CHAPTER 12
When Enjoying Sex Seems beyond Your Control
Sometimes our issues feel overwhelming, and self-help programs like following the steps of intelligent lust can seem daunting. However serious, our problems exist for reasons, and when we understand their meaning and purpose, it will give us a new perspective. We find compassion for ourselves in knowing that our problems are actually solutions to some of life’s most difficult dilemmas.
A lack of sexual interest, for instance, allows us to avoid sex and all the potential conflict it might bring. On the other hand, engaging in frequent anonymous sex permits us to live in a safe state of detachment immune from the complications of an intimate relationship. Aggressive sex may be our way of handling feelings of powerlessness, having ourselves been abused at an earlier time in our lives. And sex while using alcohol or drugs may be the only way we can let go and even consider having sex. When we figure out the underlying conflicts from which our behavior originates, we can do those things necessary to heal them. Our problems become more manageable.
If enjoying sex somehow seems beyond your reach for any of the reasons mentioned, read this chapter for advice before following the steps of intelligent lust. Take inspiration from the stories told here.
LOW SEXUAL INTEREST
When it comes to desire, levels of sexual interest vary among individuals in frequency and intensity. Studies also show that erotic urgency ebbs and flows over the life span. Around 30 percent of young and middle-aged men and women go through extended periods of feeling little or no desire for sex.
Sometimes the lack of sexual desire can be attributed to physical transitions such as menopause or postpartum phases that produce fluctuations in hormones or to diminishing levels of testosterone in men. Life stresses, such as financial or work pressures, a child’s illness, or the quality of turbulence in our relationships, can also affect our interest in sex.. Powerful physiological or psychological factors, sometimes both, change our attitude toward sex and the level of our sexual interest.
The most common reasons for women’s lowered sex drive are
The top reasons for lowered sex drive in men include
Women may not be the only ones who suffer the effects of changing hormones. Hormone changes are a natural part of aging. It’s not uncommon for men, as young as forty, to find getting an erection less automatic and sexual interest diminished. By the time a man reaches seventy, testosterone levels can be reduced by as much as 50 percent.
But even when we have a low sexual interest due to physical changes or a life crisis, there are things we can do to rekindle our sexual desire if we value the importance of sex and its healing power. We can learn to accept the changes and cultivate a sex life with opportunities for affirmation and satisfaction. Try the following things.
Give Yourself Permission to Have Sexual Pleasure
Often when our self-esteem is flagging, we feel undesirable or ugly or perhaps even undeserving of pleasure. Even so, we can give ourselves permission to enjoy sex despite the reasons that led us to lose interest. While sex may not feel like a priority, it’s also an experience we should not deny ourselves because of its many healing effects. Once we break through and reengage in sex, it tends to build on itself.
Establish a “Free Zone” Specifically for Self-Pleasuring
Institute a regular time and place, regardless of how you feel, in which you tune everything else out and tune in to sex. Use self-stimulation to reconnect to your fantasies and desires. Once your interest returns, you can initiate sex with a partner.
Stop Worrying about How You Look
You can make an effort to relax and be kind to yourself by appreciating the deeper nature of sex rather than how you think you will appear.
Use Your Fantasies
Even if you have difficulty getting an erection or suffer from vaginal dryness or some other medical condition, you can search for ways to express yourself sexually that are satisfying now. Many possibilities exist for sex that do not involve intercourse. Nongenital sex such as sensual touching, verbal play, extended kissing, massage, wrestling, bondage, tantric sex, and many other imaginative forms of contact can be immensely gratifying. You can use erectile and vaginal difficulties as an opportunity to explore possibilities that you might not otherwise consider.
Talk with Your Partner
Initiate a conversation with your partner about your experience. Ask him to help jump-start your sexual relationship in a way that could potentially excite you. This can help create a context of loving support and cooperation. Your partner is likely to have withdrawn sexually in response to your lack of interest, and he may actually find such conversation thrilling.
DIFFERENT STROKES: PAUL AND MELISSA
My patient Paul is an older man who has been married three times; Melissa, twenty years younger, has never been married and tended to bounce from one relationship to the next. They met when fixed up by a friend, and they hit it off immediately.
In the past, both Paul and Melissa had dated perfectionists whom they felt a strong need to please based on similar childhood experiences with equally demanding parents. Eventually, they always rebelled against their partners’ demands, and all their relationships ended in failure—a common trait they discovered on their first date, and one they liked talking about, as now they had each found a partner whom they didn’t feel the need to please as much as simply enjoy. As neither had many expectations of the other, they felt no need to protest and in a short time grew quite close.
Not long into their relationship, Paul and Melissa came to me for couples counseling. They wanted their relationship to work out, but they were concerned because the sex hadn’t been good. It quickly became clear that despite their ability to discuss almost anything, they hadn’t been talking to each other about sex; they had only been fumbling around unhappily in bed. Over time, I took them through the steps, opening their minds to what they truly wanted from sex, investigating their fantasies, talking candidly as much as they felt comfortable.
