Who would believe that Mae West, the bawdy entertainer known for her racy quips and double entendres, would hit on the essential truth of sex? It is emotion—the quality of our connection to another person—that defines the type of sex we have, the satisfaction we derive from it, and the impact it has on our romantic relationships. Indeed, attachment determines how we behave in bed as well as out of it.
This is a radical idea. For years, sex has been central in our beliefs about adult love. Freud started this conviction with his theory that the physical pleasure we gain from our opposite-sex parent’s nurturing and cuddling in childhood is an erotic bond that becomes the template for our adult romantic relationships. Later researchers—such as Alfred Kinsey and William Masters and Virginia Johnson, with their inquiries into sexual experience, mechanics, and biology—pushed sex into further significance. The women’s-liberation movement unwittingly endorsed this view with its proclamation that women are entitled to have as much sex and draw as much pleasure from it as men—and the Pill, which freed them from fears of pregnancy, allowed them to do so. In recent years, evolutionary biologists and psychologists have made sex even more prominent with their theory that love is simply a trick—nature’s way to induce us to have sex and thereby assure continuation of our species.
As a result, in the Western world we’ve come to believe that sexual infatuation and love are synonymous and that sex is the essence of adult love. In simple terms, sex is love—and good sex is good love. Today we are obsessed with how to have good and ever-better sex. The best sex, of course, is orgasmic. If you doubt the current state of affairs, pick up any women’s or men’s magazine and you’ll find at least one, and likely more than one, article detailing techniques and positions to liven up your sex life. Visit any bookstore and you’ll find tome after tome offering the “secret” to firing off the Big O, which, preferably, looks like the kind of seizure you might have if you put your finger in a light socket. Companies, meanwhile, have introduced a spate of new products, from ribbed and flavored condoms to spiced-up lubricants to toys and aids guaranteed to whip you into sexual frenzy and satisfaction. Sex seems to be portrayed as a process similar to digestion, as psychologist Leonore Tiefer of New York University School of Medicine suggests, rather than what it is—a reciprocal dance.
Vaulting sex to such primacy has, alas, distorted its role in relationships—and with harmful consequences. Instead of drawing people closer together, all the emphasis on sex is instead driving us farther and farther apart. Consider the fixation on Internet porn. We’re abandoning living partners for screen sex. Forty million Americans admit to being regular visitors to Web porn sites, and 10 percent of them say they are addicted. Although patrons of these sites are mostly men, women are fast catching up. And what’s most troubling is that the followers are getting younger and younger—teens and even preteens are watching Internet porn. When adults do get together today, it’s often for one-night stands or casual sex. They call themselves friends with benefits. They’re going through the motions but with little emotion.
The sad fact is that we have isolated sex, taken it out of context. Yes, it is an important aspect of romantic relationships, but it is not the be-all and end-all. To researchers like me, adult love has three elements: sexuality, caregiving (a blend of attentiveness and empathy), and attachment. And the last is by far the most important. For as we connect emotionally, so we connect sexually.
The level of ease with closeness and the degree of safety we feel with our partner translates into different kinds of sex, each with its own practices and goals, and it even directs our sexual fantasies. We can have sex that centers on physical sensation and is walled off from our heart, our emotional life. We can have sex that is mainly emotional consolation, focused on comfort and relieving our fears. Or we can have sex that is synchronous, intimate, and integrated with our deepest emotional needs.
This idea was brought home to me recently, albeit in an altogether different context. It was Friday night at the milonga, a social gathering for people who dance the Argentine tango. As the strains of the bandoneón and violin filled the hall, men and women took to the floor and stepped and swayed. My feet hurt, so I was sitting out and watching. I found myself thinking of my friends’ comments that tango is a very sexy dance. They’re right, of course. But what is it that makes it so sexy? Is it the close embrace with partners’ heads and torsos pressed together, the caressing and entangling of legs and feet, the stiletto heels that make women’s legs seem to stretch forever?
Yes, it’s all of that. But still, not all dancers give us an erotic charge. Why is that? What makes one pair mesmerizing and arousing and another not? I thought up a little experiment. As my fellow dancers—amateur tangueros and tangueras all—flowed past me, I rated them on a “torrid” scale. I closed my eyes and opened them at random and scored the couple I had in front of me.
The first couple I saw was new in town. The two were slim and spiffily dressed, he in a fitted suit and two-tone shoes, she in a slinky red dress and strappy four-inch-high black suede sandals. They danced with technique and elegance. He swiveled his hips and arced around her in a masterful molinete; she pivoted on her left foot and kicked her right foot high in the air in a stunning boleo. Their performance was impressive. But it was just that—a performance. They were dancing for their audience, not for each other, and while I admired their skill, I was left unmoved.
The next time I opened my eyes, a young, casually dressed couple was in view. The dancers walked to the beat, changed weight, and moved into some complicated steps, but there was an awkwardness about them. The young woman seemed nervous to me. She was trying very hard to follow her partner’s lead. When he stretched out his foot, she hesitated a beat before stepping over, then looked up as if to ask, “Okay?” I watched, but there was no heat. They were doing steps, trying very hard to do what the other person expected, but not truly dancing.
The third time I opened my eyes, I saw one of my friends, in her usual plain dress and flat practice shoes, dancing with a short, chubby guy in a gray T-shirt and blue jeans. They were doing slow, simple steps, but they were mesmerizing. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. It was like they were having an intimate conversation. He turned his shoulders, inviting her into the space he’d made; she accepted, and they twisted into a tight turn together. The music slowed, and he waited considerately for her to finish pivoting and step over his foot and into his embrace. He caught her foot with his and slid it behind her; then she caught his and moved it back. They were playing! They were completely absorbed in each other and in savoring each step and moment of their dance. Their moves were simple, synchronized, and wholly sensuous.
Our culture endorses the idea that sex brings emotional attachment, that it creates the bond that ties a couple together. In short, love follows sex. But much more significant is the movement in the other direction. Numerous studies over the past ten years show how the three attachment styles—secure, anxious, and avoidant—influence our motives for having sex, our sexual performance and satisfaction, and the impact of sex on our love relationships.
Those of us who are avoidant, that is, uncomfortable with emotional closeness and dependence on others, are more likely to have what I term “sealed-off sex.” The focus here is on one’s own sensations. Sex is self-centered and self-affirming, a performance aimed at achieving climax and confirming one’s own sexual skill. Technique is prized; openness and vulnerability shunned. There is little foreplay, such as kissing or tender touching. And no cuddling afterward—once the Big Bang occurs, there’s nothing left. Partners’ feelings are deemed insignificant and are easily dismissed.
