Internet and the Proliferation of Compulsive Sexual Gazing & Engagement

A point that needs discussing is the issues regarding Online Sexual Addiction [OSA] and the use of pornography.  In the book, "The Guide to Getting It On", byPaul Joannides, there is a very healthy and thoughtful discussion regarding OSA.  Pictures of naked people engaged in various sexual acts have been around since the dawn of time and they are not likely to ever go away.

 

We need to learn a healthy way to educate our children and adolescents on the proper use of our bodies and stop setting it up to become something so forbidden that we find ourselves desperately seeking out these images in ways that can lead to obsessive-compulsive behaviors.  It only becomes a problem if we make it that way and we have certainly gone out of our way to make it such, so much so that a whole field of therapy and counseling has been established to help those afflicted in order to find relief from the distressing effects of looking at too many digitized images of naked people engaged in anything sexual.

There is an interesting article where Raymond Lawrence an Episcopal cleric takes on the subject of sexual addiction and claims it to be nothing short of another attempt of Western Christianity Religious belief systems to control ones’ sexual pleasure, which given their history – is destined to fail – “Sex is not an addictive substance. It’s a human interaction on which the survival of the species is dependent. It is also possibly the most pleasurable and sought after activity known to humankind, and arguably an experience no one should be deprived of. Most normal people consider, more rather than less, sexual pleasure to be a major objective in life.”  As I reflected on his comment, I was also struck by the fact that so many people are struggling with this in their relationships and truly do need help…but help with what? 

If one were not in a relationship, would it still be a problem?  You could easily answer “yes” if it impacts ones’ employment or finances or any legal ramifications if what one seeks is judicially wrong.  However, most people I see in my practice are there because of their relationship being in trouble – in other words they got caught.  As absurd as this may sound, what if you compare this situation to someone who takes exercise to the extreme?  One could get in the same problems at work, with money and legally if one decided to ‘break in’ and steal the use of equipment.  Would we call this extreme excessive exercise addiction or as some believe ‘compulsive behavior’?  Since addiction appears to be coupled with substances like cocaine, heroin, and alcohol maybe we should/need to rethink the use of the word addiction.  Should we consider whether or not addiction is the best avenue to take when trying to describe and understand one’s need/consuming desire to seek out and engage in sexually explicit encounters?

Men & Masturbation

Results of the Beiter Sexuality Preference Indicator, BSPI survey, a communications tool to help individuals understand their own sexual preferences, indicated that the majority of men have coagulated around one particular set of preferences: Dominant, Touch, Physical and Adventurous.  As I reflected, I thought about how males typically get introduced into their sexuality at least from my own experience and those I have counseled since developing the BSPI.  The common themes include:

     Privacy

     Secrecy

     Little to no communication and not any sharing

     Forbidden images – magazines, movies, books, Internet

     Typically alone

Men, think about the first time you can remember getting an erection.  Typically, if it happened while you were asleep, you weren’t jumping out of bed and running down the hall to ask your parents.  If it happened at school, you were not wildly waving trying to get your teachers attention to ask her what was going on in your pants.  If you happened across a stash of pornographic images and got erotically excited you kept it to yourself.  In case you had not noticed what was common in what I just described is that sexuality for males is learned and practiced in isolation by masturbating. 

Masturbation for most males is a solo event and not discussed with anyone.  It becomes a conditioned behavior if you think about it.  In other words, it is done alone, in many cases with a visual image stimulant and not discussed.  Male sexuality gets positively reinforced without the benefit of a relationship with another and without language, vocabulary and/or communication. 

One other colossally monumental point to make is that what turns us on for the first time and many times thereafter is most likely never the person we end up with in a relationship.  So the question that begs to be asked is: “Given those facts about how males may develop sexually – how are they supposed to seamlessly switch from internalizing their sexuality to miraculously sharing and communicating their sexual needs to a partner?  The answer for many men is that they do not or cannot and then they are accused of being emotionally distant and/or distracted. 

There is a cultural expectation that has been reinforced for time continuum that once one is in a relationship with another they must remain devoted in all aspects to their partner.  I liken that to a man conditioning himself his whole life to play football.  He runs the drills, does the requisite exercises, learns the plays, etc.  Now when it comes time to play his first game – someone hands him a baseball glove and bat and tells him to go play!  Any we wonder why men struggle in relationships where they have been conditioned themselves to play solo?

