Sexual desire is easy to kill. The potential for desire and pleasure is natural for both women and men, but can be vulnerable. A myriad of emotional and sexual factors can poison desire. Chief among these are anger and other negative emotions, including depression, guilt, anxiety, inhibitions, obsessions, compulsions, and shame. The technical term is inhibited sexual desire. This reflects the core issue,identifying and assessing factors that block (inhibit) sexual desire. The terms we use are turnoffs or poisons. To understand what inhibits desire, you need to identify individual and couple poisons.
Of the four phases of sexual response,desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction,desire is the easiest to disrupt. Positive anticipation is the key to desire. If that key is turned off, it affects the entire sexual process. Sexuality is natural, but it has to be nurtured and reinforced. Women and men deserve sexual satisfaction. However, when conflicts, inhibitions, and avoidance dominate, sexual desire is undermined. This is especially true when anger overrides desire.
how premarital sexual experiences and expectations poison marital sex A depressing reality is that “hot” premarital couples are vulnerable to desire problems once married. Why? The factors that drive premarital sex,newness, illicitness, risk-taking, winning the partner over, romantic love, and exploring sexual boundaries ,are unstable. By its very nature, romantic love/passionate sex disappears with time. Ideally, romantic love would be replaced by mature intimacy. Ideally, hot sex would be replaced by the combination of intimacy, nondemand pleasuring, and erotic scenarios and techniques. Yet too often, sex becomes routine, low quality, and infrequent. Many times, this occurs even before marriage. The joke is that marriage kills sex, but nonmarried couples who have been together more than 2 years have higher rates of no-sex and low-sex relationships than do married couples.
New romantic love couples meet for weekends and special occasions. They have time, energy, and enthusiasm for each other.
They ignore the real world of jobs, laundry, and schedules. The person and the relationship are idealized. Once married, they spend seven nights together and have to deal with the nitty gritty tasks of sharing their lives. Within this context, sex is no longer idealized and supercharged. Ideally, couples would have both planned and spontaneous sexual experiences. Unfortunately, the reality is that sex becomes the last thing they do at night after watching the news or comedy program.
Premarital sex is a self-defeating and unrealistic standard of comparison. Barry tires of couples complaining that sex was best premaritally. The decrease in sexual frequency and romance frustrates, embarrasses, and angers the couple. Do not make premarital sexual comparisons,this poisons marital sexuality.
Marital sexual desire is based on a radically different way of thinking, feeling, and being a couple. Marital sexuality involves dealing with the whole person and sharing the complexities of your lives, including emotional and sexual intimacy. Premarital and marital sexuality comparisons are “apples and oranges.” They offer no help in resolving sexual issues, only causing blame and frustration. Disappointment, resentment, and feeling tricked or manipulated poison marital sexuality. The premarital comparison interferes with developing a marital style that nurtures intimacy, desire, pleasure, and eroticism.
anger.
Anger has an extremely corrosive effect on marital sexuality.
Couples can and do use sex to make up after an argument. This works as long as it is not associated with emotional abuse or physical coercion. Chronic anger poisons both the marital and the sexual relationship. Key elements in marital sexuality are feeling emotionally connected and trusting. Chronic conflict and anger break this emotional bond. The spouse is no longer your trusted, intimate friend, but an untrustworthy stranger who could hurt or even destroy you.
Feeling attacked or put down is the main precursor for anger.
This is especially impactful if the attack involves your body or sexuality. For example, a woman intent on hurting the husband complains that his penis is smaller than an ex-boyfriend’s. Later, she apologizes and says she did not mean it, but he continues to ruminate and feel put-down. Anger and alienation build. The therapist explains that penis size does not reflect sexual prowess nor does it affect female satisfaction. The clinician utilizes diagrams and suggests readings. Although this reduces myths, it does not reduce anger. Anger destroys intimacy and fuels sexual avoidance.
Women feel anger, usually unexpressed, at “intimate coercion.” Intimate coercion is a major cause of female inhibited sexual desire. The man who pushes sex, despite the woman’s reluctance and verbal protestations, is an example of winning a sex battle, but losing a satisfying intimate relationship. Intimate coercion is very different from marital rape. Marital rape is a repetitive pattern that destroys trust in voluntary, pleasure-oriented sexuality. Intimate coercion is an intermittent pattern which does not involve force, but is destructive to intimate sexuality. The essence of coercion is that it is a demand for sex at this time and in this way, and if not met, there will be negative consequences for the partner, such as harassment, put-downs, or not providing money or help around the house.
The husband and wife perceive intimate coercion dramatically differently. He denies that it occurs or says it is not his fault, and is shocked and baffled by her anger. His perception is that he is seducing or coaxing her, similar to premarital scenarios. She feels pressured and violated. Her preferences and desires do not matter; he puts his sexual needs over her emotional needs.
Involved, mutual, pleasure-oriented sex decreases. Frequency of intercourse is more important than her psychological and sexual feelings. She feels taken advantage of and abused. Intimate coercion must be confronted, and this marital poison eliminated.
Another source of anger involves the aftereffects of an extramarital affair. Men react more angrily than women. The wife’s affair is a reversal of the double standard. The most common female affair is a “comparison affair.” This affair met her emotional and sexual needs instead of these being satisfied in the marriage. She compared the lover to the spouse. Even though the affair is over, the husband feels judged and insecure, which is expressed as anger. Angry thoughts feed the cycle, especially when he is alone and ruminates. Some men react by shutting down sexually. Others forcefully initiate sex as if to avenge the affair.
Angry sex kills loving feelings, alienating the woman and poisoning her desire. The wife’s response to the discovery of the husband’s affair is angry withdrawal. This anger builds a wall of resentment that brooks no touching, affection, or caring. Anger and alienation build on themselves and poison desire.
Sexual issues are not the only, or even the chief, reason for marital anger. Major causes are hurt and disappointment in the spouse, marriage, or both. Hurt is caused by one spouse saying derogatory things about the other, discussing the other’s weaknesses with a relative or friend, putting the partner down in front of others, revealing a secret one had promised to honor, telling a joke at the other’s expense, using a slap or the threat of force during an argument, or reneging on a financial agreement.
Disappointment is caused by finding that the spouse is less successful than claimed, that the spouse’s family is fraught with conflicts and not the loving family the spouse depicted, that the move to a safer neighborhood is not financially possible, that caring and attentiveness have been replaced by compulsive TV watching, and that promises of intimacy have been substituted by a marginal relationship. Anger is a secondary emotion; hurt and disappointment are the primary emotions. Anger, whether caused by sexual or emotional factors, is a sexual turnoff. This is true for both men and women. In pornography videos, anger is portrayed as a sexual stimulus, but that is not how anger works for the great majority of couples.
Anger is best dealt with outside of the bedroom. Talk out issues over the kitchen table, on walks, or in a therapist’s office. The bedroom is the worst place for anger. Being nude and prone increases personal vulnerability. It is too easy for arguments to degenerate into hurtful attacks on the person, marriage, or sexuality. Deal with conflicts clothed and sitting up. Argue your points, but do not put the spouse down or fall into the “attack-counterattack” mode.
guilt.
Guilt is the most self-defeating of emotions. When you feel guilty, you lower your self-esteem and are likely to repeat the same destructive behavior. For example, the man sneaks off to a nude dancing bar and spends the $50 he planned to use for a couple night out. He keeps this secret and avoids his wife. He is afraid that if she knew, she would think he was a “scum.” As his self-esteem decreases, he feels guilty and lonely and returns to the nude club, which reinforces the self-defeating cycle.
For women, a major source of guilt is fantasizing about or having an affair. Sometimes the affair does not involve intercourse, but does include flirting, kissing, hugging, late-night calls, fondling, caressing, or stimulation to orgasm. Feelings of adventure, illicitness, and attraction are powerful. Ambivalent feelings, fear of discovery, shame, or disruption of a work situation or a friendship burden the affair, whether consummated or not. When the relationship ends, especially if it ends badly (as it usually does), feelings of guilt poison sexual desire. The bad feelings generalize to marital sexuality. The husband’s reaction of blaming or anger feeds the guilt and is a further turnoff.
Guilt causes the person to put herself down and to isolate from the spouse. Guilt disrupts the process of sharing intimacy and pleasure. To confront guilt, you need to take responsibility for the negative behavior, apologize, make amends, and, most important, use all your resources to stop that behavior.
anxiety.
Sex and pleasure belong together. Sex and performance are a poisonous combination. Anxiety is the emotion associated with performance. The type of anxiety that most interferes is anticipatory anxiety. Desire is facilitated by positive anticipation, but subverted by anticipatory anxiety. Approaching sex with a fear of failure, a wish to procrastinate or avoid, fear of embarrassment, or wanting to get it over with is a turnoff. It is like going swimming, burdened by a 100-pound weight before you dive in.
A second form of anxiety is performance anxiety, which has a negative affect on arousal and erection. The man views erection and intercourse as a pass,fail test. Sex is not sharing pleasure, but a performance where fear of failure predominates.
Performance anxiety also affects women, interfering with subjective arousal and vaginal lubrication. When arousal and orgasm are taken out of the context of sharing pleasure and made into a performance goal, anxiety increases and desire decreases.
inhibitions.
Sex is fun. Allow yourself to experience pleasure-oriented sexuality What types of inhibitions (roadblocks) interfere with the natural progression of desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction?
Inhibitions include psychological, relational, or sexual factors that block pleasure. Typical inhibitions are poor body image, reluctance to initiate, unwillingness to let go in front of the spouse, embarrassment at being nude, self-consciousness about making sexual requests, reluc-tance to try an erotic scenario, and fear of embarrassment or rejection. Inhibitions take the fun out of sexuality. Inhibitions result in rigid sex roles and stereotyped sexual expression. Sex becomes mechanical and stale, draining desire. For example, the couple has sex only late at night, with no lights, after the male’s nonverbal initiation, with limited foreplay, use of the missionary position, and perfunctory afterplay. Even if functional for both partners (it is less likely to be functional for the woman), how much fun is it? Few people look forward to that predictable, stereotyped scenario.
Inhibitions are a psychological form of withholding. You are not free with yourself or with the spouse. Psychologically and sexually, you are hiding behind a wall; you are guarded and inhibited. Allow sexuality to be open, flowing, and free.
obsessions and compulsions.
Obsessions and compulsions are sexual turnoffs. Sometimes they are a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but usually the problem is linked to sexual expression. Obsessive thoughts interfere with spontaneity and communication. For example, the husband who is obsessed by a fetish is shut off from the spouse.
A woman who obsesses that a wife and mother should not enjoy oral sex blocks pleasure. Compulsive behavior is off-putting.
Washing genitals can increase sexual comfort, but compulsive, ritualistic washing is a turnoff. Compulsive behavior such as counting intercourse strokes, using three different forms of birth control, and immediately jumping up to wash off semen, are turnoffs.
Obsessive-compulsive sexual behavior is based on the irrational fear of dirtiness and contamination. In fact, genital secretions are healthy. There are more germs in your mouth than on your genitals. An advantage of a monogamous relationship is that you can enjoy sex without fear of STDs or HIV/AIDS. Sexual obsessions and compulsions rob the couple of healthy, vital marital sexuality.
shame.
Shame refers to negative thoughts and feelings based on past experiences. The sad reality is over 90 percent of women and men were subject to negative sexual experiences in their past. This refers not only to the major traumas of child sexual abuse, incest, and rape, but to being sexually humiliated, guilt over masturbation or fantasies, being sexually rejected or ridiculed, having a sexual dysfunction, having an unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease, being exposed to or being peeped on, receiving obscene phone calls, or being sexually harassed.
Unfortunately, it is common to have confusing, negative, traumatic, or guilt-inducing incidents in childhood, adolescence, adulthood, or during all of these life stages. This is not the way it should be, but is the reality. These experiences are better confronted and dealt with, then accepted, not kept secret. The worst thing about a traumatic incident is that it becomes a shameful secret that controls sexual self-esteem.
Like guilt, shame has no positive function. Shame is more irrational because people blame themselves for something they did not cause. Why “blame the victim”? They dealt with the situation as well as they could, given their awareness and resources at the time. The “victim” should feel pride in having survived. Guilt lies with the perpetrator; there is no reason for the survivor to feel shame or guilt. The adage “Living well is the best revenge” is an optimal way to think about negative sexual experiences. Do not blame yourself; take pride in being a survivor.
Express sexuality in a manner that reinforces self-esteem and your intimate relationship. Be a proud survivor, not a victim controlled by shame.
confronting and changing sexual poisons.
Realizing that you feel controlled by a sexual poison need not cause embarrassment or depression. Knowledge is power.
Becoming aware of the poison and its self-defeating effects is a first step. Accept, rather than deny or minimize. With increased awareness, you reduce the poisons control. It is a “trap”; replace it with sexually healthy ways of thinking, acting, and feeling. For example, the poison is guilty withdrawal after an incident of masturbating to a “900” phone fantasy. Share that information with the spouse within 24 hours so that it does not become a shameful secret. You agree to a negative contingency (such as cleaning the bathrooms for a month or sending a $25 check to a cause you vehemently oppose) each time you use the “900” line.
Rather than “hiding out” after an incident, the couple is urged to engage in an intimate date. The poison is challenged. It no longer controls couple sexuality. The one-two combination is to confront the poison so that it is eliminated and to reassert a healthy role for marital sexuality.
Rich and robin.
Rich and Robin began dating as high school seniors. The “two “Rs” were envied by friends as a happy, stable couple. They dated through college with only two minor breakups and married exactly a year after graduation. When they entered therapy, they had been married 4 years and had an 18-month-old daughter, Rich was successful in computer marketing and actively involved in the care of their daughter. This enabled Robin to pursue her academic career as a Ph.D. student in literature. They were viewed by family and friends as a model couple, moving ahead with individual, couple, and family lives. Rich and Robin were affectionate in public, and because they had a baby, people naively assumed that they were a sexually active couple. People do not realize the difficulties and pain that occur behind a bedroom door.
Rich and Robin were controlled by turnoffs and poisons, including several remnants from their premarital relationship.
Robin felt very guilty about contracting a sexually transmitted disease during that time when she had broken up with Rich. She transmitted chlamydia to Rich, who had been furious and blaming. Rich was viewed by friends as easy-going, but Robin knew how angry he could be. He never hit her, but had thrown things and put his fist through a wall. Robin was intimidated by his anger.
Early in the relationship, they used sex to calm the anger. Robin came to resent this, especially Rich’s demands for oral sex. Robin viewed fellatio as Rich’s pacifier and found this a turnoff. Even before marriage, sexual frequency and quality (especially the latter) dramatically decreased.
The honeymoon had been a disaster. Rich demanded and forced fellatio after heavy drinking at the wedding reception. This was their only sexual experience during the 2-week honeymoon.
Awkwardness and resentment built, especially Rich’s hostile satire of the couple as the only husband and wife in America who had not consummated their marriage (in fact, 1.5 percent of marriages are not consummated during the first year).
Robin wanted to get pregnant, and they developed a pattern of having sex in the middle of the night. Their daughter was conceived through a 2 A.M. intercourse. Although they seldom discussed the no-sex state of the marriage, each was privately ashamed and embarrassed. Robin blamed Rich’s s angry, demanding approach and unwillingness to share feelings. Rich blamed the problem totally on Robin, seeing her as cold and inhibited. Rich felt that Robin had lied during the premarital years, when they felt romantic love and had enthusiastic sex.
What brought the chronic problem to a crisis was that Robin discovered Rich was purchasing oral sex at a massage parlor on a weekly basis. Although he paid in cash, Robin became suspicious because debt was mounting. When confronted, Rich tried to finesse and minimize the problem. He finally admitted the paid sex incidents, but blamed them on Robin for withholding sex. He assured her that he used condoms, but she insisted they both be tested for STDs and HIV. The results were negative. The physician suggested consulting a marriage therapist with a subspecialty in sex therapy.
Robin and Rich were extremely uncomfortable during the first therapy session. They believed the cultural myth that couples in their 20s do not have sexual problems. In reality, sexual problems are the main cause of divorce during the first 3 years of marriage.
When they realized they were not alone, feelings of stigma were reduced. The therapist put the problem in perspective,like many married couples, Robin and Rich had not developed a comfortable, functional couple sexual style. Sex cannot be treated with benign neglect; this results in a no-sex or low-sex marriage.
After the initial meeting, individual sexual histories were scheduled. Without the spouse present, each person had an opportunity to review positive and negative elements of his or her sexual development and to explore attitudes, behavior, and emotions. The therapist asked each to focus on his or her role, rather than blame the spouse. Secrets, turnoffs, and poisons were carefully assessed.
In the feedback session, the therapist observed that when Rich and Robin began as a couple, they felt open and caring. Over the years, frustrations, secrets, resentment, bitterness, and poisons built and compounded. Respect, trust, and intimacy eroded.
