Sex Without Stress Read online

  SECTION 3:

  THE ACTION PLAN

  CHAPTER 10

  Put Insight into Action

  A large part the book up to now deals with working on insight—understanding what is happening in your mind, your relationships, and your sex life. You’ve had a chance to challenge your thinking about what sex is and what it can be. You learned specific attitudes and actions that create a vibrant, healthy relationship and sex life. You’ve examined your past to uncover your patterns of belief and behavior. You’ve seen the importance of confronting yourself and cleaning up your own side of the court, and you have put together concrete ideas about what you need to change to improve your sexual relationship. Hopefully, you are starting to have a vision of sex as a fun, intimate possibility in your lives. These are a lot of changes that have happened in your mind.

  But insight doesn’t equal change. Change comes from deciding to behave differently. Ultimately, you need to change how you act and what you do. Change is experiential. You need to practice new ways of being and behaving. To help you do this, I am first going to describe the primary tool I use for change, the Giver/Receiver Exercise, and then provide you, in the next chapter, my tried and tested 9-phase plan for taking the stress out of sex. It is time for more work—the healthy work to help you change insight into action, and action into new behaviors.

  The Giver/Receiver exercise will be your tool.

  This exercise is a great place for the experiential work you need to do to change your sex life. Here, you can practice everything we’ve talked about so far. Even though it is contrived and may feel awkward, an exercise gives you a framework for change. It is time limited. It is focused on specific tasks. The rules are (relatively) clear. Each person has a job (again)! This exercise gives you a chance to experiment and learn. It is an experience meant to evoke responses that give you information about where you struggle. That is the point—you get to sit with your experience, notice what comes up for you, and learn more about what’s in your own way. Then you can use it to change how you’re thinking and what you’re doing. It becomes the laboratory where you change the dynamics.

  DIRECTIONS

  For 10 minutes each, one of you will be the Receiver and one the Giver. The Receiver is in charge for that 10-minute stretch. Set an alarm so you don’t have to be looking at a clock. The Receiver asks for and directs the Giver to provide whatever type of physical touch will feel best to the Receiver in the moment. The Receiver should talk through most of their turn, directing and giving feedback so the Giver can provide as “perfect” a touch as possible. The Receiver retains “ownership” of their experience, not passing responsibility to the Giver to know what to do or to create the experience.

  Concentrate on letting go of all expectations. The touch can be sexual or non-sexual. There is absolutely no expectation that either of you become aroused, and there is certainly no goal of orgasm. It is not necessary to match each other’s choices during your turns as the Receiver; you can want and request vastly different forms of touch. The exercise is a study in moment-by-moment pleasure, with no attachment to an outcome.

  The Receiver’s Jobs:

  1. Access desire.

  Whether you know what you want or whether it’s hard to come up with anything, part of your work as the Receiver is to find pleasure in touch.

  2. Ask for what you want.

  Ask for exactly what you want and give instruction and feedback. This requires being explicit and specific—enough so the Giver knows exactly what you want them to do. The intention is to ask for what would be best for you, without censoring yourself at all. Let go of trying to please your partner or keeping them in their comfort zone. This is a chance for it to be only about you. (The Giver has their own job of saying no, if necessary, so the Receiver is freed from taking care of the other person. If the Giver says no to your request, you should just pick something else.)

  3. Allow yourself to receive.

  Be present with the touch. Relax and enjoy. Take as much delight or pleasure as you can in receiving touch.

  4. Pay attention to your experience.

  Notice what it is like for you in your turn as the Receiver. Did you ask for the touch you really wanted? Did you censor yourself? Could you articulate what you wanted? Was it difficult to receive? Were there things you noticed in your partner that had an impact on you?

  The Giver’s Jobs:

  1. Say no if you NEED to say no.

  You need to say no if the request will be painful or physically uncomfortable in a way you don’t like. You also need to say no if providing the Receiver’s requested touch will be upsetting or traumatic to you. If you do need to say no, the Receiver should just pick something else. Only you can discern whether you need to say no or just want to.

  2. If you just WANT to say no, then choose to do it anyway.

  If your first reaction is to want to say no, thinking things like, “I’m not sure I like this,” “I am not really in the mood for this,” “this makes me anxious,” or “I’m not sure how I feel about this; we haven’t done it before,” then I ask you to choose to do it anyway. It may get worse, at which point you can say no, but getting out of your comfort zone is where the real work is. In this case, you will learn more about where your discomfort comes from and, over time, whether you can shift that response at all.

  3. If it’s neutral or easy to do, see if you can get in an open-hearted space of wanting to give.

  It is not necessarily easy to feel generous with your partner. But this is a chance to practice inhabiting a space of generosity, working to want to provide the “perfect” touch your partner is requesting.

