I pedal my sturdy silver bike along the banks of the Willamette River. White, puffy clouds roll northeast, shifting now and then to reveal a blue sky and warm sun. It’s spring, and the bright green riverfront surges with new life. It was on a bike ride to this river back in 1989 that I decided to write The Sexual Healing Journey. Today, I celebrate the book’s more than twenty years in print and reflect on its history and continued value as a healing resource for survivors.
I remember feeling compelled to write this book. It was as though I had discovered a new plant with medicinal properties in my own backyard and just had to share it. In my clinical practice, through academic research, and in my personal life, I was learning a tremendous amount about sexual healing. I drew on these discoveries to help many survivors begin to heal and reclaim their sexuality. Yet, I knew that many more continued to suffer in silence. Few resources for healing existed at that time. And the ones that were available were limited in content and tone. I saw the need for an information-packed, compassionate resource that would empower and assist a wide range of survivors and their intimate partners. I was challenged by the dilemma facing many survivors: wanting to enjoy sexual intimacy but having difficulty addressing sexual issues directly.
When I decided to write The Sexual Healing Journey, there were no resources that offered sex therapy techniques specifically designed for survivors. People with problems related to incest, rape, and sexual molestation were encouraged to use traditional sex therapy approaches and techniques. These exercises were prescribed and prescripted. They were insensitive to the special needs of people with sexual trauma histories. Many survivors found them unappealing, and in some instances, retraumatizing. As one survivor told me, “They were too much, too soon, and too sexual!”
That’s why I began to develop new healing approaches. My techniques teach basic skills first: rudimentary self-awareness, communication, and touching; the need to initiate and control sexual contact; and the need to go slow and build bridges from one experience to another.
My goal became to create a comprehensive healing guide beneficial to all survivors, regardless of how or when they were abused, the amount of sexual abuse recovery work they have already done, or their present lifestyles and sexual orientations. To extend the range of this book beyond what I had learned in my clinical practice as a therapist and in my early research, I interviewed survivors who had worked on sexual healing with other therapists. To reach even more people, I designed a lengthy questionnaire that I administered to more than 140 survivors, partners of survivors, and clinicians specializing in sexual healing.
I recall it being a very busy and exciting time as I gathered and organized the information for this book. It was a great opportunity for me—as a woman who has recovered from sexual abuse herself, and as a therapist who specializes in treating sexual problems. I learned more about effective healing techniques. And as the writing progressed, it was exhilarating to experience the book taking on a life of its own.
I was blessed with the supportive input and assistance of many other people—colleagues, friends, family, and survivors. They became actively involved and kept reminding me how important the book would be to others. A male survivor wrote on the back of his questionnaire, “I’d be pleased if my story can help just one person, although I wish this kind of book were not necessary.” Another survivor wrote, “I pray that people can realize abuse may have caused their sexual problems, and seek and get help.” Their words kept the project flowing and kept me cognizant of how vital a role sexual healing plays in recovery from abuse.
While I brought professional wisdom to the project, the book was also very important to me on a personal level. I am what I call a “patchwork survivor”—one who has experienced different kinds of sexual abuse at different times in his or her life. When I was a little girl, I was touched inappropriately by an uncle who acted in a sexually seductive and flirtatious manner toward me. These experiences made me anxious about my own sexual energy and harmed my ability to select genuinely caring partners in my early dating years.
When I was a junior at the University of Colorado, I was assaulted one afternoon while walking on a heavily wooded campus path. A man sprang out from behind some bushes with his pants undone, threw me up against a wall, fondled me, and tried to rape me. I defended myself with the book I was carrying: a treatise on Mahatma Gandhi’s methods of nonviolent protest. For a long time, I joked about how funny it was that I hit him with such a book, preferring not to remember the terror and powerlessness I had felt then. It wasn’t until he heard other people approaching on the path that he let go of me and ran away.
