Let's Talk About Sex

I specialize in a systemic approach to therapy, helping clients understand how their unique constellation of relationships affects their life. Together we navigate questions relating to sexual dissatisfaction, dysfunction, and disappointment - and the broader relational issues that affect your most intimate interactions.

Hi there, I’m Madeline Fox, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, located in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. I am licensed in both California and Oregon. Currently, my therapy practice is open for virtual sessions exclusively.

I have a Masters of Arts degree in Marriage, Couple, and Family Therapy with an emphasis in sex therapy from Lewis and Clark College. At the start of my career I worked in community mental health and after a few years I opened my own practice to focus on couples and sex therapy. In 2016, I worked with Esther Perel and Terry Real in their Relate training program to more comprehensively understand the intersection of love, sex, and power, in modern relationships. In November of 2017, I immersed myself in more training with Esther Perel around rethinking infidelity and better understanding how to work with couples and individuals who are struggling to maintain desire and vitality within their relationships. I served as a board member for the Oregon Association for Marriage and Family Therapy from 2016 to 2019. In the fall of 2021 I participated in a Sexuality Attitude Reassessment through Ante Up! to examine my own personal beliefs, understand how those beliefs inform my work, and identify areas where I can develop more cultural competency. In the spring of 2023, I participated in an in-depth couples therapy training with Terry Real.

In my work with folks, I am curious about one’s overall sense of vitality and eroticism- is there time for levity, joy, play, pleasure, and rest in your day to day? At times that can look like unpacking how sexual dissatisfaction and relational disconnection affect your most intimate interactions. I work with individuals, couples, and those with poly or kink lifestyles. My practice is affirming of those identifying as LGBTQIA+.

When I’m not helping clients build satisfying emotional and erotic lives, my favorite pastimes are going on long, meandering walks, drinking cappuccinos, reading fiction novels, playing tennis, making pot pie from scratch, and catching up with dear friends.

Street art from Granada, Spain. Translates to: A thousand machines will never be able to make a flower.

“‘We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.’
E.E. Cummings”