For information on the BSPI survey or to schedule an appointment with me please visit the contact page at SexHealthDoc.com.  

Performance or Pleasure? – You Decide!

My previous Blog - HistoryEven a Sexual One Has a Way of Repeating Itself… - reminded us that too many times we learn plenty “about” sex but have learned very little “from” sex.  The main justification for this statement is that we continue, as did all the generations before us, to view sex as intercourse and all about performance.  Let’s face it, this notion is supported through all the religions that promote procreation as the only valid reason for having “sex” and is certainly supported today by the pharmaceutical industries that peddle the “magic elixir” to make one ready when the time is right!

 A man’s masculinity will be challenged if he is not able to get and maintain an erection and “perform” for his partner so that she will be pleased as well.  And yes, women are just as invested in the erection as men; in some cases maybe even more.  If he cannot “get it up” i.e. “perform” she will think that she is not sexy enough and her self-esteem and sexual self-confidence can take a pretty hard hit.  So why do we persist down this path when we are full aware of the dysfunctional end? 

Let’s take a few steps backward.  Let us go back to the place where our sexual engine was turned on for the first time.  Think about what was really important to you then?  If I am not mistaken, it would be all about experiencing the most pleasure possible.  Hmmm maybe we’re onto something here!  I’m pretty sure guys were not talking to their penises, asking – hey what gives, how come you didn’t last long enough – how ever one translates ‘long enough’. And if gals even thought of sexually touching themselves – mostly not encouraged and marginally supported even today – I am again pretty sure they were not contemplating how long a male partner might or should last. 

So what is interesting to ponder in these terms is that performance sexuality is a learned and conditioned response and not “natural” as many would have us believe.  So why not challenge yourself the next time you decide to engage sexually with each other to share, experience, and enjoy as much fun and pleasure as possible?  This means letting go of sexual encounters that are judged by stopwatches, erect penises, wet vaginas and dual orgasms, which can hamper our abilities to fully engage with our partners. 

So, go ahead – take the 30-day Pleasure Challenge – I dare you!

To connect with me personally, visit the contact page at SexHealthDoc.com.

Humble beginnings as a Sex Therapist

Many have asked me how I got started as a sex therapist especially when they discover that my doctorate was received in clinical psychology.  It always reminds me of a friend of mine who once casually mentioned that there are defining times in our lives that we are completely unaware of that point us in the direction we will ultimately head.  For me, that came in my tenth grade English class. 

I volunteered to do a book report with an accompanying class presentation on sex education.  Fortunate for me at the time, my oldest sister had just returned home from college and loaded up the family bookshelves with her stash of texts and paperbacks.  To prepare for my class project, I decided to read David Rueben’sclassic: Everything You Always Wanted ToKnow About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask.  My approach was to educate my classmates on the seemingly purposeful lack of information that we received in school, particularly in health class. 

I began my infamous presentation by posting the following words on the chalkboard: Cunnilingus / Clitoris / Fellatio.  My classmates including the substitute teacher [a female] remained motionless and made no comment and had no reaction even when I asked if anyone knew what two of the words meant?  In order to facilitate the teachings, I suggested that the girls in the classroom write down these words, take them home to mother and ask her to explain, since one was their body part.  [I can only humorously imagine what that conversation would have been like that night for some if they had acted on my suggestion.] 

I continued on without interruption until I came to my summation point, when I decided it was time to let them know what I really thought about the public school system and its way of preparing us for the “sexual world”.  So I stated “You are all going to find out very soon that there is a lot more to sexual intercourse than a man sticking his penis into a woman’s vagina.”  Needless to say, this declaration forced the ending of my presentation, everyone in the room was familiar with those words as the class erupted with an explosion of laughter and the teacher finally came to life ordering me to cease and desist and take my seat.  Fearful of being suspended from school, I informed my parents that evening of the day’s events and my father while doing his best to stifle the laughter, assured me that it would be “fine” with him as he said, “at least you told them the truth!”

While that event happened over 30 years ago, I personally have not seen much progress in our ability to become more comfortable with educational matters regarding our sexuality.  This realization came at a very high price to me while completing my doctoral studies.  One may call it déjà vu but 32 years later I was making a presentation to my classmates involving gender representations of masculinity and femininity when I was almost terminally expelled from the program after one of the students had a visceral reaction to a particular way a research participant chose to display his masculinity.  The school thought it would be “in my best interest” to receive ethics consultation from a licensed psychologist of their choice at my expense and that failure to act on this “recommendation” would most assuredly result in my expulsion.  I had been advised to “lay low” and let it blow over and not make an issue of it.  It comes then as no surprise that many people continue to feel “threatened” by their own sexuality or the discussion thereof. 