Living incongruent lives increased emotional stress. It is draining to appear to be a happy couple while in reality feeling alienated and trapped in a no-sex marriage. The goal of sex therapy is to confront personal, marital and sexual poisons and to revitalize the intimate bond. This entails dealing with secrets and turnoffs and breaking down walls of alienation and avoidance. Rich and Robin needed to begin thinking, talking, acting, and feeling like an intimate team.
The therapist pointed out “traps” each needed to monitor.
Robin had to stop seeing sex as Rich’s domain, instead valuing sexuality for herself and their marital bond. She needed to confront anger and resentment, not use sex as a way of withholding or getting even. She could use her veto power to stop a sexual activity that she experienced as aversive. She reduced guilty feelings about the STD and did not allow that to control her sexual self-esteem. Rich was understanding and supportive of these changes, but reluctant to confront his traps. His biggest issue was eliminating angry sexual demands and intimate coercion. The therapist advised instituting a 48-hour prohibition on sexual activity after an angry incident. Rich had to stop judging and blaming Robin.
Rebuilding the marital bond and revitalizing sexuality are not easy, but are doable. Rich and Robin were committed to their marriage and family, but the poisons were severe. They had to confront the poisons, with each spouse committed to eliminating (or at least significantly reducing) these. Each partner had to be responsible for his or her behavior. Gradually, they began feeling and acting like an intimate team. The marital bond of respect, trust, and intimacy was badly frayed, but was still intact and open to being revitalized.
The change process was uneven, two steps forward and one step back. It is easier to confront a poison before it takes hold, but for Rich and Robin their poisons were chronic. They liked the analogy of marriage as an emotional bank account. Premaritally, they had made big deposits and there were few withdrawals.
Since marriage, there had been few deposits (their child was the main one) and many withdrawals, especially in the sexual area.
They had to conscientiously make small, steady, intimacy deposits and guard against poisonous withdrawals.
The change process was arduous and required a great deal of psychological energy. Robin assertively vetoed what she found uncomfortable. Rich stopped intimate coercion. They did each trust that the other spouse was dedicated to revitalizing the sexual bond. If an incident got them off track, the partner who was resonsible assured that it was not intentional, and this took away the poison.
Rich was surprised at how much he enjoyed sensual, nondemand touching. Robin joked that they were better at pleasuring than at sex. The therapist reinforced the importance of emotional intimacy and nondemand pleasuring as a solid basis for couple sexuality. He encouraged them to confront poisonous attitudes and behavior. Sexuality could not bloom if poisonous feelings and turnoffs were present (like weeds overrunning a flower garden).
It was Robin who initiated the return to intercourse. She requested that they maintain the prohibition on quickie intercourses and fellatio to orgasm. Rich agreed to honor this. He was enthusiastic about interactive, giving, prolonged sexual experiences. Robin taking the role of requestor and guider was a significant breakthrough. Equally important was monitoring turnoffs. For example, if Rich became frustrated and angry, rather than acting out, he called a time-out. They left the bedroom, brewed herbal tea, and talked for half an hour over the kitchen table. Robin listened empathically and validated his feelings, even if she did not agree with his proposed course of action. They went to sleep as intimate friends, with the agreement that they would discuss the problem during therapy if they could not resolve it by themselves.
At therapy termination they planned follow-up meetings and relapse-prevention strategies. Poisons are never totally gone. You have to monitor poisons and be committed to not fall into old traps. Individually and as a couple, you must value and nurture emotional and sexual intimacy.
confronting and reducing sexual turnoffs.
Changing behavior is seldom easy, nor is it total. Even people who have successfully stopped smoking and have not had a cigarette in years still experience urges to smoke. It is easier to totally cease a behavior than to moderate it; for example, it is easier to stop smoking than to moderate eating. Intimacy and sexuality are areas where balance and moderation should be the norm, which makes the change process challenging.
Couples with a no-sex or low-sex marriage must struggle to revitalize intimacy and desire. Some poisons are totally eliminated, but others need to be monitored. For example, a couple with a history of physical and verbal abuse is committed to abstain from abusive behavior. If conflict and anger intensify, there is fear of regression. It is hoped that they will learn to utilize emotional-regulation skills and the time-out technique. Fears and resentments never disappear, but they will no longer control the couple.
Individually and as a couple, you can confront marital and sexual turnoffs. They do not deserve power over your life or sexuality. Do not allow them to control your present or future. The person with obsessive thoughts about a sexually transmitted disease or an affair accepts the reality of the past, but does not let this control the present. You cannot change the past (although you can learn from it). Take responsibility for yourself in the present.
Do not remain stuck in the victim role. You are a survivor who is aware of poisons and is committed to not repeat self-defeating behavior. You are empowered to view sexuality as positive, accept sexuality as an integral part of your personality, and express sexuality so that it enhances your life and marriage.
Exercise,identifying and changing sexual poisons and turnoffs.
This exercise involves a concrete, personal assessment of sexual poisons and turnoffs. Develop a realistic plan to eliminate or drastically reduce them. Do the assessment phase separately, then work together on the change phase.
Each of you must list your poisons and turnoffs. Then list couple poisons and turnoffs. Focus on your turnoffs; do not second-guess your spouses. Examples of individual poisons include dwelling on angry thoughts, resentment over a sexual incident, inhibition about making sexual requests, avoidance of sexual topics, a secret arousal pattern, obsessive-compulsive reaction to vaginal secretions, irrational fear of pregnancy, making yourself unattractive, feeling controlled by childhood sexual trauma, overscheduling so there is no time for intimacy, making sexual demands or threats, being afraid to try new erotic scenarios and techniques, and feeling that you do not deserve sexual pleasure.
Make two columns. In the first column, list the advantages of maintaining this poison. Be honest. You maintain the poison because it protects you from anxiety or fear of failure, it is a way to control or punish the spouse, it gives you a sense of power, or it serves to maintain the status quo. Are these in your best interest?
In the second column, write how your life and marriage would be better without the poisons. What would you be free to try? Would this facilitate sexual anticipation and desire? You owe it to yourself and to the marriage to challenge and reduce poisons and turnoffs.
What is your role (not your spouses) in maintaining couple poisons? Examples include your role in the pursuer,distancer dance, the intimate coercion process, avoiding couple time, angry arguments, attack-counterattack cycle, using alcohol as a way to avoid intimacy, not making sexual requests yet resenting your spouse’s s insensitivity, maintaining an extramarital affair, comparing your spouse with a person you fantasize about, or blaming problems on family of origin. Next to each couple poison, draw two columns. In the first column, list the advantages of maintaining this poison. For example, you maintain the status quo; it is easier to blame your spouse than to take personal responsibility; it is a reason to avoid initiating; you desire to maintain emotional and sexual distance; you fear that if the issue is addressed, it will destroy the marriage; you need to maintain secrecy; or you get sympathy from friends and family. Is that what you want? Is that healthy for your marriage? In the second column, list the advantages for you and for the marriage of resolving the sexual problem. What will it take to confront couple poisons? How much time and energy? What attitudes and behaviors need to change? Do you value the benefits of a secure, satisfying marital bond? Be specific and concrete.
Exchange lists as you enter the change phase. It is easy to become defensive and counterattack when reading the spouse’s s material; that is counterproductive. The key to change is approaching sexuality as an intimate team. You trust that the spouse is on your side and will help you confront poisons.
Sexuality is a team sport; do not turn against your intimate partner. Stay away from the “guilt-blame game.” Your spouse is being vulnerable in disclosing turnoffs. Honor that vulnerability; do not turn it against that person. Listen to your spouse’s requests of how you can support the change process. Overcoming turnoffs and poisons is a one-two combination: (1) each spouse takes responsibility for changing his or her attitudes and behavior, and (2) the partners work together to eliminate the poisons and revitalize marital sexuality.
Develop a specific, clear plan to confront and reduce individual and couple poisons. Your spouse states how he or she will be supportive. What specifically will you do to promote change?
What is your spouse committed to stopping so that the process is not subverted? No change plan is perfect, but it will be successful if it is clear, positive, gradual, and you are willing to problem-solve when you encounter difficulties.
Change is a couple task. Sexuality is a shared, intimate process.
You cannot force or coerce your spouse. This exercise and the follow-up experiences give you practice at being an intimate team.
Instead of denying poisons and turnoffs, focus on changing so that these no longer control your marriage and sexuality.
closing thoughts.
There are a myriad of personal and couple turnoffs that can poison the sexual relationship. When poisons are identified and confronted, they lose power. When people assume responsibility for their own turnoffs, recognize that each person has a right to express feelings, share problems with the spouse’s, realize the spouse’s intentions are not to poison the relationship, and work as an intimate team to confront and eliminate these problems, change is well on the way. Successfully confronting turnoffs is a source of pride.
Removing poisons is necessary, but not sufficient, for revitalizing marital sexuality. Intimacy, nondemand pleasuring, and erotic scenarios and techniques are integral to healthy sexuality. Affirming sex as a shared pleasure, a way to reinforce intimacy, and a tension-reducer allows sexuality to play a positive role in your marriage.
Personal and couple turnotts need to be monitored so that they do not regain power. You have devoted time and energy to identifying and eliminating poisons, but you cannot stop there.
Be aware and vigilant so that negative attitudes and habits do not return. It is normal to have “lapses”; do not allow them to become relapses. An adage is “marriage cannot rest on its laurels.” Be willing to address personal, relational, and sexual issues so that these remain free of poisons.
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Saturday, January 1, 2011
Rekindling Desire. Chapter 2. Whose Problem Is It,His, Hers, or Ours?
Inhibited sexual desire and no-sex or low-sex marriages are not caused by one factor or one spouse. Sexuality is complex, with many causes and dimensions. In addition, there are individual, couple, and cultural differences in sexual attitudes, experiences, feelings, and values.
Sexual desire and desire problems are best understood as a couple issue. This facilitates a comfortable, productive way to think about, discuss, address, and enhance sexual desire. The couple approach is especially valuable when considering what maintains, as opposed to what caused, inhibited sexual desire.
Regardless of what originally caused the problem, you become stuck in a self-defeating cycle. It is considerably easier to break this cycle if you approach and talk about sexual desire as a couple issue. The traps of guilt and blame help maintain this as a chronic sexual problem that is a drain on your marital bond. Viewing inhibited sexual desire as a couple problem reduces guilt, defensiveness, and blaming.
Sexuality as a couple issue is one of the most helpful, yet hardest to accept, guidelines. When initially presented, the couple approach is received enthusiastically as a way to break the deadlock and promote change. The concept of being an intimate team is particularly inviting. However, when you encounter inevitable setbacks, frustrations, and disappointments, it is easy to revert to blaming. It is easier to blame your spouse than to be responsible for and change your own attitudes and behavior.
A core concept in couple therapy is to take responsibility for yourself. You are not responsible for your spouse. Focus on making personal changes in attitudes, behaviors, and feelings, this takes thought, work, and discipline. It is neither your responsibility nor your role to change your spouse. Communicate with your spouse, share feelings, and make requests for change.
You can influence your spouse, but cannot make that individual change. Especially, you cannot coerce your spouse to change.
Ideally, marriage operates through a positive influence process ,each spouse is responsible for self, and you are respectful and trusting toward each other. You discuss feelings, make requests, commit to a change process, and support and reinforce individual and couple changes. In a low-sex or no-sex marriage, the positive influence process has broken down (at least, in regard to intimacy and sexuality).
You are caught in a vicious cycle. The more sex is avoided, the lower is sexual desire. You become trapped in a pattern of blame-guilt-alienation. The self-defeating cycle is anticipatory anxiety, tension-filled sex, and sexual avoidance. You are not an intimate team working together to understand and resolve the sexual problem. Instead, the sexual problem dominates and drains your relationship. You alternate between self-blame and blaming the spouse. You are stuck in a “Who is the bad guy?” struggle.
When intimacy breaks down into “good guy,bad guy” roles, the possibility of resolution is nonexistent.
when one spouse always pushes sex.
Many couples stay stuck in the struggle where one spouse reports high desire, always pushes sex, and bitterly complains of being rejected. The other spouse feels pressured and besieged; it is upsetting to be forced to say no. Consciously or unconsciously, that person avoids intimacy. This pursuer,avoider pattern is the opposite of the positive influence, intimate team approach.
The partner pushing sex rejects approaching it as a couple problem, preferring to blame the spouse. The partners clings to the belief that inhibited sexual desire is totally the spouse’s fault.
Typically, it is the husband who pushes sex, but it can be the wife.
Whether it is the traditional pattern or a role reversal, the couple dynamic is amazingly similar. The higher-desire spouse blames the lower-desire spouse and claims there is no reason for him to change. The lower-desire spouse is mired in guilt and self-blame, which alternates with blaming the partner for being insensitive and coercive. It is hard for either person to stay with the concept of sexual desire as a couple issue. Even when the therapist presents it as a couple problem and the partners initially agree, it is easy to slip back into old attitudes and habits at the first disappointment.
The higher-desire spouse claims it does not help to stop pushing intercourse, and anyway, he does not have a sexual problem. Even if he does not overtly push, his sexual intensity, blaming, and pressure are still felt. Frustration and anger do not invite emotional sharing, touching, or sexual intimacy.
No matter how the inhibited sexual desire pattern started, the higher-desire spouse’s attitudes, feelings, and behavior exacerbate or, at least, maintain the pattern. His blaming and guilt-inducing are alienating and reduce her sexual desire. Seeing the spouse as your hostile, worst critic does not facilitate trust or desire. Sex then involves conflict and coercion, not pleasure and mutuality. This is not to blame the higher-desire spouse or make him the “bad guy,” but to highlight his role in maintaining the problem. Inhibited sexual desire is best dealt with by thinking, talking, and acting as an intimate team. The higher-desire spouse does not make sex inviting. Sex is a pressured performance to placate him and avoid his anger.
The valid points the higher-desire spouse makes are that avoidance makes the problem worse, sex is a bonding experience, and rejection is emotionally alienating. The invalid points are that it is all the partner’s fault and that increasing the frequency of sex is the key.
A prime guideline to successfully address inhibited sexual desire is that the quality of emotional and sexual intimacy is more important than intercourse frequency. To break the cycle of a no-sex or low-sex marriage, sexuality needs to be comfortable, inviting, and pleasurable for each spouse. Intimacy, affection, sensuality, playfulness, and eroticism, as well as intercourse, are valued by both spouses. The higher-desire spouse can change by adopting a nondemand approach to touching and by valuing broad-based sexuality. Not all touching can or should lead to intercourse. The single most important guideline for the higher-desire spouse is to respect and honor the partner’s emotional and sexual feelings. Her feelings and needs are as important as his. Intimate coercion has no place in marriage.
Coercion poisons sexual desire.
the spouse with lower sexual desire.
In our sex-saturated society, it is hard not to feel deficient or guilty about lack of sexual desire. Yet it is a problem for one in three adult women and one in seven adult men (with the figures for males increasing with age). The more guilty, angry, depressed, and self-blaming the person is, the worse the problem becomes. You pile one negative emotion on top of another, which subverts self-esteem and sexual desire.
What can the lower-desire spouse do? First, increase awareness ,do not avoid thinking and talking about intimacy and sexuality.
Second, take a problem-solving approach; do not feel ashamed or self-punitive. Third, approach the spouse as your supportive, intimate friend, not as your worst critic. Fourth, carefully assess what you value about intimacy, affection, sensuality, playfulness, eroticism, and intercourse. Take responsibility for your sexuality.
Identify aspects of intimacy and sexuality that you value for yourself and the marriage. Sex is not a way to placate the spouse.
You feel defensive, guilty, or angry and have lost track of the positive functions of touching, intimacy, and sexuality. Changing inhibited sexual desire is a one-two combination,first, increasing awareness and taking personal responsibility, and second, viewing desire as a couple issue and being an intimate team in revitalizing sexuality.
Are there special issues when it is the man with inhibited sexual desire? It is more acceptable for him to admit to erection or orgasm problems than admit to not being sexually interested.
Traditionally, masculinity and sexuality are closely linked. Too much of the man’s self-esteem is tied to his penis.
Male desire problems have a multitude of causes. Among these are pressure for perfect performance, fear of pregnancy, embarrassment due to sexual dysfunction, greater confidence with masturbation than with partner sex, alcohol or drug abuse, a way to maintain emotional distance or punish the spouse, a secret such as a fetish arousal pattern or sexual orientation issue, being distracted by work or money concerns, being involved with children or extended family to the detriment of couple time, not valuing marital sex, side effects of medication, few spontaneous erections so that he is hesitant to initiate sex, feeling intimidated by the wife’s sexual desire, feeling that it is unmanly to ask for stimulation to facilitate arousal, low self-esteem, or depression.
The man has to be aware of and take responsibility for his desire problem. He asks the spouse to be his intimate friend in rebuilding sexual desire and erotic functioning.
The spouse with inhibited desire wishes the partner would “back off” and “reduce the sexual pressure.” This is necessary, but not sufficient. You have to build bridges to sexual desire. Enlist the spouse as a facilitator of desire and pleasure, rather than making him the one who pushes for sexual performance. Is it worthwhile for you to change your attitudes toward intimacy and sexuality? Do you trust the spouse to be your intimate friend?
desire discrepancy,an alternative way of thinking and communicating about sexual desire.
