Labels, Definitions and Sex Models

I’ve never found a full set of sex models that I could use, or a matrix that actually worked for me in my practice. Models from other disciplines (such as sociology and cultural anthropology) don’t hold up under sexological scrutiny. Models from the past are unreliable. Even the best sex research is always going to be flawed somewhat by our inability to truly and absolutely study sexual behaviors objectively.

This is the biggest conundrum when you study sex. It’s like trying to study someone who’s in love: you may observe that they’re happier, smiling more, acting different, but that doesn’t explain why they fell for this person and not another, or how that person makes them feel inside. Nowadays, we can put people in MRIs to observe how their brains work during orgasms, but we still can’t understand fully how they felt physically, emotionally, psychologically about their orgasm.

How people feel about their experiences or even react to the same experiences is unknown and possibly unknowable, at least in quantitative terms. One reason is linguistic. Have you ever tried to describe an orgasm? Somehow, when you try to put it into words, you can’t quite capture it. Meanwhile, how your orgasm felt to you is not how his or her orgasm felt to your partner. And how your orgasm feels today may not be the way it felt yesterday or last year, or the way it will feel tomorrow.

Sex in humans is deeply personal, deeply emotional, and infinitely arbitrary and inchoate. That’s why I think it’s so tough for people to reach consensus on what labels mean and who they apply to. My focus therefore is on staying true to yourself, and not worrying about labels or definitions that don’t feel right to you, whatever your reasons. Here are quick summaries of some of the clients I’ve worked with to give you a tiny taste of the diversity I see.

TAN and MAI were Christians whose kinks and fetishes were clinically BDSM behaviors yet who did not see themselves as BDSMers because they felt the BDSM world’s moral values conflicted with their own. Their relationship was strictly private. I was the only other person who knew they had a Master/slave relationship in the bedroom.

CARESSA had struggled with her gender identity since puberty. She mainly lived as a biological man but periodically would feel she had to commit to her female identity, and would live as a gender woman. Eventually she’d drift back to her male identity, in part or fully, then she’d crave to live as a female again. She finally grew to be comfortable with fluidity, but still never liked any of the labels. “I’m CARESSA!” she said. “That’s enough of a label for me.”

JOHN had sex with his friend Doug but he didn’t consider himself gay. He liked to set up threesomes with Doug and another woman. If they couldn’t find a woman, they helped each other out. To him, gay meant you fell in love with men. He didn’t feel romantic about men, only about women. He actually felt heterosexual, though he accepted that his behavior was technically bisexual.

One could, of course, argue with all of the above people, and show them textbooks which have names for them. But why? I understand the purpose when it’s a disease or a mental illness: if you know the illness, you may have a reliable treatment plan or protocol you can follow. But sexual variations aren’t illnesses, and no one who knows the sexological literature tries to “cure” homosexuality, consensual sadomasochism, or any other normal sexual variations.

At the same time, understanding the differentials in how people relate, the structure of their relationships, how they identify their own needs and desires are all important factors in helping them build happier, more empowered sex lives.

Here is a summary of the five key areas I assess when helping people resolve relationship conflicts:

1. RELATIONSHIP TYPE: What kind of relationship are they currently having (married, long-term, casual, etc.) and what is their history of relationships?

2. SEX ACTS: What kind of sexual intimacy are they currently having in their relationship and what was their history of sexual experiences with others?

3. SEXUAL SELF-IDENTITY: Where do they think they fall on the range of sexual expression – do they identify as straight, gay, bisexual, etc?

4. SEXUAL PERSONALITY: What are all the little extras that make this person’s sexual needs unique to him/her (such as level of libido and attitude towards sex)?

5. SEXUAL FUNCTION: Are they able to have satisfying sex? How often do they have satisfying orgasms?

An optimal model for a long-term relationship’s health therefore should comprise the following: (1) a relationship which affirms all partners’ needs, (2) a sex life with enough variety to keep both partners excited, (3) a shared or compatible sexual self-identity between partners, (4) compatible sexual personalities (5) sexual satisfaction. My goal is to help clients integrate these five areas and maximize their overall sense of well-being with their partner.

In my experience, people who are in strong, happy marriages and other long-term bonded relationships are able to agree that they are on track in all five areas. As someone who’s been married for 24 years to a fellow kinky person, these are the five touchstones that have kept us awfully happy about sticking it out. Through good times and bad times, our fundamental compatibility and shared values keep us focused on what really matters.

If you look at your own relationship(s) and find that you are lacking on several fronts, chances are that you already know you are unhappy with the state of your personal life. Hopefully, if you go through the five components carefully you will figure out what area is causing issues and you can begin to work on a solution.