by EFT creator Dr. Sue Johnson with an 86% success rate. Book your free consultation today.
10,000+ couples helped
Certified EFT Couples Therapists
86% couples improve with EFT
88 5 Star reviews on Yelp
Endorsed by EFT Creator
CA Licensed LMFT
The Unique Pressures San Francisco Couples Face
Tech Industry Stress
When 70-hour work weeks at your startup leave no energy for connection, it’s easy to feel like roommates instead of partners. The startup culture that defines the Bay Area thrives on intensity and total commitment, but that same pressure that feels exhilarating professionally can leave your relationship running on empty. You’re not struggling because you’re weak you’re struggling because the ecosystem you’re succeeding in wasn’t designed with partnership in mind. Many high-performing couples find themselves caught between the demands of building something significant and the quiet need to build with each other.
Work-Life Imbalance
When one partner’s career takes off while the other feels left behind, resentment can quietly settle into a relationship. Maybe they landed the lucrative role or the exciting opportunity while you’re managing career satisfaction differently. The Bay Area’s competitive landscape can create internal hierarchies in partnerships subtle, often unspoken that erode equality and shared vision. This isn’t about income; it’s about visibility, validation, and the fear that your contributions, your ambitions, or your choices are being measured and found wanting.
High Achiever Expectations
When you’re crushing it professionally but your relationship is falling apart, the cognitive dissonance can feel destabilizing. You’ve built the skills to solve complex problems, hit aggressive targets, and lead teams so why can’t you “fix” your marriage the same way? The high-achiever mindset that serves you at work often backfires in relationships. There’s no sprint to sprint your way through intimacy. Many of our clients are brilliant people who’ve never learned that relationship growth requires a completely different set of skills than professional success.
Bay Area Cost of Living Pressure
When financial stress about housing, childcare, or the future creates constant tension, money conversations become proxies for deeper fears about security and priorities. The Bay Area’s astronomical costs mean couples are making impossible trade-offs: Who stays home? Can we afford to have kids? Will we ever own a home? These aren’t abstract financial questions they’re daily negotiations about sacrifice, resentment, and whether you’re building a life together or just surviving economically.
Relocation Strain
When you moved to SF for a job and feel disconnected from support systems, you’re not just adjusting to a new place you’re processing the loss of your network while building a partnership in isolation. One or both partners uprooted for opportunity, but that opportunity came with a hidden cost: the absence of long-time friends, family, and community. You’re building your relationship without the scaffolding that usually supports couples, and that vulnerability can either deepen your bond or reveal fractures that distance and stress have hidden.
Clinical research shows that 86% of couples improve after a brief period of EFT guidance, and 73% have maintained their improvements when we check back two years later.
The Empathi Method
Clinical research shows that 86% of couples improve after a brief period of EFT guidance, and 73% have maintained their improvements when we check back two years later.
With Couples Therapy San Francisco, You Will…
- Stop having the same argument(s) over and over again
- Return to a deeper level of intimacy
- Recover from an infidelity or another breach of trust
- Work on your relationship even though your partner doesn't seem available
- Feel more secure in your sex life
- Navigate life transitions from a place of connection and understanding of each other
- Reduce the frequency and intensity of communication breakdowns
Stop struggling. Book your call now.
Now is the best time to strengthen your relationship
Empathi's Couples Therapy Process
San Francisco couples who come to Empathi don’t want generic talk therapy you want results. Our proprietary 6-stage Empathi Method, combined with research-backed Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), gives Bay Area partners a clear roadmap from “stuck” to “securely connected.”
Acceptance
The hardest part is just getting started.
Healing starts with accepting you need help, booking a free consult, and showing up as you are. Everything that comes next will be easier as you’re held by an Empathi therapist and a proven process. From now on, you’re not alone in this.
Alliance
Feel like you're on the same team again.
Explore your process and discover a unified narrative where neither of you are wrong or right, “the good one,” or “the bad one.” Learn to approach suffering and conflicts as an “us” problem instead of a “them” problem or a “me” problem.
Empathy
See the hurt and love behind their reactivity.
Strengthen your new narrative by accessing empathy to recognize the root of each other’s reactivity, how much you matter to each other, and what love is. Understand the cycles you get into with the help of your expert Empathi counselor.
Vulnerability
Share the hurt and love behind your reactivity.
