Dear Dr. Jane,
Is therapy very effective at reducing or removing anxiety surrounding intimacy? My wife and I have had decreasing intimacy over the past decade, with traditional therapy not improving the situation, and therapy with an AASECT certified therapist for about seven months not showing much improvement.
As things continue to deteriorate, I’m losing hope that therapy will work.
– Losing Hope in Charleston
Dear Losing Hope,
Sometimes I think about writing a book entitled, “Why Sex Therapy Doesn’t Work.” This is weird because that’s what I do every day as a sexologist/sex and relationship coach. I talk to people about sex. Of course, I could write the same book about therapy in general. Or, I could write a book about AA or Weight Watchers or going to the gym. I could write it because these things don’t work either.
You show up for meetings or sessions or workouts every week or month or day and nothing changes.
Unless it does. And when it does, it’s not because the therapy or diet/exercise routine worked – it’s because YOU worked. YOU did the work on something in your life that mattered enough to you (and maybe to your partner) for you to make a powerful and lasting change.
Don’t get me wrong. Sex therapy is amazing for many reasons. Sex therapy (and other types of therapy, too) can give you lots of tools and help you have conversations you never imagined. These are great things, important things. But they aren’t the boots-on-the-ground things that really make a difference in the long haul.
Sex therapy can’t remove the deep sexual shame that you might feel about yourself as a sexual person. But it can encourage you to experience the feelings of shame and have healing conversations with your partner about things that have happened to you and how they’ve shaped you and your intimate life over the years. The letting go piece is yours alone. That’s your work.
Sex therapy can’t remove the humiliation you feel about the stretch marks on your belly after pregnancy or how horrible you feel when you lose your erection during intercourse. What it can do is lead you gently to telling your partner how you feel about these things so that you can say the difficult words that need to be said and to have the deeper conversations about what might make things feel better.
Sex therapy can’t teach you exactly how to exquisitely pleasure your partner with your mouth or with your hands, because your partner is an individual human being who likes to be touched in a very specific way. What it can do is to give you important information about your partner’s anatomy and about ways you might approach different sexual experiences together. Sex therapy can give you a boost in confidence about these things.
Sex therapy can’t change your calendar and book an AirBnb at the coast for a long romantic weekend with a roaring fire. It also cannot buy a massage table for your bedroom or special candles in a favorite scent.
What it can do is to remind you that these things might matter to your partner and that it’s impossible to have a great sex life if you never spend any quality time alone together.
Sex therapy can’t put a lock on your door so the kids don’t interrupt you. It can’t get the dogs off the bed and the electronics out of the room. But sex therapy will definitely remind you that distraction is the #1 killer of connection.
Sex therapy can’t solve the fact that you’re both exhausted and depleted from this thing called Life. It can’t heal deeply rooted anxiety and trauma born of years of abuse. But it can help you navigate your experiences of trauma (or your partner’s) so that you can gently let go of anxiety and replace it with pleasure and confidence.
Sex therapy can do a lot of things. It’s up to you to do the work.
You got this.
– Dr. Jane
Dr. Jane Guyn is a nationally recognized relationship coach based in Oregon. Her column appears online monthly.
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