You have broken the pattern of inhibited sexual desire and a no-sex or low-sex marriage. Congratulations! However, you cannot rest on your laurels and take marital sexuality for granted.
Maintaining and generalizing healthy marital sexuality are crucial. You have come a long way,you owe it to yourself, your spouse, and your marital bond to not allow a relapse.
It is unrealistic and self-defeating to believe that each sexual encounter will involve equal desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction. It is equally unrealistic to believe that touching and intimacy will always flow easily. Setting nonperfectionist goals is crucial. A positive, realistic expectation is that sexuality will nurture your intimate bond. Sexuality is a positive, integral part of your lives and your marriage. By reinforcing healthy sexual attitudes, behavior, and feelings, you are inoculated against future problems. Whether the sexual experience is joyful, satisfying, mediocre, or unsuccessful, the couple remains an intimate team.
Both spouses are committed to maintaining intimacy and to not falling into the avoidance trap. Giving and receiving pleasure-oriented touching are the essence of intimate sexuality.
The core of relapse prevention is awareness that intimacy and sexuality need continual time and energy. Sexuality cannot be taken for granted. When there are mediocre or negative experiences, you treat this as a lapse and ensure it does not relapse into inhibited sexual desire. Relapse prevention is an active process.
specific strategies and techniques.
When couple sex therapy is about to end, Barry suggests 10 guidelines to ensure that gains are maintained and generalized.
The partners agree to utilize three or four personally relevant guidelines to ensure that their hard-won gains continue.
1. As a couple, you continue to meet on a regular basis. One advantage of therapy is that on a weekly or biweekly basis, you both engage in serious communication about your relationship. Instead of going to the therapist’s office (you have both cleared your schedules and are used to regular meetings), keep the time for yourselves. You can go for a walk, have a sexual date, go to dinner, problem-solve a difficult issue, or have an intimate talk. Devote time and energy to maintaining your intimate bond.
2. Schedule a 6-month follow-up therapy session. This ensures that you remain accountable to each other and to the therapist.
Intimacy and sexuality cannot rest on their laurels.
Commitment and accountability prevent relapse.
3. Schedule a nondemand pleasuring session at least once every 2 months, preferably monthly. Setting aside time for a pleasuring session (with a prohibition on intercourse) reinforces communication, sensuality, and playfulness. This allows you to experience sensuality and experiment with new stimuli,an alternative pleasuring position, body lotion, a new setting or milieu. Maintaining a vital pleasuring and sensuality combats relapse.
4. When a problem occurs, treat it as a lapse, a mistake to learn from. Do not permit it to become a relapse. Even among happily married couples with no history of sexual dysfunction, 5 to 15 percent of sexual interactions are mediocre, unsatisfying, or failures. People are not perfectly functioning sexual machines. There is an inherent variability and flexibility to couple sexuality. Do not panic or overreact to a mediocre or negative experience. Rather than hoping it will never happen (an unrealistic expectation), learn coping techniques to ensure that a lapse does not become a relapse.
Whether it occurs once a week, once a month, or once a year that the man does not get an erection, the woman experiences pain during intercourse, or one or both do not feel sexual desire, this is not a cause for panic or blame. Accept this as disappointing, not as a tragedy or being back at square one.
You can laugh or shrug off the experience, and make a date within a day or two when you both feel desirous, receptive, and sexier. Better yet, you can find pleasure in a sensual massage or an erotic nonintercourse scenario. A negative experience can turn into a pleasurable one.
5. Establish positive, realistic expectations about marital sex. In movies (where healthy marital sexuality is almost never portrayed), sex is spontaneous, intense, nonverbal, passionate, and perfect. The reality for married couples is that less than half the time is there equal desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction. If you experience movie-quality sex once or twice a month, you are a lucky couple. If sexuality is to remain positive and to nurture your intimate bond, you need to accept flexibility and variability. Adopt a broad-based approach to touching and eroticism. Sexuality meets a variety of individual and couple needs. Sometimes sex is a tension-reducer, sometimes a way to share closeness, at other times a passionate experience, a way to heal an argument, or a bridge to reduce emotional distance. Often, it is better for one spouse than the other,that, too, is a realistic expectation.
6. Plan intimacy dates, weekends, or both without children. Sex therapy confronts the rigidity of the male always initiating and the expectation that all touching should end in intercourse. Both spouses feel free to initiate intimacy and sexuality. Especially valuable is a weekend away (without children) at least once a year. Couples report better sex on vacation.