Later, in graduate school, I went out with a law student I barely knew. He invited me to his apartment to listen to music. After a few kisses, he suddenly changed. A faraway look came over him, and he seemed to become another person. He grabbed me, held me down, and raped me. I felt used, humiliated, and mad at myself. I never reported the event. It wasn’t until years later when I read books about date rape that I admitted I had been a victim. I had to learn to call it rape and to release myself from feeling responsible for what had happened to me.
This patchwork of experiences, along with years of study and work as a sex therapist, has helped me understand the challenge of sexual healing. I know how hard it can be to overcome denial and feelings of responsibility. I know how long it can take to stop old patterns of behavior that continually re-create the abuse. I know how slowly one has to go to relearn touch and sexual responsiveness in a new way, free of the memories of abuse. And I know how important it is to respect and love oneself, embracing a new concept of what it means to be a sexual person.
One of the things that I enjoyed most about writing this book was the opportunity it gave me to share my hard-earned insights about sexual healing with others. It’s important to me to break the silence and reduce shame about important sexual issues. Too many people suffer unnecessarily—stuck in self-hatred, ignorance, and dissatisfaction—because they are denied accurate information about sex. As a trailblazer, The Sexual Healing Journey gives survivors and partners a crucial message: You are not alone. You can safely learn from the healing experiences of others who have gone before you. You can enjoy a deeply rewarding sex life of your own invention.
The book also prompted me to go further in my own sexual healing. More memories of childhood abuse surfaced. I confronted my uncle about the covert type of incest I experienced as a child. He was furious and denied the abuse at first. A year later, after doing some counseling work of his own, he visited me in Eugene, Oregon, to work on family reconciliation. We met, and I told him what I remembered and how his actions had affected my life.
My uncle listened, shared more information, took responsibility for his actions, and offered a sincere apology. In addition, he told me about things that had happened to him in the family that led him to develop poor boundaries with sexual talk and behavior. It was heart-wrenching to realize how much the past abuse had prevented an active, healthy uncle-niece relationship for many years. We both cried. Afterward, I felt like I shed layers of unnecessary sexual shame I hadn’t even been aware I had been carrying. I also gained a greater respect for the courage it takes for someone who perpetrated sexual abuse in the past to step forward and be accountable.
A year after I met with my uncle, I returned to Boulder, Colorado, to visit the path where I had been sexually assaulted twenty-five years earlier. I was amazed. First of all, I could hardly recognize the spot where the attack occurred because the school had cleared away the dense bushes where the assailant had hidden before jumping me. I also noticed that the university had installed call boxes at both ends of the trail. It was wonderful to feel my own strength and recovery, as well as to recognize the efforts that had been made to prevent sexual assaults.
I lean my bike along the railing of the Owasso Bridge and look south toward the now-naked sun. Rivulets paint a twinkling mosaic on the flat surface of the slow-moving river. Mesmerized by both the familiarity and constant transformation of the landscape, I reflect on the social changes that have taken place since The Sexual Healing Journey was first released in 1991.
Back then, it felt daring to write about sex and sexual abuse. Today these topics are far more popularized, providing material for magazine articles, books, online forums, television shows, and movies. Numerous high-profile lawsuits involving clergy, scout leaders, coaches, and others have drawn increased attention to the reality of sexual violence and child sexual exploitation. People are no longer shocked when an actress, politician, or author publicly discloses past sexual abuse. In general, victims are more believed and less blamed.
Time has brought a deeper understanding of the psychological repercussions of sexual abuse. The phenomenon of repressed memories, which once called into question the reality of recollections of past trauma, is better understood and has been validated by a large body of scientific research. We have better identified and addressed the relationship between past sexual abuse and a wide variety of concerns, including eating disorders, substance abuse, depression, chronic anxiety, chronic medical conditions, and compulsive behaviors. It has been heartening to witness the positive shifts in public opinion concerning issues such as sexual harassment, sexual addiction, sexual health, acquaintance rape, victims’ rights, and child advocacy.
The Internet and other advances in communication technologies have become powerful tools for addressing and reducing sexual abuse. Social networking forums and online sex offender registries raise public consciousness about how vulnerable both children and adults are to sexual predators. The Internet also provides an unprecedented array of resources for sexual abuse prevention, protesting, reporting, and recovery.
