KINK SHRINK
IF you ask Lia Holmgren, Ana Steele and Christian Grey had the right idea.
The intimacy coach — like a couples therapist, but kinkier — thinks a little power play can benefit a relationship.
“Once you open your mind to [BDSM], you will open your mind to other things in the relationship,” Holmgren, 35, tells The Post.
In her Chelsea office, she charges clients up to $500 for 90-minute intimacy counseling sessions. There, she helps couples open the lines of communication about having submissive or dominant roles in the bedroom. Sometimes, this means helping couples figure out what their particular fetishes are by suggesting books or types of porn she thinks they might like to explore. The goal, she says, is to improve their sex lives and bring them closer together.
Although Holmgren isn’t a licensed therapist, she has a lot of experience in this area. Before she started counseling couples two years ago, the Slovenia-born Financial District resident was a professional dominatrix who got paid to fulfill men’s fantasies of being submissive. Her résumé also includes stripping and organizing sex parties, as well as what she calls “vanilla” work in real estate.
“When I was a dom, I real- ized people were ashamed to discuss their fantasies with their partner,” says Holmgren. She aims to break those taboos with her clients, encouraging them to talk about issues around sex and the relationship as a whole.
The Post saw this in action at a recent session with two of Holmgren’s regular clients, Kim Aquilina and her partner, who preferred to remain anonymous for professional reasons. Holmgren asked them how their forays into domination were going. Not well, they admit. “In the middle of the day, I don’t want to be told what to do,” says the male submissive partner.
Holmgren reassures the couple that their problem is a common one for couples just starting to introduce BDSM to their relationship: Outside the bedroom, men may find it difficult to cede the kind of control they’re used to, she says.
Her advice to Aquilina is to make it sexy for her partner, too — and to get his consent to play. “Go behind him and whisper, ‘Hey, my little slut. I’m in a dom mood. Do you want to continue?’ ”
Aquilina, 38, says Holmgren’s services have helped the couple navigate the murky waters of kink. “It reminded us to check in regularly,” says the writer, who lives in East Flatbush.
Talk therapy isn’t all Holmgren offers: Deep-pocketed clients can access her premium services, including a mood-setting bedroom makeover that costs up to $25,000. She says she’ll even help them get situated in their bondage contraptions. (While she usually leaves before the couple gets into the swing of things, “Sometimes I do stay,” she says.) She’ll also accompany couples to “pretty expensive” sex shops to help them pick out outfits and toys. Another package she offers costs $9,999 for a couple, and includes travel to Germany, where she’ll curate a couple’s risqué week — complete with a sex party at a club she owns in Munsterland, and a stay in a luxury château nearby.
But for all of the bells and whistles she can offer, the key is really learning how to communicate with each other, she says — and enjoying the fun that follows.
Her client, Mark, who declined to give his last name for professional reasons, says seeing Holmgren all but rescued his 15-year relationship with his wife. The two had been “in and out of traditional couples therapy” be- cause of their lukewarm sex life, says the middle-aged Manhattanite, who works in finance. He visited Holmgren on his own at first, for advice on how to bring up some of his kinks. She advised Mark to schedule a bimonthly check-in with his wife to discuss their marriage concerns in a “loving, kind way,” Mark says.
Carving out time to communicate gave way to more trust in the bedroom, he says. Little by little, he introduced some kink into the bedroom. He “always knew [she] enjoyed foot rubs,” so he started incorporating them into their foreplay. Long story short, they went from having sex once a month to four or five times a month.
“I’m living a more fulfilled life, sexually speaking,” he says — and he’s glad to be doing so in a “caring, compassionate” way. “[Holmgren] taught me that lovemaking doesn’t have to be the same thing over and over again.”