When you chose to marry, you did not decide to enmesh your lives and become one person. A viable marriage involves a balance between individual autonomy and sharing your lives as an intimate couple. If you needed to feel equally desirous to engage in an activity, the marriage would be stagnant and blocked. One spouse likes dancing; the other is enthusiastic about board games.
One spouse prefers the mountains to the ocean; the partner prefers bed-and-breakfast inns to resort hotels. One spouse enjoys creating elaborate salads; the other’s favorite meal is meat loaf with macaroni and cheese. Yet even with those individual differences, couples are able to participate in and enjoy a range of activities. One enjoys certain experiences more, and that is okay.
They reach a balance that recognizes individuality as well as coupleness. There is no need for a power struggle. Discrepancies in hobbies, vacations, and foods are accepted and even enjoyed.
Let us give a personal example. Emily is a quilter and an antiquer who loves craft shows, especially in small, historic towns.
Barry appreciates and enjoys these activities, but not as much.
Barry loves cities, ethnic foods, and plays, which Emily appreciates, but finds overwhelming as a steady diet. We accept these differences and work with them. Each spouse offers experiences that expand and enrich both partners’ lives. Each person is able to say no to an activity that is aversive or excessive.
For example, 2 hours is Barry’s maximum at a quilt show,he does his thing (reading, biking, or writing) and we meet later for dinner. Emily finds more than 3 days in New York intolerable, so we do not plan more than a weekend trip. Desire discrepancies are successfully accommodated. We communicate feelings and requests and reach agreements, rather than settle for lukewarm compromises.
Can couples use this model in discussing and working with discrepancies in sexual desire? We believe not only that they can; this is the preferred approach. It ends the power struggle and breaks the blame/guilt cycle. Discrepancies in sexual desire are conceptualized as a couple issue. Each spouse states feelings, makes requests, and as a couple you develop agreements that nurture desire and sexuality. Accept the desire discrepancy; do not fall into the guilt/blame trap or be coercive. Commit to marital sexuality, enjoy touching, and adopt a broad perspective on intimacy and sexuality. This provides a solid foundation from which to revitalize sexual desire.
broad-based intimacy and sexuality.
There is more to sexuality than intercourse and more to intimacy than sexuality. A key to change is awareness of the many dimensions of intimacy and sexuality. The prescription for satisfying marital sex is integrating an intimate relationship, nondemand pleasuring, and erotic scenarios and techniques. Even in the best marriages, a mutually satisfying sexual encounter does not occur all the time,in fact, the couple is lucky if it occurs most of the time. Contrary to movies, love songs, and magazines, not all sex is romantic, mutual, functional, or satisfying. There is normal variability in sexual expression.
Inhibited sexual desire often reflects an intimacy issue. How emotionally close does each spouse want to be? Is more intimacy better? Some couples prefer the best friend marital style, with a great deal of closeness; others prefer the complementary couple style of retaining autonomy with moderate closeness; others prefer the conflict-minimizing style, where personal boundaries are strong; still others adopt the emotionally expressive style, where there are periods of great closeness mixed with periods of anger and distance. You need to develop a mutually acceptable level of intimacy that fits your emotional needs and life situation.
Sexuality is one way to express intimacy, but not the sole means or even the primary means. Sharing feelings, being affectionate, cuddling on the couch and in bed, disclosing hopes and fears, and sharing your lives as trusted, respectful friends are the core of intimacy.
Sensuality and nondemand pleasuring are the basis of broad-based sexuality. Sensuality involves pleasure-oriented touching,body massage, taking showers or baths together, kissing, playful touching while clothed or semiclothed. Touching is valued for itself, occurring inside and outside the bedroom.
Staying in touch is as likely to involve a hug as it is intercourse. A hug can evolve toward arousal and orgasm, but normally does not. Cuddling before going to sleep and on awakening provides a solid basis for loving feelings. Dancing in the living room to your favorite music, while engaging in playful touching and kissing, is inviting and at times serves as a bridge to sexual desire. Giving a neck or back massage while watching TV is a way to maintain connection. Showering together in the morning or before bed can be playful and pleasurable. Nondemand pleasuring is the bedrock of a healthy sexual relationship.
Eroticism includes a range of manual, oral, rubbing, and intercourse scenarios and techniques. Eroticism serves to turn you and the spouse on. Eroticism includes intercourse, but is not limited to intercourse. To increase eroticism, you can engage in multiple stimulation before and during intercourse. Multiple stimulation involves kissing, caressing, breast stimulation, testicle stimulation, anal stimulation, and the use of fantasy.
The broader the intimate, sensual, and erotic repertoire, the easier it is to maintain sexual desire. Both partners are open to a variety of ways to express intimacy, affection, sensuality, playfulness, and eroticism. Sometimes touching is for emotional intimacy, sometimes for affection; sometimes it is playful, sometimes sensual, sometimes erotic, and sometimes lustful.
Communicating feelings and sharing touch help maintain sexual desire.
Jill and stefan.
When they finally arrived in the therapist’s office, Jill and Stefan were a demoralized couple trapped in the power struggle of whose fault it was that they had a low-sex marriage. They had been married 6 years and had a 3-year-old daughter. Jill very much wanted a second child. Stefan was angry at the lack of sex and feared that Jill only wanted him for “stud” services; he would be trapped in a child-centered marriage. Jill felt that Stefan was being irrational and withholding; before marriage they had agreed on two children. Stefan counterattacked, saying that Jill had tricked him into believing that she valued sex. Both agreed that their best sex had been premaritally. When dating, they had sex each night they were together. When they began living together, sex was three to five times a week. This decreased to once or twice a week 4 months before marriage. During that time, Jill began experiencing inhibited sexual desire.
The 2-week honeymoon to Hawaii was the beginning of the intense struggle over sexual initiation and frequency. Stefan had the expectation of daily sex, while Jill’s expectation was for a fun, scenic, romantic time. Jill felt coerced by Stefan’s sexual pressure.
Stefan felt betrayed and played with by Jill’s sexual avoidance. Jill was not orgasmic during either of the two times they had sex.
When the newlyweds returned from Hawaii, friends joked what a wonderful, sexy honeymoon it must have been, which increased the upset because the couple resented having to lie and pretend.
When you begin fighting about sexual initiation and frequency it is easy to fall into the cycle of anticipatory anxiety, negative or mediocre experiences, and sexual avoidance. Guilt and blame become the dominant emotions. This pattern was broken when they had sex with the intention of conceiving their daughter, but they quickly regressed after Jill became pregnant. Since the birth, intercourse was once or twice a month. Stefan stopped initiating because of his anger at being rejected. Jill felt that Stefan rejected her affectionate overtures, and she felt emotionally abandoned.
Even though there was severe alienation, Jill very much wanted a second child.
The therapist found it hard being in the same room with Jill and Stefan. The tension was palpable. It was easier for them to socialize with other couples and do things as a family than to be a couple.
Fortunately, neither was threatening divorce. Divorce threats add a destructive dynamic. Jill and Stefan shared life goals and religious values, parented well, and felt supported by family and friends, all of which reinforced marital stability. They thought of themselves as a viable couple, committed to their marriage.
However, the sexual problem was tearing at and weakening their marital bond. Jill questioned her love for Stefan; she saw him as irrational and mean in regard to sex. Stefan confided to the therapist that he was thinking of beginning an affair. The therapist told Stefan that affairs usually become more emotional and complicated than planned. As well, affairs are much easier to get into than out of. Stefan committed to not have an affair while they were in couple therapy.
The first therapeutic task was to break the cycle of guilt and blame. Stefan and Jill began thinking of themselves as an intimate team, striving to revitalize marital sexuality. The therapist’s optimism helped them craft an expectation that this was a changeable problem. Inhibited sexual desire was the mutual enemy Their marital commitment was the best prognostic sign for revitalizing sexuality.
Marital sex had never gotten on track, and inhibited desire was a growing threat to their marital bond. Building marital sexuality would take a great deal of communication and effort on both people’s part. Good intentions were necessary, but not enough. It is crucial to approach the problem as a couple, break the cycle of blame/guilt, and cease the attack/counterattack pattern that demoralized and drained them. Playing “Who’s the bad guy?” was getting them nowhere. Stefan agreed to stop name-calling and blaming. Jill lowered her wall of alienation and emotionally reinvested in the marriage. Reluctantly, she agreed to postpone pregnancy until sexuality was reestablished. She would use a diaphragm until a joint decision was made to become pregnant.
Stefan was hesitant to agree to a temporary prohibition on intercourse, but this acknowledged the reality of the situation.
With the performance pressure of intercourse removed, they had the freedom to explore touching as a means to feel connected and share pleasure. This was very inviting for Jill, who missed affectionate touch and sharing intimate feelings.
Rebuilding intimacy and sexuality was a complex, difficult couple task. Without the support and suggestions of the therapist, they would have given up in frustration and reverted to the guilt/ blame pattern. One of the major functions of therapy is to keep motivation high enough so that couples persevere through frustrations and setbacks to achieve the satisfaction of a pleasure oriented couple sexual style. A breakthrough for Stefan occurred when he realized that Jill was not punishing him by withholding sex. Her anxieties and inhibitions were real, not manipulative.
Most important, Stefan realized that his being an intimate spouse, rather than a coercive, angry person, helped reduce Jill’s inhibitions. When Jill realized that she could veto a sexual activity and Stefan would honor her veto, her anxiety was reduced and she felt less need to veto.
Jill found that sensual experiences led to erotic feelings. Jill was receptive and responsive to manual and oral stimulation,she preferred the term outercourse. Stefan’s rigid view that “only intercourse was sex” melted under these new experiences. It was Stefan who began insisting that not all touching had to lead to intercourse, an insight Jill greatly appreciated.
Intercourse was reintroduced as a “special pleasuring experience.” Intercourse was part of the pleasuring process, not the pass,fail test of their relationship. A side effect of the pleasuring exercises was that Stefan became a slower, more sensitive lover. This made intercourse more appealing. Jill’s sexual response was similar to that of the majority of women; orgasm with manual or oral stimulation is easier than during intercourse.
With self-acceptance and partner acceptance, Jill and Stefan developed a comfortable, functional couple sexual style. Not all touching culminated in intercourse, which helped Jill build sexual anticipation and excitement.
Becoming pregnant with a planned, wanted child is a major impetus for sexual desire. This was true not only for Jill, but for Stefan as well. Intercourse with the hope of a second child was a strong sexual motivator. In addition, they continued broad-based affectionate, sensual, and erotic experiences. This provided the bedrock for sexual desire.
Jill and Stefan were motivated to maintain and generalize sexual gains. A relapse-prevention plan is integral to sex therapy. Sexual desire cannot rest on its laurels or be taken for granted. Jill and Stefan set aside couple time, when their daughter was being watched by another parent or was asleep. Jill’s initiating sex was important, to reassure Stefan that he did not have to stay in the rigid role of always being the initiator. Equally important, Stefan learned to accept a “no” without withdrawing or punishing Jill.
Stefan did not regress to coercing Jill or calling her names. Jill did not regress to hiding behind a wall of alienation.
For Jill, the keys to generalizing sexual gains were to reinforce intimacy, be open to sensual touching, and enjoy outercourse scenarios. These continued to be her bridges for sexual desire. For Stefan, the keys were feeling that they were an intimate team, enjoying both outercourse and intercourse, and accepting sexual disappointments as normal, rather than as a source of defensiveness and blaming. Stefan and Jill agreed to implement the therapist’s suggestion that once a month they have a sensual date where orgasm and intercourse were prohibited. This allowed them freedom to play and enjoy touching.
functions of sexuality.
At its essence, sexuality is a couple, not an individual, experience.
That is another reason that inhibited sexual desire is best understood as a couple issue. Sexuality is best when both spouses feel free to initiate affectionate, sensual, playful, erotic, and intercourse experiences. Equally important, both feel free to say no or suggest an alternative way to stay connected. It is optimal that both spouses value sexuality as a shared pleasure. Couples who are comfortable with touching inside and outside of the bedroom, who are aware of the value and dimensions of touching, and who realize that not all touching leads to intercourse have a solid base for sexual desire. Each component of the sexual prescription,an intimate relationship, nondemand pleasuring, and erotic scenarios and techniques,require couple involvement.
Each person is responsible for her or his sexuality. For desire to remain vital, the couple continues to share as an intimate team.
Exercise,sexual desire as a couple issue.
This exercise involves two steps,the first is that each spouse writes self-blaming or blaming-the-partner statements. Next to each statement, they each write a healthy counter-statement that challenges irrational, self-defeating blaming. The second step is to discuss new, healthy understandings about sexual desire as a couple issue. They should write down and save these new understandings so that they can use these as a resource in the coming weeks, months, and years.
Examples of self-blaming and partner-blaming statements (with counters) include “It’s all my fault.”,Sexual desire is complex; there is not an angel and a devil.
“My spouse doesn’t love me.”,Love and sexual desire are not the same.
“It’s guilt from my Catholic background.”,Guilt inhibits sexual desire. However, Catholic couples report high desire and satisfaction. The new Catholic teaching (almost all religions agree on this) is pro-sex in marriage.
“If only my spouse would change, my desire would be fine.”,You can only change yourself. You cannot change the spouse, although you can encourage and support your spouse in making changes.
“If only I hadn’t gotten pregnant.”,“If only” thinking is self-defeating. Deal with the present; you cannot change the past.
“I can’t enjoy sex until I lose 20 pounds.”,A positive body image is important, but sexuality should not be held hostage to weight or a perfect body image. Sexual desire is based in the relationship and on giving and receiving pleasure-oriented touching.
“Romantic love is gone; there’s nothing I can do.”, Romantic love is very fragile; it seldom lasts more than 2 years and typically dissipates after 6 months. Sexual desire is based on mature intimacy, not romantic love.
“The best sex is premarital or extramarital.”,Marital sex is special and can be high quality and satisfying.
“We’ve been trapped in a no-sex marriage for so long, it will never change.”,Chronic problems are difficult, but motivated couples do revitalize marital sexuality.
“We have the only nonconsummated marriage in the city.”,Because of stigma and embarrassment, people do not discuss this problem. Nonconsummated marriages exist and the problem is resolvable.
“Since my spouse had an affair, I will never trust her or desire to be sexual with her.”,Couples can and do survive affairs. Intimacy and sexuality facilitate the healing process and are an integral component in rebuilding the trust bond.
There are many more self-defeating cognitions, but happily, there are even more rational, problem-solving counters.
The second step is to discuss sexual desire as a couple issue.
Write down understandings as a way to acknowledge and reinforce crucial insights. New understandings facilitate self-acceptance, spouse-acceptance, and being an intimate team.
Do this exercise together. Write two to five statements about inhibited sexual desire and the no-sex or low-sex marriage as a couple issue. Be sure these are clear and genuine. Examples are “There is no good guy-bad guy; inhibited sexual desire is the enemy. We will fight it together and revitalize marital sexuality.” “Our love for each other and commitment to the marriage will help us overcome this sexual problem.” “We are good people and a good couple that deserves to enjoy sexuality.” “The sexual problem has been a drain and we have been terrible to each other, but now we are committed to being an intimate team and to developing a vital, satisfying sexual relationship.” “We want to have sex and a baby. We are going to support each other in doing this.” Develop your list of statements, which will allow you to maintain an intimate team approach even when you encounter the inevitable frustrations, disappointments, and setbacks.
confronting desire problems as an intimate couple When Barry treats demoralized couples who have chronic desire problems and marriages where there has been no sex for years, the concept of being an “intimate team” is what keeps them motivated. A crucial aspect of the team concept is not to turn on or attack your spouse. You win or lose as a team. You acknowledge sexual successes and share intimate feelings. When you fail, support and encourage each other; do not engage in blaming.
Learn from the problem and plan for the next encounter. Trust that the spouse has your best interest in mind and wants you to succeed. The most powerful aphrodisiac is two involved partners where each person’s arousal plays off the other’s to create an erotic flow. This is a natural extension of the “give to get” pleasuring guideline.
Sex works best when each spouse is open and receptive. This is the opposite of the self-defeating pattern in which one spouse demands and the other feels coerced and avoids. Each spouses sexual desire and bridges to desire are acknowledged and accepted. Both the higher- and the lower-desire spouse think and talk about sexuality as a couple issue, with the shared goal of establishing a sexual relationship that nurtures the marriage. It is not “his way” or “her way”; it is finding “our way.” Quality of intimacy and sexuality is more important than quantity of intercourse. A comfortable couple sexual style is more important than sexual prowess. The focus is on sharing pleasure, not on intercourse performance. Confronting and changing the no-sex or low-sex marriage are challenges you meet as an intimate team.
When your sexual relationship is disappointing or gets off track, you view this as a lapse. Remaining on the same team ensures that it does not turn into a marital relapse.
Establish positive, realistic expectations for marital sexuality.