  4. Pay attention to your experience.

  Notice what it’s like for you in the role of Giver. Did you need to say no? What thoughts and feelings arose as you were in the exercise? What light does that shed on where your challenges are? Were you able to feel openness and generosity? Did you read anything in your partner that had an impact on you?

  When the alarm goes off, stop no matter what you are doing. Remember that there was no goal with the 10-minute turn, so you don’t need to finish anything. Switch roles and do the other 10 minutes. Again, when the alarm goes off, stop there. That is the entire exercise, and you can stop wherever you are. You have the option of doing it again, spending more intimate time together, or having sex, but that should be a separate decision, not considered or made until the 20 minutes is over.

  Here are some important notes for the Giver/Receiver exercise.

  You can’t do this wrong. This exercise is first meant to get information: what are your obstacles? What thoughts or feelings come up and shed light on where you are starting? What challenges can you focus on next time? You don’t need to argue over the instructions or feel like you’re failing. No matter what happens, you get information.

  Don’t be discouraged if things seem to go badly. I think of this exercise, in its early use, as getting the monsters to come out from under the bed. Instead of being a way around your sexual issues, this exercise will take you straight through them. If it’s hard, that means the exercise is working. The struggles you have are not a coincidence; they relate directly to the issues in your sex life. Each time you do the exercise, you have the opportunity to grow and change. That said, do be mindful of pacing. While you want to stretch yourself, you do not want to break. It’s okay if the exercise is hard, but it shouldn’t feel traumatic or disastrous.

  It takes intention to do this on a regular basis. If you say, “We should do the exercise,” it is unlikely to happen. There is no “should” used in taking action, and don’t wait for “we.” I encourage each of you to take ownership of it, suggesting it in a concrete way. I suggest language such as “I want to do the exercise” or “this is important to me.” Suggest it in a moment when you can do it or be concrete and suggest a specific time in the next day or so.

  You do not have to be feeling great to do the exercise. While I recommend not leaving it until la
st thing before bed (when so many people are likely to be exhausted), you can do this exercise in any mood and with any amount of energy. Part of what you get out of the exercise is a chance to practice shifting gears, showing up, and becoming present and open. If you are feeling down about your partner, use this opportunity to find the warmth you have toward them that’s under the surface. If you are tired, you can participate with less energy, but still work to bring yourself to the activity. If you are distracted or stressed, you can use the time to practice letting go of those thoughts and try to engage with your partner.

  The more you do this, the more you will get out of it. This exercise has subtlety to it. There are layers of information you can uncover because each time you try the exercise, it is slightly different. As you learn more about your individual challenges, each repetition of the exercise gives you a chance to practice moving further along. And because you are doing this with a partner, their experience and growth affects you, too. Take your time with this. Allow your experiences to unfold slowly.

  Keep in mind that each of you is responsible for your own side of the court. Don’t focus on your partner’s issues; avoid the temptation to help them manage their growth. Focus on your own issues, working to make progress each time you repeat the exercise. Know what you’re trying to improve each time you do it.

  The exercise will mirror some of the desire politics of your relationship. You will probably encounter the same pattern around initiation of the exercise that you have with sex. Figure out who is the partner with the higher desire for the exercise and who has the lower. Think about how that is likely to impact you bringing it up or doing it. Anticipate the challenges that come from the pattern with your partner, and plan ahead to navigate those differences. Resolve to approach this differently than you’ve approached sex so far.

  Use the exercise for growth.

  The utility of this exercise is not just in the doing, but also in the reflection on what happened for you and the debriefing with your partner. Whatever happens, pay attention. The key to your own growth is in your reactions to the exercise. You will likely notice the challenges that surface directly relate to issues you have in your sex life. This is a chance to begin making things different.

  When I’m working with clients in therapy, we debrief the exercise together and strategize about how to use the information that comes from it. To set you up for success to do this on your own, I’m going to lay out a way to use the exercise in a progressive way, addressing some of the main tenets of a successful sex life along the way. The next chapter will take you through these ideas and will show you how the exercise can help you master each one.

  CHAPTER 11

  The 9 Phases of Taking the Stress Out of Sex

  There are some key skills and attitudes that are fundamental to a healthy and thriving sex life. The Giver/Receiver exercise can be used to practice and integrate all of them. In my therapy practice, my clients are working to develop all these skills at once, but here you can move through them as separate phases. Focus on one at a time and learn how the exercise can help you master each one. The directions for the exercise never change, but you use it to emphasize the development of different competencies in order to grow.

  Give yourself plenty of time with each phase. There is no quick fix here. You might decide to spend a certain number of weeks with each area of focus. Or you could decide to do the exercise a certain number of times before you move on to the next step. There is not a test to know when to progress to the next phase. Use your judgment about how to proceed to make the most impact on your unique challenge. All these concepts are at play at the same time, so it’s a matter of intentionally focusing on one thing at a time to help you master and integrate each skill.

