CHAPTER 1
How Sex Heals
“Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you—all of the expectations, all of the beliefs—and becoming who you are.”
—RACHEL NAOMI REMEN
The human body is designed to heal itself. We have an immune system that protects us from disease and repairs us when we are damaged. Pain acts as an alarm, alerting us to the problem. In response, all of the body’s systems, including the mind, are called into action to aid in the process of self-recovery.
Similarly, when we encounter emotional conflict, we also experience pain. This can take the form of feelings of sadness, anxiety, fear, and anger, although sometimes it may manifest in the body through physical illness. The mind mobilizes its own defense to assist in repairing the emotional wound in the same way we release an army of antibodies to heal a cut finger. Whether it’s physical or psychological, we are hard-wired to lessen pain, helped by innate mechanisms.
Among the mind’s most inventive weapons in the battle for recovery and reconciliation are our fantasies. We create them to counteract anxiety or pain, substituting pleasure where conflict exists. We need only to spend time with a young child to remember what a central role fantasies have in our development as human beings. Children discover the world and themselves through fantasy play, mastering skills that they will use to face challenges throughout their lives.
In the rituals of fantasy play, children find comfort. They often return to the same fantasies, games, or objects again and again because their familiarity provides a zone in which they feel safe and increasingly competent. Children try out roles as sports stars, princesses, police officers, and superheroes, enabling themselves to feel powerful in a world in which grown-ups are in charge.
As we age and societal expectations and norms gradually restrict our imaginations and behavior, we shift from using play as a means to understanding and begin to apply the lessons learned toward navigating the harsher realities of adult life. Yet, we continue to use fantasies to help us gain mastery of challenging events. Now we imagine being billionaires or CEOs or celebrities, rewarded with power or fame for our accomplishments, or we fantasize writing the great American novel or producing a film, becoming the pillars of our community, or simply winning the lottery. We have learned to convert painful feelings of disappointment, powerlessness, failure, or loss into manageable and sometimes even pleasurable ones. This is the healing nature of fantasy, one of the mind’s most effective mechanisms for coping with emotional crisis.
Like children’s play and fantasy, sex exists as one of our greatest natural pleasures. Thinking back to the fun and freedom we experienced playing, we can draw a parallel with sexual play as adults. During sex, we similarly enter into an ecstatic space in which we let go of all immediate worries and try out different roles. Like child’s play, sex takes us to a level far from the mundane, a moment of exceptional intensity. Yet in sex, we take things even one step further. We use it to make our lives and relationships more vivid and robust.
Scientists agree that frequent sex can improve heart health, build a more robust immune system, and increase the ability to ward off pain. Sex changes brain and body chemistry, boosting certain hormone levels that keep us young and vibrant. Sex can also alter our mental state by releasing endorphins that act as antidotes to stress, anxiety, and depression. But among our greatest healing miracles is how we use sexual fantasies to work through deep-seated conflicts and satisfy unmet childhood needs.
By the time we leave adolescence, most of us have eroticized some aspect of these conflicts, encoding them in our sexual fantasies. The fantasies, which continue throughout our adult lives, transform the pain associated with old conflicts into pleasure.
As a society, we have a complicated relationship with sex, simultaneously promoting sexual images in popular culture—movies, television, and advertising—while demonizing those of us who enjoy it with labels like “whore,” “slut,” and “player.” Sometimes sex is portrayed as a romantic seduction in which it’s used to win the man. Other times partners are shown tearing each other’s clothes off and engaging in ravenous behavior, giving the impressions that sex is primitive and instinctual and should require no thought. Many of us internalize these confusing or unrealistic messages. By the time we reach adulthood, we have no idea of what sex actually means to us personally. Nor do we have a sense of the healing effects sex can have in our lives as an experience in building trust, intimacy, acceptance, and authenticity. As a society, we have not yet discovered the deeper meaning of sex.