What they discovered was that, at age sixty-seven, Paul’s sexual drive was a fraction of what it had been. He was growing to love Melissa, but much of that came from her companionship and the close physical contact they both enjoyed.
Melissa, however, was still sexual. Because her fantasies often centered on being told what to do by an authoritarian man, the couple eventually developed a practice that satisfied both of them: In bed, Paul would hold Melissa and tell her exactly what she should do to reach orgasm on her own. Once she had, Melissa would take time to embrace and caress Paul, which pleased him immensely.
This might strike some people as an odd compromise, but it was anything but that to the couple, who could now not only talk about sex but also regularly embellish on the scene to make it uniquely theirs—and it made them very happy as well.
But what if there is no medical explanation or other life crisis that accounts for the lack of our sexual interest? What if we are simply the type of person who never had much of an interest in sex or rarely even fantasized about it?
Some experts say that fantasy doesn’t play as vital a role in women’s sexuality as in men’s or that when it comes to desire men have more of it than women—women are more interested in the quality of the relationship than in sex. But these characteristics, if they do exist, are more informed by social attitudes than biology. We hold men and women to different standards—sexually active women are judged negatively, while men advance on the social ladder for performing as studs. If women fantasize less or act less interested in sex, it’s because, in our culture, they are not afforded the same sexual entitlement as men. Despite the enormous gains the women’s movement has achieved in the last thirty years, when it comes to sex, many women still believe it’s their role to please rather than seek pleasure for themselves.
Some of us give up on sex without ever understanding the reasons why. We choose to live celibate lives, sometimes justifying them with spiritual explanations. If we follow the steps of intelligent lust, we can confront those attitudes and defenses that stand in the way of knowledge and dig deeper to discover the real meaning and purpose for the absence of sex in our lives. Whether we disown sex to protect ourselves from experiencing shame, consider it a temptation, or fear being out of control, we can enlighten ourselves with the truth and eventually open up to the genuine satisfaction that comes from connecting to our deeper selves and another person.
THE MEANING OF DREAMS: AARON
My patient Aaron, for example, insisted that he had no interest in sex. His friends even made fun of him at their bachelor parties, he told me with some pride, because he was “nonplussed” about the sexual partying that often went on. He was the only guy in his fraternity not distracted by sex, which he believed was why he earned straight As.
But that was not the reason he came for therapy. He was concerned because he often felt exhausted. Though he made sure he had eight hours’ sleep most nights, most mornings he woke up “wrecked.” Now a highly paid software engineer, he could hardly keep his eyes open during the day. It was as if he had no sleep at all. He wondered if therapy could help.
First, I referred him to a physician, who determined there was no medical reason for his physical exhaustion and was as puzzled as Aaron about why he would fall asleep at his desk or have no energy in the evenings. A change in diet and the addition of supplements made no significant difference, and he could not get up the energy to return to the gym for regular workouts.
I wondered if perhaps Aaron’s sleep was made fitful by disturbing dreams, so during our second session, I asked him to describe in detail what typically happened during his sleeping hours.
“I don’t know. I fall asleep pretty easily. I usually read until I’m groggy then I turn the light off. I’m dead out. The next thing I know it’s morning. The alarm rings and I can’t open my eyes. I hit the ten-minute snooze button and wake up when it goes off. I feel like I haven’t slept at all.”
“Do you wake up during the night?” I asked.
“If I do, I’m not aware of it.”
“Do you remember dreaming at night?”
“That’s weird too. I never remember dreaming but I know I must.”
“How do you know?”
Aaron was silent for a moment.
“Because either I am jerking myself off in my sleep or I’m having wet dreams,” he said with an embarrassed smile. “I’m sticky down there.”
“So you may be having a whole other life when you’re asleep,” I said.
He laughed.
I went on. “Do you have sex or masturbate at other times?”
“Not really. I don’t have much of a sex drive. My friends in college even laughed at me because I was never interested in sex.”
“Well, apparently you are when you’re sleeping.”
We both laughed.
“Yeah, I wish I was there to enjoy it,” he said, still laughing.
“Do you ever have sexual fantasies?”
“No, I really don’t think about sex.”
I thought for a few moments about Aaron’s situation then made a suggestion. It seemed obvious he had so thoroughly repressed his sexual desires that whatever was truly exciting to him must have seemed so unthinkable that he could not allow it to surface to his consciousness. He so thoroughly cut himself off from his sexuality, that he expressed no interest in sex at all.