Because pleasure without emotional engagement is shallow and fleeting, this kind of sex needs continual boosting to be thrilling. Novel techniques and new partners can momentarily heighten excitement, but the incessant experimenting can lead to unsafe practices and coercive pressure being applied to partners who are hesitant to participate.
Sealed-off sex is most common among heterosexual men (the quintessential practitioner is James Bond) and also can be frequent among gay men, especially if they are not out about their orientation. Disturbingly, this type of sex may be increasing because of the wide spread of Internet porn. Youngsters who troll sex websites are learning about performance and sensation but not about emotional connection.
Henry, a 40-year-old fitness instructor, tells me, “Sex and love are separate—and anyway, romantic love is a con, a fiction.” When I ask about his sex life, he says he masturbates frequently. “It’s easier than dealing with my wife. And I get frustrated because she never wants to do blow jobs. She knows that they are my big turn-on, but she just won’t do it.” He goes into great detail about the moves that arouse and satisfy him. He adds, “I guess she is also angry about the one-night stand I had while I was on a business trip. I don’t really see what all the fuss is about. Everybody does it. It was just sex.”
Alison, an elegant career woman in her early fifties, tells her husband, Michael, “I am tired at night, and if we make love, I just don’t want this big demand for cuddling and kissing afterward. I don’t enjoy it that much, frankly. I just want to have the orgasm and then go to sleep.” But then she turns to me and says, “We also fight less if I have sex with him. We have fewer of these long, drawn-out relationship discussions where he wants to hash over everything. So sex works. But then, you know, it doesn’t really impact things. Next day we just go on as usual. The relationship doesn’t improve, really.”
Sealed-off sex is one-dimensional and leaves both partners dissociated. It undermines emotional bonds. It is also, in the end, less satisfying. Research indicates that it actually reduces arousal and results in less frequent orgasms. In a dance without connection or the ability to tune in to the emotional music, boredom and emptiness follow every step.
More anxiously attached people, by contrast, tend to have “solace sex,” that is, to use sex as proof of how much they are loved. There is emotional engagement, but the chief feeling is anxiety. For such people, who are highly vigilant and sensitive to even a hint of rejection, sex serves as reassurance that they are valued and desired. For men, it is usually the sex act itself that gives comfort. For women, it is the kissing and cuddling that precedes and follows it.
Leon, 55, a high-powered lawyer, wants to make love to his wife, Jolene, every morning and evening. He explains that he is highly sexed because his testosterone level is especially high. He adds, though, when he is alone with me, that he is always scared that his wife does not really love or desire him. Even though there is no evidence for it, he obsesses over the idea that she might have had an affair sometime during their thirty-year marriage. He says, “Jo withdraws from me. If only she would want me more, then the relationship would be just fine. Then I could ‘rest.’”
When Jolene reminds him of the great sex they had last week, he agrees, but immediately fixates on the week before, when she had turned him down. “I know on some level that I am pushing her and getting kind of demanding,” he says. “But I just want to be closer, more sure of her. When we make love, then it’s like the sun comes out and I start to feel truly loved. But when she’s tired and doesn’t want to, I can’t help it—I take it really personally, and all my fears whip up.” Like other anxiously attached folks, Leon is so sensitive to any relationship threat that he tends to leap to catastrophic conclusions at the first sign of disappointment, sexual or otherwise.
Claire, 38, a petite high school teacher, confesses that she never says no when her partner, Terry, wants sex. “I just try hard to please him. But I guess I have always been of two minds about sex, really. It’s hard for me to just relax and let go. I like the closeness, though. The holding each other. The romance is important. I know he loves me then. I am never quite sure why he finds me attractive, you know? I don’t see myself that way. He asks me what I want in bed. But I don’t really know. I want what pleases him. And I worry that I am not sexy enough for him.” Claire is thinking about having an eye lift and liposuction to enhance her looks and desirability. Seeking cosmetic improvements is fairly common among anxiously attached women.
It makes perfect sense that our basic comfort with closeness and vulnerability affects how we express and experience sex. We are wired to put safety first. If we have to constantly monitor our partner’s level of love for us, we are distracted from the attunement and responsiveness that good sex requires. We can’t be flexible and coordinate our response; we lose the ability to lead and to follow.
Attachment goals and perspectives haunt private sexual fantasies. We see this very clearly when people are insecurely attached. Psychologist Gurit Birnbaum and her colleagues at Bar-Ilan University in Israel asked 48 couples to fill in attachment questionnaires and to keep 21-day diaries of their sexual thoughts and fantasies. More anxious men and women fantasized about their partner being very affectionate in sex, reflecting the yearning for love and reassurance that pervades their sexuality. Mary, who is extremely anxious, described her fantasy this way: “I am with my boyfriend on a secluded beach, and he tells me how much he loves me, caresses me gently, and I feel I have melted in his arms. I hope it will never end.” Partners who were more avoidant imagined themselves or others acting in alienated and aggressive ways. David wrote in his diary, “I am at a private party with three amazing naked women, and I’m giving them the time of their lives.”
On days when partners reported conflict or criticism in the relationship, anxiously attached partners portrayed themselves as humiliated and helpless. In his imagination, Carl became literally powerless: “She undressed me and tied me up with ropes to the bed, leaving me completely helpless. She was totally in charge and made me a slave of her desires.” Avoidant partners, however, depicted themselves as aloof, remote, and invulnerable to the dangers posed by others. Morris described a fantasy in which “some beautiful woman takes my pants off under a table in a library…the librarian stares at me very harshly, but then joins in. I am sure it’s the best sex they have ever had. But then they freeze in fear. My girlfriend is watching, so I guess the party is over.” Here, Morris is distant and focuses on his superior performance in sex. The result of being caught in an infidelity is simply that the party ends.
Of course, attachment style also influences how sex, whether good or bad, affects our relationship. This is particularly important, since how we make sense of the inevitable sexual failures and disappointments that we all experience will partly define our overall relationship with our lover. In Birnbaum’s study, researchers asked how relationship behaviors and satisfaction were affected by having had sex the previous night.
Anxious attachment seemed to amplify the effect of both good and bad sex. This fits with what Kate tells me in my office: “Even if really good sex is not all that frequent, when we do have it, it restores my confidence in us for a while, and I can believe that he loves me. I am more affectionate then. But if the sex seems just ho-hum, or he isn’t really turned on—you know, if we are both tired or something—I become really bothered about it. I think about it all the next day, and I get edgy. I tend to push him for attention, and all my worries come up about him not really loving me. It usually ends in a fight.”
