Intimacy. Connection. Love.
I'm Mateo Mercur, and I'm interested in getting to know you.
As an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, I work with individuals, couples, and partners to build intimacy, vulnerability, communication, and trust.
I help clients to feel seen, heard, felt, and understood, and to be more expressed in their relationships and lives.
How I Work
My work is relational, attachment-based, and informed by interpersonal neuroscience and polyvagal theories.
During sessions we keep things real. We laugh, cry, curse, and relate. We look to the past just enough to have a context for the present.
I listen closely, reflect what I hear, and show up as a real person in the room with you. We explore thoughts, feelings, memories, and experiences. We make connections. We clarify, express, and organize what may have previously only been sensed. We feel into territory that may still be unknown.
The therapeutic relationship, while unique, is also an authentic relationship. At times I may share my own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Clients often find the process to be warm, thoughtful, relatable, and deeply human.
Who I Work With
As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, I work with individuals, couples, partners, and families on the core relational experiences of communication, intimacy, vulnerability, and trust.
As an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist I work with clients across a range of identities and experiences on an array of issues relevant to sex, gender, sexuality, identity, and self-expression.
I see clients within LGBTQ+, heterosexual, asexual, sex worker, and other sexual minority communities.
I welcome clients who seek informed and affirming support while exploring their sense of self, sexuality, gender, and self-expression.
I work with clients across a range of relationship structures including single, monogamous, open, CNM (consensually non-monogamous), and polyamorous.
I also work with clients across a spectrum of neurotypes, particularly ADHD and Autism, and have specialized training in how diverse neurotypes can present in romantic and sexual relationships.
With nearly three decades as a high-performance endurance coach, I bring a unique skill set to psychotherapy. Integrating psychotherapy and sport, I work with athletes on mental toughness and preparation, training and racing, injury, retirement, relationships, and life beyond sport.
I coached the first out and highly-visible non-binary athlete in professional triathlon to their most successful season in 2022 with wins across Ironman 70.3 and professional gravel and mountain bike events.
In psychotherapy practice, I work with gender expansive, trans, and non-binary clients on standard-issue interpersonal concerns as well as sex, gender, and sexuality specific social, physical, and relational experiences and transitions.
For clients outside of Colorado, I provide mental skills coaching for high-performance athletes and sex and relationship coaching services.
What to Expect
At the heart of our work is the therapeutic relationship; characterized deep listening, curiosity, empathy, attunement, and care. Within our relationship you can expect to feel heard, tended to, and also challenged. We will explore your current concerns, make connections to past experiences, and work for a future of greater clarity, perspective, integration, and peace.
I will never be the therapist who performs the head tilt and nod and then ask, “how does that make you feel?” At times, I will share my own thoughts. On occasion, I will be directive. We will work on communication skills, techniques, strategies, and principles. When appropriate, I may be tough.
As an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and a PhD Candidate in Clinical Sexology we can address and explore a range of issues, concerns, and experiences having to do with sex, gender, and sexuality. You can expect an approach that is candid, informed, curious, and sensitive, while also being relaxed, relatable, and relevant.
The therapeutic relationship is an authentic relationship. It can be significant, powerful, and have an enduring impact. It can provide opportunities for deep human connection and understanding. In my opinion, this quality of relating is the precious thing that makes all the difference in therapy and beyond.
Areas of Focus
As an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and PhD candidate in Clinical Sexology, I specialize in couple and relationship work. My work focuses on individuals, couples, and people in monogamous, open, and multi-partner relationships.
I see clients across a range of identities and experiences.
Regular themes in our work often include: communication, self-expression, creativity, curiosity, emotional and physical intimacy, sexual challenges or problems, and addressing unwanted physical or psychological pain.
We often work on deconstructing ideas about sex, gender, and sexuality, and on developing more expansive views of what is possible in clients' sexual lives and relationships.
Clients often come in to address problems such as discrepancies with partners in desire or sexual interests, arousal non-concordance (genital response not aligning with emotional/psychological state or desire), erection difficulties, premature ejaculation, and anorgasmia.
I work with clients who have experienced relational and sexual trauma.
I see clients from high-control religious backgrounds. We process family and community experiences, deconstruct and reconstruct belief systems to better align with the client's sense of self, and explore and rebuild client relational and sexual lives.
I work with clients who have experienced infidelity and other relationship ruptures.
I help clients explore thoughts, feelings, and questions about relationship structures, opening and closing relationships, renegotiating relationship agreements, and being in mixed mono/poly relationships.
I work with clients around fertility, pregnancy, parenting, and co-parenting.
I discuss hormonal and surgical care with cis, trans, non-binary, and other clients going through mid-life, transition, and other care.
I help clients navigate dating, sexual health, identity, and self-expression.
In our work we talk about sex, sexuality, intimacy, and desire in ways that are clinically informed and educational while also being relatable and lighthearted.
We work to address and reduce feelings of sexual shame and to build more authentic, fulfilling, and self-expressed sexual, personal, and relational lives.
Why now
People often come into therapy when the pain of things as they are, or have been, becomes too much to bear.
If you’re here, reading this now, then it's likely that either you or someone that you care about is going through a challenge.
Perhaps you or they are carrying a burden that they would like to put down.
Or you or they would like some help in making sense of a circumstance or a question.
Maybe you or they are looking for some support in exploring something more integral or core to who you or they are.
Finding a good therapist can be hard. A good referral is a thing of value. Meeting a therapist and feeling a sense of connection and rapport… that is gold.
As I wrote at the top of this page, I’m interested in getting to know you. I'll let you know if I think I can help. If a colleague might be a better fit, I'll point you in the direction of a trusted referral.
Whatever you’re working through, you don’t have to go through it alone.