7. Generalize and expand your sexual repertoire. There is not “one right way” to be sexual. Each couple develops its unique style of initiation, pleasuring, erotic stimulation, intercourse, and afterplay. The more flexible the couple sexual style and acceptance of the multiple functions of touching and sexuality, the greater the resistance to relapse. Develop a comfortable, functional, and satisfying sexual style that meets the needs of both of you and that energizes your marital bond.
8. You can cope with mediocre or negative sexual experiences.
The single most important technique in relapse prevention is the ability to accept and not overreact to experiences that are mediocre, unsatisfying, or dysfunctional. Any partners can get along if everything goes well. The challenge is to accept disappointing or dysfunctional experiences without panicking or blaming. Whether a miscommunication about a sexual date, a minimally arousing sexual interaction, or an erectile or orgasmic failure, these happen to all couples.
Intimate couples accept occasional mediocre or failure experiences and take pride in having a resilient sexual style.
9. Develop intimate and erotic ways to connect and reconnect.
Intimacy includes sexuality, but is much more than sexuality.
You need a variety of ways to connect, reconnect, and maintain connection. These include five gears of connection ,affectionate touch, nongenital pleasuring, playful touch, erotic touch, and intercourse. In traditional sex role socialization, females emphasized emotional connection and males emphasized sexual connection. It is hoped that now both the wife and husband are comfortable initiating intimacy and eroticism. This promotes a variety of ways to remain connected and build bridges to sexual desire. The more ways you have to maintain intimate and sexual connection, the easier it is to avoid relapse.
10. Each of you makes sexual requests, and as a couple, you develop special erotic scenarios. The importance of having a variety of sexual alternatives and scenarios cannot be overemphasized. Couples who express intimacy through massage, taking walks, bathing, and engaging in semiclothed or nude sensual touch have a flexible repertoire. Couples who are open to “quickies,” prolonged and varied erotic stimulation, various intercourse positions, multiple stimulation during intercourse, and planned, as well as spontaneous, sexual encounters have a robust sexual relationship. A flexible, variable sexual repertoire is a major antidote to relapse. Sexuality that meets a range of needs, feelings, and situations will serve you both well in maintaining gains and preventing relapse.
assumptions behind relapse prevention.
The best strategy for relapse prevention is a broad-based couple sexual style that is comfortable, intimate, and satisfying.
Emotional intimacy, nondemand pleasuring, and erotic stimulation, combined with realistic expectations, ensure healthy sexuality. This inoculates the couple against sexual problems, especially with aging of the partners and the marriage.
Partners who trust each other to deal with problems are in a much better position than those who magically hope that nothing goes wrong. Resilient couples are confident in their ability to deal with difficulties and lapses. Relapse prevention is more than luck ,it is confidence in yourself, your spouse, and your relationship.
You can deal with stress and disappointment while remaining an intimate couple. Affectionate, sensual, playful, erotic, and intercourse experiences are flexible and can withstand occasional problems, dysfunction, or disappointments. The most important component is motivation. You feel like an intimate team that is committed to maintaining a vital sexual relationship.
Tracy and sean.
Two years after the completion of couple sex therapy, Tracy and Sean felt secure in their marriage. Intimacy was a forté. Sexuality was functional and satisfying. They felt proud that the marriage had survived a stressful crisis and no-sex period.
At the time of starting treatment, Tracy and Sean had been married 3 years, had a 1-year-old daughter, and had not been sexual since she was born. Unbeknownst to Tracy, Sean began an affair with a divorced woman from his office when Tracy was 4 months pregnant. Sean used the pregnancy as a justification for the affair, rationalizing that Tracy did not enjoy sex when pregnant. Sean was an example of the adage “Affairs are easier to get into than out of.” The stress of a double life caused by the affair, plus adapting to a new baby, resulted in marital alienation.
Tracy suggested marital therapy. Sean was resistant, afraid that the affair would be revealed. When Tracy found a therapist who specialized in marital and sex therapy, Sean relented and agreed to go. Consulting a professional confronts partners with the seriousness of their problems. Tracy was sad and angry over the lack of intimacy and sexuality. She alternated between blaming herself and blaming Sean.
Sean minimized the impact of the affair, although he realized the precarious state of the marriage. In the individual session Sean told the therapist about the affair, feeling relieved to disclose this secret. After the first few months the affair was no longer exciting or satisfying, but he could not extricate himself. The affair was becoming increasingly destructive. Sean could not devote the time and energy needed to revitalize the marriage while distracted by the affair.