Avoidant attachment, on the other hand, appeared to dampen the effect of physical intimacy. Sex and the response to one’s partner the next day were unconnected. I see this in my practice. In my office, Tom chastises his wife, Anabelle: “I don’t know why you are making this big deal about our lovemaking on the weekend. Yes, it was good. So what? Does that mean I am supposed to go around hugging you for days on end? Sometimes it’s not so good, so I just forget about it. Sex is just sex.” Tom dismisses the attachment significance of sex, alienating his wife in the process.
Sexual satisfaction for both the anxiously attached and the avoidant is constricted: the anxious partner is preoccupied with being loved, and the avoidant partner is determined to stay detached. Worry and distraction do not make for expansive, fulfilling sex. Sealed-off sex tends to be erotic but empty, while solace sex is soothing but unerotic. The most satisfying and orgasmic sex, what I call “synchrony sex,” occurs when partners are securely attached.
A secure bond is characterized by emotional openness and responsiveness in the bedroom as well as out. That leads to better communication and engaged, focused attention, which in turn leads to greater arousal, pleasure, and satisfaction. This is sex at its most rewarding.
Secure partners are able to express their needs and preferences. But you’d never know from the images on TV and movie screens that communication is part of sex. There, good sex is almost always a dreamlike experience. Partners never seem to talk; they appear to instinctively know what to do. In the real world, great sex is often full of chatter and laughter (“Move over—I’m falling off the bed”).
Many studies now attest to the fact that because secure partners feel safely connected to their lovers, they can access the full richness of their sexuality. Feeling protected gives them the freedom to explore and be sexually adventurous. Think about it. If you trust that your partner is there for you, then you can relax and let go without fear of embarrassment or rejection. Safety fosters a willingness to experiment, take risks, and be fully immersed in the sexual encounter. Sex becomes more spontaneous, passionate, and joyful.
At the end of repairing their relationship in couple therapy, Elizabeth comments, “You know, I can’t believe the difference this work has made to our sex life. I didn’t even hope for that. I am such an inhibited person, but now I feel so sure of Peter I can’t believe the risks I am taking. Last week I actually asked him for oral sex!” She giggles, then continues, “He didn’t seem to mind at all. For me, being able to do that opens up a whole new world. Maybe I am more passionate than I thought I was!”
Unlike insecure partners, secure lovers tend to be confident about their physical attractiveness, sexual desirability, and skill. Studies indicate that the more secure you are, the more you believe that you can control the quality of your sexual experience—that it is up to you rather than your partner or factors like where and when you have sex. This kind of efficacy is empowering and translates into a more active and flexible response.
As with other aspects of a relationship, attachment science gives us a clear picture of exactly what a healthy, optimal sexual relationship looks like. And that offers us a compass. As Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you will wind up somewhere else.” Securely attached people report that they prefer to have sex in a committed relationship and that affection and expressions of love are key parts of their sexual experience. They report more passion, pleasure, and mutually initiated sex. Emotional openness and the desire to express love go hand in hand with physical pleasure in bed.
One-way arrows of causality are generally passé in the new relationship science, so it is, of course, too simple to say that attachment shapes sex. In fact, they are a circle, one reinforcing or weakening the other. A strong emotional bond leads to good sex, which in turn leads to a still stronger bond, and so on. The reverse is true as well. A weak connection often leads to unfulfilling sex, which further weakens the connection.
This may be why unhappy partners in established relationships are so quick to cite sex as the major cause of their misery. Distressed mates assign up to 70 percent of their misery to sexual problems, according to sex educators Barry and Emily McCarthy of American University in Washington, DC. By contrast, less than a quarter of contented partners credit a good sex life for their happiness. Sexual dissatisfaction is actually a bellwether, the most evident sign of what’s truly going wrong in the relationship: the unraveling of the emotional bond.
For more secure people, good sex can help overcome minor misattunements and even more serious difficulties. The emotional platform, the trust and safety built over months and years, is solid; synchrony sex helps glue any edges that are crumbling. The insecure are not so lucky. For the avoidant, there really isn’t an emotional foundation to build on, and sealed-off sex never permits one to be constructed. In anxiously attached people, the foundation is flimsy. Good solace sex can help cover over cracks and gaps and keep the relationship steady for a while, but bad solace sex only widens the nicks and chinks, until the entire edifice tumbles down.
Unless one is masturbating, sex involves another person who has his or her own attachment style. The most relationship-damaging interactions occur between people who habitually avoid emotional engagement. Sex becomes an impersonal transaction, a bargain. When I ask such couples, “Do you make love?” they give answers like, “Yes. We schedule it. Every two weeks on Sunday at 7 p.m.” Sex is merely scratching an itch in such instances; it does not promote emotional intimacy, since both partners are focused solely on satisfying their own sexual urges.
Other combinations are only marginally more successful—for example, an avoidant man with an anxious woman. In studies, avoidant men report having less sex as their partners express more anxiety and need. She pushes for more sex as reassurance, but her demands make him even more wary than usual, and he draws even further away. There is less sex and less satisfaction for both partners.
When two anxious people get together, there may be lots of sex as they both try to allay their fears. But they are so preoccupied with their individual concerns that neither is able to respond the way the other wants, and they wind up less trustful and more doubtful of each other’s love. She: “If you loved me, you’d say something sweet while making love to me.” He: “I’m so nervous about keeping my erection and performing, and also that you’re going to reject me, that I can’t say anything.”
Sex best enhances relationships when partners’ needs are complementary. Thus two secure people can pair rewardingly. So can a secure person with an anxious one. For example, Peter grew up in a large, close family on a farm, where it was natural and common to see animals mating and breeding. Mary, the only child of elderly parents, is a quiet, shy young woman with limited sexual experience. The two met at a local community college and quickly fell in love. Peter, with his confidence and warmth, gave Mary a safe haven where she could bloom sexually. And as Mary became more confident and secure, she gave Peter the affection and playful sex that he was longing for.
Recognizing that attachment shapes our sexual behavior changes our perspective on many issues. Once we understand love, these issues take on a new clarity.
Today there is hot debate in the media, on talk shows, and in academic journals about whether it’s possible to stay with one person for a lifetime. The popular consensus seems to be that while it is a desired goal—according to a recent survey, 90 percent of U.S. teenagers hope to marry and stay with the same spouse “till death do us part”—it is impossible to achieve. People point to gloomy statistics as proof. Various surveys have found that nearly half of all U.S. marriages end in divorce and almost half of all American men and women cheat on their mate.
Observers cite numerous reasons why long-term monogamy is unrealistic. Familiarity breeds boredom, say many relationship experts. “Passionate love provides a high, like drugs, and you can’t stay high forever,” explains psychologist Elaine Hatfield of the University of Hawaii. Polygamy dominates in many cultures around the world, according to anthropologists. Constancy goes against the natural order; only 7 percent of mammals are monogamous, naturalists note. Among humans, men in particular are programmed to spread their genes around and assure survival of the species, or so evolutionary biologists theorize. In the light of all this, shouldn’t we all just grow up and accept that promiscuity is natural and that romantic love has an expiration date?