But how could we discover what was behind his amnesia? I told him I thought it might prove helpful if he could do some research. I suggested that each night for one week until we met again, he set his alarm for different times during the night with the idea of catching himself in the middle of a dream or fantasy. I asked him to keep a paper and pencil handy to record what he recalled when he awoke.
Aaron took the experiment seriously. He returned the next week carrying a black leather-bound journal, which he opened immediately to the first page.
“I’m going to read this to you. Nothing happened the first two nights. But on the third night, here’s what I wrote: ‘Thursday, 3 a.m.: Dream. Feet. Beautifully sculpted, deep arches, soft gentle smell, natural toenails. Kissing them, gently rubbing them, and massaging them. Hard-on. Lots of precum. I am incredibly excited.’ Wait. There’s more. ‘Saturday, 3:30 a.m. I’m sucking toes. No body or face attached. Just feet. Beautiful toes. I’m really hard. I rub my cock against the sole of the feet and start to fuck them. They grab my cock.’”
We sat in silence for a moment.
“How do you feel about what you discovered?” I gently asked.
“A mixture of being freaked out—shame and relief. I mean, it wasn’t a total shock to me. I remember having more than the usual interest in feet and shoes as a kid. I loved going to buy new shoes. I didn’t know what it meant. But the whole feeling of the shoe store, watching people take their socks off, the smell, trying on shoes, measuring feet. I would drag my mother into any shoe store when we were out shopping. After a few times, she must have sensed something. She told me it was ‘odd.’ We stopped buying shoes in stores. She would order them for me from catalogs.
“I’d hide the catalogues under my bed and read them at night. I didn’t know why. I didn’t know it was erotic, but I just couldn’t wait to look at them. I also felt really ashamed. Later, in high school, when I took gym class, I tried not to look at the other kids’ feet. At first I couldn’t resist, then after time and a lot of bargaining with God, I made myself stop thinking about it.”
“You said you felt a combination of shame and relief.”
“I feel like a freak. I’m turned on by feet. Not a pretty face or breasts. Feet. That’s kind of humiliating.”
“Why relief then?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s because at least I’m sexual. I think I was already feeling like a freak because I had no interest in sex like every other guy in his twenties did. I wouldn’t let myself think about sex at all. I didn’t date or watch porn with my frat brothers. I just couldn’t take the chance. I didn’t want it to be true. But it’s true. I’m turned on by feet. I don’t know; it’s confusing. What happened to that sweet little kid who just so happened to love feet? It’s so sad.”
Aaron began to cry. I waited until he calmed himself and then told him stories of other patients and their true erotic desires—the young man who got excited whenever someone sneezed, the rabbi and Kabbalah scholar who masturbated while thinking about women wearing eyeglasses. I talked about how our erotic desires had meaning and how we could together discover the poetry in the purpose of his fantasies. “Repression is a powerful defense against shame,” I said. “In our attempts to protect ourselves against the unthinkable, it can cast a long, dark shadow over our lives, blanketing out large segments of who we truly are.” His passion for feet was a “gift that deserved to be gently unwrapped, admired, and understood.” I told him many people shared his appreciation, and at some point, he would discover them.
I explained the steps of intelligent lust and asked him to take the journey with me.
Compulsive Lust
While the principles of intelligent lust honor desire, they do not deny the dark and difficult aspects of it. Sex can be compulsive when we repeatedly pursue encounters with the hope that each new experience will relieve our tension, anxiety, or boredom or help us escape from pain or conflict. Because our body produces a surge of powerful chemicals during the excitement of sex, bingeing acts as a momentary antidepressant, blotting out pain and flooding us with feelings of well-being. But when the effect begins to wear off, we are left with even greater anxiety, feelings of emptiness, or shame from which we also crave to escape. The thought and pursuit of sex progressively dominates our lives until we are caught up in a cycle of compulsive lust or romantic obsession.
Every compulsion has a healthy intention—we enact rituals in an effort to soothe pain or conflicts—but the anarchy of compulsive lust leads to meaningless or reckless sex, or sometimes its opposite, sexual self-starvation. Without making a conscious attempt to understand the true nature of our sexuality, we cannot direct our energy toward healing. Compulsive acting out indulges selfishness and self-loathing, where intelligent lust generates self-love and generosity.
Compulsive lust can take many forms. Check your own behavior against the most common listed below:
DANCING WITH MEMORIES: ANITA
Like many young ballet dancers, Anita dedicated herself to her art with extraordinary focus and discipline, even to the exclusion of enjoying a typical adolescent social life. She had no interest in boys other than as partners in the ballets she performed.
Her talent and persistence paid off. She was invited to join the corps de ballet of a major New York City company when she was barely eighteen. In her first years there, she worked hard and earned the respect of her colleagues as well as the attention of the artistic director.
One evening, while performing the “shades” passage of the classical ballet La Bayadère, Anita collapsed on stage.
“My body gave out. I just couldn’t move. I felt like I was going to die.”
