Marc Bou Sleiman
Sexologist & Couples Counsellor
After years of talking about sex in 4 languages with people from 30+ countries, I learned words change; hopes and fears don’t. Shame is taught and silence teaches it. I help you unlearn it and own what you edited out.
I specialise in:
About me
Most of us inherit a script for how to live, and sex is where it gets tested hardest. We learned our lines secondhand, then spent years wondering why they never quite sounded like us. A lot of my work is translation: between what your body says and what you were taught to say, and between you and the person next to you, who swears you're both speaking the same language.
I got here by asking too many questions. Psychology gave me some answers. Sexology gave me better questions, mostly about the things families skip over and societies marginalize. Those are my favourite conversations to have, and I try to make them easier to start. I'm also suspicious of labels that turn ordinary human variation into a diagnosis, so I try to get the “is this normal?" out of the room early on.
I grew up in Lebanon and trained in Rome. Moving between the two and working with an international setting taught me that normal is local: what's scandalous in one city is a regular Tuesday night in another. Sessions run in English or Arabic, but people often switch to French or Italian when a feeling only fits in one language. That's fine by me. I'm fluent in awkward pauses too.
I speak:
Location:
Approach
I’m curious about you before the problem. The problem makes more sense once I know who’s carrying it.
No verdicts, no rulebooks. What I ask for is honesty, especially the uncomfortable kind: the fantasy you’ve never told anyone, the thing you suspect makes you “too much” or “not enough.” I’d rather understand it with you than label it.
Then we work out what’s really going on, and that usually means looking past the bedroom. Sex is often where a problem shows up, not where it started. Stress, resentment, a rule you absorbed at twelve: all of it finds its way into bed. Turns out the bed was just the messenger. Cause sex isn’t just about what happens in bed, it’s about what happens in your head.
I work best with people who don’t fit the standard script: cross-cultural couples, expats far from the rules they grew up with, people of any faith or none rethinking what they believe about sex, people exploring their sexuality, and anyone mid-change who wants company while they figure out who they’re becoming.
Experience
Since 2025 on It's Complicated, I have worked with people from more than thirty countries, believers of several faiths and people of none. Some came from places where sex is barely mentioned. Others came from places so open about it that they felt behind for not wanting more. The pressure just points in different directions.
What stays with me most is the trust. The vulnerability, the things people have never dared to say out loud, the moments when something shifts and they begin to feel alive again. Sometimes, all it takes is teary eyes and a quiet thank you. Those moments never lose their weight. I never take them for granted.
And the training hasn't stopped. Alongside my clinical training at ISC, I write for the Insights section of IOSS (International Online Sexology Supervisors), work under regular clinical supervision, and keep going to seminars and conferences, because the field keeps moving and so do the people in it. I have also spent years on the other side of the couch in my own therapy, so I know what it takes to sit in that chair and start talking. All of it is so you get the same attention in session ten as in session one.
Education
Clinical Sexology Training, Istituto di Sessuologia Clinica (ISC), Rome (2026–present)
Ongoing clinical training alongside my practice, under a principal supervisor who is a pioneer in the field, with group supervision and guidance from other clinicians at the institute.
MSc in Clinical Psychosexology, joint degree, Sapienza University of Rome & University of Rome Tor Vergata (2024)
Where I learned to look at sex as biology, psychology, relationships and culture all at once, because a sexual problem rarely stays in one box. Clinical training and research side by side, with supervision throughout.
Bachelor's in Clinical Psychology, Lebanese University (2021)
Where the questions started: general psychology, human behaviour, and the therapeutic basics everything else is built on.
Services
Intro Call
Individual Session
Couples Session
Insurances