Emphatically not! All of us may not be destined for a single, lifelong relationship, but we are naturally monogamous. Yes, that’s right. Naturally monogamous. I hear gasps from an audience whenever I say this, but the evidence is solid: we are wired to prefer mating and bonding with one partner for the long term. Polyamory and short-term mating are not the strategies of choice for most humans, male or female.
What of the pessimists’ points? If we look at them closely, they don’t carry much weight. Divorce is actually dipping among those younger than age fifty (and has always been lower in countries outside the United States, such as Canada). The figures on cheating are often based on flimsy research and wildly exaggerated; reliable studies indicate that only around 25 percent of men and 11 percent of women actually stray. Polygamy exists in more primitive cultures mainly because men are few and because lack of education, equality, and opportunity prevents women from supporting themselves and their children on their own. As for nature, 90 percent of birds are monogamous. And although only a few mammal varieties fall into this category, monogamy tends to be the rule in those who must invest time and effort to ensure survival of their offspring and the species as a whole. Among them are the California mouse, pygmy marmoset, beaver, gray wolf—and humans. These mammals are all biologically wired to attach to those who depend on them and to those upon whom they depend.
All of them also produce oxytocin, the neurotransmitter and hormone that promotes bonding, both parent to child and partner to partner (see Chapter 4). In humans, oxytocin surges through our brains at moments of heightened emotional connection, such as at breastfeeding and orgasm. Recent evidence shows that our lover doesn’t even have to be physically present to trigger a flood of oxytocin in our brains. We only have to think of him or her to be inundated with it. This hormone also reduces the release of stress chemicals and leaves us calm and blissful, further reinforcing the bond between lovers. As I’ve mentioned, oxytocin is widely known as the cuddle hormone, but scientists have another name for it: the molecule of monogamy.
The clearest proof of this chemical’s power in encouraging fidelity comes from studies of two species of voles, prairie and montane. These little rodents differ in one major way: prairie voles have oxytocin receptors in their brain; montane voles do not. Mr. and Mrs. Montane mate, have young, abandon the pups after a few days, and go their separate ways. Mr. and Mrs. Prairie, on the other hand, mate, have young, rear them, and stay together for life. When researchers boost oxytocin in the faithful rodents, they snuggle like crazy and almost groom each other to death. But when oxytocin is blocked, these loyal animals mate but do not bond, just like their montane cousins.
This was starkly demonstrated in one series of experiments. Researchers placed a mated pair of prairie voles in a cage and tethered the female. Then they opened a door to another cage, where an unfamiliar female scampered about. Did the hubby stray to go play with the intoxicating lady next door? He did not; he stayed with his wife. Then researchers injected him with a chemical that shuts down the brain’s oxytocin receptors—and the prairie male became as shameless as his montane relative, copulating indiscriminately with both mistress and mate.
A recent study demonstrated for the first time a monogamous oxytocin effect in men. Neurobiologist René Hurlemann and his colleagues at the University of Bonn, Germany, administered an oxytocin nasal spray to a group of healthy heterosexual men, and forty-five minutes later they introduced the men to an attractive unfamiliar woman who moved around the room. Each man was told to indicate when he felt slightly uncomfortable at her closeness and when she was at an ideal distance. Oxytocin is known to promote trust, and the researchers expected all the men to permit the woman to come equally close. But that was not the case. The men in committed relationships kept between 10 and 15 centimeters farther away from the woman than did the single men!
Because of the link between oxytocin and sexuality, there is a natural propensity for sex to lead to bonding, thus inclining us to long-term relationships. Oxytocin has another fidelity-supporting effect, one that negates the “sex inevitably gets dull with the same partner” argument. In fact, in studies of cocaine addiction, oxytocin has been shown to interact with dopamine receptors in the reward centers of the brain and actively block habituation so that pleasure does not diminish. This seems to be evolution’s way of ensuring that mothers and infants and adult lovers will find their interactions, including sex, infinitely and continually rewarding.
Of course, very little in nature is absolute and completely consistent. Oxytocin does not guarantee sexual exclusivity, so occasionally even the monogamous Mr. Prairie will mate with another lady. But then he rushes home to groom, sleep with, and protect his mate. Should we take this to mean that an occasional fling has a biological rationale—that it supports the old “it didn’t mean anything” argument? No! The fact that we can occasionally get turned on by someone other than our partner does not mean that we are not suited for monogamy. We are much more complex than rodents.
Additional support for the idea that, in humans, mating and bonding are tied together comes from the recent work of Omri Gillath, professor of psychology at the University of Kansas, and his team. In one experiment, he had 181 heterosexual men and women between the ages of 18 and 40 each sit before a computer screen and look at twenty pairs of words that describe kinds of furniture—for example, “table-television” and “cabinet-chair.” Their ostensible task: to press a number between 1 and 7 indicating how dissimilar or similar the paired furniture is. But before each pair of words appeared on the screen, there was a flash lasting just 30 or 50 milliseconds, much quicker than the blink of an eye, that the subject wasn’t aware of seeing. Half of these subliminal flashes contained a neutral abstract image; the other half carried an erotic image—for example, male subjects got an attractive naked woman, female subjects a naked man.
Gillath then asked the subjects to fill in a questionnaire about how they would typically respond to their romantic partner in certain situations. The people who were subliminally “primed” for sex were more likely to check off intimacy-related statements (“I feel very close to my romantic partner”) and positive ways of resolving conflict (“I try to cooperate with my partner to find a solution that is acceptable to both of us”). Men also checked responses that showed a willingness to make sacrifices—for example, to forgo seeing family or friends or indulge in hobbies or entertainments in order to maintain a relationship. Gillath’s conclusion? Even lust, the slightest simple sexual arousal, automatically triggers attachment or bonding responses.
This fact, along with oxytocin, explains why adulterous one-night stands, swinging, and polyamory ultimately don’t work so well. Wandering spouses may tell their mate, “It didn’t mean anything; it was just sex,” and polyamorous couples may set up boundaries and rules for encounters with others (“No kissing or cuddling; no meeting outside of set times”), but such assurances and restrictions are like moving chairs around on the deck of the Titanic. Chances are there will be a moment in the sexual experience when participants begin to connect emotionally—because we are set up that way. Nature has designed us so that physical closeness easily and inexorably slips into bonding and caring. Sex hooks us into relationships.