Increased social awareness regarding sexual abuse appears to have paid off big-time. Child sexual abuse and rape rates declined significantly for most of the past two decades, according to federal health statistics.* These lower rates mean thousands of children and adults were spared unjustifiable suffering. And many individuals and families impacted by sexual abuse were able to find help and emotional support.
Unfortunately, however, we still have a long way to go in addressing the serious epidemic of sexual abuse in our culture. Social factors that can predispose sexual harm, such as gender inequality, the sexualizing of children in fashion and the media, and the widespread consumption of sexually aggressive pornography, remain quite strong. Sadly, a number of recent surveys are indicating that sexual abuse rates may be on the rise again.
As a therapist who hears frequently about the intimate problems of survivors, I am frustrated that important studies affirming the seriousness of sexual repercussions of sexual abuse have not received adequate attention in the national media. In particular, a survey of more than three thousand people reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association found high rates of sexual arousal disorder in women who have experienced child sexual victimization and forced sexual contact. They also revealed that male victims of child sexual abuse were three times as likely to experience erectile dysfunction and approximately two times as likely to experience premature ejaculation and low sexual desire, and that such profound effects may last for years after the original event.
A 2007 survey of 3,200 women in the Boston, Massachusetts, area found similar results reporting a strong relationship between sexual dysfunction and multiple types of sexual abuse, even after adjusting for depression. And a study of 827 patients at a New York sexually transmitted disease clinic found alarmingly high rates of sexual risk behavior in individuals with child sexual abuse histories. Together these studies and others demonstrate that our society needs to take more seriously the fact that experiencing sexual harm puts one at greater risk of developing significant problems with sexual health, desire, functioning, romantic attachment, and satisfaction.
Looking back over the past twenty years, I can see how The Sexual Healing Journey propelled me to create more resources for sexual understanding and healing, while launching me into a life of travel, lecturing, media appearances, and other advocacy for survivors. Aware of the impact of sexual abuse on adult intimate partners and the importance of learning directly from others, I coproduced two videos for couples. The first one, Partners in Healing: Couples Overcoming the Sexual Repercussions of Incest, features three couples discussing how they faced the effects of sexual abuse together and how they learned to work as a team in recovery. The second video, Relearning Touch: Healing Techniques for Couples, also features real couples and includes sensitive demonstrations of the relearning touch exercises that you will find described and illustrated in chapter 10 of this book.
When growing numbers of survivors disclosed serious concerns with troublesome and unwanted sexual fantasies, I began researching how I could help them more effectively. I looked at academic studies on fantasy and began interviewing people about their erotic imaginings. I discovered that some sexual fantasies, like nightmares, stem from negative sexual experiences and unresolved psychological conflict related to past sexual abuse. Just as I had done earlier with sexual healing, I developed healing strategies survivors can use to understand and effectively move away from their disturbing and unwanted sexual fantasies. These strategies are described in Private Thoughts: Exploring the Power of Women’s Sexual Fantasies, coauthored with my journalist friend, Suzie Boss. While the book focuses on women’s issues, it also provides information helpful to men who have sexual fantasy concerns.
At conferences and in my practice, survivors would frequently tell me they were having a hard time conceptualizing healthy sexual intimacy. They were less concerned with what it looks like from the outside, and more interested in finding out what it feels like to experience from the inside out. I went searching for inspiring resources that could reveal the beauty and meaning of sex that is freely chosen and based on conditions of real love, respect, and responsibility. I looked at numerous media and eventually found the most compelling examples in works of poetry.
Excited by this discovery, I compiled and edited two poetry anthologies, Passionate Hearts: The Poetry of Sexual Love and Intimate Kisses: The Poetry of Sexual Pleasure. They celebrate the joys of healthy sexual love and explore the nature of sexual pleasure. These vivid descriptions of healthy sexual sharing underscore the fact that sex can be what you make it. Its positive potential is limitless.