To avoid feelings of confusion or shame, we often attempt to suppress or erase our sexual desires and fantasies from our experience, if not from our consciousness altogether. This can result in a condition of alienation and inauthenticity—a disconnection between who we really are and how we behave. We enter a process of disengaging our minds from our bodies and souls, which often lasts a lifetime.
But the truth refuses to be buried. Denying our desires and fantasies ultimately does not work. The conflict will manifest itself in a wide range of sexual difficulties from the loss of sexual interest to feelings of dissociation in which we engage in sex but feel as if we aren’t fully present. We feel numb, or imagine shopping at Saks or bowling a perfect score while we are “making love” with our partner. Other times our conflicts are reflected in our inability to orgasm, genital pain, or erectile dysfunction.
To help clarify the idea of the toll that repression can take, here’s one of my cases—twenty-five-year-old Sam Watson, who came to therapy because he couldn’t perform sexually on his wedding night.
TOO GOOD FOR HIS OWN GOOD: SAM
Unlike most young people today, Sam and his new bride, Erica, waited for their wedding night to consummate their marriage. But when it came time for sexual intercourse, Sam quickly lost his erection. When they were dating, they had regularly engaged in making out and petting, during which Sam always found himself aroused, but intercourse seemed to be a different matter entirely.
Sam was the eldest of five children raised by a single mother without the financial or emotional involvement of a father. Both his parents had emigrated from Ireland and met in New York at a church social, after which they never left each other’s side. They married within a few months and had five children immediately, each two years apart. Their new family seemed to make up for the ones they left behind in Ireland.
A heavy smoker, Sam’s father died of lung cancer after a protracted and painful illness. Sam was barely twelve at the time. Just before his death, Sam’s father made Sam promise that he would take care of his mother after he was gone, a deathbed vow that Sam took very seriously.
Left with little money, Sam’s mother worked hard as a housekeeper, taking care of the local church and a few of the larger homes in town. Sam’s mother always managed her work and family responsibilities with grace, never issuing a complaint. She was admired by friends and neighbors, often held up as a model parent—hardworking, kind, and self-sacrificing.
Sam fulfilled his vow to his father by looking after the younger children. He helped them with homework, dressed, fed, and read to them daily. As he grew older, he took on more responsibilities, even accompanying his mother to parent/teacher conferences and church meetings. He often served as her companion. In high school he stayed close to home, never letting his mother down.
But this did not come without a price. At times, the responsibility felt too much for him. He wanted to join in the activities with other high school kids—play soccer, attend after-school clubs and school dances, but there was no time for that. And while he continued to measure up to his responsibilities, he secretly began to feel resentful.
By his senior year Sam had grown into a handsome boy. Girls teased and flirted with him, but he was too busy and too shy to date. He had discovered masturbation early—when he was barely a teenager—and had been enjoying it regularly ever since, despite the fact that he had been taught it was a mortal sin. By now he had begun to have regular sexual fantasies about some of the girls from school. With an edge of defiance, Sam took pleasure in secretly rebelling against the authority of the church, masturbating several times a day.
At some point toward the end of his senior year, Sam began to imagine having anal sex with girls, a fantasy that occurred occasionally at first but soon came to dominate his thoughts. His fantasies also grew increasingly aggressive over time.
When it was time for college, Sam stayed near home, attending the county community college so he could continue to look after his family. His fantasies about anal intercourse continued, yet he still had not experienced sex with a girl.
Then Sam met Erica. He felt lucky to have found a woman who was as kind, thoughtful, and hardworking as his mother. She shared a similar view of life and, like Sam, was a churchgoer who believed in the importance of close family ties. Erica was well liked by Sam’s mother and siblings and easily fit into their family life. Soon they were all spending time together.
Sam was as respectful of Erica as he was of his mother, and while they were affectionate with each other, neither felt in a hurry to have sex. Kissing, holding hands, and light petting were enough for them. They had agreed to wait until they were married to have sex.
Privately, Sam kept up his fantasy life, which now had a second benefit. It helped him to maintain his abstinence with Erica.