The collapse was attributed to exhaustion by the company physician, and although she recovered quickly, within a few months it happened a second time and then a third. The doctor placed her on leave and recommended rest and “fun.”
During this time she suffered bouts of anxiety and depression, though she had no deeper explanation for them other than her immediate disappointment with herself for having been instructed to take time off. Her physical symptoms also continued. At times she was unable to move her body enough to get out of bed. Then she began to have disturbing dreams of violent sex in which she was tied up and raped. Specialists could find no reason for her physical symptoms. Suspicious that they may be psychosomatic, her doctor recommended psychotherapy.
By the time Anita came for a consultation, she was already beginning to remember what had happened to her as a small child, though the memories were vague and foggy, like faded photographs. Slowly, we reconstructed her history, and, as she directed her attention to these recent unsettling images, the words and story came into her memory too.
Much to her horror, she remembered that at around the age of six, while visiting her mother’s sister in Wyoming, she was left in the care of teenage cousins while the adults attended a family wedding. During their absence, she was taken to the basement by her cousin, tied and bound, and repeatedly raped. He threatened to seriously hurt her if she repeated the story.
Because of her self-doubts about the event, a common stage in recovering traumatic memories, I helped her recount the story several times over the weeks that followed, each time filling in the details and supporting her in experiencing the emotions and the bodily sensations of the trauma.
Ballet had kept her at a safe distance from these memories. The strict discipline of her training gave her the feeling of having control of her body, while the intensity and focus of the dance distracted her from reexperiencing the emotional and bodily effects of the rape. Her separation from boys, except as ballet partners in which their activities were rigidly prescribed, also allowed her to keep them at a safe distance. And ballet was an art form that required her to remain mute. Perfect.
At times, we all have the experience of losing ourselves while watching a good play or movie, or reading a good book. But Anita dissociated: the memory of her trauma, along with all sexual fantasy and desire, were involuntarily erased from her consciousness. But even though the events were forgotten, the feelings associated with them had a long-term effect. The aftershock reached into adulthood before her body finally betrayed her. She developed debilitating physical symptoms that metaphorically revealed her secret—she became unable to move, similarly tied and bound as she had been during the rape.
• • •
Whether we suffer a gentle seduction or violent rape like Anita, the symptoms of post-traumatic stress can turn every aspect of our lives inside out. Some survivors feel guilty, even responsible, and often avoid sex entirely or continually reenact the trauma through sexually compulsive behavior. While most victims don’t become abusers, some do eroticize the role of the perpetrator and act out their aggression by engaging in abusive sex. Men with histories of child abuse are more likely than women to imitate the perpetrator, transforming feelings of fear into power.
The most common symptoms of abuse include
My patient Jennifer knew exactly what excited her. It wasn’t something she gave much thought’ she simply acted it out. Jennifer was always attracted to risk and danger and never wanted to know why or what her preferences meant. “That would have spoiled the thrill,” she told me in hindsight.
By the time Jennifer came to therapy, she had already admitted that her sexual activities had grown beyond her control. The fact that she was married with two children hadn’t stopped her from secretly seeking sex with strangers. But when she found herself obsessively thinking about prostitution, she finally decided it was time to look for help. Until that point, her personal life had been geared around how and with whom she would next have sex. As soon as she finished one encounter, she was thinking about the next.
And surprisingly, no one suspected.
“I was already having sex with strangers, why not get paid for it? That’s how out of control I got,” Jennifer said, describing her logic. “I finally realized that this has got to end. Is this what I want my life to amount to? I’m a thirty-five-year-old whore cheating on my husband. I couldn’t even let myself think about the kids. I was constantly afraid of being caught. That’s when I made the decision to stop.”
A year before she came for therapy, Jennifer had gone on the Internet and found a Sexual Compulsives Anonymous group that met during the afternoons when her husband was at work and she was her most vulnerable. She began attending meetings several times a week.
After a few months, with the support of her group, Jennifer made the decision to come clean with her husband. She felt she had to take responsibility for her behavior—she had a moral obligation to tell him. And she no longer wanted to live in hiding. It was also the first time in her life that she had ever taken herself so seriously.
Her husband was both blindsided and devastated. He had no idea that Jennifer had a double life. He felt angry and betrayed. At first, he asked her to move out of the house, but not wanting to disrupt the children’s lives, he settled for her sleeping in the guest room. He refused to move out of their bed, and he refused to speak to her unless it was about the children.
“I’ll never forget the look on Michael’s face. He was broken,” she said, her own face as white as ash.
Somehow they survived the next six months. Jennifer faithfully attended SCA meetings. For the first time, she stopped keeping secrets, and along with deep feelings of shame, she also felt a sense of relief.