The truth is that we stray and have affairs not because we are all naturally inclined to have multiple mates but because our bond with our partner is either inherently weak or has deteriorated so far that we are unbearably lonely. We haven’t understood love or known how to repair it. So, confused and lost in a world that sells sex aggressively as the be-all and end-all of a relationship, the only obvious “solution” has been to seek out new lovers to try to create the longed-for connection.
What about the argument that passion is impossible to sustain over the years? This is true—if we do not know how to invest in the security of our bond or if we only know how to have sealed-off, avoidant sex. More and more novelty is necessary to sustain attention if sensation and performance alone are the focus of intercourse. Then familiarity becomes the death knell of exciting sex. For secure partners, however, rigorous studies and surveys show that the thrill can last indefinitely. This excitement is not the explosive lust of first infatuation but a deeper exhilaration that rises from knowing someone profoundly. When I ask my client Jerry, who has been happily married for thirty years, about his sex life, he responds, “Do you mean the ‘Oh, my God, this is fun, and this shows she likes me, and we are so hot’ sex, like in the beginning of the relationship? Or do you mean the kind we have now, where we are really tuned in to each other—what I call ‘soul sex’? It’s still a total thrill, but it’s a whole different kind of heat. This is like the morning sun.”
Secure lovers have the capacity to be playful and adventurous throughout the relationship. This is borne out by a recent survey of sex in America by University of Chicago researchers who found that sexual satisfaction and excitement for both men and women increases with emotional commitment and sexual exclusivity. All this reminds me of my friend Mary, who dances tango, preferably with her husband of thirty years. She tells me, “I like to sometimes dance with other partners. But Marty and I, we have three decades of practice. We know how to help each other stay balanced, how to tune in, how to play. Dancing with him is delicious. He knows how I dance, and he is with me in a way that other social dancing friends cannot be.”
If you are tuned in, every dance is different, even if your partner is the same. So, too, is every sexual encounter different, even if your lover is the same.
New science and the attachment perspective are also sparking a major revision of our views of female and male sexuality. A huge sexual problem today is lack of libido. Around 30 percent of women say that they have little or no desire for sex, even with a committed, loving partner. By contrast, only 15 percent of men report feeling little desire. Research indicates that we have not understood the nature of women’s desire and how female sexuality profoundly differs from men’s.
In men, a lack of libido is almost always linked to illness, such as heart disease or diabetes. But in most women, no physical explanation is apparent. Indeed, studies show that women often show the physical signs of arousal—their genital and vaginal tissues swell with blood and natural lubricant—but this excitement never surfaces to consciousness and felt desire. The paucity of explanations in this area has left many women feeling ashamed and guilty (“There’s something wrong with me in my head”) and men feeling mystified and frustrated (“I don’t know how to help”; “What am I supposed to do for sex?”).
Laura, 28, and Andy, 30, are newlyweds living in New York. Though Andy is always eager to hop into bed and make love, Laura can barely work up enthusiasm for even a once-a-month encounter. Both have been miserable, and now they’ve begun arguing. “I went to my doctor, and he told me that I had a sexual problem,” she tells me. “He said that it isn’t normal for a newlywed woman. That I should regularly feel this hot spontaneous lust for Andy if I loved him. The more ashamed and anxious I get about all this the less I want to talk to Andy about it. He knows that I had some bad sexual experiences as a teenager, but he says I should be over that by now and that there is something wrong with me. Now the more I avoid sex, the more insistent he gets about it and the shorter our lovemaking becomes.”
What’s going on here? For years, we’ve used a simple model to explain sexual function and dysfunction: sexuality is genitally focused and moves linearly from desire to arousal to orgasm to satisfaction. This model does hold true for men, for whom arousal is largely a physical experience triggered by visual cues. A man sees a woman in high heels and a tight skirt, blood floods into his penis, he feels the erection, and thinks to himself, “I am aroused. I want sex.” But this model now appears to be all wrong when it comes to women. For them, sex is a more complex physical—and emotional—experience. And one of the heretofore unrecognized requisites for feeling desire, new research suggests, is feeling safe.
An exciting experiment by Omri Gillath and his colleague Melanie Canterberry appears to literally show this happening. They took brain scans of 20 female and 19 male college students who were told to look at abstract pictures and rate how much they liked them. The students were also told that they might be exposed, subliminally or supraliminally (that is, consciously) to other images, some of which might be sexy. When exposed to the sexy “primes”—naked pictures of the opposite sex, both men’s and women’s brains lit up. There were some very slight differences between men and women at the subliminal level in the parts of the brain that were most activated, but by far the most fascinating finding was that only in women, at both the conscious and unconscious levels, did the prefrontal cortex and other regions involved in making judgments and decisions illuminate.
“Women’s brains clearly respond differently to sexual cues—the control regions of their brain always turned on in response to a sexual cue,” says Gillath. “It seems like they have a natural tendency to pair safety concerns with lust. They are preoccupied with security, which makes sense—sex is simply riskier for them.” Sex puts women in a very vulnerable position; they are smaller and weaker than men, often naked and on their backs. They have to overcome the natural fear that that helpless position induces. They appear to unconsciously ask themselves: “How sure do I feel about this person? Can I trust him?”
Women may also have an innate fear of becoming pregnant and so tend to be more vigilant. “They have more of a biological investment in potential offspring than do men,” notes Gillath. He suggests that one of the reasons women may have more oxytocin receptors in their brains than men do is because they require more of the stress-reducing chemical: “Maybe they need lots of this to turn off fear and be able to become aroused and have sex.”
Much more so than men’s, women’s sexuality appears to depend on the quality of the relationship rather than the intensity of the sensations in their skin. “It naturally connects to attachment and a safe-haven relationship,” says Gillath. “And it helps us to understand why women, even after the Pill and feminism, still tend to be the gatekeepers in sex and men the initiators.”
Psychiatrist Rosemary Basson of the University of British Columbia has posited a new model of female sexuality to replace the old linear genital model. It’s a feedback loop and includes such factors as relationship satisfaction, emotional intimacy, and previous sexual activity, all of which influence sexual response. “Women often begin sexual experiences feeling sexually neutral,” she observes, “and move into desire and arousal as a result of sexual cues from their partner. Their sexuality is often responsive rather then agentic. It is a reaction to a partner’s sexual interest.”
Recognizing that cues concerning safe attachment are fundamental to women’s arousal and sexuality opens the way to new remedies. Previous medical therapies have failed here. Viagra, for example, does not work very well in women, likely because it increases genital blood flow rather than actually creating the experience of desire. Women with low libido particularly seem to need more sensual, teasing foreplay to cement their sense of security and move into the awareness of desire and arousal.
