Meet Trisha Andrews, MA, LMFT, CST Heather DeKeyser, MS, LMFT, CST | Co-Founders and Clinical Directors of Dalliance Sexual Wellness

We had the good fortune of connecting with Trisha Andrews, MA, LMFT, CST Heather DeKeyser, MS, LMFT, CST and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Trisha Andrews, MA, LMFT, CST, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Dalliance is a community of clinicians that challenge society’s current values and ideas of what sex is and help individuals and relationships explore what works for them and create their own sexual confidence and lifestyle. We value sexual health esteem, which includes exploring what contributes to sexual confidence, promoting fun and connecting conversation, and encouraging a focus on pleasure.

Heather and I are both relationship and sex therapists. We saw a need for accessible, quality sex therapy in our community. Our group practice offers sex and relationship therapy services at various price points starting at $80 per session. Sex therapy is not typically covered by insurance and can be quite costly out-of-pocket because of the comprehensive training and supervision that’s required for certification. Dalliance Sexual Wellness offers resources for mental health clinicians to feel more comfortable bringing the topic of sexuality into the therapy room and knowing when to refer out to a certified sex therapist. We are also building a community education arm to the practice by hosting groups, speaking opportunities, and social events on the topic of sexuality and pleasure.

What should our readers know about your business?
Dalliance is a sexual wellness community of practitioners who challenge societal constructs and ideas of sex. We believe in providing clients with current, evidence-informed therapies that are accessible, integrative, creative and sex-positive. We collaborate with clients to encourage pleasure, accountability, authenticity and curiosity in regard to relationships, bodies and beliefs. We believe in expanding views of sex from a performance and goal-based set of behaviors to an integrative experience that connects mind, body and spirit.

Dalliance views sexuality as being an inherent, essential and beneficial dimension of being human and values the connection between vulnerable conversation and physical exploration. We believe our role as clinicians and healers is to help clients explore healthy sexual attitudes and values to create lives full of connection and pleasure.

Heather and Trisha realized the importance of collaboration and dividing the load to build Dalliance Sexual Wellness Collective. This business is essentially a marriage for the two of us, which is a little ironic. As two marriage and family therapists who preach open, honest communication, and emotional regulation to our clients, we have to walk our talk as business partners. There have definitely been hard decisions, conversations, big feelings along the way on our journey, but we have always approached any challenge with honesty, integrity and curiousity to hear the other person.

We are so excited to be a resource for our community by providing quality and accessible sex therapy, education and are on a mission to normalize the importance of sexuality and pleasure.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Southeast Denver has some very fun haunts. We would start our morning with a hike on Reuter-Hess incline to get our mental health walk in full gear. We would swing down to The Exchange Coffee Shop to get properly caffeinated. We have some amazing speaking opportunities coming up which necessitates some new outfits and our go-to is Evereve for the best in business casual in Park Meadows mall. Our favorite lunch spot is Zao – it’s essentially an Asian Chipotle. Wrapping with dinner is the spot we do many of our best business dinners – Sierra in Lone Tree.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Our clients, our families and our team at Dalliance have inspired, supported and motivated us to create Dalliance Sexual Wellness. Without them, this endeavor would never have been possible.

Website: www.dalliancesexualwellness.com

Instagram: @dalliance_swc

Facebook: Dalliance Sexual Wellness

Image Credits
Simone Giradot, Denver