  As you go along, add the newest area of focus on top of the others, so that by the end, you’re working to integrate all the different aspects of a great sex life at the same time. Realize that while I have laid this out in phases building on each other, you may find that you’ll want to work in a different order, depending on what challenges come up for you and your partner. You and your partner can focus on different aspects, too, since your work is different. I’ve put this together in an order I have found to be most useful with my clients over the years, but please know it is merely a suggestion. Work with this information in the way that seems most helpful and relevant to you and your situation.

  Phase 1—Prioritizing Intimacy

  People can put sex far down on the priority list. As you have kids, get busy with careers, or deal with other challenges life throws you, you often decide that sex can wait. You may feel like your partner can wait, too, especially compared to the young kids who need so much of your attention or the job demands that must be addressed. A lot of people would prefer to just get some sleep! Sex becomes something you do only when you have extra time and energy.

  Early on in a relationship, sex is often automatically a top priority. It doesn’t need any forethought, planning, or convincing to make it happen. As you are getting to know your partner, falling in love, and in that discovery phase, you may have easy access to your desire for sex. It takes no work or intention. It happens with a decent frequency, and neither person has to think too much about it. As the newness wears off, you get more comfortable. Life tends to get in the way, and sex drops down the list unless you put intention into having it more often.

  If sex doesn’t come easily in the beginning, you may think, “It will get better with time, I just need to deal with some other things first.” Perhaps you believe you need to let your attraction grow if you started more as friends. Or you just need to learn about each other. Whatever the underlying issue, you think that somehow it will work itself out. However, if time keeps passing without any improvement in your sex life, you may question whether you’re sexually compatible or if you should even be together. Regardless of how the sexual relationship started, without effort to make your sex life work, it can wither over time.

  Nothing will change until you do something different. If you and your partner have been avoiding your sex life, then the other parts of life have taken over all your available time. If you intend to make things better, you’re going to have to prioritize intimacy. One of the most important things you can do is be intentional about intimate time with your partner.

  I recommend you create an “anchor” time in which you spend anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes together every day. This can become a ritual and something to look forward to. It gives you a chance to talk and connect or just relax together and share space. It could be a time when you incorporate physical or sexual touch, too. Whether it’s over a cup of coffee in the morning, a glass of wine or a cup of tea in the evening, or walking the dog together every night, make sure you are getting some amount of uninterrupted couple time each day. If you aren’t in the same location, then make that happen by phone or video.

  Date nights and trips are also wonderful opportunities to invest in your relationship. It is great to have longer couple time to go out and have fun. (Laughter does wonders!) Plan some dates, get a sitter for the kids, and make sure you’re out doing new and interesting things together if you can. Find a frequency that works for your life and your budget, but there are ways to do it cheaply. Whatever effort and money you spend to make this happen, it’s much cheaper than divorce and easier than a break up. Your investment in your relationship will pay off.

  It’s also important to prioritize time and energy to be physically intimate together. One of the first obstacles you will encounter is that you must make this happen. Since you are struggling in your sex life, you (or your partner) may well have developed some avoidance when it comes to being physically involved. You may resist the idea of scheduling sex, but if you’ve been avoiding your sex life, you’re going to have to change that on purpose. And it’s not sex you’re scheduling. You’re scheduling a “trip to the playground,” like I talked about in Chapter 4. No expectations and no pressure—just an outing with your partner
where you can have fun. You schedule the opportunity; the rest happens as it will. You can certainly still have spontaneous encounters—that’s great—but those can be in addition to what you’ve planned.

  Getting around to sex can feel like the way people often treat exercise. When you’re together for a long time, you often go through stages where it feels like work to have sex. And since you and your partner have been in a cycle of avoiding sex, it’s definitely work to tackle the things that have made you avoid it in the first place. So on top of the mental and emotional work of dealing with your issues and expectations, you’ve got to summon the energy to climb the stairs, take off your clothes, and somehow get your mind involved! If you are in a stage like that now, then go ahead treat it like exercise.

  Commit to it. Make yourself show up in the right state of undress. Just get going. Don’t worry about the outcome or expectations. If you only make one lap around the track, at least you tried. In these stages, it’s about making a habit and a commitment to show up, whether intrinsically driven or not. Just like exercise, the early days of trying to change your sex life may involve some resistance. That’s when it’s important to keep showing up so you get stronger. Just like exercise, once you start making progress, good sex will energize you and make it that much easier to get engaged the next time. Eventually, it’s not going to feel like work anymore. Desire can ebb and flow, so the important thing is to adapt to those fluctuations and maintain some momentum in your intimate life.