For men, that means overhauling their view of female sexuality and adjusting their verbal and physical approaches to make it apparent that there is desire for the person, not just for orgasm. This offers women reassurance. Cary tells me in a therapy session: “I can’t get over it. All those sexual technique manuals I read. What a waste of time. She likes me to talk to her. I hate to be corny, but sharing my feelings seems to turn her on. Amazing. I used to keep asking her, ‘Do you want to mess around?’ I didn’t get what a turn-off that was for her. I wanted her to show all this passion right off the bat. Now I understand that she wants to be held and whispered to and then for me to come on to her slowly. It works!” His wife, Jill, mutters, “Of course,” and smiles. Jill offers that she does not always need an orgasm to feel satisfied with a sexual encounter. Although this puzzles Cary, it is not that uncommon.
The idea that women, newlywed or not, take longer to become aroused than do men and that they need to feel safe and be soothed first was completely new to Andy, Laura’s husband. He lives in our sexually obsessed but relationally unaware culture, where avoidant sex is held up as the norm and even as the ideal. In our sessions, I was able to help Andy stop criticizing and pressuring his wife and share his own anxiety when she did not respond in bed the way he wanted. And as he did so, Laura was encouraged to come out of her shell and state clearly what she wanted and didn’t want, before and during sex. “Please don’t hold me down or put your tongue in my mouth,” she told Andy. “That is instant alarm for me, and I just want to get away from you. I need gentleness first.” Once she was able to ask for what she needed, Laura and Andy’s sex life hummed along just fine.
Although men’s sexuality is more direct, they, too, have a need for emotional intimacy. In therapy, they tell me that sex without it is “empty” and that with it, sex is better. For one thing, they can share their performance concerns and receive reassurance. The fact that nearly 60 percent of men stop using Viagra after the first prescription speaks to the fact that sex is a complex relational and emotional experience.
All this fits with what we find in EFT. When couples become more secure and satisfied with their relationship, the sex, even when we don’t directly address it, automatically improves as well. And when there are specific sexual problems, we still begin by addressing the quality of the couple’s connection. A secure base creates the sense of safety that all partners, and particularly women, need to move into engaged, flexible sexuality.
There are not many models in our culture for learning the fine-tuned emotional and physical coordination that good sex—or, I should say, sex that is good for both partners—requires. Andy mostly learned about sex from his buddies and from magazines, books, TV, and movies. These cultural touchstones are still prime sources of information about sex for men and women. Today, for men especially, there is another source: the Internet.
What these sources, along with sex education in schools, all have in common is a concentration on the mechanics of sex. We don’t hear much about the emotions that revolve around sex, the context in which it exists. One exception to this is women’s romance novels. This genre, even though it represents by far the biggest segment of the book industry, hasn’t gotten much respect (unlike thrillers, the genre that men love). When they first appeared, they were derided as bodice rippers for their depictions of corset-bound, submissive women enthralled by princes, pirates, and medieval warriors. But in recent years, these books have changed. Today, they feature contemporary, capable, accomplished women, and they even tackle heavy issues, such as domestic violence. The important point here is that even in the most explicit of these books, sex nearly always occurs within a relationship, and the feelings of the partners are described.
One example of a new and titillating variation on the romance novel is the bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James. This book and its two sequels are, on one level, saccharine clichés of the romance novel. A young, virginal girl, Anastasia, falls in love with a “prince,” in this case billionaire tycoon and BDSM aficionado, Christian Grey. She agrees to enter his Red Room of Pain and become his “submissive,” or sex slave. However, even though she is overwhelmed by lust—she seems to have multiple orgasms at the mere sight of his long, elegant fingers—she manages to keep her wits about her and alters the contract he asks her to sign, thereby setting limits on what she must accept. Of course, she discovers that his sexual proclivities are the result of his inner pain—he was abused as an adolescent—and she turns her wounded lover into someone who “has a wealth of love to give.” This Cinderella story (or is it a Beauty and the Beast story?) is peppered with descriptions of spanking and other bondage, discipline, and sadomasochistic pleasures.
What does the popularity of this “romance” tell us? That women long for men who can masterfully take them over and so allow them to explore and surrender to their own and their partner’s sexuality without anxiety or guilt? Perhaps. We know that active surrender is prevalent in women’s sexual fantasies. Females do need to be somewhat still and cooperative for successful coitus to occur. So submission in women and assertiveness in men are important cues for mating. This book taps into this basic fact of sexuality and ties it in with the inherent longing for connection that is displayed in romance novels.
Fifty Shades of Grey waters down the woman-as-object aspect of pornography, which shows up in the formal contract that Anastasia has to sign. In it, her body is defined by her lover’s desires and needs—she agrees to remain hairless and to have pain inflicted. The Internet’s popular “three grandmothers” weren’t titillated; their review included the phrases “Ouch” and “Never do anything that hurts.” For me, the disturbing part of this book was the labeling of regular, non-BDSM sex as “vanilla”—the implication being that unless you include whips and go to the edge of pain, sex is less than satisfying; it’s simply not “sensational” enough. In a society that does not understand emotional connection, we have to go to more and more extremes to drag our bodies into deeply felt physical excitement.
This book, with its insinuation that regular sex is by definition vanilla, is being made into a film. It will be another in a long line of movies that distort the link between emotional bonding and sexuality. Movie love makes no love sense. I had to scour my memory and go a long way back to find a handful of films that show an honest, accurate portrayal of good erotic sex within a developing or ongoing love relationship. Three old movies—and one more recent movie—stand out for me here.
Don’t Look Now (1973) shows how attachment and sex work together. The romantic thriller centers on Laura and John Baxter, long-married spouses who are grieving the recent drowning death of their young daughter. They are in Venice for his work, and in their hotel room they go through familiar routines. They casually chat while each bathes; he lies naked on the bed reading papers. Slowly, she begins to stroke his flanks, and then they turn to tender, erotic lovemaking. They are long-term lovers, comfortable and easy with each other, and yet the sex has intensity. They know each other’s body and how to give pleasure. The long sex scene is intercut with shots of the two after sex, as they get dressed to go out to dinner. Sex is part of the continuum of their relationship, and the sex has the residual effect of bringing them closer. As they walk down the hotel hallway on their way to dinner, she is tight by his side, her hand wrapped around his arm.
