Existential Sex Therapy
There are moments in life when sexuality feels distant from who you are. Desire fades. Pleasure becomes something you think about rather than something you feel. Intimacy may bring questions you never expected. When the inner experience of sexuality begins to shift, many people start to wonder what has changed inside them. That wondering is often where existential sex therapy begins.
A Place to Turn Toward Yourself
My practice is a place to slow down and turn inward. I work with individuals who sense that their relationship to sexuality contains history, questions or layered meaning that is difficult to name. Sometimes the concern arrives as diminished desire. Sometimes it shows up as intrusive memories that surface during intimacy or a quiet uncertainty about who you are in your sexual self. Sometimes it arrives as repetitive relationship patterns and dynamics. People often reach out when they feel drawn to a space that can hold sexuality with depth rather than urgency.
Many people choose existential sex therapy when they want a space that honors meaning rather than performance.
My name is Genevieve Marcel, Existential Sex Therapist.
I am a Licensed Professional Counselor Associate, Board Certified Sexologist (Diplomate), Certified Trauma Professional and Certified Mindfulness Teacher while actively completing a PhD in Clinical Sexology.
Sitting With What Feels Unsayable
My earliest clinical work brought me into rooms where people were confronting the parts of life that reshape who they are. I sat with individuals whose bodies held stories that words had not yet found. That experience taught me to listen beneath language, to remain steady when feelings tighten or go quiet and to be comfortable sitting in discomfort because that is often where transitional work begins, where change takes root and where something in you quietly starts to shift.
What Shapes Sexuality
I practice existential sex therapy. This work recognizes that sexuality is influenced by core human experiences. Freedom and the weight of choice. Responsibility for who we become in our relationships and within ourselves. Isolation even when partnered. Meaning and the questions that rise in private moments. Awareness of a finite life and the way mortality changes how we live. The desire to be authentic and to be known without distortion. These existential experiences shape desire and the way the body speaks. In therapy, we explore how these forces have touched your intimacy, your voice and your sense of self.
Becoming who you are & living your authenticity is often less about discovery and more about slowly allowing what has always been true, often in moments that may not immediately look like change from the outside.
When the Self Has Been Performed
I became an existential sex therapist because I saw how many people navigate the world while carrying a private self that rarely reaches the surface. The human need for belonging often asks us to trade parts of ourselves (our authenticity) for acceptance and belonging.
Parents shape what is allowed. Culture & society shape what is desirable. Financial realities shape what is possible. Over time authenticity can be beaten into submission, not by force, but by subtle daily negotiations. Existential therapy becomes a place where those negotiations are paused long enough for the self to speak again.
The Weight of Being “The Model”
Some people arrive with a life built on being the steady one, the example, the one others look toward. Often their composure is admired, yet the private cost is rarely seen. Reflection & authenticity can feel dangerous when the self has been organized around performance. When you are always expected to model strength, sitting with your own inner world can feel exposing. It can feel like vulnerability itself might undo everything that has held you together. Yet those who allow themselves to stay in that discomfort often find that something opens. The self begins to evolve in ways that feel more honest. What once felt threatening becomes a form of liberation. Authenticity becomes less about achieving perfection and more about allowing who you are to exist without justification.
The Work and the Pace
The work here is spacious, but it is not passive. We move at a pace that protects your inner world. At times, therapy may include techniques when they are clinically appropriate and supportive of your goals. Technique is never a replacement for understanding. Meaning and method work together when it serves you.
Who I Am as a Therapist
I am a Licensed Professional Counselor Associate in Texas and I am completing a PhD in Clinical Sexology where I am deepening my research on sexual experience. My clinical work is intentionally focused and rooted in Existential philosophy & psychology, Stoicism, attachment theory and mindfulness. I work with a limited number of individuals so that each person receives depth, continuity and a level of presence that is not possible when therapy is hurried or crowded. This focus also allows me to continue writing and researching to support the work we do in session.
If You Choose to Begin
If you choose to begin therapy here, you will be met with curiosity and respect. My role is not to impose values upon you, but understand the values that shape who you are and navigate how to live within them. You will not be asked to arrive with clarity. Some arrive because something in their sexual life has changed. Others arrive because they have never asked themselves what they want. Both belong here.
This is a place for you to return to yourself.
“Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.”
Specializing in Existential Sex Therapy & Existential Individual Therapy