What I think is interesting to note and contrast is that in Esther Perel’s – Mating in Captivity – she reveals that the research has indicated that the United States has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy of any developed country and scores lowest when it comes to sex education.  One of my attempts then with this blog is to support my fellow educators and help debunk a lot of the common myths and misunderstandings in the field of human sexuality.

Connect with me through my Contact page at SexHealthDoc.com for relationship issues, sexual health and more!

Go figure

I spend hours weekly trying to improve ‘my craft’ by reading, studying or attending workshops in my chosen profession of a sex therapist.  One timeless text I’ve been reading isBernie Zilbergeld’s The New Male Sexuality.  As I reflect on Bernie’s writings and the latest rush of clients that have passed my threshold seeking relief for what sexually ails them, one concern that comes [no pun intended] up [again, no pun intended] is that of sexual compatibility between men and women.  Let’s take a minute or ten and think this through.

Zilbergeld claimed there were a minimum of three anchor points that males are taught regarding their sexuality – that it should be private, secret and above all else impersonal. As boys we receive clear cultural messages that masturbation is normal for us even though we are never encouraged to discuss our self-pleasuring escapades, thus, we learn at an early age that sex [as described as erection and ejaculation] is not based on relationships.  We are encouraged by our peers, family members, friends and social media that as a man – we should sow our wild oats.  It becomes all about the numbers and performance [another problem I will address in a later Blog].  Most of us hit the masturbatory trail at puberty and again for most – always know where and how to return to that path regardless of our age or position in our relationships.  Yes, please read between the lines, most of us never stop masturbating our entire lives and it happens all the time in committed relationships.  I remember reading some research findings not long ago that stated that men in committed relationships tend to masturbate more often than those single people…Go Figure.

So let us Go Figure…why do you think that is?  This question also brings me back to the therapeutic office where the wife is complaining that she does not understand how her husband can think of anyone but her during their sexual interludes.  Let me restate one perspective, boys have received cultural messages that it is ‘ok’ to masturbate to images found in magazines, movies and the Internet.  They learn to self-pleasure as they reach puberty and continually reinforce this behavior with secret, private and impersonal images of those they do not know or if they do know – do not necessarily have any emotional connection with that person.  So here is this young boy finding sexual pleasure in the images he has been exposed to for years and years and the fantasies he has created within his own mind – this is how he has been introduced and indoctrinated into his sexuality. 

Conversely, the women did not receive those same messages but ones that link sexual activity with emotional and relationship stability with one person.  Eventually, when they come together [they wish – and again no pun intended] as a couple – somehow there is supposed to be these magical transformations [mixing oil & water] where his sexual desires and satisfactions will now focus solely on just her, leaving behind forever the multitude of impersonal, secretive and private images of his past that had been reinforced for years…Go Figure!...again remind me, how is this to happen?

Now at this point some of you will vehemently deny that you support such a notion of sexuality and certainly are not promoting these kinds of behavior.  To drive home my point, I want to share a statistic I picked a few years ago at a presentation by Stefanie Carnes [daughter of Patrick Carnes famous for his work – Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction] had made to a group of Mental Health Professionals interested in learning about sexual addiction/compulsivity.  She presented a slide titled – Number of Porn Pages by Country – the top five countries included Japan [5] with 2.7 million pages; Australia [4] with 5.7 million pages; United Kingdom [3] with 8.5 million pages; Germany [2] with 10 million pages; and topping out the number one spot was the United States standing like a giant above the rest with 245 million pages.  In spite of that number being the staggering one that it is, another point comes to mind living in the capitalistic society that we do.  From a production and inventory capacity we are creating a huge amount of product that will need to be consumed…and what better way to create the demand for the supply than to prime our males with the desire and want for these private, secret and certainly impersonal images, thus, continually developing our boys to men along the lines Zilbergeld discovered almost two decades ago. 

As men, as a society, as a culture we need to break this pattern so that our sons and daughters can enter sexual relations with realistic and emotionally and relation-ally aligned expectations.  It’s all about choices and attitudes…Go Figure!

Ready to change your attitude about sex and life, visit the Contact page on my website, SexHealthDoc.com!  I see clients in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and via the internet.