Couples Therapy and
Relationship Counseling in
San Francisco, CA

Serving couples online throughout California, Florida, & Pennsylvania

Improve your communication, navigate life transitions, adjust to responsibilities including caring for children, operate as a team, and enjoy being together.
Proudly serving all couples, including LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, AAPI, and multicultural and interracial couples.

Hi, my name is Larissa House, and I’m a couples therapist in San Francisco.

I help couples at all stages of their relationship create the connection that they desire.

I provide relationship counseling to couples who are:

  • Dating and hoping to do this relationship differently from their relationships before

  • Engaged or thinking about forever and wanting to build a solid foundation

  • Married or long-term couples wanting to replace exhaustion, frustration, and distrust with joy, passion, and trust with their partner

  • New parents or adjusting to caregiving responsibilities and trying to connect and feel like they’re doing life together

  • Uncoupling and consciously closing a chapter on their lives together and wanting to breakup, divorce, separate or co-parent in the most compassionate way

Do you ever think to yourself

“This cannot be as good as it gets for us.”

You may be feeling like you and your partner are stuck in the same exhausting patterns, that your partner doesn’t get you or they don’t make sense to you, or that your relationship needs aren’t being met, even if you’ve tried talking about them before.

Maybe you’re tired of wondering “Is this the year that breaks us?” and worrying that there isn’t much more of this relationship that you or your partner can handle.

Maybe you want something better for your relationship but aren’t sure where to start because the things you’ve tried before just don’t seem to make the difference you’ve been hoping for.

Maybe you’re tired of having the same conversations over and over. 

Maybe you’re hoping that all hope isn’t lost for the two of you, because at one time, things between you two were pretty good, and you actually had fun together.


I understand that you want something better for your relationship and that you probably don’t have a lot of extra time, energy, or money to waste on trial and error, and I’m here to help.

Through Couples Therapy and Relationship Counseling in San Francisco, I help couples repair emotional wounds, create new and enjoyable patterns of interacting with each other, and intentionally build the relationship that they knew they had the potential for when they decided to do life together while honoring where they are in their lives now.

If you’re ready to start building a relationship with your partner that is more invigorating than exhausting, click below to schedule a complimentary consultation with me today.


My approach to Couples Therapy in San Francisco

I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and I provide relationship counseling in San Francisco. I believe that when both partners are willing to put the work into their relationship and show up for themselves and for each other, it is possible to create a relationship that is more joy than drain, no matter how long it’s been since you had a conversation that didn’t turn into a fight. 

I treat couples and marriage counseling as a collaborative process, which means it’s not an hour of me listening to you fight and also not an hour of me just telling you what to do. As we begin our work together, I get to know the couple both as partners and as individuals to really get a clear understanding of the pain points–those areas in your relationship that you want to change so that you can enjoy the life that you’re building together.

Together, we create clear goals for your relationship and our work together and identify what changes you hope you will see in your relationship by the end of your therapy journey that will make you feel like the couples counseling process was worth it.

I don’t take sides, no matter why you’re coming to therapy, but I will help you have hard conversations with each other, which will often include learning how to take responsibility and truly supporting each other with compassion and love. Through couples therapy, I’ll help you process, repair, connect, and build or rebuild trust in your relationship.

My goal is to help you create practical tools for your relationship that you can use anywhere and anytime and eventually utilize on your own, because, let’s be honest, with 167 of 168 hours of the week spent outside of therapy, you’ll be spending way more time outside of therapy than you will in session with me.

During our sessions, we’ll develop tools and practice skills that will help you control your racing thoughts and feelings about your relationship, clearly identify what you need and want, clearly and compassionately communicate those needs and wants, build trust, and communicate with your partner from a place of love, friendship, and empathy.

Are you ready to feel like you’re on the same team again?