Sex is not the most important factor in marriage. Sex is not even the most important aspect of intimacy. Emotional closeness and giving and receiving nondemand touching are the core components of the intimate bond. Eroticism, intercourse and orgasm are special, energizing experiences. When sex works well, it plays a 15 to 20 percent role toward adding to marital vitality and satisfaction. Unfortunately, inhibited sexual desire is more powerful as a marital stress than good sex is as a marital enhancer.
Intimacy includes emotional closeness, trust, affection, sensuality, arousal, intercourse, and bonding. The most satisfying marital sexuality integrates intimacy and eroticism.
Does this mean that the individual loses his or her sexual autonomy? Not at all. Each spouse remains responsible for her or his desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction. Being an intimate team does not mean giving up autonomy or blurring personal boundaries. Healthy sexuality involves developing and maintaining a comfortable, desirous, and satisfying couple sexual style.
Should every sexual experience be functional and satisfying?
This is an unrealistic expectation that will result in relapse. A positive, realistic expectation is that 40 to 50 percent of sexual encounters will be mutually satisfying, 20 to 25 percent will be good for one spouse and okay for the other, 20 to 25 percent will be good for one spouse with the other going along for the ride, and 5 to 15 percent of encounters will be mediocre, unsatisfying, or failures. This is a very different image than is portrayed in movies, on talk shows, and in novels. The reality that 5 to 15 percent of sexual experiences are mediocre, unsatisfying, or dysfunctional is particularly important. This is the kind of sex where one spouse looks at the other and says, “I hope you are enjoying this; it’s for you” and the other says, “I thought this was for you.” The partners who can laugh or shrug off these experiences and get together at a later time when they are awake, aware, desirous, involved, and responsive have the right attitude.
The couple that is frustrated, angry, panicky, or blaming is likely to relapse. Occasional mediocre or poor sexual experiences are normal.
closing thoughts.
Conceptualizing inhibited sexual desire as a couple problem has great advantages,specifically, breaking the guilt/blame cycle.
The one-two combination of personal responsibility and being an intimate team is key. Developing a broad-based couple sexual style sets the framework for satisfying marital sex. Being an intimate couple allows you to confront the no-sex or low-sex marriage and to revitalize marital sexuality.
Sexual desire and desire problems are best understood as a couple issue. This facilitates a comfortable, productive way to think about, discuss, address, and enhance sexual desire. The couple approach is especially valuable when considering what maintains, as opposed to what caused, inhibited sexual desire.
Regardless of what originally caused the problem, you become stuck in a self-defeating cycle. It is considerably easier to break this cycle if you approach and talk about sexual desire as a couple issue. The traps of guilt and blame help maintain this as a chronic sexual problem that is a drain on your marital bond. Viewing inhibited sexual desire as a couple problem reduces guilt, defensiveness, and blaming.
Sexuality as a couple issue is one of the most helpful, yet hardest to accept, guidelines. When initially presented, the couple approach is received enthusiastically as a way to break the deadlock and promote change. The concept of being an intimate team is particularly inviting. However, when you encounter inevitable setbacks, frustrations, and disappointments, it is easy to revert to blaming. It is easier to blame your spouse than to be responsible for and change your own attitudes and behavior.
A core concept in couple therapy is to take responsibility for yourself. You are not responsible for your spouse. Focus on making personal changes in attitudes, behaviors, and feelings, this takes thought, work, and discipline. It is neither your responsibility nor your role to change your spouse. Communicate with your spouse, share feelings, and make requests for change.
You can influence your spouse, but cannot make that individual change. Especially, you cannot coerce your spouse to change.
Ideally, marriage operates through a positive influence process ,each spouse is responsible for self, and you are respectful and trusting toward each other. You discuss feelings, make requests, commit to a change process, and support and reinforce individual and couple changes. In a low-sex or no-sex marriage, the positive influence process has broken down (at least, in regard to intimacy and sexuality).
You are caught in a vicious cycle. The more sex is avoided, the lower is sexual desire. You become trapped in a pattern of blame-guilt-alienation. The self-defeating cycle is anticipatory anxiety, tension-filled sex, and sexual avoidance. You are not an intimate team working together to understand and resolve the sexual problem. Instead, the sexual problem dominates and drains your relationship. You alternate between self-blame and blaming the spouse. You are stuck in a “Who is the bad guy?” struggle.
When intimacy breaks down into “good guy,bad guy” roles, the possibility of resolution is nonexistent.
when one spouse always pushes sex.
Many couples stay stuck in the struggle where one spouse reports high desire, always pushes sex, and bitterly complains of being rejected. The other spouse feels pressured and besieged; it is upsetting to be forced to say no. Consciously or unconsciously, that person avoids intimacy. This pursuer,avoider pattern is the opposite of the positive influence, intimate team approach.
The partner pushing sex rejects approaching it as a couple problem, preferring to blame the spouse. The partners clings to the belief that inhibited sexual desire is totally the spouse’s fault.
Typically, it is the husband who pushes sex, but it can be the wife.
Whether it is the traditional pattern or a role reversal, the couple dynamic is amazingly similar. The higher-desire spouse blames the lower-desire spouse and claims there is no reason for him to change. The lower-desire spouse is mired in guilt and self-blame, which alternates with blaming the partner for being insensitive and coercive. It is hard for either person to stay with the concept of sexual desire as a couple issue. Even when the therapist presents it as a couple problem and the partners initially agree, it is easy to slip back into old attitudes and habits at the first disappointment.
The higher-desire spouse claims it does not help to stop pushing intercourse, and anyway, he does not have a sexual problem. Even if he does not overtly push, his sexual intensity, blaming, and pressure are still felt. Frustration and anger do not invite emotional sharing, touching, or sexual intimacy.
No matter how the inhibited sexual desire pattern started, the higher-desire spouse’s attitudes, feelings, and behavior exacerbate or, at least, maintain the pattern. His blaming and guilt-inducing are alienating and reduce her sexual desire. Seeing the spouse as your hostile, worst critic does not facilitate trust or desire. Sex then involves conflict and coercion, not pleasure and mutuality. This is not to blame the higher-desire spouse or make him the “bad guy,” but to highlight his role in maintaining the problem. Inhibited sexual desire is best dealt with by thinking, talking, and acting as an intimate team. The higher-desire spouse does not make sex inviting. Sex is a pressured performance to placate him and avoid his anger.
The valid points the higher-desire spouse makes are that avoidance makes the problem worse, sex is a bonding experience, and rejection is emotionally alienating. The invalid points are that it is all the partner’s fault and that increasing the frequency of sex is the key.
A prime guideline to successfully address inhibited sexual desire is that the quality of emotional and sexual intimacy is more important than intercourse frequency. To break the cycle of a no-sex or low-sex marriage, sexuality needs to be comfortable, inviting, and pleasurable for each spouse. Intimacy, affection, sensuality, playfulness, and eroticism, as well as intercourse, are valued by both spouses. The higher-desire spouse can change by adopting a nondemand approach to touching and by valuing broad-based sexuality. Not all touching can or should lead to intercourse. The single most important guideline for the higher-desire spouse is to respect and honor the partner’s emotional and sexual feelings. Her feelings and needs are as important as his. Intimate coercion has no place in marriage.
Coercion poisons sexual desire.
the spouse with lower sexual desire.
In our sex-saturated society, it is hard not to feel deficient or guilty about lack of sexual desire. Yet it is a problem for one in three adult women and one in seven adult men (with the figures for males increasing with age). The more guilty, angry, depressed, and self-blaming the person is, the worse the problem becomes. You pile one negative emotion on top of another, which subverts self-esteem and sexual desire.
What can the lower-desire spouse do? First, increase awareness ,do not avoid thinking and talking about intimacy and sexuality.
Second, take a problem-solving approach; do not feel ashamed or self-punitive. Third, approach the spouse as your supportive, intimate friend, not as your worst critic. Fourth, carefully assess what you value about intimacy, affection, sensuality, playfulness, eroticism, and intercourse. Take responsibility for your sexuality.
Identify aspects of intimacy and sexuality that you value for yourself and the marriage. Sex is not a way to placate the spouse.
You feel defensive, guilty, or angry and have lost track of the positive functions of touching, intimacy, and sexuality. Changing inhibited sexual desire is a one-two combination,first, increasing awareness and taking personal responsibility, and second, viewing desire as a couple issue and being an intimate team in revitalizing sexuality.
Are there special issues when it is the man with inhibited sexual desire? It is more acceptable for him to admit to erection or orgasm problems than admit to not being sexually interested.
Traditionally, masculinity and sexuality are closely linked. Too much of the man’s self-esteem is tied to his penis.
Male desire problems have a multitude of causes. Among these are pressure for perfect performance, fear of pregnancy, embarrassment due to sexual dysfunction, greater confidence with masturbation than with partner sex, alcohol or drug abuse, a way to maintain emotional distance or punish the spouse, a secret such as a fetish arousal pattern or sexual orientation issue, being distracted by work or money concerns, being involved with children or extended family to the detriment of couple time, not valuing marital sex, side effects of medication, few spontaneous erections so that he is hesitant to initiate sex, feeling intimidated by the wife’s sexual desire, feeling that it is unmanly to ask for stimulation to facilitate arousal, low self-esteem, or depression.
The man has to be aware of and take responsibility for his desire problem. He asks the spouse to be his intimate friend in rebuilding sexual desire and erotic functioning.
The spouse with inhibited desire wishes the partner would “back off” and “reduce the sexual pressure.” This is necessary, but not sufficient. You have to build bridges to sexual desire. Enlist the spouse as a facilitator of desire and pleasure, rather than making him the one who pushes for sexual performance. Is it worthwhile for you to change your attitudes toward intimacy and sexuality? Do you trust the spouse to be your intimate friend?
desire discrepancy,an alternative way of thinking and communicating about sexual desire.
When you chose to marry, you did not decide to enmesh your lives and become one person. A viable marriage involves a balance between individual autonomy and sharing your lives as an intimate couple. If you needed to feel equally desirous to engage in an activity, the marriage would be stagnant and blocked. One spouse likes dancing; the other is enthusiastic about board games.
One spouse prefers the mountains to the ocean; the partner prefers bed-and-breakfast inns to resort hotels. One spouse enjoys creating elaborate salads; the other’s favorite meal is meat loaf with macaroni and cheese. Yet even with those individual differences, couples are able to participate in and enjoy a range of activities. One enjoys certain experiences more, and that is okay.
They reach a balance that recognizes individuality as well as coupleness. There is no need for a power struggle. Discrepancies in hobbies, vacations, and foods are accepted and even enjoyed.
Let us give a personal example. Emily is a quilter and an antiquer who loves craft shows, especially in small, historic towns.
Barry appreciates and enjoys these activities, but not as much.
Barry loves cities, ethnic foods, and plays, which Emily appreciates, but finds overwhelming as a steady diet. We accept these differences and work with them. Each spouse offers experiences that expand and enrich both partners’ lives. Each person is able to say no to an activity that is aversive or excessive.
For example, 2 hours is Barry’s maximum at a quilt show,he does his thing (reading, biking, or writing) and we meet later for dinner. Emily finds more than 3 days in New York intolerable, so we do not plan more than a weekend trip. Desire discrepancies are successfully accommodated. We communicate feelings and requests and reach agreements, rather than settle for lukewarm compromises.
Can couples use this model in discussing and working with discrepancies in sexual desire? We believe not only that they can; this is the preferred approach. It ends the power struggle and breaks the blame/guilt cycle. Discrepancies in sexual desire are conceptualized as a couple issue. Each spouse states feelings, makes requests, and as a couple you develop agreements that nurture desire and sexuality. Accept the desire discrepancy; do not fall into the guilt/blame trap or be coercive. Commit to marital sexuality, enjoy touching, and adopt a broad perspective on intimacy and sexuality. This provides a solid foundation from which to revitalize sexual desire.
broad-based intimacy and sexuality.
There is more to sexuality than intercourse and more to intimacy than sexuality. A key to change is awareness of the many dimensions of intimacy and sexuality. The prescription for satisfying marital sex is integrating an intimate relationship, nondemand pleasuring, and erotic scenarios and techniques. Even in the best marriages, a mutually satisfying sexual encounter does not occur all the time,in fact, the couple is lucky if it occurs most of the time. Contrary to movies, love songs, and magazines, not all sex is romantic, mutual, functional, or satisfying. There is normal variability in sexual expression.
Inhibited sexual desire often reflects an intimacy issue. How emotionally close does each spouse want to be? Is more intimacy better? Some couples prefer the best friend marital style, with a great deal of closeness; others prefer the complementary couple style of retaining autonomy with moderate closeness; others prefer the conflict-minimizing style, where personal boundaries are strong; still others adopt the emotionally expressive style, where there are periods of great closeness mixed with periods of anger and distance. You need to develop a mutually acceptable level of intimacy that fits your emotional needs and life situation.
Sexuality is one way to express intimacy, but not the sole means or even the primary means. Sharing feelings, being affectionate, cuddling on the couch and in bed, disclosing hopes and fears, and sharing your lives as trusted, respectful friends are the core of intimacy.
Sensuality and nondemand pleasuring are the basis of broad-based sexuality. Sensuality involves pleasure-oriented touching,body massage, taking showers or baths together, kissing, playful touching while clothed or semiclothed. Touching is valued for itself, occurring inside and outside the bedroom.
Staying in touch is as likely to involve a hug as it is intercourse. A hug can evolve toward arousal and orgasm, but normally does not. Cuddling before going to sleep and on awakening provides a solid basis for loving feelings. Dancing in the living room to your favorite music, while engaging in playful touching and kissing, is inviting and at times serves as a bridge to sexual desire. Giving a neck or back massage while watching TV is a way to maintain connection. Showering together in the morning or before bed can be playful and pleasurable. Nondemand pleasuring is the bedrock of a healthy sexual relationship.
Eroticism includes a range of manual, oral, rubbing, and intercourse scenarios and techniques. Eroticism serves to turn you and the spouse on. Eroticism includes intercourse, but is not limited to intercourse. To increase eroticism, you can engage in multiple stimulation before and during intercourse. Multiple stimulation involves kissing, caressing, breast stimulation, testicle stimulation, anal stimulation, and the use of fantasy.
The broader the intimate, sensual, and erotic repertoire, the easier it is to maintain sexual desire. Both partners are open to a variety of ways to express intimacy, affection, sensuality, playfulness, and eroticism. Sometimes touching is for emotional intimacy, sometimes for affection; sometimes it is playful, sometimes sensual, sometimes erotic, and sometimes lustful.
Communicating feelings and sharing touch help maintain sexual desire.
Jill and stefan.
When they finally arrived in the therapist’s office, Jill and Stefan were a demoralized couple trapped in the power struggle of whose fault it was that they had a low-sex marriage. They had been married 6 years and had a 3-year-old daughter. Jill very much wanted a second child. Stefan was angry at the lack of sex and feared that Jill only wanted him for “stud” services; he would be trapped in a child-centered marriage. Jill felt that Stefan was being irrational and withholding; before marriage they had agreed on two children. Stefan counterattacked, saying that Jill had tricked him into believing that she valued sex. Both agreed that their best sex had been premaritally. When dating, they had sex each night they were together. When they began living together, sex was three to five times a week. This decreased to once or twice a week 4 months before marriage. During that time, Jill began experiencing inhibited sexual desire.
The 2-week honeymoon to Hawaii was the beginning of the intense struggle over sexual initiation and frequency. Stefan had the expectation of daily sex, while Jill’s expectation was for a fun, scenic, romantic time. Jill felt coerced by Stefan’s sexual pressure.
Stefan felt betrayed and played with by Jill’s sexual avoidance. Jill was not orgasmic during either of the two times they had sex.
When the newlyweds returned from Hawaii, friends joked what a wonderful, sexy honeymoon it must have been, which increased the upset because the couple resented having to lie and pretend.
When you begin fighting about sexual initiation and frequency it is easy to fall into the cycle of anticipatory anxiety, negative or mediocre experiences, and sexual avoidance. Guilt and blame become the dominant emotions. This pattern was broken when they had sex with the intention of conceiving their daughter, but they quickly regressed after Jill became pregnant. Since the birth, intercourse was once or twice a month. Stefan stopped initiating because of his anger at being rejected. Jill felt that Stefan rejected her affectionate overtures, and she felt emotionally abandoned.
Even though there was severe alienation, Jill very much wanted a second child.
The therapist found it hard being in the same room with Jill and Stefan. The tension was palpable. It was easier for them to socialize with other couples and do things as a family than to be a couple.
Fortunately, neither was threatening divorce. Divorce threats add a destructive dynamic. Jill and Stefan shared life goals and religious values, parented well, and felt supported by family and friends, all of which reinforced marital stability. They thought of themselves as a viable couple, committed to their marriage.
However, the sexual problem was tearing at and weakening their marital bond. Jill questioned her love for Stefan; she saw him as irrational and mean in regard to sex. Stefan confided to the therapist that he was thinking of beginning an affair. The therapist told Stefan that affairs usually become more emotional and complicated than planned. As well, affairs are much easier to get into than out of. Stefan committed to not have an affair while they were in couple therapy.