Two years after they met, they had a big church wedding with more than two hundred people attending. But that’s when the trouble started. As the wedding approached, the expectation of having sex with Erica weighed heavily in Sam’s thoughts. He feared that he would not get excited by conventional sex and worried about maintaining an erection.
What he feared turned out to come true. “Missionary sex” did not arouse him, and he was unable to satisfy Erica or himself. He forced himself to keep his fantasies of anal sex out of his thoughts, banishing them while having sex with Erica. Where his fantasies once brought pleasure and relief, they now left him feeling inadequate and ashamed. So did his inability to perform. He grew irritable and frustrated, which soon extended beyond the bedroom. Because of their mutual shyness, he could not bring himself to talk with Erica about what he felt, and she, likewise, never raised the subject.
Finally, he visited his doctor but was too embarrassed to tell him the truth about his sexual desires. After a brief interview, the doctor diagnosed him with erectile dysfunction and prescribed Viagra.
But the Viagra didn’t work, which sometimes happens when the underlying psychological reasons for a symptom are not dealt with. Sam still could not maintain an erection or reach an orgasm.
It wasn’t until Sam entered therapy, at the suggestion of a forward-looking priest, that he began to understand that his inability to get or maintain an erection resulted from the disconnection between his true desires and the sex he felt he was expected to perform. Previously, he had not thought about the history and meaning of his desires and how well they actually served him or how much they were a part of a healing process. But by going through the initial steps of intelligent lust, Sam discovered that, without knowing it, he had eroticized his feelings of resentment. His fantasies of anal intercourse offered him an outlet for expressing his anger, allowing him a secret space to be a “bad boy” while dutifully fulfilling his vow of being a “good son” by continuing to act responsibly in his everyday life. Unfortunately, his guilt was strong enough to interfere with his inability to maintain an erection.
With my guidance Sam carefully initiated conversations about sex with Erica. He told her that he had been investigating his sexuality in therapy and that he now had some insight into his failure to be a better lover. At first, Erica didn’t understand why Sam would share such private thoughts, or exactly what they meant. She had never had the benefit of therapy herself and was not naturally inclined toward making psychological connections. But Erica loved Sam and understood intuitively that Sam’s pain was greater than her confusion. She worried about where the conversations might lead, but they had, so far, left her feeling closer to him. She asked him if he would mind if she went to therapy with him so she could understand him even better. Sam was delighted.
In our first session together, I explained to her the basic concepts of intelligent lust and why Sam and I had been discussing them. Although Erica confessed that sex was a mystery to her—“I never thought much about it”—she said she could appreciate the value of talking about it. “Even though it makes me a little nervous,” she told me, “I already feel closer to Sam.” Though not quite eager, she remained curious.
While I never directly asked her questions about sex, since we had agreed that our agenda was to “help her understand Sam,” by the end of our second session she surprised us by volunteering to try following the steps of intelligent lust herself. Sam eagerly instructed her on the first step.
When they returned, Erica stated that, much to her surprise, she had “a kind of epiphany” while completing the first exercises. She realized that, like Sam, much of her life had gone into being the good girl and that despite her devotion to her parents and church, she secretly fantasized about what it would feel like to be “naughty.” She recounted adolescent fantasies in which she imagined behaving like “a bad girl,” sexually and otherwise, for which she remembered feeling guilty and ashamed.
Sam was excited to discover that his wife had spent as much time as him “thinking about what it would be like to be free. To be bad for a change. We were both way too good as kids.”
In the next few sessions, Erica and Sam discussed the details of their fantasies and speculated on what they meant in relation to their past. And much to their relief, they discovered how complementary their sexual desires were. But when we discussed the ways they could act them out, Sam was the one who objected. He was not sure that he wanted to do this with the woman who was his wife. He worried that this would change his opinion of her, à la the Madonna/whore paradox. But Erica insisted she was game.