The Big Easy (1986) portrays sex in a developing courtship. Remy McSwain is a cocky New Orleans detective attracted to Anne Osborne, a self-conscious district attorney investigating police corruption. With humor and charm, he helps her feel safe enough to take an emotional risk. In the sex scene, she is uptight and hurts him when she goes to touch his genitals. “Sorry, I never have been good at this,” she confesses. As she continues, saying, “I can’t do this; too nervous. I am embarrassed,” he becomes tender and caring, and finally she is able to relax. As he slides his hand up her skirt, we see that she is now aroused. They are interrupted by a call, so they don’t get to make love, but the scene ends with Anne, seeing that he has to go, saying, “It’s okay; I never had much luck with sex anyway.” Remy tells her, “Your luck is about to change,” and she allows herself to whisper, “Come back,” as he runs out the door. In another scene, she throws up after viewing a dead body and as he cares for her and helps her clean up, she kisses him and gets toothpaste all over his face. Later in the movie, he weeps in shame at his and his buddies’ history of corruption, and she comforts him. After facing conflicts and danger together, the movie ends with their waltzing through their home, having just married.
A History of Violence (2005) has two contrasting sex scenes, one in which sexuality and secure connection come together in synchrony and one in which sex is detached, even hostile. The first scene shows a long-married couple, Edie and Tom Stall, in playful intimacy. She has dressed in her high school cheerleader outfit as a surprise and comes on to him. They roll about on the bed, at first teasing, and then serious. The scene shows loving connection unfolding into intense sexuality in an established marriage. The second scene occurs when the bond has broken and she no longer feels safe with him. He has shown himself to be capable of breathtaking violence, and she realizes that he is not the man she thought she knew during all their years together. He is now a stranger, and so, deprived of a sense of safety, she turns away from him. He reacts to this abandonment by overwhelming her and taking her on the stairs. Although she becomes aroused about halfway through the encounter, the end is brutal and sad. After sex, she pushes him away and goes to her bedroom, where she sits hugging her knees. Both of them are now alone. Their sexuality will not be viable unless they can find a way to reconnect and renew their bond. The final shot of the movie shows them looking at each other with naked vulnerability, and there is a sense that they see each other and will connect again.
Friends with Benefits (2011) demonstrates how hard it is to keep emotions and attachment out of the bedroom. After being rejected by their respective lovers, Dylan and Jamie are risk-averse: “I am going to shut myself down emotionally,” he declares. “I’m done with the relationship thing,” she announces. So the two friends decide to have sex with no emotional strings—“Two people should be able to have sex just like they play tennis.” And indeed, when they hit the sheets, it sounds like a tennis match, with each yelling instructions and comments at the other. “What are you doing, trying to dig your way to China?…A little more to the left,” she instructs him when he is giving her oral sex. He announces that he has to go pee, and this is hard to do with an erection, so she has to wait. Both are focused on the task of getting to the Big O. (This is funny and kind of endearing to watch; it reminded me of Woody Allen’s quip “Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as meaningless experiences go it’s pretty damn good.”) But soon they can’t keep their emotions at bay. They care for each other in spite of themselves. She shows him her safe place, a rooftop hideaway. He takes her home to his family, exposing his fear of heights, tendency to stutter, and love for his dementia-addled father. In his family home, they come together, and this time they have the kind of sex we call making love: they are caught up in sensuality and each other in such a way that there is no need for yelled instructions. The closeness scares him, however, and the next morning he turns away. Significantly, the movie ends with both characters taking an emotional risk by confessing their vulnerabilities to each other; she fears she is “damaged,” and he fears needing her. Only then can they admit they are in love.
These four movies seem to be among a small number of exceptions to the flood of images of impersonal sex that pervades Western culture. But we have left out the medium that has been hailed as both the ultimate source of social connection and the ultimate threat to that connection: the Internet.
Of all the cultural changes that have occurred over the past few years, the most pernicious to relationships has been the gargantuan increase in the amount and availability of pornography. Porn has always been with us, but it was a trickle on the margins of society. Thanks to the Internet, it has become a mainstream flood. In the United States alone, 40 million people visit Internet porn sites at least once a month; 35 percent of all downloads are pornographic. Around 85 percent of users are men, and male youths under the age of eighteen are among the biggest consumers.
Porn is strictly genital sex. It completely divorces sex from emotional attachment, the springboard for optimal sex, which requires mutual engagement, attunement, and responsiveness. Porn reduces sex to sensation—intercourse and orgasm—and eliminates any connection to or respect for the user’s partner. Imitating porn is a surefire recipe for being a lousy lover. It teaches men that all that is necessary for satisfying sex is a hard penis and a soft orifice. And by ignoring all the hard-won knowledge about female sexuality, it teaches women that they are mainly receptacles of desire and the servants of male arousal. The word pornography comes from the Greek pornographos, which translates as “writing about prostitutes”—the original exemplars of depersonalized sex.
The result of the porn glut is troubling: we are creating masses of avoidant men and anxious women. Women, intent on holding on to their men, are beginning to have their genital lips surgically enhanced to match those of women in porn. “The whole beauty of women’s genitals is that they are all completely unique,” a despairing sex therapist tells me. I’ve seen the consequences in my office, too. Over the past five years, more and more distressed couples have been coming in with pornography as a central issue in their relationship. Women complain of being deceived, betrayed, and humiliated; men protest that their actions are harmless and criticize their partners for being too uptight and less “sexy” than the women online.
“You’ve spent all our savings on this, and you spend all your time in the evenings surfing these sites,” Marilyn says accusingly to Tony after she’s discovered his penchant for Internet porn. “Now I get why when we’ve made love lately it’s like you’re somewhere else. Not with me. Where am I in all this? It’s like you’re having an affair.”
“Such a fuss,” Tony replies tersely. “How can I be having an affair when I have never left the house? It’s not like I was really having sex with anyone else. I was only typing. It’s just a fantasy.” Perhaps, but it’s a fantasy life that takes him farther and farther away from a secure connection with his wife.
Even worse, men are abandoning their real mates altogether in favor of the fantasy figures on the flickering screen. Men used to use porn to become aroused and then head for their partners. Now the porn itself has become the object of desire, as Wendy and Larry Maltz observe in their book, The Porn Trap. Porn offers immediate sexual arousal and release with completely compliant and ready women. “I’ve lost all interest in dating,” says one fan quoted by Wendy Maltz in the magazine Psychotherapy Networker. “Porn is easier and more convenient than dealing with actual people.”
Porn’s supporters dismiss such criticisms and charge that opponents are simply pathologizing a legitimate form of sexual release. But many health professionals are now convinced that Internet porn presents an even more alarming danger: addiction. The word addiction comes from the Latin addictionem, meaning literally “a devoting.” An estimated 6 to 8 percent of men are now thought to be “devoted to”—that is, dependent on—online porn. “After all,” Tony admits, “escape into a high is always, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, just a click away.”