Get to know, live in, and share your vulnerable feelings. Then, learn to let in the ways that those feelings are understood and accepted by your partner through the power of the Empathi method and Emotionally-Focused Couples Therapy.
Connection
Feel deeply and securely bonded to one another.
Mend your relationship and your wounds through the understanding that you matter to each other. Learn to grieve, show up for, heal, and accept the most vulnerable parts inside of each other without sacrificing those parts in yourselves.
Resilience
Rely on your bond to get out of stuck moments.
Having proved your ability to resolve long-standing issues, heated conflicts, and negative cycles, face your future together with a certainty that you will not only survive those moments, but grow stronger and more connected because of them.
Unlike other San Francisco therapists who keep you in therapy indefinitely, our goal is to graduate you. We’ve found that most couples complete the Empathi Method in 3 months emerging with tools to navigate Bay Area life’s inevitable stresses together.
We are passionate about healing relationships.
Our team of couples counselors and marriage therapists can help you reconnect and discover that loving feeling.
- Feel safe to be your true self in life and love.
- Heal from recent or past grief and loss.
- Connect in a deeper and more authentic way.
- Stop having the same argument(s) over and over again.
- Avoid being disappointed in each other so much.
- Recover from infidelity or other breach of trust.
- Get back to more joy, laughter, and fun together.
- Work on your relationship even though your partner doesn't seem available.
We’re 5 Stars On Yelp!
Why Yelp Chooses Empathi Couples Therapy
Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) provides our team at Empathi with an understanding of the emotional bonds between partners so that we can identify and work toward moments that strengthen and harmonize that emotional connection.
We use attachment-based frameworks to understand the ways very early bonds inform our adult behavior and choice of partner, as well as the ways our relationship with our partners inform how we understand those early bonds today. Being in a committed partnership then becomes more than just an agreement between two lovers – it is a healing art, a restorative power in the lives of both individuals.
Seeking the safety and containment of professional psychotherapy is a monumental first step on the road to turning painful patterns into a productive partnership. Committed exploration and a willingness to be curious and vulnerable about what is motivating one’s own behavior, reactivity, patterns, and choices can bring about positive change for your relationship – whether it’s steering a particular issue, transitioning toward compromise, or simply bringing about a newly deepened sense of passion and commitment.
"With Empathi, Figs has created a fun and creative way to help people feel more connected in their relationship and to become acquainted with the transformational power of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy."
Dr. Sue Johnson
Creator of Emotionally-Focused Therapy for Couples
It's quick, easy, and free
to get started!
Between the emotional hurdle of accepting you need help and the logistical nightmare of finding a therapist you trust, actually starting couples therapy is the hardest part…
That’s why we keep it simple:
- Pick a date & time for your free consult with an Empathi counselor.
- Show up for the call. Explain your circumstances and needs.
- Book a first session with the right therapist for your price point and situation.
- Show up for your first session.
- Start feeling better!
Don’t Waste Time Feeling Stuck
Empathi Couples Counseling Near You
Find your city or schedule your free consult now and we’ll find the right therapist for you!
Empathi's
Therapy Services
Find the right counseling services for your situation.
Marriage Counseling
- Recognize the negative cycles you create together.
- Stop being so disappointed in each other.
- Connect in a deeper and more authentic way.
- Get back to experiencing joy, laughter, and fun together.
- Empathize with each other around stressful conflicts
- Learn to weather difficult times together.
Couples Therapy
- Stop having the same argument(s) over and over again.
- Recover from infidelity or other breaches of trust.
- Return to a deeper level of intimacy.
- Work on your relationship even though your partner doesn't seem available.
- Navigate life transitions from a place of connection and understanding of each other.
Couples Therapy
for Parents
- Learn to navigate parenting style differences.
- Get "unstuck" from disconnected routines and repetitive arguments.
- Get back in touch with a genuine appreciation for each other.
- Feel like you're on the same team again.
- Build a secure foundation your kid(s) will come to for support and look to as a model.
Individual Relationship
Therapy Services
- Break out of cyclical relation.ship issues through individual exploration
- Work through the unresolved trauma that's holding you back.
- Discover effective treatments for depression with the right ally and guide.
- Heal stubborn and pervasive self-esteem wounds.
- Become all you can be through a process of self-reclamation.