The first therapeutic task was to break the cycle of guilt and blame. Stefan and Jill began thinking of themselves as an intimate team, striving to revitalize marital sexuality. The therapist’s optimism helped them craft an expectation that this was a changeable problem. Inhibited sexual desire was the mutual enemy Their marital commitment was the best prognostic sign for revitalizing sexuality.
Marital sex had never gotten on track, and inhibited desire was a growing threat to their marital bond. Building marital sexuality would take a great deal of communication and effort on both people’s part. Good intentions were necessary, but not enough. It is crucial to approach the problem as a couple, break the cycle of blame/guilt, and cease the attack/counterattack pattern that demoralized and drained them. Playing “Who’s the bad guy?” was getting them nowhere. Stefan agreed to stop name-calling and blaming. Jill lowered her wall of alienation and emotionally reinvested in the marriage. Reluctantly, she agreed to postpone pregnancy until sexuality was reestablished. She would use a diaphragm until a joint decision was made to become pregnant.
Stefan was hesitant to agree to a temporary prohibition on intercourse, but this acknowledged the reality of the situation.
With the performance pressure of intercourse removed, they had the freedom to explore touching as a means to feel connected and share pleasure. This was very inviting for Jill, who missed affectionate touch and sharing intimate feelings.
Rebuilding intimacy and sexuality was a complex, difficult couple task. Without the support and suggestions of the therapist, they would have given up in frustration and reverted to the guilt/ blame pattern. One of the major functions of therapy is to keep motivation high enough so that couples persevere through frustrations and setbacks to achieve the satisfaction of a pleasure oriented couple sexual style. A breakthrough for Stefan occurred when he realized that Jill was not punishing him by withholding sex. Her anxieties and inhibitions were real, not manipulative.
Most important, Stefan realized that his being an intimate spouse, rather than a coercive, angry person, helped reduce Jill’s inhibitions. When Jill realized that she could veto a sexual activity and Stefan would honor her veto, her anxiety was reduced and she felt less need to veto.
Jill found that sensual experiences led to erotic feelings. Jill was receptive and responsive to manual and oral stimulation,she preferred the term outercourse. Stefan’s rigid view that “only intercourse was sex” melted under these new experiences. It was Stefan who began insisting that not all touching had to lead to intercourse, an insight Jill greatly appreciated.
Intercourse was reintroduced as a “special pleasuring experience.” Intercourse was part of the pleasuring process, not the pass,fail test of their relationship. A side effect of the pleasuring exercises was that Stefan became a slower, more sensitive lover. This made intercourse more appealing. Jill’s sexual response was similar to that of the majority of women; orgasm with manual or oral stimulation is easier than during intercourse.
With self-acceptance and partner acceptance, Jill and Stefan developed a comfortable, functional couple sexual style. Not all touching culminated in intercourse, which helped Jill build sexual anticipation and excitement.
Becoming pregnant with a planned, wanted child is a major impetus for sexual desire. This was true not only for Jill, but for Stefan as well. Intercourse with the hope of a second child was a strong sexual motivator. In addition, they continued broad-based affectionate, sensual, and erotic experiences. This provided the bedrock for sexual desire.
Jill and Stefan were motivated to maintain and generalize sexual gains. A relapse-prevention plan is integral to sex therapy. Sexual desire cannot rest on its laurels or be taken for granted. Jill and Stefan set aside couple time, when their daughter was being watched by another parent or was asleep. Jill’s initiating sex was important, to reassure Stefan that he did not have to stay in the rigid role of always being the initiator. Equally important, Stefan learned to accept a “no” without withdrawing or punishing Jill.
Stefan did not regress to coercing Jill or calling her names. Jill did not regress to hiding behind a wall of alienation.
For Jill, the keys to generalizing sexual gains were to reinforce intimacy, be open to sensual touching, and enjoy outercourse scenarios. These continued to be her bridges for sexual desire. For Stefan, the keys were feeling that they were an intimate team, enjoying both outercourse and intercourse, and accepting sexual disappointments as normal, rather than as a source of defensiveness and blaming. Stefan and Jill agreed to implement the therapist’s suggestion that once a month they have a sensual date where orgasm and intercourse were prohibited. This allowed them freedom to play and enjoy touching.
functions of sexuality.
At its essence, sexuality is a couple, not an individual, experience.
That is another reason that inhibited sexual desire is best understood as a couple issue. Sexuality is best when both spouses feel free to initiate affectionate, sensual, playful, erotic, and intercourse experiences. Equally important, both feel free to say no or suggest an alternative way to stay connected. It is optimal that both spouses value sexuality as a shared pleasure. Couples who are comfortable with touching inside and outside of the bedroom, who are aware of the value and dimensions of touching, and who realize that not all touching leads to intercourse have a solid base for sexual desire. Each component of the sexual prescription,an intimate relationship, nondemand pleasuring, and erotic scenarios and techniques,require couple involvement.
Each person is responsible for her or his sexuality. For desire to remain vital, the couple continues to share as an intimate team.
Exercise,sexual desire as a couple issue.
This exercise involves two steps,the first is that each spouse writes self-blaming or blaming-the-partner statements. Next to each statement, they each write a healthy counter-statement that challenges irrational, self-defeating blaming. The second step is to discuss new, healthy understandings about sexual desire as a couple issue. They should write down and save these new understandings so that they can use these as a resource in the coming weeks, months, and years.
Examples of self-blaming and partner-blaming statements (with counters) include “It’s all my fault.”,Sexual desire is complex; there is not an angel and a devil.
“My spouse doesn’t love me.”,Love and sexual desire are not the same.
“It’s guilt from my Catholic background.”,Guilt inhibits sexual desire. However, Catholic couples report high desire and satisfaction. The new Catholic teaching (almost all religions agree on this) is pro-sex in marriage.
“If only my spouse would change, my desire would be fine.”,You can only change yourself. You cannot change the spouse, although you can encourage and support your spouse in making changes.
“If only I hadn’t gotten pregnant.”,“If only” thinking is self-defeating. Deal with the present; you cannot change the past.
“I can’t enjoy sex until I lose 20 pounds.”,A positive body image is important, but sexuality should not be held hostage to weight or a perfect body image. Sexual desire is based in the relationship and on giving and receiving pleasure-oriented touching.
“Romantic love is gone; there’s nothing I can do.”, Romantic love is very fragile; it seldom lasts more than 2 years and typically dissipates after 6 months. Sexual desire is based on mature intimacy, not romantic love.
“The best sex is premarital or extramarital.”,Marital sex is special and can be high quality and satisfying.
“We’ve been trapped in a no-sex marriage for so long, it will never change.”,Chronic problems are difficult, but motivated couples do revitalize marital sexuality.
“We have the only nonconsummated marriage in the city.”,Because of stigma and embarrassment, people do not discuss this problem. Nonconsummated marriages exist and the problem is resolvable.
“Since my spouse had an affair, I will never trust her or desire to be sexual with her.”,Couples can and do survive affairs. Intimacy and sexuality facilitate the healing process and are an integral component in rebuilding the trust bond.
There are many more self-defeating cognitions, but happily, there are even more rational, problem-solving counters.
The second step is to discuss sexual desire as a couple issue.
Write down understandings as a way to acknowledge and reinforce crucial insights. New understandings facilitate self-acceptance, spouse-acceptance, and being an intimate team.
Do this exercise together. Write two to five statements about inhibited sexual desire and the no-sex or low-sex marriage as a couple issue. Be sure these are clear and genuine. Examples are “There is no good guy-bad guy; inhibited sexual desire is the enemy. We will fight it together and revitalize marital sexuality.” “Our love for each other and commitment to the marriage will help us overcome this sexual problem.” “We are good people and a good couple that deserves to enjoy sexuality.” “The sexual problem has been a drain and we have been terrible to each other, but now we are committed to being an intimate team and to developing a vital, satisfying sexual relationship.” “We want to have sex and a baby. We are going to support each other in doing this.” Develop your list of statements, which will allow you to maintain an intimate team approach even when you encounter the inevitable frustrations, disappointments, and setbacks.
confronting desire problems as an intimate couple When Barry treats demoralized couples who have chronic desire problems and marriages where there has been no sex for years, the concept of being an “intimate team” is what keeps them motivated. A crucial aspect of the team concept is not to turn on or attack your spouse. You win or lose as a team. You acknowledge sexual successes and share intimate feelings. When you fail, support and encourage each other; do not engage in blaming.
Learn from the problem and plan for the next encounter. Trust that the spouse has your best interest in mind and wants you to succeed. The most powerful aphrodisiac is two involved partners where each person’s arousal plays off the other’s to create an erotic flow. This is a natural extension of the “give to get” pleasuring guideline.
Sex works best when each spouse is open and receptive. This is the opposite of the self-defeating pattern in which one spouse demands and the other feels coerced and avoids. Each spouses sexual desire and bridges to desire are acknowledged and accepted. Both the higher- and the lower-desire spouse think and talk about sexuality as a couple issue, with the shared goal of establishing a sexual relationship that nurtures the marriage. It is not “his way” or “her way”; it is finding “our way.” Quality of intimacy and sexuality is more important than quantity of intercourse. A comfortable couple sexual style is more important than sexual prowess. The focus is on sharing pleasure, not on intercourse performance. Confronting and changing the no-sex or low-sex marriage are challenges you meet as an intimate team.
When your sexual relationship is disappointing or gets off track, you view this as a lapse. Remaining on the same team ensures that it does not turn into a marital relapse.
Establish positive, realistic expectations for marital sexuality.
Sex is not the most important factor in marriage. Sex is not even the most important aspect of intimacy. Emotional closeness and giving and receiving nondemand touching are the core components of the intimate bond. Eroticism, intercourse and orgasm are special, energizing experiences. When sex works well, it plays a 15 to 20 percent role toward adding to marital vitality and satisfaction. Unfortunately, inhibited sexual desire is more powerful as a marital stress than good sex is as a marital enhancer.
Intimacy includes emotional closeness, trust, affection, sensuality, arousal, intercourse, and bonding. The most satisfying marital sexuality integrates intimacy and eroticism.
Does this mean that the individual loses his or her sexual autonomy? Not at all. Each spouse remains responsible for her or his desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction. Being an intimate team does not mean giving up autonomy or blurring personal boundaries. Healthy sexuality involves developing and maintaining a comfortable, desirous, and satisfying couple sexual style.
Should every sexual experience be functional and satisfying?
This is an unrealistic expectation that will result in relapse. A positive, realistic expectation is that 40 to 50 percent of sexual encounters will be mutually satisfying, 20 to 25 percent will be good for one spouse and okay for the other, 20 to 25 percent will be good for one spouse with the other going along for the ride, and 5 to 15 percent of encounters will be mediocre, unsatisfying, or failures. This is a very different image than is portrayed in movies, on talk shows, and in novels. The reality that 5 to 15 percent of sexual experiences are mediocre, unsatisfying, or dysfunctional is particularly important. This is the kind of sex where one spouse looks at the other and says, “I hope you are enjoying this; it’s for you” and the other says, “I thought this was for you.” The partners who can laugh or shrug off these experiences and get together at a later time when they are awake, aware, desirous, involved, and responsive have the right attitude.
The couple that is frustrated, angry, panicky, or blaming is likely to relapse. Occasional mediocre or poor sexual experiences are normal.
closing thoughts.
Conceptualizing inhibited sexual desire as a couple problem has great advantages,specifically, breaking the guilt/blame cycle.
The one-two combination of personal responsibility and being an intimate team is key. Developing a broad-based couple sexual style sets the framework for satisfying marital sex. Being an intimate couple allows you to confront the no-sex or low-sex marriage and to revitalize marital sexuality.
Rekindling Desire. Chapter 1. Why Do Couples Experience a Dead End to Desire?
Part 1, Understanding, The First Step.
Chapter 1. Why Do Couples Experience a Dead End to Desire?
The number one sexual problem facing American couples is inhibited sexual desire. The second most common problem is discrepancies in sexual desire. Pundits laugh and say, What do you expect from people married 20 years? In truth, these are not the couples in trouble. Desire problems plague newly married couples, as well as unmarried couples. Contrary to cultural myths, neither boredom nor age are the main factors in inhibited sexual desire. Desire problems occur among all age groups and types of couples.
This book will explore the complex phenomena of inhibited sexual desire—specifically, low-sex and no-sex marriages. The cultural sexual revolution of the 1960s and the scientific sexual revolution of the 1970s, inaugurated by the work of Masters and Johnson, were expected to dramatically increase sexual satisfaction. Why did that not happen? What went wrong? Most important, what does this mean for your marriage? How can you understand and confront inhibited sexual desire? Are there really no-sex marriages, or are you a freak?
Take this true—false test:
the test.
1. Sex is more work than play.
2. Touching always leads to intercourse.
3. Touching takes place only in the bedroom.
4. You no longer look forward to making love.
5. Sex does not give you feelings of connection and sharing.
6. You never have sexual thoughts or fantasies about your spouse.
7. Sex is limited to a fixed time, such as Saturday night or Sunday morning.
8. One of you is always the initiator and the other feels pressure.
9. You look back on premarital sex as the best time.
10. Sex has become mechanical and routine.
11. You have sex once or twice a month at most.
If you answered true to five or more statements, true to item 11, or both, you are among the more than 40 million Americans stuck in a low-sex or no-sex marriage.
The adage in sex therapy is that when sexuality goes well, it is a positive, integral but not major component—adding 15 to 20 percent to marital vitality and satisfaction. However, when sexuality is dysfunctional or nonexistent, it assumes an inordinately powerful role, 50 to 70 percent, robbing the marriage of intimacy and vitality.
The most disruptive sexual problem is inhibited desire. If this degenerates into a no-sex or low-sex marriage, it puts tremendous pressure on the couple, especially if affection and sensuality also cease. Desire is the core of sexuality. No-sex and low-sex marriages become devitalized, especially when this occurs in the first 3 years of marriage. Unless something is done to reverse this process, divorce is a likely outcome.
The functions of marital sexuality are to create a shared pleasure, to reinforce and deepen intimacy, and to use as a tension-reducer to deal with the stresses of life and marriage. An optional function is to conceive a planned, wanted baby. No-sex and low-sex marriages negate these benefits. In addition, lack of sexuality robs the couple of special feelings and intimate connection.
the stigma of desire problems.
The initial focus of sex therapy was orgasm problems—premature ejaculation in men and nonorgasmic response (especially during intercourse) in women. The naive assumption was that if both partners had orgasms, everything would be fine. The simplistic concept was “orgasm=satisfaction.” Sexuality is complex, with many causes and many dimensions.
The four components of sexual function are desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction. When therapists refer to a primary sexual dysfunction, it means the problem has always plagued the couple. Secondary dysfunction means sexuality was once fine and then became problematic. Secondary inhibited sexual desire is the most common sexual problem facing married couples.
Desire and satisfaction are the core of sexuality. It is more socially acceptable to say you have a specific dysfunction— nonorgasmic response, female arousal dysfunction, vaginismus, painful intercourse, erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, or ejaculatory inhibition. It is hard to admit, “I am not interested in sex,” “I do not like sex,” or “I do not find sex enjoyable.” In our sex-satiated culture, everyone is supposed to love sex.
Research studies (the most important being the Sex in America study) find that 1 in 3 women and 1 in 7 men report inhibited sexual desire. Sometime in marriage more than 50 percent of couples experience inhibited desire or a desire discrepancy. You are not alone. Feeling stigmatized and deficient is of no value.
Desire problems are the most frequent complaint of couples seeking sex therapy. Inhibited sexual desire stresses a marriage more than any other sexual dysfunction does.
The extreme of desire problems is a no-sex marriage. The couple falls into the cycle of anticipatory anxiety, negative experiences, and, eventually, sexual avoidance. Sex is more of a pain than a pleasure. The partners did not plan to have a no-sex marriage; it is a pattern they fell into. A no-sex marriage does not mean total abstinence, but that sex occurs less than 10 times a year. A low-sex marriage means being sexual less than every other week (i.e., less than 25 times a year). Approximately 20 percent (one in five) of married couples have a no-sex relationship. An additional 15 percent of married couples have a low-sex relationship. One in three nonmarried couples who have been together more than 2 years have a no-sex relationship.
The longer the couple avoids sexual contact, the harder it is to break the cycle. Avoidance becomes a self-fulfilling trap. The longer the partners are in a low-sex or no-sex marriage, the more they blame each other. The more shameful they feel, the harder it is to break the cycle. The couple that has not resumed sexual contact 6 months after the baby was born faces one set of problems, but the couple that has not been sexual for 6 years faces a more daunting task. Yet the strategy for change is the same—renew intimacy, engage in nondemand pleasuring, and add erotic scenarios and techniques. The more chronic the problem, the more difficult is the change process. Maintaining motivation is a major challenge. Confronting avoidance and inhibitions is more difficult for the couple that has stopped being affectionate. The good news is that motivated couples are able to reestablish touching, desire, arousal, and intercourse.
the nonconsummated marriage.