“For God’s sake,” she joked, “we need to have some fun. I’m not perfect. Definitely not like the Swan Queen in the ballet. I’m not going kill myself after you have your way with me.” They both laughed. She said she strongly believed they could not only handle it but that “being naughty” would bring them even closer.
So with some nervousness and a lot of self-consciousness, they set out to follow the final step of intelligent lust by exploring their true sexual desires together. In the process they not only grew closer to each other but also came closer to honoring all the complexities of who they each truly are as human beings.
TAKING A STEP BEYOND INSIGHT
Does such insight make a difference? Is it enough to just understand our desires, or is it essential to the healing process to act out our fantasies, regardless of their content?
Some psychotherapists, sexologists, and religious counselors say emphatically no, we shouldn’t, because enacting our fantasies can reinforce and encourage the continuation of thoughts that may then serve as a stepping-stone to pathological, antisocial, or even violent behavior. According to this theory, a wide range of sexual fantasies fit into this category because they fall outside of a set standard of normalcy.
But what is normal exactly, and who determines it?
In actuality, definitions of “normal” are socially constructed, continuously shifting over time as cultural attitudes change. Homosexuality, for example, once considered a perversion by mental health professionals, was eliminated in 1973 as a psychiatric illness from the Manual of Diagnostic Categories. Other categories of sexual “deviations” have similarly been dropped as our attitudes toward sex have changed. For example, up until the eighteenth century the age of sexual consent was twelve. In actuality, there is no essential truth about what is normal, only what is socially relevant at a given moment in time.
Additionally, there is no scientific evidence to support the notion that acting out fantasies will lead to violent or perverse behavior the way drinking may lead to alcoholism. Regardless, some of us believe we will feel worse for acting out a sexual fantasy—perhaps even cheapened. “Dirty” thoughts should be kept secret, the thinking goes. But these feelings are more the result of the internalized shame and guilt we’ve been taught to associate with sex than they are decisions in support of self-respect or respect for our partners.
Our sexual desires reflect our unique histories and are as original and varied as we are as people. Far from random thoughts and feelings, they are healing instruments with meaning and purpose. By following the principles of intelligent lust, we can decode them and bring them to life safely and intelligently. If we can achieve authenticity by aligning our sexual behavior with our true desires, we can permanently change our relationships with ourselves and satisfy a host of deeper needs. Self-knowledge alone does not necessarily promote well-being; we need to use those insights and take action that breaks past patterns.
For centuries, philosophers have concerned themselves with the question of authenticity. Socrates may have been the first to state, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” but it has been said innumerable times since.
For contemporary psychologists, a healthy and fulfilling life derives from the reconciliation between the external world and internal needs. Such authenticity requires knowing what those needs are and pursuing the goal of living them with honesty and integrity.
By challenging cultural values and norms, the steps of intelligent lust help us achieve the goal of authenticity. We arrive at our own set of moral values and obligations that derive from self-knowledge and self-acceptance.
Embracing our sexual truth reverses the corrosive influences of guilt and shame, and enhances the sense of self-worth and wholeness that is essential to leading a healthy life. We reclaim abandoned parts of ourselves and integrate them into our being, also crucial to health.
As we go through the process and gain insight, we also improve our relationships. No longer strangers to ourselves, we form relationships with greater sexual intimacy and compatibility. We connect with partners who understand our true desires and are willing to explore theirs as well. We continuously seek and exchange truths, a process that leads to a level of honesty beyond that normally achieved by partners and ultimately to a more satisfying relationship.
Through this journey we can accomplish something even deeper. We can counteract feelings of loneliness, powerlessness, inadequacy, and fear, satisfy unmet needs, and come to new terms with childhood conflicts. We reunite the mind, body, and soul in sexual experiences invoking the highest levels of our being. The journey itself is filled with mystery and beauty. It may be fast or unfold slowly with moments of pain and struggle. Yet, when we follow it, the realizations go deep and ultimately we find passion for life itself.