It had been an extraordinarily painful year for both her and Michael. Yet on the one-year anniversary of her sexual sobriety, to her surprise, Michael told her that though he would never forget the pain she caused him, he admired her determination to live a healthy life. He said he didn’t know if he could ever fully trust her again, but he wanted to try. They both wept, and for the first time since her disclosure, they slept in the same bed.
But the more things improved with Michael, the more inexplicably sad she felt. She made another decision: to come to therapy to “finally face all the demons.” When I asked her what that meant to her, she bowed her head and looked directly at the floor. After a few moments of silence, she began her devastating story, which she had told only one time before.
Jennifer and her two younger brothers were raised in a middle-class suburb of Detroit by her mother and stepfather. Her parents had divorced when she was six, and within a year her mother remarried her high school sweetheart and her father’s best friend. Jennifer was nine when, while watching television on the living room couch—her mother out working the night-shift—her stepfather asked her to massage his shoulder, which he said he had injured at work that day. He had asked her before, but always in her mother’s presence. She always took pleasure in the idea of pleasing him, and with her brothers sitting nearby, she thought nothing of it.
Later that evening, after her brothers were in their beds and she in her own, her stepfather came to her room to thank her. He sat on the edge of her bed, brushed her hair with his hand, and gently kissed her on the cheek. Then, he placed his lips on her mouth and kissed her again. Though he left her room immediately after, in that instant her life changed.
Several nights later he returned to her room and instructed her to massage his chest. He removed his shirt and asked her to rub the lotion he had brought with him across his body. Within a short time, he pushed her small hand toward his penis and held it there.
His nighttime visits continued regularly, and soon he was placing her face down on her bed, taking her clothes off, and rubbing his body against hers, until one night he raped her.
“I was terrified. I never said a word. He told me that if I told anyone that he would tell them that I had made it up. No one would believe me.”
The rapes went on for several years, sometimes more than once a week. Finally, on the day of her thirteenth birthday, she gathered her courage and told her mother that her stepfather was having sex with her. Her mother was shocked and devastated. Without hesitation, she called the police, and when her husband returned from work, he was confronted and arrested. The marriage ended right then.
Like most abuse victims, Jennifer felt it was impossible to make sense of all the feelings—anger, shame, guilt, love, pain, and fear—that occurred during and after that experience. As she entered puberty and developed physically, she became even more confused. Now she had sexual feelings, but along with them, associations that frightened her—she could not stop fantasizing about her stepfather. She imagined having vaginal intercourse with him, a thought which she found both horrifying and pleasurable.
By the time she was sixteen, she was regularly having sex with older boys and men. She felt powerful knowing she could please them. She was struggling to gain control over the pain and indignity by unconsciously acting out a more pleasurable version of her abuse. But because the meaning and purpose of her fantasies and behavior were not part of her consciousness, they could not produce true healing. Instead, compulsively acting out sex produced a numbing, narcotic-like effect that, for a time, served its purpose.
Now, twenty years after her abuse ended, she was finally dealing with those feelings rather than escaping from them. As we discussed the details of her trauma in therapy, she recognized that her childhood was stolen from her and could never be replaced. Soon she plunged into a period of genuine grief. Never before had she felt safe enough to allow such feelings, and now that she had, she didn’t think she would ever stop feeling sad.
I invited Michael to the next session because I felt that providing a context for understanding her experience might open his heart and at the very least foster compassion. I was right.
As the deepest mourning lifted, anger replaced it. She began having fantasies of getting even with her stepfather. At the time of his arrest, her mother had been advised not to prosecute her husband because the events surrounding a trial would further traumatize Jennifer. Now Jennifer felt outraged and wanted to punish him.
During this stage, Michael and I bore witness to her story. Along with her SCA group, we supported her through each twist and turn of her grief over the period of a year.
The restorative powers of mourning are extraordinary. When the process is fully embraced, it runs its course and leaves room for a new perspective. And while life’s challenges can reawaken some aspect of the trauma, its effects grows less powerful with time. Eventually the pain is left in the past and the task of rebuilding life in the present takes priority. Jennifer’s courage paid off. She is finally prepared to follow the steps of intelligent lust and establish a sexuality that is separate and free from the trauma.
Before attempting the steps of intelligent lust, victims of sexual abuse should seek the support of a self-help group, physician, or mental health professional. We need first to fully understand what happened to us and the erroneous beliefs about ourselves that we may have assumed as a result. We are not “damaged goods” or “bad” or a “sexual object,” as we may have come to think. We need to stop sexual behavior that reinforces the trauma, such as risky sex, sex we don’t really want, and compulsive sex. We need to become conscious of our automatic reactions and identify when we are projecting or having a flashback, separating the past from the present. We need to do our best to identify those fantasies related to the trauma and allow ourselves to discover new desires. And not the least, we need to learn how to be touched and touch again outside of the associations of the past.
