In 39 years as a sex therapist, I’ve worked with individuals and couples from every conceivable background, with every imaginable problem.
And yet this huge variety of people share a small number of recurring concerns. That’s what every sex therapist talks about, over and over, year after year.
If people would do the following eight things, most of our business would dry up overnight. Do one of these and your sexual satisfaction will almost certainly increase.
People are injecting politics into their relationships in ways that undermine them, interfering with empathy and communication.
Too many people perceive and talk about political forces instead of discussing personal characteristics or feelings. This doesn’t educate others or promote intimacy.
As a sex therapist, I talk about masturbation with patients a lot.
They’re often surprised at the details I ask about: not just how often, but for how long, where, and what they actually do. And how they feel before, during and after it.
And I ask two questions that no one expects: Why do you do it? And do you enjoy it? You might be surprised at the answers I get…
Sexual desire.
Therapists don’t understand enough about it. We know a little about what diminishes desire, even less about what enhances it.
Oh, we know one thing about how desire works in relationships: for many people, you treat them poorly and they want sex less. But with a lot of people, you treat them well and they don’t want sex more.
And someone whose sexual desire is simply turned off? We don’t know much about how to turn it on.
Good therapists know how to fix certain aspects of desire…
Sex addiction is a convenient explanation for the destructive behavior of people driven mad by shame and Christian demands for sexual purity.
But the problem is shame, not sex. Treating shame, sexual ignorance, and relationship problems can actually cure people–so they don’t have to be addicts in recovery for the rest of their lives.
Many sex questions are a plea for reassurance, or a wish to be normal.
But it can be better to ask about a question’s meaning than to answer it.
Here are some common questions about sex that I rarely answer directly, and examples of how I respond instead.