In their conjoint session, the therapist asked Tracy whether she was willing to help Sean terminate the affair. This was a novel strategy, but the more they discussed it, Sean felt that this was what he needed. Tracy said she would not tell the other woman for him, but agreed to actively support Sean in confronting her.
Tracy was hurt at learning that Sean was having an affair, but felt validated that her intuition had been right,there was a specific cause for their feelings of alienation. They invited the woman to their home for lunch. To be sure that emotions remained in check, no alcohol was served. Sean showed her the baby and said that he and Tracy were recommitted to the marriage and they needed to devote time and energy to rebuilding their marital and family bond. He hoped this would not interfere with the professional work relationship, but there could not be a personal relationship. The woman was upset and it was an awkward, uncomfortable lunch, but the message was clear and unequivocally communicated. Tracy and Sean agreed to a 5-minute check-in weekly to ensure that there would be no secrets.
Sean agreed that if a high-risk situation arose, he would tell Tracy within 24 hours. This agreement freed Sean and Tracy to focus on revitalizing their sexual bond.
Realizing how much work it takes to rebuild trust and intimacy increased their motivation to not allow an affair or another crisis to destabilize their marriage. Six months after they resumed being a sexual couple, Tracy unexpectedly broke into tears,this occurred after being orgasmic and feeling close to Sean. At first, Sean was defensive and wondered if Tracy was doing this as a guilt-inducing manipulation. Tracy was clear that it was neither manipulative nor to punish Sean, but a genuine feeling of sadness.
You cannot change the past, nor does guilt help rebuild intimacy.
Renewing intimacy is a joint venture. Trust is not a simple process,it requires talking and supporting each other emotionally through stresses and disappointments. When Tracy cried or Sean was frustrated, rather than go their separate ways, they used their trust position (Tracy put her head on his heart and he stroked her hair). They found that being quiet, yet together, was better than trying to talk the problem to death.
The strategy that was most helpful was thinking of themselves as an intimate team fighting against the common enemy of inhibited sexual desire. The most helpful technique was building bridges to desire. Before a sexual date, Tracy took time for herself while Sean watched the child. Tracy became comfortable using a vibrator during partner sex, and Sean integrated loving and erotic feelings. Sean’s favorite bridge was taking a shower while Tracy was putting the baby down and then their getting together.
Tracy’s favorite bridge was being sexual when the child was out of the house (mothers day out or eating at another family’s house).
The therapist encouraged them to develop a specific relapse-prevention plan. Tracy worried that this was overkill because they were doing well, but Sean was insistent. He felt responsible for the intimacy and trust problems and was committed to doing everything he could to ensure that the marriage remained satisfying and secure. Sean suggested that they go for coffee and a serious conversation once a month to ensure that there would be no relapse. The quality of their sex was much improved. Sean became comfortable with showering before sex (which facilitates fellatio). Tracy committed to initiating sex at least once a week. She wanted marital sexuality to continue to be vital, integrating intimacy and eroticism.
Sex with the intention of becoming pregnant enhanced desire.
They remained emotionally and sexually connected throughout the pregnancy. By the 5th month, Tracy preferred erotic sex to intercourse. Sometimes it was mutual and sometimes one-way.
Although he preferred intercourse, Sean was open to whatever was comfortable for Tracy. Neither Tracy nor Sean were hypervigilant about an affair. They were confident the spouse would discuss a high-risk situation rather than act out.
Tracy and Sean valued an intimate, erotic, secure marriage.
They did not take each other for granted. Sexuality was a positive, integral part of the marriage and they were committed to keeping it that way.
relapse prevention versus crisis intervention.
In movies and novels, once the problem is resolved, people expect to live happily ever after. Yet neither marriage nor sexuality can rest on its laurels. Prevention is superior to a crisis and the need for crisis intervention. Sadly, a significant number of couples fall into the trap of a second sexual crisis, caused in part by “magical thinking.” The partners hope that if they do not worry or talk about sex, it will not be a problem. We do not promote fear or obsessing. However, we do advocate a preventative approach and, if sexuality gets off track, a problem-solving approach.
The best example of relapse prevention involves inhibited desire as an overreaction to an erection problem. The goal of sex therapy is to regain comfort and confidence with erections, resulting in renewed desire. Not maintaining an erection that is sufficient for intercourse might occur once a month or once a year.
This is a normal part of male sexuality, especially after age 40.