The number of couples that do not consummate their marriages is difficult to estimate because it is a shameful secret. One in four couples has an unsuccessful or painful first intercourse. As many as 1.5 percent of marriages are not consummated the first year, and about half of those remain unconsummated. Most of these couples were sexually active premaritally, but ceased intercourse before marriage and were unsuccessful at resuming. Another pattern is that a specific dysfunction, such as vaginismus or ejaculatory inhibition, makes intercourse very difficult or impossible. Some couples maintain desire and enjoy nonintercourse sex. Most people in nonconsummated marriages avoid any sensual or sexual activity.
Embarrassment over a nonconsummated marriage dominates their lives. The woman avoids gynecological examinations because she does not want to answer questions about sexual activity. If she has never had intercourse or suffers from vaginismus (spasming of the vaginal opening so that insertion is very painful or impossible), she avoids a vaginal exam or having a pap smear. The stigma for the male is just as severe. He views the nonconsummated marriage as an attack on his masculinity.
The couple treats this as a “shameful secret,” not talking to friends, doctors, or a minister, which furthers alienation and stigma. The partners do not even talk to each other. It is important to realize that non-consummated marriages, no-sex marriages, low-sex marriages, and marriages controlled by inhibited desire are more common than thought. Sexual problems can be addressed and resolved. You can revitalize your sexual bond and rebuild desire and functioning. It requires motivation, focus, and working as an intimate team.
what is normal sexuality?
Before 1970, we lacked scientific information about sexual function and dysfunction, had only poor quality educational materials, and suffered from inhibition, guilt, and limited communication. Sexual myths and misinformation were rampant.
An astounding increase in knowledge has occurred during the past 30 years. Unfortunately, this has not resulted in improved sexual functioning. There are as many sexual problems in the 21st century as in the 1950s, although the types of problems have changed.
We have better scientific information about sexual function and dysfunction than at any time in human history. There is a plethora of educational materials and self-help books. Sexuality is discussed in arenas ranging from pulpits to talk shows. Sexual themes dominate our culture, especially TV, movies, and music.
There is an enormous amount of sexual discussion, although the quality is low, with a confusing medley of fact and fiction. Naive, repressive myths have been replaced by unrealistic, performance-oriented myths. Guilt has been replaced by performance anxiety. There has been no net gain for sexual pleasure. Sexual anxieties, inhibitions, and problems are still the norm.
Sexuality is a complex, crucial aspect of life and marriage. We are respectful of individual, couple, and cultural differences in the functions and meanings of sexuality. There is not “one right way” to be sexual.
Concepts that promote healthy sexuality are 1. Sex is more than genitals, intercourse, and orgasm. Sexuality involves attitudes, feelings, perceptions, and values. Sexuality is a natural, healthy element in life. It need not be a source of guilt or negative feelings.
2. Sexuality is an integral aspect of your personality. You deserve to feel good about your body and yourself as a sexual person.
3. The essence of sexuality is giving and receiving pleasure-oriented touching.
4. Express sexuality so that it enhances your life and your intimate relationship.
The four components of sexual functioning are:
1. Desire—Positive anticipation and feeling that you deserve sexual pleasure.
2. Arousal—Being receptive and responsive to touching and genital stimulation.
3. Orgasm—Letting go and allowing arousal to naturally culminate in orgasm.
4. Satisfaction—Feeling emotionally and physically bonded after a sexual experience.
Healthy sexual functioning allows both people to enjoy pleasure.
A key element is having realistic expectations, accepting the inherent variability and flexibility of sexual experiences. Novels and movies emphasize free-flowing, nonverbal, powerful sexuality where desire is intense. Arousal is quick, orgasm always occurs for both (simultaneously), and it is marvelous. This sells movies and novels, but makes real people feel inadequate and deficient. If partners experience powerful desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction twice a month, they can count themselves lucky and should celebrate those special times. Less than half the sexual experiences of well-functioning couples involve equal desire, arousal, and orgasm. Typically, one partner is more into sex, although the other enjoys the experience or at least appreciates going along for the ride. Five to 15 percent of sexual experiences are mediocre, unsatisfying, or failures. This, too, is normal. You are not a perfectly functioning sexual machine. You are two individuals sharing sexuality. There is built-in variability and, occasionally, dissatisfaction or dysfunction.
Fifty percent of married couples (and over 60 percent of unmarried couples) experience sexual dysfunction or dissatisfaction. Inhibited sexual desire and discrepancies in desire are the most common complaints, so you have plenty of company.
One spouse (usually the male) initiates and encourages sexual contact, so even if dysfunctional or unsatisfying, marital sex continues. Some people with desire problems do not have difficulty with arousal and orgasm once they begin. As a client said, “Once stimulation starts, I get turned on and come; it’s the wanting to be sexual that stymies me.” Pundits call it “lack of wanta.” Occasional lack of desire is normal. At times, it is healthy. You wonder about people who have high sexual desire in times of couple conflict, dealing with an ill child, after a funeral, facing a financial crunch, or during a work crisis. It is unhealthy to use sex as a way of denying or avoiding reality.
It is normal to occasionally have differences in desire.
Sometimes one partner wants a hug, the other wants an orgasm.
What is not normal is chronic inhibited desire, a no-sex or low-sex marriage, or constant conflict over sex.
romantic love and sexual chemistry.
We have been socialized by movies, songs, and novels to believe that romantic love and sexual chemistry are the powerful, driving forces that carry couples to the heights of ecstacy. Sex is smooth, passionate, spontaneous, and uninhibited. Movie sex is spectacular sex; the fact that it has nothing to do with real couples’ sex lives is beside the point of the magical media hype.
Romantic love, with its idealization of the partner and the relationship, plays a powerful role in initial attraction. Romantic love is inherently unstable, usually ending before marriage or seldom lasting past the first year. Sexual chemistry is very explosive and equally short-lived. Couples report “hot” sex at the beginning when they see each other on weekends, but experience sexual disappointment when living together or married. “Where did the passion go?” Hot sex based on romantic love and passion disappears, as it should. These cannot maintain desire. Sexual desire is based on emotional and sexual intimacy, not on romantic love or passionate sex. Comfort, attraction, and trust nurture desire after the heat of sexual chemistry is long gone. The prescription for maintaining sexual desire is integrating intimacy, nondemand pleasuring, and erotic scenarios and techniques.
Couples who believe that the way to rebuild desire is to rekindle romantic love and reignite sexual passion are heading into a dead end. The keys to revitalizing marital sexuality are building bridges to desire, increasing intimacy, enjoying nondemand pleasuring, and creating erotic scenarios. Broad-based, flexible sexuality provides a solid foundation for marriage. Sexual desire is essentially interpersonal, not individual. The partners learn to think, talk, act, and feel like an intimate team. Each spouse facilitates and reinforces the other’s sexual feelings and desires, rather than colluding in sexual avoidance.
Maintaining comfort, attraction, and trust is an active process.
Each person takes the initiative and designs a pleasurable or erotic scenario. The spouse is open and receptive. Inhibitions and avoidance are confronted. This requires commitment and working together. Change is usually gradual, rather than dramatic. There will be difficulties, set-backs, disappointments, and lapses, but if the partners stay with the process, they will succeed. Once sexuality is reestablished, they need to generalize and maintain gains. Benign neglect subverts sexual desire.
Relapse prevention is an active process. Good intentions and loving feelings are necessary, but not sufficient, to maintain a vital sexual bond.
who we are and the plan of the book.
We have been married 36 years and see sexuality as a vital, integral part of our marital bond. Since 1980 we have been a writing team; this is our seventh coauthored book. We have complementary skills—Barry is a Ph. D. clinical psychologist, and certified sex and marital therapist; Emily has a degree in speech communication.
Our previous sexuality books include a conceptual book, Couple Sexual Awareness (1998); a book using sexual exercises to increase comfort and skill, Sexual Awareness (2002); as well as Male Sexual Awareness (1998) and Female Sexual Awareness (1989).
A significant part of Barry’s clinical practice is with couples suffering from inhibited desire or stuck in no-sex or low-sex marriages. He has treated over 2,500 couples who have sexual problems and dysfunction. Typically, the problems have gone on for years, and the partners feel ashamed and embarrassed. They mistakenly believe that they are the only couple with this problem and approach therapy with a great deal of hesitancy Layers of frustration, resentment, and blaming have built and are a greater threat to the marriage than is the sexual problem itself.
Our motivation for writing this book is to provide knowledge, support, and hope for couples facing inhibited desire and a no-sex or low-sex marriage. Sexual problems need not control a marriage or dominate the couple’s feelings. Women are unfairly blamed for sexual difficulties; guilt and shame further inhibit desire. We believe in working as an intimate team and using a range of affectionate, sensual, playful, and erotic bridges to rekindle desire.
This is not meant to be read like a textbook. We encourage you to identify issues that are personally relevant and to focus on those. Each chapter is self-contained. The material can be read for information and ideas, but it is best used as an interactive learning medium. We encourage you to read together as a couple and discuss what is personally significant. One technique is to take turns reading aloud, stopping at important points to discuss.
Another method is for both of you to underline or star the points you feel are relevant. Then read these, underlining or marking what is important to you. Discuss issues. Try suggested strategies, involve yourselves in relevant exercises, and develop communication and sexual skills.
This is a book of ideas, guidelines, and exercises, not a “do-it-your-self therapy.” The more information and understanding the partners have, the better decisions they will make. Knowledge is power. We draw on case studies of clients Barry has treated (names and details are altered to protect confidentiality). Most chapters contain an exercise to make the assessment and change process personal and concrete. We encourage you to engage in exercises that are helpful and feel free to skip those that are not. Exercises are not rigid or set in concrete; feel free to modify them so that you get the most you can from these experiences.
self-help and therapy.
This is a self-help book, not a substitute for individual, marital, or sex therapy. The most efficacious use is as an adjunctive resource while in therapy. We offer information, guidelines, case examples, exercises, and personal observations, and we suggest change strategies and techniques. Increasing awareness and reducing myths and stigma are crucial. Information, understanding, and attitude change will challenge inhibited desire, but this is not enough.
Sexuality has a major cognitive component—the most important element for desire is positive anticipation. Attitudes about deserving sexual pleasure and your rights as a sexual person promote healthy sexuality. Yet sexuality is not a cognitive activity.
Sexuality involves emotions and interaction—sharing intimacy, pleasure, and erotic feelings. The more severe and chronic the inhibited desire, the harder it is to develop the courage to take risks and reinstitute touching and sexual expression.
Sex therapy has a number of advantages over a self-help book.
Therapy promotes hope and maintains motivation in the face of frustration or disappointment. The change process is never as easy or straightforward as is portrayed in books. The typical process is “two steps forward, one step back.” The therapist helps the couple to stay focused and reinforces motivation for change. Having a regular therapy appointment and feeling accountable are valuable in breaking the impasse of a no-sex or low-sex marriage. The therapist’s empathy and insights are vital. The therapist’s respecting and caring about each person promote self-respect and mutual caring. The therapist can guide the couple toward other valuable helping resources. Guidelines for choosing a marital or sexual therapist are presented in appendix 1.
can all marriages be saved?
The traditional view was that all marriages could and should be saved. Divorce was viewed as a failure. This is untrue and self-defeating. Marriages that are fatally flawed, abusive, or destructive or those that subvert well-being are not worth preserving. We are definitely pro-marriage, but divorce is the healthy alternative when the marriage is fatally flawed or destructive.
A marriage that meets needs for intimacy and security is of great value. The marital bond of respect and trust motivates the couple to revitalize sexual intimacy. When respect and trust are lacking, trying to restore intimacy is a useless struggle.
A no-sex or low-sex marriage robs the couple of intimate feelings, especially when affection and sensuality are absent.
Unless this changes or there are other sources of satisfaction, the marriage probably will not survive. The marriage might have genuine strengths, but inability to resolve sexual problems overwhelms the relationship. We hope this book can revitalize your marriage or at least revive hopefulness and motivate you to seek marital or sex therapy.
secrets and hidden agendas.
Inhibited sexual desire and no-sex or low-sex marriages have a multitude of causes, especially sexual secrets and hidden agendas.
Most of these can be dealt with; others symbolize a fatally flawed marriage. Examples of secrets that can be dealt with are shame over childhood sexual abuse, guilt over an idiosyncratic masturbation pattern, and sexual avoidance due to fear of failure.
Examples of secrets that reflect a fatally flawed marriage are a homosexual orientation and hidden sexual life, marrying for convenience or security but no genuine feeling for the spouse, and a continuing comparison affair that subverts the marital bond because emotional and sexual needs are being met through the affair.
Ideally, the trust bond is enhanced by openness. Disclosing secrets facilitates trust. Sharing secrets (such as embarrassing or traumatic childhood incidents) helps the individual. Other secrets (such as telling the spouse that one of his or her children was born through an affair) can destroy the marital bond. Secrets inhibit sexual desire and should be shared with someone—if not the spouse, then with a therapist, minister, sibling, or best friend.
Hidden agendas are even more sensitive and explosive. Some can be dealt with, whereas others indicate a fatally flawed marriage. Couples can deal with fear of pregnancy, fear of being abandoned, shame about a fetish arousal pattern, lack of desire caused by a side effect of medication, being afraid to raise sexual issues because the spouse would leave, or pretending you lack desire in order to protect a spouse who is obsessed with sexual performance. Hidden agendas destroy sexual anticipation—they need to be disclosed and dealt with. Hidden agendas that produce a fatally flawed marriage include the man who married because of a sexual attraction to the stepchildren and who has little or no attraction to his spouse, a woman who married her spouse for money or security and uses sex to placate him, a woman who has decided to leave the marriage after her child graduates high school and so avoids sexual contact, and a man who is homosexual and uses the marriage as a social cover for business or professional reasons. These marriages cannot and should not be saved. The healthy alternative is divorce—hidden agendas control the relationship, resulting in a sham marriage.
Dealing with secrets or hidden agendas by yourself is extremely difficult. Individual or couple therapy can help you understand the dilemma and reach a resolution. Hidden agendas are very hard to address without professional help. Even with an objective third party, there is unpredictability and potential explosiveness.
Sometimes both spouses have a hidden agenda, but usually it is one spouse. People with hidden agendas fear (often rightly) that these will be used against them to blame them for all of the problems or be used by lawyers in a divorce proceeding. If the goal is to revitalize the sexual bond, the hidden agenda must be addressed and dealt with.
is the sexual problem a symptom or a cause?
The question of whether a marital problem causes a sexual problem or the sexual problem causes marital dissatisfaction is more than a chicken-and-egg argument. Human behavior is overdetermined, with many causes and many dimensions. Any simple answer is likely to be wrong or, at least, incomplete.
Sexuality is a positive, integral component of marital intimacy.
Although no-sex or low-sex marriages can function satisfactorily, these are the minority. Some couples maintain a respectful, trusting bond and are good parents even though sexuality is dysfunctional or absent. Other couples have an angry, alienated, nonsupportive marriage, and the only thing that works is sex.
The most common pattern is a couple that has a good relationship, but struggles unsuccessfully with inhibited desire.
Over time, the sexual problem becomes severe and chronic. Sexual problems undermine marriages by robbing them of intimate connection and energy. The sexual problem increasingly defines the marriage; blaming and resentment build. In well-functioning marriages, sexuality plays a 15 to 20 percent role in terms of vitality and satisfaction. With a chronic inhibited desire problem, sexuality plays an inordinately powerful role, draining positive feelings and tearing at the marital fabric.
Another pattern is that relationship conflicts, especially those involving anger, are played out through sexual conflict. Anger is the main cause of secondary inhibited sexual desire. Withholding or avoiding sex makes a statement, a way to fight back. Although this is usually a female reaction, males shut down sexually as a way to express anger. Sometimes this is a conscious choice; more often it is not. Anger can involve a sexual issue (demand for oral sex, a discovered extramarital affair, conflict over birth control), but more often anger involves a relationship problem. Common causes of anger may be concern about drinking and driving, not feeling supported in a family conflict, out-of-control arguments that include slapping and pushing, conflicts over spending, and feeling that your spouse is taking advantage of you. As alienation increases, “hot” angry thoughts build on themselves. Attempts to bridge the emotional gap with affectionate touching or sexual activity are met with angry rebuffs, increasing frustration and isolation. Emotional and sexual distance feeds the angry cycle. The partners find themselves trapped in an alienated low-sex or no-sex marriage.
No-sex or low-sex marriages happen; it is not the spouse s intention. The exception is when that is the hidden agenda.
Examples of hidden agendas include when one spouse is gay and has married for a convenient cover or the spouse has a paraphiliac arousal pattern (exhibitionism, fetishism, pedophilia, obscene phone calls), with little desire for intimate sex. Seeking out Internet pornography and chatrooms can become a compulsive pattern, subverting desire for couple sex. These are male patterns. Female hidden agendas are fear of pregnancy or pain during intercourse, resulting in sexual avoidance. There are nonsexual hidden agendas, which include marrying for security, money, social approval, or religious pressure but with lack of caring and attraction. There is little hope for these marriages unless the core issues that block a genuine marital bond are addressed. Unless both individuals are willing to confront the hidden agenda and build a solid marital bond, divorce is the healthy alternative.