ALCOHOL AND SEX
A candlelit dinner with a glass or two of wine or a cocktail can set the stage for a romantic sexual interlude. The alcohol loosens inhibitions and makes it far easier to make the first move or to relax and surrender to an advance. But alcohol used in excess can cloud judgment and allow one to make poor decisions. Over time the effects of alcohol use on sex can be severe both psychologically and physiologically, including erectile dysfunction, suppressed interest, difficulty with orgasm, vaginal tightness, and much more.
While a small amount of alcohol might lubricate a conversation, too much of it disconnects us from deeper thoughts and feelings, dulling us in a way that doesn’t allow access to the core of who we are. Instead of fostering intimacy, as we imagine, it keeps us at a distance from our true selves and our partner. That’s often why people drink. Their guilt or shame about sex needs to be deadened before they can actually have it.
Excessive alcohol use interferes with our capacity to follow the principles of intelligent lust, in which we want to know what we really feel about sex and use those feelings to guide our behavior (the symptoms of alcohol abuse can easily be found online). Consulting a substance abuse counselor or attending a twelve-step program may be necessary before attempting the steps of intelligent lust. Even with support, if sex has been closely associated with alcohol, investigating our deepest thoughts and fantasies, is likely to raise powerful feelings that we have long denied or avoided, and that can threaten sobriety.
My patients, John and Cindy, came together at a particularly vulnerable moment in both their lives. From our telephone conversation days earlier, I knew that John and Cindy were both recovering alcoholics. I also learned that John, forty-five, was older than Cindy by almost fifteen years. Cindy was studying for a doctoral degree in education, and John, an art consultant, had a great deal of pride in Cindy’s accomplishments. They lived together, though not married, in Hell’s Kitchen, a mid-town Manhattan community that had been greatly gentrified in recent years. John earned a good salary, enough to support them comfortably even after the economic downturn.
In dress, each partner remained faithful to his or her age and vision of him- or herself. John, trim and fit at six feet, wore a dark blazer, blue button-downed business shirt, and a dark tie. Cindy, also tall and with fine angular features, was at once conventional and elegant, in a black skirt, high leather boots, and white silk blouse with a colorful Hermes scarf, which added a youthful flair.
When I asked, during our initial session, the standard question about why they had sought an appointment with me, they said the fear of violence had inspired them.
Violence. Nothing about either one’s demeanor had suggested that there could be a violent moment between them, but Cindy confessed that there had been an incident of violence that was quite frightening to both of them.
I asked for a detailed account, and Cindy began to speak, her tone shaped by a slightly embarrassed edge.
“I overreacted,” she said, then fell silent.
John looked at her with compassion.
“What happened was I reached up and placed my hand against the back of Cindy’s head and gave her neck the slightest squeeze. Her response was so exaggerated.”
“You surprised me,” Cindy said.
“Maybe that was the extra ingredient—that I surprised her. I’m not exactly a touchy-feely person, but occasionally I do like to express my affection. I know she is sensitive to being touched. But it was our anniversary. Two years. And I just felt like acknowledging it.”
“What happened next?” I asked.
“It struck me the wrong way. I didn’t want to be touched like that. I felt violated. I lost control and punched him.” A look of deeper embarrassment crossed her face.
Why had a loving gesture gone so wrong? Had John unwittingly transgressed a forbidden boundary, or was Cindy’s reaction simply an anomaly?
I asked if there were other moments of violence between them.
“No, never,” Cindy answered.
“So there have been times when you do touch and it’s comfortable?” I asked.
John answered. “Yes, sometimes. It’s usually when she initiates it. I’ve learned not to start anything. I’m generally very respectful of her space. This was the first time anything like this happened. It frightened us both.”
“It felt sexual to me, and I was just not in that place,” Cindy added.
I nodded my head in acknowledgment.
“We don’t have sex very often,” John said, then hesitated. “We’re just not that sexual. I’m sure it came out of left field, and I’m sorry for that. Sex really isn’t that important to me—to us right now.”
Cindy picked up the conversation.
“We both kind of agree about that. It’s not that I’m not into John. I think he’s very attractive, but I have a lot of work to do on myself right now. Staying sober is a lot for me to handle. I love John. I think he’s an amazing man. Kind and supportive. The list of things I like about him is endless. I feel close to him. We’re really good together,” she said emphatically.
John’s face fell into a smile. “I feel close to you too.”
I asked them how they first met. They answered that they had first spoken to each other at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. They had seen each other at several meetings before. Eventually, John approached Cindy and struck up a conversation. They became friendly at subsequent meetings and even sat together. They seemed proud of their slow and deliberate speed in striking up a relationship. They made every move according to the highest AA standards.
They talked about “the program” and how grateful they were for its existence, and for the dedication and generosity of its members. John had been sober six years, Cindy for three.