When an erectile difficulty causes the husband (or wife) to overreact and avoid sex, marital sexuality is vulnerable. The answer is not guaranteed erections, but comfortable, pleasurable alternative scenarios for intimate connection. These include manual or oral stimulation to orgasm, lying together and holding each other, stimulating her to orgasm, engaging in sensual pleasuring, or setting a date in the next day or two when you are desirous, receptive, and responsive. Most couples, especially men, would rather not think or talk about this. They fear “jinxing” the erectile success and sensitizing performance anxiety.
The man and the couple confidently anticipate touching, eroticism naturally flowing to erection, and arousal evolving into intercourse. Distraction, anxiety, or spectatoring distracts and disrupts the erotic flow. The way to counter anxieties and distractions is not by “magical thinking,” wishing there would never be another sexual problem. The healthy coping strategy is to nurture desire through anticipation and bridges to desire. Be open to the natural flow of sexuality,comfort, pleasure, eroticism, arousal, erections, intercourse, orgasm, and afterplay.
Equally important is having comfort and confidence in back-up sensual and erotic scenarios when you are not able to have intercourse. This inoculates you against regression to erectile problems and inhibited desire. Both spouses being open to nondemand pleasuring, erotic stimulation, and orgasm with nonintercourse sex allows a varied, flexible, and robust sexual repertoire. These attitudes and coping skills prevent relapse. A broad-based sexual repertoire is healthier than a pass,fail approach to intercourse. The narrow-based sexual repertoire of both spouses needing to be desirous and orgasmic each time makes relapse likely.
Couples need to be able to deal with emotional and sexual difficulties when these occur, but prevention is easier and more effective. Why create an unnecessary crisis? Why waste psychological energy dealing with a crisis when you can more efficiently and happily prevent the problem? Maintaining his, hers, and our bridges for sexual desire is one way to prevent relapse. Another is having a variety of sensual, erotic, and nonintercourse techniques when sex does not flow. A positive, realistic expectation is that not all experiences will be mutual or satisfying. Realistic expectations are an important ingredient in sexual satisfaction. You can tolerate occasional mediocre, disappointing, or failure experiences. The more your sexual relationship is broad-based, with an emphasis on sharing desire, pleasure, and eroticism, the greater the likelihood you will maintain gains and prevent relapse.
Exercise: your personal plan for preventing relapse.
Take the theory and good intentions of relapse prevention and make them personal and concrete. Each spouse needs to be aware of vulnerabilities and traps. What can you do to ensure that you will not fall into these traps? How can your spouse be helpful and supportive? Individually and as a couple, commit to doing what is necessary to ensure that your sexual bond remains vital.
This exercise involves two phases. First, write down personal and couple traps. Writing facilitates clarity and specificity. Then, discuss how to prevent falling into these traps. An example of a trap for the husband is becoming discouraged and obsessed with career disappointments, which depresses sexual desire. The coping mechanism is to share career perceptions, feelings, and alternatives with the wife, professional colleagues, or both. Your career should be only one factor, at most one-third, in your measurement of self-esteem. If career problems are not changeable, it is crucial to find other sources of self-esteem and satisfaction. One source is marital and sexual intimacy. Your spouse can initiate both supportive hugs and sexual encounters.
An example of a trap for the wife is that orgasms are not as easy as in the past, but she is reticent to request additional erotic stimulation. As sex becomes lower quality and less satisfying, her anticipation and desire decrease. She is more irritated by, than receptive to, his sexual initiations. To counter this, she introduces personal and external turnons to enhance sexual quality. She requests additional erotic stimulation; her satisfaction is as important as his. His role is to be a giving spouse, not to pressure her or make her orgasm his responsibility. Bother partners must be open to erotic scenarios and techniques that enhance quality and facilitate desire.
The most common couple trap is self-consciousness about sexual initiation. Exercises can increase awareness and comfort, without the side effects of self-consciousness. Sexual initiations become personal and easier. Each spouse identifies what he or she can do to make initiations inviting.
The second phase of the exercise is to explore strategies and techniques to keep marital sexuality vital. Discuss intimacy and sexuality in a clear, positive, realistic manner. The answer is not to quit your job so that you are stress-free or to send the children to their grandparents for a month. Examples of realistic plans are that each of you initiates an intimate experience once a week and a couple weekend without children every 6 months; if there has been no sexual contact for 2 weeks, you both agree that the husband will initiate a nondemand pleasuring experience on Sunday afternoon; on Friday night after the kids are asleep you rent an Ror X-rated video; you plan an erotic date at least every 2 months, with the understanding that you will not proceed to intercourse; every 6 months you shop for a new sensual lotion or a sexy outfit; or each of you initiates a favorite erotic scenario once a month. Commit to developing at least one individual scenario and one couple scenario that reenergizes marital sexuality.