Fertility problems are a common cause of inhibited sexual desire. Sex with the intention of becoming pregnant is an aphrodisiac. For 85 percent of couples under 30 and 70 percent of couples over 30, becoming pregnant is usually easy (often, too easy). Couples in the unlucky minority find that as time goes on, frustration builds. The process of undergoing a fertility assessment, with increasingly intrusive, painful, and expensive tests and interventions, weakens the desire of the most ardent couple. Fertility problems are no fun. Self-blame and blaming the spouse are easy traps. Fertility problems can bring out the worst in people. Infertility dominates self-esteem, the marriage, and sexuality. They stop being sexual except during the high probability week. Sex becomes a pressured performance to achieve pregnancy, with little pleasure, warmth, or feeling of connection. Couples dealing with a fertility issue need a great deal of support, which includes using touching, sensuality, and eroticism to energize themselves during the non-high probability periods of the month.
Another problematic pattern is conflict about intercourse frequency. Instead of broad-based pleasuring and a variety of bridges to desire, it is a “yes—no” question—are we going to have intercourse? If not, there is no touching. If every touch is a demand for intercourse, the pressure is up and the pleasure is down.
Emotional intimacy and non-demand pleasuring are sacrificed to intercourse pressure. The result is inhibited desire. Intimacy, comfort, and pleasure lead to sexual anticipation. Conflict and pressure lead to inhibited desire. Quality is more important than frequency Sexuality is more than genitals, intercourse, and orgasm. Guidelines that promote desire include the beliefs that touching is valued for itself, touching occurs both inside and outside the bedroom, and not all touching must result in intercourse.
Another pattern is that if sexual dysfunction increasingly dominates the relationship, one or both partners would rather avoid than try to be sexual. The dysfunction, whether erectile problems, premature ejaculation, nonorgasmic response, vaginismus, or ejaculatory inhibition, controls the relationship.
The dysfunctional spouse feels embarrassed or humiliated. To avoid bad feelings, she avoids sex. This is an especially destructive trap for males with erectile dysfunction. If he cannot be guaranteed an erection sufficient for intercourse, he does not want to try. Premature ejaculation or ejaculatory inhibition is frustrating, but does not cause the couple to stop being sexual.
Female dysfunction subverts desire, but the couple is unlikely to stop sexual activity, especially when the male continues to initiate.
With vaginismus (which blocks intercourse), couples can enjoy nonintercourse erotic scenarios and techniques.
If sexual dysfunction does not reverse within 6 months, it is unlikely to spontaneously clear up. The typical outcome is that the problem becomes severe and chronic, negating anticipation and desire. Functional sex alone does not build anticipation, but dysfunctional sex drains desire.
A myriad of factors inhibit desire and lead to a no-sex or low-sex marriage. Understanding the pattern is a helpful, and usually necessary, step in resolving the problem. Most important is the commitment to restore intimacy and sexuality. No matter what originally started the sexual slide, once the pattern is established, chronicity, blaming, and avoidance solidify the problem.
The individual cannot resolve sexual problems alone or by sheer willpower. The partners have to work together. Being an “intimate team” is the cornerstone of this approach. The way to rebuild desire is a one-two combination of taking personal responsibility for sexuality and being an intimate team. Trust that the spouse will make a good faith effort to deal with inhibitions, anxieties, and traps. Be open to renewed ways to connect physically and emotionally and build bridges to sexual desire.
maintaining a vital marital and sexual bond.
The change process is complex and difficult, but doable. Couples begin to experience desire, break the sexual hiatus, enjoy pleasuring, and resume intercourse. Once the cycle of the low-sex or no-sex marriage is broken, you cannot rest on your laurels. To maintain a vital sexual bond, you have to commit time and energy.
The most important components in maintaining desire are to be an intimate team; anticipate sexual encounters; realize that sex is more than intercourse and orgasm; nurture bridges for desire; be open to flexible, variable sexual scenarios; and maintain a regular rhythm of affectionate and sexual contact.
It is normal for 5 to 15 percent of sexual experiences to be mediocre, unsatisfying, or failures. Do not overreact to a negative experience; especially do not avoid touching. Keeping intimate contact is the best way to ensure that a sexual lapse does not turn into a marital relapse.
Value emotional and sexual intimacy. Both people can enjoy affection, sensuality, playfulness, eroticism, and intercourse. Not all touching can or should lead to intercourse. Both planned intimacy dates and spontaneous sexual encounters promote a vital sexuality. The greater the number of bridges for desire and openness to variable, flexible sexual scenarios, the more likely you will maintain your gains. Sexuality nurtures and energizes your marital bond.
using this book to revitalize marital sexuality.
This book can help you understand and resolve the complex, draining problem of inhibited sexual desire and the low-sex or no-sex marriage. We encourage you to seek marital or sex therapy, rather than trying to do it on your own. Overcoming desire problems requires awareness, understanding, working as an intimate team, active confrontation of avoidance and inhibitions, maintaining motivation, not overreacting to difficulties and failures, and using all of your resources and supports. Increased awareness and knowledge are helpful, but not sufficient, to break the cycle of the low-sex or no-sex marriage. Increasing understanding is the first step in the 10-step change process.
Use this book as an interactive learning medium; do not just passively read. Read it aloud or highlight what is personally relevant. Discuss issues. Try exercises that are relevant; feel free to redo or individualize these to promote awareness and comfort.
Discuss guidelines and case studies, and implement what is meaningful and helpful. Use suggested strategies and techniques to empower change. Confront guilt and shame; do not beat up on yourself or feel stigmatized because of sexual problems. You deserve to feel good about yourself as a sexual person and to allow sexuality to nurture and energize your marital bond. This book is a resource in the healing journey to renewed sexual vitality and satisfaction.
Chapter 1. Why Do Couples Experience a Dead End to Desire?
The number one sexual problem facing American couples is inhibited sexual desire. The second most common problem is discrepancies in sexual desire. Pundits laugh and say, What do you expect from people married 20 years? In truth, these are not the couples in trouble. Desire problems plague newly married couples, as well as unmarried couples. Contrary to cultural myths, neither boredom nor age are the main factors in inhibited sexual desire. Desire problems occur among all age groups and types of couples.
This book will explore the complex phenomena of inhibited sexual desire—specifically, low-sex and no-sex marriages. The cultural sexual revolution of the 1960s and the scientific sexual revolution of the 1970s, inaugurated by the work of Masters and Johnson, were expected to dramatically increase sexual satisfaction. Why did that not happen? What went wrong? Most important, what does this mean for your marriage? How can you understand and confront inhibited sexual desire? Are there really no-sex marriages, or are you a freak?
Take this true—false test:
the test.
1. Sex is more work than play.
2. Touching always leads to intercourse.
3. Touching takes place only in the bedroom.
4. You no longer look forward to making love.
5. Sex does not give you feelings of connection and sharing.
6. You never have sexual thoughts or fantasies about your spouse.
7. Sex is limited to a fixed time, such as Saturday night or Sunday morning.
8. One of you is always the initiator and the other feels pressure.
9. You look back on premarital sex as the best time.
10. Sex has become mechanical and routine.
11. You have sex once or twice a month at most.
If you answered true to five or more statements, true to item 11, or both, you are among the more than 40 million Americans stuck in a low-sex or no-sex marriage.
The adage in sex therapy is that when sexuality goes well, it is a positive, integral but not major component—adding 15 to 20 percent to marital vitality and satisfaction. However, when sexuality is dysfunctional or nonexistent, it assumes an inordinately powerful role, 50 to 70 percent, robbing the marriage of intimacy and vitality.
The most disruptive sexual problem is inhibited desire. If this degenerates into a no-sex or low-sex marriage, it puts tremendous pressure on the couple, especially if affection and sensuality also cease. Desire is the core of sexuality. No-sex and low-sex marriages become devitalized, especially when this occurs in the first 3 years of marriage. Unless something is done to reverse this process, divorce is a likely outcome.
The functions of marital sexuality are to create a shared pleasure, to reinforce and deepen intimacy, and to use as a tension-reducer to deal with the stresses of life and marriage. An optional function is to conceive a planned, wanted baby. No-sex and low-sex marriages negate these benefits. In addition, lack of sexuality robs the couple of special feelings and intimate connection.
the stigma of desire problems.
The initial focus of sex therapy was orgasm problems—premature ejaculation in men and nonorgasmic response (especially during intercourse) in women. The naive assumption was that if both partners had orgasms, everything would be fine. The simplistic concept was “orgasm=satisfaction.” Sexuality is complex, with many causes and many dimensions.
The four components of sexual function are desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction. When therapists refer to a primary sexual dysfunction, it means the problem has always plagued the couple. Secondary dysfunction means sexuality was once fine and then became problematic. Secondary inhibited sexual desire is the most common sexual problem facing married couples.
Desire and satisfaction are the core of sexuality. It is more socially acceptable to say you have a specific dysfunction— nonorgasmic response, female arousal dysfunction, vaginismus, painful intercourse, erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, or ejaculatory inhibition. It is hard to admit, “I am not interested in sex,” “I do not like sex,” or “I do not find sex enjoyable.” In our sex-satiated culture, everyone is supposed to love sex.
Research studies (the most important being the Sex in America study) find that 1 in 3 women and 1 in 7 men report inhibited sexual desire. Sometime in marriage more than 50 percent of couples experience inhibited desire or a desire discrepancy. You are not alone. Feeling stigmatized and deficient is of no value.
Desire problems are the most frequent complaint of couples seeking sex therapy. Inhibited sexual desire stresses a marriage more than any other sexual dysfunction does.
The extreme of desire problems is a no-sex marriage. The couple falls into the cycle of anticipatory anxiety, negative experiences, and, eventually, sexual avoidance. Sex is more of a pain than a pleasure. The partners did not plan to have a no-sex marriage; it is a pattern they fell into. A no-sex marriage does not mean total abstinence, but that sex occurs less than 10 times a year. A low-sex marriage means being sexual less than every other week (i.e., less than 25 times a year). Approximately 20 percent (one in five) of married couples have a no-sex relationship. An additional 15 percent of married couples have a low-sex relationship. One in three nonmarried couples who have been together more than 2 years have a no-sex relationship.
The longer the couple avoids sexual contact, the harder it is to break the cycle. Avoidance becomes a self-fulfilling trap. The longer the partners are in a low-sex or no-sex marriage, the more they blame each other. The more shameful they feel, the harder it is to break the cycle. The couple that has not resumed sexual contact 6 months after the baby was born faces one set of problems, but the couple that has not been sexual for 6 years faces a more daunting task. Yet the strategy for change is the same—renew intimacy, engage in nondemand pleasuring, and add erotic scenarios and techniques. The more chronic the problem, the more difficult is the change process. Maintaining motivation is a major challenge. Confronting avoidance and inhibitions is more difficult for the couple that has stopped being affectionate. The good news is that motivated couples are able to reestablish touching, desire, arousal, and intercourse.
the nonconsummated marriage.
The number of couples that do not consummate their marriages is difficult to estimate because it is a shameful secret. One in four couples has an unsuccessful or painful first intercourse. As many as 1.5 percent of marriages are not consummated the first year, and about half of those remain unconsummated. Most of these couples were sexually active premaritally, but ceased intercourse before marriage and were unsuccessful at resuming. Another pattern is that a specific dysfunction, such as vaginismus or ejaculatory inhibition, makes intercourse very difficult or impossible. Some couples maintain desire and enjoy nonintercourse sex. Most people in nonconsummated marriages avoid any sensual or sexual activity.
Embarrassment over a nonconsummated marriage dominates their lives. The woman avoids gynecological examinations because she does not want to answer questions about sexual activity. If she has never had intercourse or suffers from vaginismus (spasming of the vaginal opening so that insertion is very painful or impossible), she avoids a vaginal exam or having a pap smear. The stigma for the male is just as severe. He views the nonconsummated marriage as an attack on his masculinity.
The couple treats this as a “shameful secret,” not talking to friends, doctors, or a minister, which furthers alienation and stigma. The partners do not even talk to each other. It is important to realize that non-consummated marriages, no-sex marriages, low-sex marriages, and marriages controlled by inhibited desire are more common than thought. Sexual problems can be addressed and resolved. You can revitalize your sexual bond and rebuild desire and functioning. It requires motivation, focus, and working as an intimate team.
what is normal sexuality?
Before 1970, we lacked scientific information about sexual function and dysfunction, had only poor quality educational materials, and suffered from inhibition, guilt, and limited communication. Sexual myths and misinformation were rampant.
An astounding increase in knowledge has occurred during the past 30 years. Unfortunately, this has not resulted in improved sexual functioning. There are as many sexual problems in the 21st century as in the 1950s, although the types of problems have changed.
We have better scientific information about sexual function and dysfunction than at any time in human history. There is a plethora of educational materials and self-help books. Sexuality is discussed in arenas ranging from pulpits to talk shows. Sexual themes dominate our culture, especially TV, movies, and music.
There is an enormous amount of sexual discussion, although the quality is low, with a confusing medley of fact and fiction. Naive, repressive myths have been replaced by unrealistic, performance-oriented myths. Guilt has been replaced by performance anxiety. There has been no net gain for sexual pleasure. Sexual anxieties, inhibitions, and problems are still the norm.
Sexuality is a complex, crucial aspect of life and marriage. We are respectful of individual, couple, and cultural differences in the functions and meanings of sexuality. There is not “one right way” to be sexual.
Concepts that promote healthy sexuality are 1. Sex is more than genitals, intercourse, and orgasm. Sexuality involves attitudes, feelings, perceptions, and values. Sexuality is a natural, healthy element in life. It need not be a source of guilt or negative feelings.
2. Sexuality is an integral aspect of your personality. You deserve to feel good about your body and yourself as a sexual person.
3. The essence of sexuality is giving and receiving pleasure-oriented touching.
4. Express sexuality so that it enhances your life and your intimate relationship.
The four components of sexual functioning are:
1. Desire—Positive anticipation and feeling that you deserve sexual pleasure.
2. Arousal—Being receptive and responsive to touching and genital stimulation.
3. Orgasm—Letting go and allowing arousal to naturally culminate in orgasm.
4. Satisfaction—Feeling emotionally and physically bonded after a sexual experience.
Healthy sexual functioning allows both people to enjoy pleasure.
A key element is having realistic expectations, accepting the inherent variability and flexibility of sexual experiences. Novels and movies emphasize free-flowing, nonverbal, powerful sexuality where desire is intense. Arousal is quick, orgasm always occurs for both (simultaneously), and it is marvelous. This sells movies and novels, but makes real people feel inadequate and deficient. If partners experience powerful desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction twice a month, they can count themselves lucky and should celebrate those special times. Less than half the sexual experiences of well-functioning couples involve equal desire, arousal, and orgasm. Typically, one partner is more into sex, although the other enjoys the experience or at least appreciates going along for the ride. Five to 15 percent of sexual experiences are mediocre, unsatisfying, or failures. This, too, is normal. You are not a perfectly functioning sexual machine. You are two individuals sharing sexuality. There is built-in variability and, occasionally, dissatisfaction or dysfunction.
Fifty percent of married couples (and over 60 percent of unmarried couples) experience sexual dysfunction or dissatisfaction. Inhibited sexual desire and discrepancies in desire are the most common complaints, so you have plenty of company.
One spouse (usually the male) initiates and encourages sexual contact, so even if dysfunctional or unsatisfying, marital sex continues. Some people with desire problems do not have difficulty with arousal and orgasm once they begin. As a client said, “Once stimulation starts, I get turned on and come; it’s the wanting to be sexual that stymies me.” Pundits call it “lack of wanta.” Occasional lack of desire is normal. At times, it is healthy. You wonder about people who have high sexual desire in times of couple conflict, dealing with an ill child, after a funeral, facing a financial crunch, or during a work crisis. It is unhealthy to use sex as a way of denying or avoiding reality.
It is normal to occasionally have differences in desire.
Sometimes one partner wants a hug, the other wants an orgasm.
What is not normal is chronic inhibited desire, a no-sex or low-sex marriage, or constant conflict over sex.
romantic love and sexual chemistry.
We have been socialized by movies, songs, and novels to believe that romantic love and sexual chemistry are the powerful, driving forces that carry couples to the heights of ecstacy. Sex is smooth, passionate, spontaneous, and uninhibited. Movie sex is spectacular sex; the fact that it has nothing to do with real couples’ sex lives is beside the point of the magical media hype.
