Intimate Inquiries open for business in Niwot

Auburn Meisner, daughter of former Niwot dentist David Meisner, recently opened her own business in Niwot, Intimate Inquiries, located at 376 2nd Avenue.

Meisner obtained her social work degree from Washington University in St. Louis, MO, and went on to work with sex offenders, but felt she needed to work in a less regulated field. She’s continued her education in human sexuality and sex therapy, leading her to open her own private practice in sex therapy and intimacy.

“It’s such a field that it’s kind of before its time, even though in my opinion it’s coming in late,” Meisner explained. “There aren’t a lot of agencies that specialize in sex therapy, so I decided to open up my own.”

Meisner is a licensed therapist and will soon be an approved sex therapist. “It’s fun for me to now work in a population where things are just starting to be problematic,” Meisner said. “You’re not just picking up the broken pieces, you’re kind of helping facilitate change before it’s unsolvable.”

Meisner mostly sees couples struggling with intimacy issues, pleasure issues or infidelity. She also helps those wanting to learn how to communicate better to have a healthier relationship. In addition, Meisner helps to identify any physical ailments that might be impeding someone’s sex life.

“Once we rule out all the physical stuff, I get to hone in on the psychological stuff,” she stated.

Not many therapists specialize in sex and intimacy, and Meisner hopes to normalize the field and make it more positive for people to talk about.

“Sex has always been a fascinating and a very taboo subject that no one talks about,” Meisner said. “I grew up in an extremely sex positive family where we were able to explore different sexualities [and] redefine our gender roles. To me it’s really easy and fun to talk about sex, and it’s normal.”

Meisner said unlike most therapy, sex therapy is very solution focused where her clients see results and change. “I think human beings are naturally sexual beings from cradle to grave, and we don’t address that,” Meisner said. “Not only the sex part of it, but the messages we’re taught about our bodies and belief system.”

Through her practice, Meisner hopes she can unveil sex and intimacy as normal desires instead of being scary. “I think what it comes down to is we live in a society where we don’t want to acknowledge that pleasure… . We don’t want to see it, we don’t want to talk about it.”

Besides her private practice, Meisner speaks at conferences, holds group meetings, workshops, and tries to educate both parents and kids on sex.

“The education part is educating parents on how to talk to their kids about sex and have them introduce [their kids] to these topics,” she said. “It’s not an event, it’s an ongoing conversation throughout their life.”

Through her work, Meisner finds many underlying causes to people’s intimacy issues, such as trust and communication, and is able to form a treatment plan from there.

“People just forget how to get their needs met or hear the other person,” Meisner explained. “A lot of it is just basic therapy and the sex is ruined because they don’t have a safe context for that.”

Before Meisner moved her business to Niwot, she had worked in other locations, but none worked out quite as well as her present location behind the old Niwot Dental office. “I felt very well received when I got here,” Meisner said of Niwot. “There are some people who ask ‘What do you do?’ There’s never nudity in my office, there’s never touching. I do give adult couples homework to do in the bedroom at their own home, then they come back and tell me about it.”

Meisner has clients of all ages and believes “sex therapy is really for everybody. Niwot is special, because a lot of my clients actually come from Longmont, Boulder and Denver,” she said. “My office is kind of tucked away, because sex therapy is a very private thing. It’s kind of removed from the main drag, and yet it’s very accessible to a lot of demographics.”

Through Meisner’s past education and professional experiences she had created a safe place for her clients. “People can come in and tell me something that’s so hard and so difficult, and to me it’s like ‘oh that’s OK, we can work with this,’” she said. “I’m generally not offended or freaked out or surprised.”

Meisner aims to redefine sex for her clients, and change the way they view intimacy and their own bodies.

“It’s just trying to break people out of their expectations that can be very confining,” she said. “And getting them to know their body and [spending] a lot of time working through trauma.”

For more information on Intimate Inquiries, visit intimateinquiries.com or call 303-915-8900.