For many people, Valentine’s Day is a night of pressure, followed by disappointment or conflict. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Changing the Way People, Politics & the Media Look at Sex
For many people, Valentine’s Day is a night of pressure, followed by disappointment or conflict. It doesn’t have to be that way.
There’s a new book out about sexual fantasy and it’s half wonderful.
Social psychologist Justin Lehmiller has recently completed the largest American study of people’s sexual fantasies, interviewing over 4,000 respondents. He discusses the results in his lively new book Tell Me What You Want: The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You.
To summarize: humans are a sexually diverse group, with an enormously wide range of sexual fantasies. And those fantasies are generally not polite, or wholesome, or respectful of boundaries—which is actually the point of sexual fantasy.
Old therapy joke:
Q: What’s the difference between defense mechanisms and sex? A: You can go a whole day without sex.
Actually, we can go without sex for a lot longer than that. But you wouldn’t know it from listening to some of my patients. Or their partners.
It generally sounds like this: “So I just need a lot of sex. I can’t help it, that’s just how I am—I need a lot of sex, preferably every day.”
As a sex therapist, I work with couples every week in which one partner wants more sex than the other.
When it’s a small disparity people generally work it out. But when one person wants sex twice a week and other wants it twice a year, many couples simply can’t cope. Ideally, couples would struggle over this together: what are WE going to do about OUR problem?
What’s more common, unfortunately, is that each partner sees themselves as having the primary pain. And each person looks at the other and says what are YOU going to do about MY suffering that YOU’VE created?
Blaming porn for what’s wrong with our sex lives is easy. But when men behave like jerks in bed, there’s are always reasons. Talking about them–instead of blaming porn–is uncomfortable, but way more productive.
People want more passion in long-term (and even some new) relationships.
The solution may involve saying goodbye to our youthful model of intense desire, and creating a relaxed, communicative model of sexual interest that is sustainable through the lifecycle.