Romantic love, with its idealization of the partner and the relationship, plays a powerful role in initial attraction. Romantic love is inherently unstable, usually ending before marriage or seldom lasting past the first year. Sexual chemistry is very explosive and equally short-lived. Couples report “hot” sex at the beginning when they see each other on weekends, but experience sexual disappointment when living together or married. “Where did the passion go?” Hot sex based on romantic love and passion disappears, as it should. These cannot maintain desire. Sexual desire is based on emotional and sexual intimacy, not on romantic love or passionate sex. Comfort, attraction, and trust nurture desire after the heat of sexual chemistry is long gone. The prescription for maintaining sexual desire is integrating intimacy, nondemand pleasuring, and erotic scenarios and techniques.
Couples who believe that the way to rebuild desire is to rekindle romantic love and reignite sexual passion are heading into a dead end. The keys to revitalizing marital sexuality are building bridges to desire, increasing intimacy, enjoying nondemand pleasuring, and creating erotic scenarios. Broad-based, flexible sexuality provides a solid foundation for marriage. Sexual desire is essentially interpersonal, not individual. The partners learn to think, talk, act, and feel like an intimate team. Each spouse facilitates and reinforces the other’s sexual feelings and desires, rather than colluding in sexual avoidance.
Maintaining comfort, attraction, and trust is an active process.
Each person takes the initiative and designs a pleasurable or erotic scenario. The spouse is open and receptive. Inhibitions and avoidance are confronted. This requires commitment and working together. Change is usually gradual, rather than dramatic. There will be difficulties, set-backs, disappointments, and lapses, but if the partners stay with the process, they will succeed. Once sexuality is reestablished, they need to generalize and maintain gains. Benign neglect subverts sexual desire.
Relapse prevention is an active process. Good intentions and loving feelings are necessary, but not sufficient, to maintain a vital sexual bond.
who we are and the plan of the book.
We have been married 36 years and see sexuality as a vital, integral part of our marital bond. Since 1980 we have been a writing team; this is our seventh coauthored book. We have complementary skills—Barry is a Ph. D. clinical psychologist, and certified sex and marital therapist; Emily has a degree in speech communication.
Our previous sexuality books include a conceptual book, Couple Sexual Awareness (1998); a book using sexual exercises to increase comfort and skill, Sexual Awareness (2002); as well as Male Sexual Awareness (1998) and Female Sexual Awareness (1989).
A significant part of Barry’s clinical practice is with couples suffering from inhibited desire or stuck in no-sex or low-sex marriages. He has treated over 2,500 couples who have sexual problems and dysfunction. Typically, the problems have gone on for years, and the partners feel ashamed and embarrassed. They mistakenly believe that they are the only couple with this problem and approach therapy with a great deal of hesitancy Layers of frustration, resentment, and blaming have built and are a greater threat to the marriage than is the sexual problem itself.
Our motivation for writing this book is to provide knowledge, support, and hope for couples facing inhibited desire and a no-sex or low-sex marriage. Sexual problems need not control a marriage or dominate the couple’s feelings. Women are unfairly blamed for sexual difficulties; guilt and shame further inhibit desire. We believe in working as an intimate team and using a range of affectionate, sensual, playful, and erotic bridges to rekindle desire.
This is not meant to be read like a textbook. We encourage you to identify issues that are personally relevant and to focus on those. Each chapter is self-contained. The material can be read for information and ideas, but it is best used as an interactive learning medium. We encourage you to read together as a couple and discuss what is personally significant. One technique is to take turns reading aloud, stopping at important points to discuss.
Another method is for both of you to underline or star the points you feel are relevant. Then read these, underlining or marking what is important to you. Discuss issues. Try suggested strategies, involve yourselves in relevant exercises, and develop communication and sexual skills.
This is a book of ideas, guidelines, and exercises, not a “do-it-your-self therapy.” The more information and understanding the partners have, the better decisions they will make. Knowledge is power. We draw on case studies of clients Barry has treated (names and details are altered to protect confidentiality). Most chapters contain an exercise to make the assessment and change process personal and concrete. We encourage you to engage in exercises that are helpful and feel free to skip those that are not. Exercises are not rigid or set in concrete; feel free to modify them so that you get the most you can from these experiences.
self-help and therapy.
This is a self-help book, not a substitute for individual, marital, or sex therapy. The most efficacious use is as an adjunctive resource while in therapy. We offer information, guidelines, case examples, exercises, and personal observations, and we suggest change strategies and techniques. Increasing awareness and reducing myths and stigma are crucial. Information, understanding, and attitude change will challenge inhibited desire, but this is not enough.
Sexuality has a major cognitive component—the most important element for desire is positive anticipation. Attitudes about deserving sexual pleasure and your rights as a sexual person promote healthy sexuality. Yet sexuality is not a cognitive activity.
Sexuality involves emotions and interaction—sharing intimacy, pleasure, and erotic feelings. The more severe and chronic the inhibited desire, the harder it is to develop the courage to take risks and reinstitute touching and sexual expression.
Sex therapy has a number of advantages over a self-help book.
Therapy promotes hope and maintains motivation in the face of frustration or disappointment. The change process is never as easy or straightforward as is portrayed in books. The typical process is “two steps forward, one step back.” The therapist helps the couple to stay focused and reinforces motivation for change. Having a regular therapy appointment and feeling accountable are valuable in breaking the impasse of a no-sex or low-sex marriage. The therapist’s empathy and insights are vital. The therapist’s respecting and caring about each person promote self-respect and mutual caring. The therapist can guide the couple toward other valuable helping resources. Guidelines for choosing a marital or sexual therapist are presented in appendix 1.
can all marriages be saved?
The traditional view was that all marriages could and should be saved. Divorce was viewed as a failure. This is untrue and self-defeating. Marriages that are fatally flawed, abusive, or destructive or those that subvert well-being are not worth preserving. We are definitely pro-marriage, but divorce is the healthy alternative when the marriage is fatally flawed or destructive.
A marriage that meets needs for intimacy and security is of great value. The marital bond of respect and trust motivates the couple to revitalize sexual intimacy. When respect and trust are lacking, trying to restore intimacy is a useless struggle.
A no-sex or low-sex marriage robs the couple of intimate feelings, especially when affection and sensuality are absent.
Unless this changes or there are other sources of satisfaction, the marriage probably will not survive. The marriage might have genuine strengths, but inability to resolve sexual problems overwhelms the relationship. We hope this book can revitalize your marriage or at least revive hopefulness and motivate you to seek marital or sex therapy.
secrets and hidden agendas.
Inhibited sexual desire and no-sex or low-sex marriages have a multitude of causes, especially sexual secrets and hidden agendas.
Most of these can be dealt with; others symbolize a fatally flawed marriage. Examples of secrets that can be dealt with are shame over childhood sexual abuse, guilt over an idiosyncratic masturbation pattern, and sexual avoidance due to fear of failure.
Examples of secrets that reflect a fatally flawed marriage are a homosexual orientation and hidden sexual life, marrying for convenience or security but no genuine feeling for the spouse, and a continuing comparison affair that subverts the marital bond because emotional and sexual needs are being met through the affair.
Ideally, the trust bond is enhanced by openness. Disclosing secrets facilitates trust. Sharing secrets (such as embarrassing or traumatic childhood incidents) helps the individual. Other secrets (such as telling the spouse that one of his or her children was born through an affair) can destroy the marital bond. Secrets inhibit sexual desire and should be shared with someone—if not the spouse, then with a therapist, minister, sibling, or best friend.
Hidden agendas are even more sensitive and explosive. Some can be dealt with, whereas others indicate a fatally flawed marriage. Couples can deal with fear of pregnancy, fear of being abandoned, shame about a fetish arousal pattern, lack of desire caused by a side effect of medication, being afraid to raise sexual issues because the spouse would leave, or pretending you lack desire in order to protect a spouse who is obsessed with sexual performance. Hidden agendas destroy sexual anticipation—they need to be disclosed and dealt with. Hidden agendas that produce a fatally flawed marriage include the man who married because of a sexual attraction to the stepchildren and who has little or no attraction to his spouse, a woman who married her spouse for money or security and uses sex to placate him, a woman who has decided to leave the marriage after her child graduates high school and so avoids sexual contact, and a man who is homosexual and uses the marriage as a social cover for business or professional reasons. These marriages cannot and should not be saved. The healthy alternative is divorce—hidden agendas control the relationship, resulting in a sham marriage.
Dealing with secrets or hidden agendas by yourself is extremely difficult. Individual or couple therapy can help you understand the dilemma and reach a resolution. Hidden agendas are very hard to address without professional help. Even with an objective third party, there is unpredictability and potential explosiveness.
Sometimes both spouses have a hidden agenda, but usually it is one spouse. People with hidden agendas fear (often rightly) that these will be used against them to blame them for all of the problems or be used by lawyers in a divorce proceeding. If the goal is to revitalize the sexual bond, the hidden agenda must be addressed and dealt with.
is the sexual problem a symptom or a cause?
The question of whether a marital problem causes a sexual problem or the sexual problem causes marital dissatisfaction is more than a chicken-and-egg argument. Human behavior is overdetermined, with many causes and many dimensions. Any simple answer is likely to be wrong or, at least, incomplete.
Sexuality is a positive, integral component of marital intimacy.
Although no-sex or low-sex marriages can function satisfactorily, these are the minority. Some couples maintain a respectful, trusting bond and are good parents even though sexuality is dysfunctional or absent. Other couples have an angry, alienated, nonsupportive marriage, and the only thing that works is sex.
The most common pattern is a couple that has a good relationship, but struggles unsuccessfully with inhibited desire.
Over time, the sexual problem becomes severe and chronic. Sexual problems undermine marriages by robbing them of intimate connection and energy. The sexual problem increasingly defines the marriage; blaming and resentment build. In well-functioning marriages, sexuality plays a 15 to 20 percent role in terms of vitality and satisfaction. With a chronic inhibited desire problem, sexuality plays an inordinately powerful role, draining positive feelings and tearing at the marital fabric.
Another pattern is that relationship conflicts, especially those involving anger, are played out through sexual conflict. Anger is the main cause of secondary inhibited sexual desire. Withholding or avoiding sex makes a statement, a way to fight back. Although this is usually a female reaction, males shut down sexually as a way to express anger. Sometimes this is a conscious choice; more often it is not. Anger can involve a sexual issue (demand for oral sex, a discovered extramarital affair, conflict over birth control), but more often anger involves a relationship problem. Common causes of anger may be concern about drinking and driving, not feeling supported in a family conflict, out-of-control arguments that include slapping and pushing, conflicts over spending, and feeling that your spouse is taking advantage of you. As alienation increases, “hot” angry thoughts build on themselves. Attempts to bridge the emotional gap with affectionate touching or sexual activity are met with angry rebuffs, increasing frustration and isolation. Emotional and sexual distance feeds the angry cycle. The partners find themselves trapped in an alienated low-sex or no-sex marriage.
No-sex or low-sex marriages happen; it is not the spouse s intention. The exception is when that is the hidden agenda.
Examples of hidden agendas include when one spouse is gay and has married for a convenient cover or the spouse has a paraphiliac arousal pattern (exhibitionism, fetishism, pedophilia, obscene phone calls), with little desire for intimate sex. Seeking out Internet pornography and chatrooms can become a compulsive pattern, subverting desire for couple sex. These are male patterns. Female hidden agendas are fear of pregnancy or pain during intercourse, resulting in sexual avoidance. There are nonsexual hidden agendas, which include marrying for security, money, social approval, or religious pressure but with lack of caring and attraction. There is little hope for these marriages unless the core issues that block a genuine marital bond are addressed. Unless both individuals are willing to confront the hidden agenda and build a solid marital bond, divorce is the healthy alternative.
Fertility problems are a common cause of inhibited sexual desire. Sex with the intention of becoming pregnant is an aphrodisiac. For 85 percent of couples under 30 and 70 percent of couples over 30, becoming pregnant is usually easy (often, too easy). Couples in the unlucky minority find that as time goes on, frustration builds. The process of undergoing a fertility assessment, with increasingly intrusive, painful, and expensive tests and interventions, weakens the desire of the most ardent couple. Fertility problems are no fun. Self-blame and blaming the spouse are easy traps. Fertility problems can bring out the worst in people. Infertility dominates self-esteem, the marriage, and sexuality. They stop being sexual except during the high probability week. Sex becomes a pressured performance to achieve pregnancy, with little pleasure, warmth, or feeling of connection. Couples dealing with a fertility issue need a great deal of support, which includes using touching, sensuality, and eroticism to energize themselves during the non-high probability periods of the month.
Another problematic pattern is conflict about intercourse frequency. Instead of broad-based pleasuring and a variety of bridges to desire, it is a “yes—no” question—are we going to have intercourse? If not, there is no touching. If every touch is a demand for intercourse, the pressure is up and the pleasure is down.
Emotional intimacy and non-demand pleasuring are sacrificed to intercourse pressure. The result is inhibited desire. Intimacy, comfort, and pleasure lead to sexual anticipation. Conflict and pressure lead to inhibited desire. Quality is more important than frequency Sexuality is more than genitals, intercourse, and orgasm. Guidelines that promote desire include the beliefs that touching is valued for itself, touching occurs both inside and outside the bedroom, and not all touching must result in intercourse.
Another pattern is that if sexual dysfunction increasingly dominates the relationship, one or both partners would rather avoid than try to be sexual. The dysfunction, whether erectile problems, premature ejaculation, nonorgasmic response, vaginismus, or ejaculatory inhibition, controls the relationship.
The dysfunctional spouse feels embarrassed or humiliated. To avoid bad feelings, she avoids sex. This is an especially destructive trap for males with erectile dysfunction. If he cannot be guaranteed an erection sufficient for intercourse, he does not want to try. Premature ejaculation or ejaculatory inhibition is frustrating, but does not cause the couple to stop being sexual.
Female dysfunction subverts desire, but the couple is unlikely to stop sexual activity, especially when the male continues to initiate.
With vaginismus (which blocks intercourse), couples can enjoy nonintercourse erotic scenarios and techniques.
If sexual dysfunction does not reverse within 6 months, it is unlikely to spontaneously clear up. The typical outcome is that the problem becomes severe and chronic, negating anticipation and desire. Functional sex alone does not build anticipation, but dysfunctional sex drains desire.
A myriad of factors inhibit desire and lead to a no-sex or low-sex marriage. Understanding the pattern is a helpful, and usually necessary, step in resolving the problem. Most important is the commitment to restore intimacy and sexuality. No matter what originally started the sexual slide, once the pattern is established, chronicity, blaming, and avoidance solidify the problem.
The individual cannot resolve sexual problems alone or by sheer willpower. The partners have to work together. Being an “intimate team” is the cornerstone of this approach. The way to rebuild desire is a one-two combination of taking personal responsibility for sexuality and being an intimate team. Trust that the spouse will make a good faith effort to deal with inhibitions, anxieties, and traps. Be open to renewed ways to connect physically and emotionally and build bridges to sexual desire.
maintaining a vital marital and sexual bond.
The change process is complex and difficult, but doable. Couples begin to experience desire, break the sexual hiatus, enjoy pleasuring, and resume intercourse. Once the cycle of the low-sex or no-sex marriage is broken, you cannot rest on your laurels. To maintain a vital sexual bond, you have to commit time and energy.
The most important components in maintaining desire are to be an intimate team; anticipate sexual encounters; realize that sex is more than intercourse and orgasm; nurture bridges for desire; be open to flexible, variable sexual scenarios; and maintain a regular rhythm of affectionate and sexual contact.
It is normal for 5 to 15 percent of sexual experiences to be mediocre, unsatisfying, or failures. Do not overreact to a negative experience; especially do not avoid touching. Keeping intimate contact is the best way to ensure that a sexual lapse does not turn into a marital relapse.
Value emotional and sexual intimacy. Both people can enjoy affection, sensuality, playfulness, eroticism, and intercourse. Not all touching can or should lead to intercourse. Both planned intimacy dates and spontaneous sexual encounters promote a vital sexuality. The greater the number of bridges for desire and openness to variable, flexible sexual scenarios, the more likely you will maintain your gains. Sexuality nurtures and energizes your marital bond.
using this book to revitalize marital sexuality.
This book can help you understand and resolve the complex, draining problem of inhibited sexual desire and the low-sex or no-sex marriage. We encourage you to seek marital or sex therapy, rather than trying to do it on your own. Overcoming desire problems requires awareness, understanding, working as an intimate team, active confrontation of avoidance and inhibitions, maintaining motivation, not overreacting to difficulties and failures, and using all of your resources and supports. Increased awareness and knowledge are helpful, but not sufficient, to break the cycle of the low-sex or no-sex marriage. Increasing understanding is the first step in the 10-step change process.
Use this book as an interactive learning medium; do not just passively read. Read it aloud or highlight what is personally relevant. Discuss issues. Try exercises that are relevant; feel free to redo or individualize these to promote awareness and comfort.
Discuss guidelines and case studies, and implement what is meaningful and helpful. Use suggested strategies and techniques to empower change. Confront guilt and shame; do not beat up on yourself or feel stigmatized because of sexual problems. You deserve to feel good about yourself as a sexual person and to allow sexuality to nurture and energize your marital bond. This book is a resource in the healing journey to renewed sexual vitality and satisfaction.
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