Sex Without Stress Read online

  If your family or social culture taught you that sex is negative, you may have a hard time even recognizing those messages. Your beliefs will show up in your behavior and your feelings, and you may have to work to uncover what they are and where they come from. As you discovered in Chapter 6 when looking at your own history, it’s hard to see the water you swim in. You tend to assume that what you learned growing up must be true. If you were taught sex negativity through your religious background, you may be in an even a bigger bind. It may feel like a violation, sin, or breaking of faith to question your beliefs or to pursue certain sexual behaviors. (You may want to seek out the book by Tina Sellers listed in the resources section.) You will need patience and support as you take apart your beliefs and decide for yourself (and with your partner) what your limits will be.

  Look at issues due to aging.

  As you get older, your body changes. You know this, but it will probably still surprise and upset you when it starts to happen. When those changes show up in your sex life, it can be especially upsetting.

  One common change is that you need more stimulation in order to reach the same level of arousal. As Dr. David Schnarch describes in his work, you need a certain amount of stimulation (a combination of physical and mental) to get physically aroused (to get lubricated or erect), and then you need a higher level of stimulation to reach an orgasm. You can think of these as thresholds—like a bar you need to get over to physically respond the way you want to. As you get older, those bars get higher. You need more stimulation to achieve the same result you got more easily when you were younger.

  In addition, you may have other changes that occur with age. Women (here I am talking about female-bodied people with a vagina, uterus, ovaries, and vulva) generally go through menopause, during and after which it can become more difficult to lubricate, and there can be some discomfort or pain with sex. Some women will report libido changes. Vaginal tissue often gets thinner and more prone to damage. Not all women experience the same changes, but it’s common to experience at least some change in one of these ways.

  Men’s bodies change with age, too (here I am talking about male bodied people with a penis and testicles). Erectile dysfunction gets more common and tends to get worse with other medical conditions, too. Libido can drop. The refractory period (how long it takes to be able to have sex again) generally gets longer.

  Even if you don’t have the anatomy referred to above or don’t experience the changes described, there are other effects of aging that will impact your sex life. You tend toward a bit more pain in your body, less range of motion in your joints, and lowering stamina. Age brings medical problems that can have sexual repercussions. Certain necessary medications have sexual side effects. All of this can have an impact on your sex life.

  If you and your partner are experiencing age-related changes in your sex life, this may be a reason you’ve been more prone to avoid sex. It’s hard to feel like you are meeting sexual expectations when your body is functioning differently than it used to.

  Children have an impact.

  Research shows that marital satisfaction drops with the arrival of children, and it doesn’t go up again significantly until after they leave the house. Maybe if someone told you this ahead of time, you’d rethink your decision to have kids! As much as they can be a joy and the light of our lives, having children often affects the relationship and sex life between partners.

  If you have young children, you know that privacy, free time, and energy are in short supply. The needs of the kids seem ever-present and (mostly) of highest priority. It’s common to put your marriage on the back burner—even if you didn’t mean to. Some couples use a tag-team model, where you trade off the kids, so one can get some other things done, leaving minimal time for you to connect as a couple. Parenting can cause some serious issues between partners, too, and cause more discord and tension than in the past.

  As the kids get a little older you may have more time to yourselves, but the parenting challenges often get bigger. You may be dealing with some serious behavioral or other issues with your older children. If nothing else, parents are often swamped with activities, carpooling, and sporting events.

  If your sex life is being impacted by the fact that you have children, you’ve got to factor that into your understanding of what’s happening (or not) in the bedroom.

  Consider any trauma you or your partner have experienced.

  I wrote about trauma when I asked you to reflect on your sexual history. Trauma, whether it’s “Big T” or “small t” trauma, can have an impact on your sex life. If you or your partner find yourself emotionally triggered by sex or by certain activities, it is hard to be present and engaged in your body. These triggers make it difficult to relax and trust. You may struggle to know what you like or to get aroused. If you’ve had some sort of trauma, and it is affecting your sex life, you need to allow extra time and space to work through the trauma and its emotional effects. Again, consider a therapist or specialist to help you move past it, but at the very least you need to be gentle with yourself and work as a team with your partner as you reclaim your sexuality. It’s important to understand what your triggers are so you can work to defuse them (where possible), and work around them (if necessary).

  Consider the impacts of illness and disability.

  If either of you has a disease, especially a chronic condition, it is likely to impact your sex life. Some illnesses have specific sexual side effects. Heart disease and diabetes can both affect your ability to get physically aroused. Some medical treatments and medications create sexual side effects. Plenty of diseases just make you feel lousy: affecting your energy level, your ability to be present, and your interest in being sexual at all. If your condition is temporary, you may be able to just wait it out. But if either of you is dealing with something chronic or long term, you’ll have to find a way to adapt your sex life to accommodate the condition.