Repeat this exercise in 6 months.
ensure that a lapse does not become a relapse.
For some behaviors, a lapse (returning to a destructive behavior) is serious and unacceptable,spouse abuse, using heroin, driving while intoxicated, exhibiting yourself, or setting fires. You do not want a lapse, but for the majority of behaviors lapses do occur, examples include fear and avoidance, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and depressive thinking. Behaviors that are a continuous part of the person’s life (mood, anxiety, eating) are more likely to involve lapses than are behaviors that are dichotomous and can be abstained from (cigarettes, stealing, drug use). With sexual functioning,specifically, desire,occasional or intermittent lapses are likely.
Lapses in marital and sexual behavior are normal. How can you ensure that a lapse does not turn into a relapse? A lapse involves a temporary situation, a specific regression. Examples include pushing sex when the spouse is not receptive; reacting to a mediocre or negative experience with blame; miscommunication when one spouse wants intercourse and the other wants a sensual experience; the man loses his erection or the woman is not orgasmic and they overreact; one spouse goes along with a sexual initiation, even though he or she is not receptive; they have sex in the middle of the night, which they agreed was not acceptable; or a spouse tries to have sex after an argument when the partner is still alienated. These are normal occurrences. Among couples with no sexual problems, 5 to 15 percent of sexual experiences are mediocre, disappointments, or failures. The key is to ensure that occasional lapses do not become a full-blown relapse.
What is a relapse? A relapse is a regression to sexually dysfunctional ways of thinking, behaving, and feeling. It is a return to infrequent sex (less than once every 2 weeks), inhibited desire, and avoidance. Anticipatory anxiety replaces positive anticipation; the partners no longer feel they deserve sexual pleasure, they revert to guilt and blaming, and they stop acting and feeling like an intimate team. Do not allow yourselves to regress to the cycle of anticipatory anxiety, tension-filled sex, and avoidance.
A relapse is more distressing than the original sexual problem was because it is more difficult to regain motivation. The first time you confront inhibited sexual desire and the no-sex or low-sex marriage, you learn new concepts, skills, exercises, and experiences that challenge this problem. Sexual pleasure and sharing intimacy are powerful reinforcers. Dealing with a relapse (whether for the first or eighth time) is more difficult. There is no new dramatic strategy; rather, you must implement and reinforce techniques that you know are helpful in rebuilding sexual intimacy and desire.
It is crucial to address and recover from a lapse. Feelings of intimacy, pleasure, eroticism, and being a team become stronger and more resilient. It is easier to deal with issues and problems early and not to allow the avoidance that results in a full-blown relapse.
How to prevent relapse? When a lapse or negative experience occurs, you need to acknowledge this, rather than deny that it happened or magically wish it would never happen again.
Recognize the lapse and actively deal with it, rather than avoid, pretend, or overreact. Learn from mistakes. Intimacy and sexual self-esteem need not be controlled by problems. A healthy strategy is to set an intimacy date for the next day or two. Some couples choose a pleasuring experience, with an explicit ban on intercourse; others prefer to go with the flow. It is crucial to challenge avoidance. Some couples choose a nongenital pleasuring date to reintroduce touching and sensuality, confronting avoidance in a sensual, as opposed to erotic, manner.
Continuing to share intimacy and pleasure is a powerful strategy to prevent relapse.
Couples do not decide they are going to regress to a no-sex or low-sex marriage. It is a result of benign neglect. It is easy to procrastinate, be diverted by other things, and fall into old habits.
Sexuality does not remain a priority. Sexuality should not be the top priority in marriage, but should be a positive, integral component. Resting on your laurels or treating sexuality with benign neglect does not work. Sexual desire is like any other activity; if you ignore or avoid, sexuality becomes self-conscious and uncomfortable. The positive feedback loop of anticipation, pleasurable experiences, and a regular sexual rhythm gives way to the negative feedback loop of anticipatory anxiety, tense and failed performances, and sexual avoidance. Anxiety and avoidance feed on themselves. Inhibition and avoidance need to be confronted and replaced by a regular rhythm of anticipation, emotional intimacy, nondemand pleasuring, and erotic scenarios and techniques (including intercourse).
closing thoughts.
You have come too far to relapse to a no-sex or low-sex marriage.
Confronting the sexual problem was a team effort. Maintaining and generalizing intimacy and sexual pleasure likewise are team processes. Reinforce intimacy and sexual desire, recognize and avoid personal and couple traps, and ensure that a lapse does not become a relapse.
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