Beginning in the late 1990s, and coinciding with the explosion of the Internet and other electronic devices, increasing numbers of clients began complaining about serious problems caused by pornography. Some clients were survivors who had become caught up in a porn-infused fantasy world that was reinforcing past sexual abuse and hindering their sexual healing. Others were tremendously upset that their intimate partners were into porn. As one woman shared, “The invasive presence of pornography is like the abuse all over again.” It became apparent that this relatively new, easy-to-get, on-demand pornography is capable of disrupting relationships and shaping sexual behaviors in harmful ways.
The people who contacted me about problems with porn wanted help. They wanted to know how they could deal with this new threat to sexual health and intimacy. After several years of research, my husband, Larry, and I coauthored The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography. It’s a compassionate resource that describes the serious problems that can result from using porn and provides effective strategies and steps for recovery. As in The Sexual Healing Journey, we include specific exercises for people healing from porn who want to develop skills for approaching touch and sex in ways that are compatible with love-based sexual sharing.
I am delighted that in the past twenty-plus years The Sexual Healing Journey has been so positively received. My colleagues in the therapy field tell me they regard it as the seminal work on how to heal the sexual problems caused by sexual abuse. The book has been lauded for providing a flexible approach to sexual recovery that combines mind, body, and relationship healing techniques. It is listed in many bibliographies and on web pages for survivors, intimate partners, and therapists. Since it was first published, The Sexual Healing Journey has sold more than 175,000 copies.
Survivors around the world have sent letters of appreciation. An Australian woman wrote: “Thank you for your truth and honesty and your style of thinking, relating, and writing. The tone is gentle, yet firm, and covers all facets of the problems, appropriately and professionally.” A survivor from Connecticut sent a card saying, “The Sexual Healing Journey is an incredible resource. It’s very healing to read other people’s stories and quotes. I’ve worked on intimacy issues for many years now and can finally see, feel, and know that some powerful positive changes have occurred. Your book has been very healing for me.” And another survivor recently e-mailed sharing, “Your book has changed my life.”
While I treasure these messages, I also understand that the book is, and always has been, an accumulation and sharing of information acquired from the life experiences of many people besides myself. My primary role has been as a conduit for survivors, partners, and other therapists to share their wisdom. In fact, their stories have been a gift to me, reaffirming my own experience and enduring conviction that love is stronger than abuse.
A great blue heron silently lifts off from its stony perch on the riverbank. I climb back on my bike and head home, feeling pleased that The Sexual Healing Journey continues to be available and beneficial to many people. As a seasoned therapist, I know that the healing approaches and techniques described in the book do work. Thousands of people have used them to heal and create intensely rewarding, richly satisfying, sexual lives. And you can, too.
This twentieth anniversary edition has been updated and revised to keep current with the latest research and treatment methods. This new edition includes an improved and expanded Resources section to provide you with up-to-date information on books, articles, organizations, and residential treatment facilities. You’ll also notice new listings for web sites that can be helpful to survivors, partners, and therapists involved in sexual recovery work. And, for the first time, it is also available in electronic reading formats.
In your hands you hold a safe, private way to begin sexual healing. Here you will find a model for healthy sex and become familiar with the journey that can take you there. This book offers you new insights into what happened, how it influenced you, and how you can change ingrained sexual attitudes and behaviors that hinder your enjoyment of life. And if you are in a relationship, it provides guidance for your intimate partner so you can work as a team in making positive changes. I want to help you feel comfortable addressing and discussing sexual issues with others and to give you the tools you will need to accomplish your own sexual healing.
This book is based on my firm belief that no one should have to suffer through life sexually damaged because of something that happened in the past. Healthy sex is something everyone deserves and can achieve.
Wendy Maltz
Eugene, Oregon
Most of the quotes and stories in this book come from questionnaires, interviews, counseling sessions, and workshops. Names and identifying details of the survivors and partners mentioned have been changed. In some cases, composite accounts have been created based on the author’s professional expertise.