  If one of you is disabled, that will likely have an impact on your sexual functioning. You’ll have to consider exactly what is different for you—in terms of sensation and movement—and determine what is available to compensate for this difference. The human body has an incredible way of compensating for losses, so use the whole body when exploring what’s pleasurable and possible. If you focus on pleasure and connection with your partner, you’ll find ways to share a sexual experience together.

  Examine body image issues.

  A lot of people struggle with body image issues or self-consciousness in sex. Being “in your head,” criticizing your body, or wanting to hide, means you are not present in the experience with your partner. You are probably far removed from the pleasure you could be having. If one of you has gained weight or had some other change while you’ve been together, that person may be especially self-conscious about their body now. Worrying about your body is a common reason to avoid being sexual. On the one hand, you can certainly start to do what it takes to move toward the body you want to have. On the other hand, there’s good reason to make peace with who you are and accept yourself now, so you can live your life and enjoy yourself without always waiting for the day when your body looks like you think it should. I share resources for addressing body image issues at the end of the book.

  Sexual aversion can be a problem.

  Some people avoid sex because of an aversion to bodily fluids or a belief that sex is just gross. Often people are also bothered by other bodily functions and situations. It takes some work to overcome these reactions. You can certainly see a therapist to help you, or you can try a basic exposure desensitization approach, working your way to comfort with parts of the body and their secretions. You can only sanitize sex so much, but you can start with clean bodies, towels nearby, condoms or latex barriers, and a dose of patience.

  Gender issues can affect your sex life.

  Sometimes people avoid sex because their gender is not straightforward, and they don’t feel comfortable in their body. This can be because you don�
�t identify with/as your assigned gender, which can make using some body parts confusing or unpleasant. Even if you chose surgery to change your anatomy, you may have a complicated relationship with your new body, needing to learn to accept it and how to find and give pleasure in this new form.

  Other people struggle with gender because they are not clearly male or female. There are almost two dozen different medical or genetic conditions that fall in the spectrum of “intersex” that mean someone does not clearly fit into a binary view of gender. For some of you, this was discovered at birth, and you may have been assigned a gender or surgically altered as an infant or child. For others of you, the condition was only discovered later, as a teen or adult. Without fitting into a clear category of male or female, and perhaps without having the genitalia you might expect, you may experience confusion, embarrassment, shame, or self-doubt when you have sex. You may have to expand what it means to have sex. Find a way to be open with your partner about how you feel and what’s going on, so you can work together to make sex enjoyable.

  Medical and surgical changes need to be considered.

  If you’ve had surgery to change your body, especially your sexual parts, you will likely have to adapt to the new you. Whether that surgery has been to change or adapt your gender, or the result of medical treatment (like mastectomy or prostate surgery), your body is different, and your sexual functioning may be affected. Your core sense of yourself as a sexual being may have changed. If these changes are positive, if they bring you into alignment with who you are, you may have an easier transition, but it’s still going to take time to feel at home in your new skin and adapt to your body in sex.

  If those changes are negative or unwanted, the result of an accident or medical treatment, you likely have loss and grief to deal with on top of learning to have sex in your new body. These are complex changes and can easily lead to avoiding sex. Talking openly with your partner is crucial. They are likely timid about bringing this up and may struggle to know how to talk about it. If you can open the topic and share what’s on your mind, it makes space to hear how the changes have affected them, as well.

  Your Takeaways

  * * *

  There are a lot of different issues that can complicate your sex life. You have considered many of the common influences that can make your intimate life even more challenging than it would be otherwise. Get clear about which of these factors are at play in your life. Do you have children? Is age, illness, or disability having an impact? Has one or have both of you experienced trauma? Issues with body image or gender? Surgery? Are there losses that impede your sex life? Are there relationship issues that get in the way of your ability to want to have sex? Do you struggle with sexual desire? Are you caught in the traps of a desire discrepancy? What else is making your sex life more difficult?

  ——

  Phew, that’s a lot! Are you feeling overwhelmed at all the information and discovery in this chapter? There are so many ways sex can get difficult, and all these reasons make sense. Some of you have more baggage than others, but hopefully you’ve gotten a good look at the various influences that are making your sex life more difficult than it needs to be. Don’t worry; even if there’s a lot to unpack and discard, you can lighten your load.

  Now that you have a good understanding of the kinds of issues that contribute to your problems, it is time to look at your unique dance around sex. You will take apart both how you have and how you don’t have sex to understand how these ideas come together to sabotage your sex life.

  CHAPTER 8

  What Is Your Unique Dance?

  At this point in the process, you have inventoried the problems that make it natural for you to avoid sex. Now it’s time to look at how sex itself is working (and not) under your circumstances. Even if you are the only one reading this book, if you change your thought process, behaviors, reactions, and expectations, your sex life will naturally have to change. Sex will gradually become easier.