During their animated testimony about AA, I marveled at how respectful they were of each other, pausing to let the other speak. It seemed like a dance of caution played out in the most friendly and mannerly way but in such contrast to the violence that had erupted on the second anniversary of their meeting.
As we drew near to the end of our first session, I considered the information that I learned. They seemed to demonstrate an enormous amount of respect for the other person’s personal and intimate territory. While each had expressed a feeling of closeness, they were also remarkable in maintaining a comfortable distance. Even their body language suggested restraint.
I told them admiringly, “I’ve been watching and listening as each of you demonstrates an enormous amount of respect for the other’s personal space. You seem to have figured out a level of intimacy that serves you both well for the moment—an exquisite balance between closeness and distance. Too intimate a connection might threaten the personal boundaries you’re building with the assistance of AA. My suspicion is that you each fear that sex might disturb those boundaries and consequently your sobriety.” They both nodded their heads in acknowledgment. I went on.
“Although none of us condones violence, I can understand how the episode you described might have protected you from this potential threat. It was, after all, your anniversary—a day of celebration of your togetherness. I know this is going to sound strange, but a simple act of violence may have protected you from any further temptation of togetherness—from tipping the balance of closeness on such a special day. The way you touched Cindy was an invitation to have sex and consequently a challenge to your mutual agreement to leave sex out of the equation of your lives for now in order to achieve a higher purpose. It’s ironic, but violence may have been the anniversary gift Cindy gave to herself and to you. She reminded you, as severe as it was, that sobriety comes first and that’s best protected by keeping the right distance.”
An expression of relief passed over their faces.
I noticed right away at the beginning of the second session, a week later, that their mood had altered slightly. They seemed more unsettled.
A moment barely passed when Cindy confessed that she was battling the urge to have a drink. Sinking deeper into the soft sofa, she said she was struggling more than usual to protect her sobriety. She was working the program, attending meetings daily.
I wondered if our first session had eased the shame and anxiety caused by the touching/hitting episode and allowed the atmosphere to calm. Could it be, as I had suspected, that too much warmth could unsettle them?
I decided to move backward in time, to tap a deeper vein of comprehensibility. I wanted to understand what they were protecting themselves from and at what sacrifice. As if in an AA meeting, I asked each of them to tell his or her story.
Cindy, speaking first, volunteered that her father was an active alcoholic, given to violent episodes. She said the family’s attempts to avoid her father’s rages long ago became a centerpiece of family life, much of which was organized around either not upsetting her father or getting away from him when he was drinking. Her mother was consumed with her husband’s drinking, allowing very little attention for Cindy and her siblings.
Cindy said she escaped by fleeing into academic interests, which served her very well. The extra ingredient of total dedication helped her get accepted on scholarship to Harvard, an achievement that otherwise would have been unattainable because of the family’s economic situation. She excelled at first, but the pressure of the scholarship and maintaining a part-time job began to get to her. She felt awkward among the other students and worried how she could hold up educationally and socially against those who had gone to selective schools and came from privileged families. She moved around campus as if she were on stage and the other students were finding her performance lacking. She began to drink to ease the pressure.
In her second year, Cindy plunged headlong into heavy drinking. In a relatively short time, she had progressed from binge drinking to daily marathons. She also began having sex indiscriminately. Blackouts followed in which she often forgot how she had gotten herself into a sexual situation. To protect herself, she holed up in her room and stopped attending classes.
Reports of her behavior and subsequent fights over it with her mother and siblings resulted in near total alienation from her family. Eventually, she fell so far behind in her academic work that she was forced to drop out of school.
But the drinking and self-loathing didn’t stop. She described herself as “seething with rage” toward her father, ironically for his alcoholism and rage. In the combined rage and stupor, swathed in self-pity and shame as well, she said she “hit bottom.” A man she randomly met at a bar and slept with convinced her to attend an AA meeting. She ended her story by saying that this act of rescue, plus several that followed it when she slipped back into the bottle during her introduction to recovery, had saved her life.
She finished her testimony with less emotional tension than when she had begun.
John, who had been watching with compassion as Cindy chronicled her descent and ascent, picked up his cue and talked about his background growing up as the son of successful parents, both corporate attorneys with homes in New York and Florida. His parents were very active socially, traveling frequently and, when at home, hosting many “fabulous” parties lubricated by alcohol. While given all of the material best, John was essentially left to grow up on his own, his parents demonstrating more interest in their work and each other than in him. At an early age, John discovered he was gifted as a pianist, and as he grew into a young man he excelled. He got invited into the “best homes” where people fawned over his playing, often rewarding him with cocktails or after-dinner drinks lasting late into the night.