 

If it feels like

 
 

  • There’s a cloud hanging over your interactions

  • Simple conversations quickly turn into an argument

  • You seem to be having the same conversations or arguments over and over

  • It’s hard to remember when was the last time you felt like you truly connected physically or emotionally

  • You want clarity with where things are going in your relationship

  • You’re struggling to remember why you got with your partner to begin with

  • Your schedules and responsibilities are getting in the way of connecting

  • You have big things you know you need to address but have been avoiding

  • You’re adjusting to roles, responsibilities, and stress of raising a child/children or caring for aging parents

  • How your partner was raised (and the people they were raised with) is getting in the way of your flow as a couple

 
 

 I can help you

  • Honor your journey as a couple and as individuals

  • Identify and ask for what you really want

  • Learn how to truly listen

  • Become aware of patterns that cause conversations to escalate

  • Develop tools to keep yourself in a calm head space to have positive communication, even for the hard topics

  • Navigate through difficult situations

  • Develop a sense of appreciation for each other

  • Talk about the hard stuff

  • Create new, healthy patterns with each other

  • Be confident that you’re good together

  • Set healthy boundaries with your stressors

  • Have fun and enjoy your time together

  • Learn how to operate as a team

  • Be optimistic about your future

 
 
 

Uncoupling & Co-parenting

Sometimes, the goal isn’t to grow together. And that’s ok.

I can help you

  • Set clear goals

  • Ask yourself (and each other) the hard questions to have honest conversations

  • Maintain an environment of respect

  • Help you come to a thoughtful decision

  • Process your relationship and hold space for the emotions that come along with closing this chapter
    in the most compassionate way possible

  • Navigate co-parenting

Couples Therapy in the San Francisco Bay Area FAQs

  • Definitely not!

    Have you ever heard the phrase “You can’t see the forest for the trees?” If you haven’t, it’s basically the idea that it can get really hard to see the big picture for what it really is (the forest) when you’re in the middle of it (the trees).

    Relationships can bring up a lot of emotions for us, and those emotions can cause us to hyper-focus, making it really hard to see the big picture of where we want to go and how to get out of the stuck patterns that we’re in.

    Bringing in a neutral, professional third party doesn’t mean that you don’t have what it takes to figure it out yourselves. It means that you are done with feeling stuck and are ready to start viewing your relationship from a new perspective.

  • Yes! I’ve done couples therapy online with many couples and have found it to be just as effective as in-person therapy. Couples therapy online can be really convenient when juggling busy schedules, as 55 minutes of therapy means 55 minutes that you need to carve out of your day, not 55 minutes plus 10-15 minutes driving to the office each direction and additional time finding parking.

    In our sessions, I communicate clearly and make sure that you have the materials that you need to have a successful session.

  • I believe that you don’t need to be married to do couples therapy. In fact, doing couples therapy before you’re married can help you build a strong foundation for your relationship and prevent many of the problems that long-term couples get stuck in.

  • Every couple is different, and we’ll create a plan specific for the two of you to address your needs and help you grow the way that you want to grow. As you start to apply the tools we develop together, you should start to feel better about yourself, your partner, and your relationship, and your interactions will improve, but just because some things might start to feel better after a few weeks, it doesn’t mean that they’re resolved.

    Most couples find that 3-6 months of therapy helps them create the relationship they want to have together, but you might need more or less time. When you think about it, though, what’s a few months or even a year when you look at the big picture of the lifetime you’re hoping to spend together.

  • That’s a fair question. I don’t believe that you need to know if you want to stay together in order to do couples therapy, especially in the beginning phases, and couples therapy can be a safe space to develop a sense of clarity about what you want.

    Together, we’ll set clear goals and create a safe space to explore.

    I’m not about secrets in couples therapy, though, so if you’re hiding something from your partner, I’m going to encourage you to put it out in the open so that we can address it and all be working towards the same goals.

Get help from a Relationship Therapist in
San Francisco

You may be wondering how you got to this place in your relationship, but if you don’t like where you’ve ended up, there is nothing that says that just because the two of you promised to be together, that you have to be miserable or settle for a lackluster and unfulfilling relationship.

You can create a relationship where you trust each other, have fun together, and are confident that you’ve built something solid, and couples counseling in San Francisco and anywhere you are in California, Florida, and Pennsylvania can help make that happen.