Can you really have an addiction to what is, after all, the normal, naturally occurring process of sexual release? The elements of addiction are all there: a physiological “high”; the compulsion to seek out a “fix”; increasing tolerance of the “drug,” which requires increasingly bigger fixes; a sense of deprivation when it isn’t available; increasing preoccupation with the release offered; the investment of a large amount of time in pursuit of the fix; disruption of one’s private and work lives; and so on. One element of classic addiction—that a person continues to seek out a fix to avoid the pain of withdrawal—is missing. But a newer view of addiction holds that addicts are first and foremost caught in a web of expectation. They anticipate pleasure from getting a high and an escape from anxiety and depression, and this anticipation creates a persistent state of semiarousal. My clients who are riveted to cybersex report feeling intensely and constantly sexual at a level that was unknown to them prior to using digital porn.
Porn slakes desire—momentarily. A screen-generated orgasm triggers a rush of “feel-good” chemicals, including endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin. It does not, however, discharge oxytocin, the attachment hormone, which produces consummate contentment and calm. Habitual users of porn soon find that they need more and more porn to get release. Porn simply makes you want more porn.
Recent research is showing that, in all addictions, overstimulation results in an excess of the reward hormone, dopamine, being released in the brain. To maintain equilibrium in the nervous system, the brain shuts down the receptor sites that take up dopamine, and response to dopamine slows down. This is like pleasure fatigue. As physiological tolerance rises, more and more stimulation—be it of cocaine, alcohol, prescription painkillers, or sex—is necessary just to feel normal, let alone high. In one study, Paul Johnson and Paul Kenny, neuroscientists at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida, found that overeating by rats resulted in dopamine deficits in the their brains and further compulsive eating.
The power of the Internet is unparalleled: it is unlimited in variety of content; it is private, anonymous, eternally accessible, and seemingly offers no real-life consequences. Tony’s forays into cybersex escalated as his marriage got rockier and his work suffered (his boss caught him one day watching porn on the office computer and warned him that his job was in jeopardy). But he hems and haws about whether he has a serious problem. “I know I can stop it if I want,” he tells me. “It started when I was down; I’d broken my leg in three places. And I just opened this e-mail. Now it’s just that…I guess, well, I must admit that I miss watching it if I don’t do it. I miss that high and the calm that comes afterwards. I guess it’s true that I use it more and more, but so what? I feel so in control. I can play out my fantasies at the click of a button. My wife says that I have turned away from other parts of my life, that I am in love with porn. Maybe I have overdone it a bit. But our sex relationship was never that good. This stuff adds a kind of color to my life. It’s like a secret feel-good pill in my pocket, and I guess I feel more sexy as a person knowing that I can watch as soon as I get home. And now Marilyn is all angry. I never saw it as anything to do with her, really.”
When Tony describes his attachment to Marilyn, it is clear that he has an extremely avoidant style. Their courtship was all about “having fun,” he says, and what tied them together was their mutual love of outdoor sports. When I ask whom he feels close to, confides in, or turns to for support, he looks at me blankly. “Adults need to stand on their own two feet,” he replies. “The way I was bought up, you were sent to your room if you got upset. You have to learn how to deal with things yourself.” There is good evidence that avoidant folks are more susceptible to addictions in general. If you cannot find your way to healthy attachment, you go in search of a substitute.
Porn addiction is a perfect example of the consequences of cutting off sex from attachment and connection with others. Sex and attachment are meant to go together. Most addictions are, at base, desperate attempts to find a substitute for secure attachment to others. But such substitutions cannot satisfy, and they are destructive to health, happiness, and even, ultimately, to sexual functioning. As men become accustomed to porn’s high-octane stimulation, they become desensitized to the pleasures and the physiological highs of regular sex. When they are with a real partner, they find themselves unable to become aroused. Urologist Carlo Foresta, professor at the University of Padua, has found from his surveys that 70 percent of the young men seeking help for sexual performance problems admit to routinely using porn. He suggests that a numbed-out sexual response system resulting from obsessive use of porn, not performance anxiety, is now one of the main causes of erectile dysfunction (ED). Clinicians are finding that if men can abstain from porn for a period of time, their physiology eventually recalibrates, their sexual performance improves, and their libido rekindles.
In the end, Internet porn devastates our capacity for close relationships and good sex. It promotes loneliness and isolation and infuses a person with shame and despair. Porn devotees are left with a broken and fragmented sexuality, in which emotion and the erotic are separate and never integrated.
It is only when Marilyn walks out on Tony that he begins to recognize the price of what he calls his hobby. He goes into individual therapy, and he and Marilyn come back to couple therapy. Letting go of porn and turning back to the complexities of sex with a real person is a huge challenge for Tony. He is still working on it.
* * *
Science today is offering us a new understanding of sexuality: mature sexuality grows from and flourishes in a secure sense of attachment to others. As the actor Peter Ustinov quipped: “Sex is a conversation carried out by other means.” Where there is no conversation—no emotional connection—the consequences are dire. But when we bring attachment and sex together, there is nothing better, and it makes perfect love sense.
Famed sex researchers Masters and Johnson said that there was a simple biological motive for sex: an “inborn drive to orgasm.” In fact, though, there are many reasons why we have sex, and our attachment style shapes these.
Try looking at your own motives for having sex. Assuming that you are not trying to conceive a child at the moment, imagine the last couple of times you initiated an encounter or responded to a sexual overture.
On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is not true at all, 5 is moderately true, and 10 is completely true, rate the importance of these factors in your sex life:
I want to get close to and feel connected to my lover.
I want the turn-on, the thrill, and the pleasure of touch and sex.
I want the tension release, and sex helps me to let go of stress.
I want to feel special to my partner and cared for by him or her.
I want to show my love and have my partner feel special and cared for.
I want to feel good about myself and know that I am potent as a sexual person.
These motives are the most obvious. Maybe you have a special reason for seeking sex right now that is not on the simple list above.
Sam, who is recovering from his wife’s infidelity, says, “I want us to make love because then I know she is mine. It’s like when we were dating. She becomes my woman. It is like I am claiming her. I feel safe then.”
Discuss with your partner your motives for having sex. The best sex combines all of the above factors for both partners. If you find that you and your partner are focused only on one goal, or that each of you has a different goal, explore that together.
Secure attachment allows us to engage fully in a sexual experience. To examine your sense of security, sit quietly and bring up images of two or three moments when you felt really loved by others, and then imagine yourself in a sexual situation where you feel entirely safe, cherished, and accepted.
Ask yourself: “Feeling this way, what would I do or ask for that is different from my usual responses or routine in sex?” Another way to think about this is to ask: “If I could be emotionally as well as physically naked in bed with my lover, what would I do that is different?”
State this “discovery” in a clear short sentence, and share it with your lover.