For John, alcohol was more seductive. He did not turn to it to escape part of his life; it was part of life, every day. Bloody Marys and mimosas replaced morning coffee on weekends; wine washed down every meal after breakfast; and no sound lifted the late-afternoon, summer doldrums like the tinkling of ice cubes crashing against the walls of a crystal vessel. Drinking was not associated with violence or escape for John, quite the contrary. Alcohol escorted fun to every gathering. Sex was often part of the fun too.
Unlike Cindy, John felt little anger and no real pressing motivation to quit drinking or even confront the possibility that it might be a problem, until the accident occurred. Driving home from a party one evening with a few friends as passengers, John lost control of his car and crashed headfirst into a tree. While the passengers luckily suffered only minor injuries, both of John’s arms were broken as well as his nose and most of his teeth.
The accident brought into focus an obligation to take care of himself or perish. No one brought John to an AA meeting; he decided to find one himself.
I now understood from their narratives that stability had no roots in either of their histories. They had in common a chaotic childhood marked by a lack of parental love.
As I braided their stories together in my mind, I tried to imagine what each must have felt before their lives dissolved into a hopeless fog of drinking. I sat in wonderment over what they had achieved in recent years, individually and with each other—stability—with its unfamiliar consistency and serenity.
I struggled to find the language to describe what I was thinking and to express the respect that I felt for their courage and discipline.
“It’s amazing how far you’ve each come independently in the past few years and also how much you’ve accomplished together. Two years of relative serenity coupled with feelings of closeness. I understand now that these are feelings that neither of you had experienced before.” They shook their heads again.
“You’ve taken incredible leaps in becoming sober, including separating from your families. You chose each other—you’re both very different from each other’s family members. How? Both of you are interested in and respectful of the other’s needs, something none of your parents seemed to succeed at. You are also genuinely kind and loving to one another, experiences that seem to have been absent in your former lives. And that’s not all. Within that affection, you’ve established a degree of intimacy that also helps you maintain your sobriety—neither too close nor too distant.
“You’ve come together to form a beautiful and generous bond, a restorative relationship, in which each of you is helping the other repair your past.”
I paused until I felt the information had settled. Soon John reached for Cindy’s hand. They both smiled.
These few sessions affected them profoundly. It seemed to push them into a different plane of perception as well as a deep appreciation for what they had each accomplished in the service of the other.
“I think the struggle for you now is about how to go further—how to bring new things into your life while maintaining your sobriety. This,” I said, “is an important part of recovery.
“For instance, sex. Both of you have sacrificed something so fundamental to living fully by not daring to express yourselves physically. You both must see physical affection as a stepping-stone to sex, and sex for both of you has been dangerously inseparable from alcohol. One has acted as a trigger for the other. Because, in the past, you were both intoxicated when you had sex, neither of you probably have any real understanding of what your true desires are.”
“That’s true,” Cindy said. “I think we both had a lot of the wrong kind of sex. I’m totally scared and confused by sex. Add guilt and shame to those feelings too.”
“I don’t know where to begin. How do we have sex without drinking?” John asked.
“When you both feel ready, we can work together on introducing sex into your lives. Talk about it at home. I think you’ll know when the time is right.”
A month after that session, they called to say they were ready to examine who they were sexually. And so when they returned, we cautiously set out together to follow the steps of intelligent lust.
ALYSSA’S THOUGHTS
Premature Ejaculation
Among the most common concerns for which a man will seek sexual therapy is his inability to get or maintain an erection or because he regularly experiences premature ejaculation. The client is usually prompted to start therapy because he has met someone whom he really likes but fears that, while his new partner has been supportive thus far, he or she will become frustrated and eventually lose patience and interest. Such anxiety further diminishes his self-esteem, exacerbating his inability to perform.
Due to feelings of shame and embarrassment, most of these men avoid sex altogether or any conversation about the problem, using excuses such as being tired or having consumed too much alcohol to draw attention away from the truth. Some attempt intercourse without discussing their concern first, hoping that this time “mind over matter” will work. Still others will over-focus on their partner’s pleasure, not dealing with their own.
Of course, all of these strategies are likely to result in failure because they are not based on the truth. Emotional distance between the partners will widen, and the prophecy about breaking-up will be self-fulfilling.
After an initial examination by a physician, I take my client through the steps of intelligent lust, which not only sheds light on the purpose and meaning of his problem, but also naturally eases his shame. Most often, such insight begins to dislodge it. But if the problem persists, I use some of the techniques developed by sexual therapists to deal with the mechanics of sex. I first coach the client on how to have conversations with his partner. Where silence can be divisive, involving a partner in the solution encourages greater intimacy. I suggest exercises couples can do together before they ever attempt to have sex. Often these involve the compatibility exercises suggested in these pages or simple exercises that are more sensual than sexual. I’ll often teach my clients how to use specific breathing and relaxation techniques. While some of these techniques may sound cold or clinical, in practice they can be fun and very pleasurable.