  Consider what I term the “dance” around sex. I use the word dance because so much of what happens between couples is non-verbal. Examine what you and your partner do when you have sex and when you don’t, and you’ll discover there’s almost a choreography to your interactions.

  What does it look like when sex is hard? In this chapter, I will walk you through a series of questions—like those you’d answer if you were in therapy—to discover your steps in the dance. Notice that many of my questions ask you to reflect on what you’re reading in your partner. As I have already established, this information is a big part of what’s happening between you. It’s time to talk about that openly. You will end up with your sexual encounters laid out in front of you like a movie. Watch what’s going on and recognize everything that each of you is doing and why. Uncover your choreography.

  Who initiates sex and how?

  The first thing to look at is your pattern around initiating, or not initiating, sex. Couples who are struggling with sex often end up with one person doing most of the initiation, in whatever form that takes. Looking at how and when that is done, with all the subtle signals you read in each other, is part of the process of acknowledging what you both know is unspoken. Consider both the verbal requests as well as the physical bids for sex that one or both of you make. Go through these questions as a couple and discuss each one:

  • Which of you will typically initiate sex? How?

  • Does one of you initiate considerably more than the other?

  • Is the sexual initiation verbal or physical? What exactly happens in this situation? Does the other person recognize it?

  • If you’re the one initiating, or at least used to be, what made you decide to do it then? What makes you back off and not suggest it?

  • How much are you “reading the room” to make your decision, and what do you see that makes you approach or avoid sexual initiation with your partner?

  • What signals do you throw out to keep your partner away or to invite them in?

  • How are the two of you communicating about what you want and don’t want without words?

  • Do you acknowledge what’s happening or let it go without addressing it?

  • If one of you is avoiding sex, how are you accomplishing that? How are you disguising that avoidance?

  How do you talk about sex?

  Next, let’s address how you both communicate about sex at this point in your relationship. It’s probably difficult for the two of you to honestly talk about your sex life now that sex itself has become difficult. You may have been avoiding this conversation for a long time and have some well-worn techniques for keeping it at bay. I want you to go through these questions and be as real as possible about how you have handled the topic of the sexual issues in your relationship. You’re hurting yourself the most if you hold back or hide. Apply some focused thought to these questions:

  • What happens when one of you tries to talk about sex? Who does that and how? When? How often?

  • Do you have a conversation about it or find a way to deflect? How is it deflected?

  • Does one of you bring up something unrelated to divert the talk? Does the other person persist or allow themselves to be diverted?

  • If you do talk about your sex life, are you being real and honest about what’s happening? Do you blame your partner? Do you blame it on other circumstances in your life?

  • Are you being direct about your thoughts and feelings or holding them back because you’re afraid to tell your partner?

  • When your partner is talking to you, how much are you willing to accept a cover story or a surface explanation? Are you afraid to hear them say the truth?

  • Do you both collude to keep the conversation on relatively safe ground?

  What happens during sex itself?

  Let’s take apart what happens in sex when you have it. Most long-term couples, struggling or not, develop a basic way they usually have sex. I want you to talk about what sex looks like for you now, at this po
int. Slow it down and go through the details; that will help you see how you read each other and how you proceed with what you are reading. Directly examining your sex life may not be pretty. In fact, it probably won’t be since you’re struggling with sex. That’s okay; it’s why you are here. Just get it all out now and know you’ll be working to make it better very soon. Again, several more important questions to help you:

  • When do you know you’re moving toward sex instead of avoiding it?

  • What is the signal that you give that you’re willing? Or what do you read in your partner that tells you it’s a yes rather than a no?

  • What are you thinking and feeling at that point in time?

  • Where are you in your head? What’s the story you have about what’s happening?

  • And what do you think is going on for your partner?

  • How does sex proceed? What happens next? And next?

  • Who is in charge of the pacing? Who is reading the scene and deciding it’s time for each next step?

  • Are you talking to each other during sex? Is either of you saying what you like (or don’t)? Are you arguing during sex? Are you talking about extraneous things, like the kids’ carpool?

  • What are you thinking and feeling?

  • How much are you reading what’s happening for your partner and using that to judge what should happen next?

  • Is any of this overt or is it all unspoken?

  • If sex is a problem, at what point does it seem to go badly? How do you know?

  • What do you do in that problematic moment? What does your partner do?

  • Are you talking about it?

  • Does everything come to a screeching halt or do you change directions?

  What happens after (and between) sex?

  When sex is a struggle, you may have more of an aftermath than an afterglow. Sometimes there can be peace and joy when it’s gone well (or if it’s happened at all), but many times you and your partner may end up frustrated, disappointed, sad, confused, or upset. That can then feed your avoidance cycle. Look at what you do after sex is over, both immediately and between sexual encounters: