Is a sex therapist right for you?

An interview with Dr. John Beiter, Sex Therapist, to determine if this is the right course of action for you.
(from YourTango.com)


A lot of people ask me, just what does a sex therapist do and how do I know if I need or could benefit from one?  The following represents a recent interview to help answer those questions.

Interviewer [I]: Can you summarize in one sentence who typically seeks you out?
Sex Therapist [ST]:  Couples and individuals who want to strengthen and improve their sexual relationship.

I:  Can you tell me the 3 biggest and most critical problems that your clients are facing?
ST: The three areas of most concern deal with an emotional connection that is missing; fears of intimacy; and being comfortable/vulnerable enough to communicate your sexual needs to your partner.

I:  How do you help individuals and couples resolve these issues and help them feel whole or connected again?
ST:  Couples and individuals learn to communicate daily to reconnect emotionally.  For example, couples can ask each other a “magic question” everyday in the morning and look forward to the answer later that same day.  An example would be – what are you looking forward to most in your day?  It should be about something other than the routine of one’s activities and not about family type issues.  Clients learn how to keep their partner’s “emotional love tank” [Gary Chapman – The 5 Love Languages] full which creates a more stable and nurturing foundation.  Clients are encouraged to take an anonymous and free sexual preference survey at www.BSPItest.com to either discover or validate how they like to relate to their partner sexually along four different sets of intimacy.

I: What is the number one most relevant result you help your clients achieve?
ST: Couples and individuals who are serious and determined to live their sexual life to the fullest change their attitude from a performance-based sexuality to one that is based on pleasure, fun and intimacy.  This alone has been known to boost confidence and let the person[s] feel more comfortable in being vulnerable.

I: As a final question, besides finding solutions to the presenting problem, are there any other core benefits that your clients experience?
ST:  Couples and individuals achieve a closer, more intimate way of relating to one another and a deeper level of communicating.

You can’t embrace the present by holding onto the past

Learning to heal the wounds of the past by learning new perspectives on what past events mean.

(Reposted from YourTango.com)

For some it is so hard to let go of the wrongs of their past, they clutch to it like it were a life preserver, when in fact it is more like an anchor pulling them under.  A friend of mine recently shared a profound insight that helped him move on – he said, “I finally figured what I needed to do in order to stop my past from haunting me, I just had to lose sight of it.”  He continued, “The insight came to me when I was looking at one of those 3-D puzzles, the kind if you stare long enough the image emerges but if you take your eyes off of the page – it disappears.  And so it was with my past, when I could no longer see it the way I was choosing to see it, the pain subsided!”

Many people are finding that obtaining a new perspective of the situation will change the way you feel about it.  My friend decided to adopt an attitude of gratitude while reflecting on those in his life who he had formerly wanted to see as only mean, self-serving and degrading.  When he wrote out his list and saw with his own eyes how much these people had done for him, he was able to let go of the resentments and carry their memories in ways that were much more healing and helpful.

He also discovered that he had spent most of his life trying to fill a bottomless void that drained him dry of his energy and resources.  He realized that instead of trying to fill the void that it was in his best physical and mental interest to let the void just heal.  He learned to let the voids, caused by past emotional wounds, to close without trying to keep them stuffed open with anything.  So for those of us who struggle with voids in our lives – consider giving them time to close because by keeping them open we deny ourselves the opportunity to heal!

Everything I needed to learn about relationships I should have learned from my car!

I like to consider myself a “car guy”, make no mistake, I am no ‘gear head’ – never had the talent, could change the oil, tire and an occasional light bulb but that’s pretty much where it ends – I just appreciate beautiful cars. It is truly a sensual experience for me – I love the sight of a brilliant shine and the way light and every object around it is reflected. I love to touch a smooth, polished finish and glide my hand across the cool texture of a clear coat, along with the scent of a soft leather interior and the sound of a throaty engine that envelopes you when you give the key a turn. Therapy for me has always been about detailing my ride until I have it looking, smelling and feeling the way I want to drive it. I can spend hours washing and waxing and cleaning the interior, windows and tires…and of course over the years I've heard the complaint – “if you spent as much time with me as you do your car…”

So it got me thinking…imagine if I treated my relationships like I do my car. I would be investing in my relationship on a weekly basis. For starters, I invest in a tank of gas roughly every week, so how can I invest in my relationship on a weekly basis that “keeps it running without worry about it coming to an end? I usually don’t wash my car unless it is dirty but how can I “polish the relationship” when I feel I have neglected it and it is really in need of some TLC [Tender Loving Care]. I am not looking for the car to tell me what it needs and I can certainly adopt that attitude with my partner. I can be proactive and decide that our relationship needs my time and attention and how best to tend to those needs.

I can easily spend a couple of hours washing, rubbing and buffing, why not share massages with my partner and rub her from head to toe? Why not find new ways to hold her, feel her, hear her, taste and smell her and really appreciate seeing her beauty “from all angles”? I do not have to do a detailed and thorough cleansing every time I decide to “work on the relationship”; sometimes a quick and easy wash is all that is called for or all that I have time for but the point is that I make time for the relationship.

I am usually pretty good at scheduling maintenance ahead of time and could easily translate that behavior into planning special times with my partner, like date night or take her out dancing or whatever it is that she enjoys. My attitude, like being with my car, should be enjoying time together-just the two of us. I can plan for major expenses as I can plan for anniversaries, vacations, birthdays and other special events.

If we men can start thinking about our relationships in the term of our “love affairs” with our cars, it
may do us well to realize that we have been practicing our relationship skills for many years without even knowing it…something like the movie The Karate Kid where Mr. Miyagi taught Daniel all about self defense in the realm of waxing his car.

Sex – It’s just not for everyone!

A couple of years ago I was asked to speak on a panel concerning the lack of a sexual relationship in as many as 40 million couples in the United States. While many people believe that sex is natural and normal and vital for a relationship to survive, there are those do not. I guess if you are one of the ones experiencing a healthy sexual connection with your partner then you might find this notion to be untenable. Even though I am one of those in a
healthy sexual relationship, I could easily imagine those that are not. As I reflected on what might steer one away from a sexual union with another, it was not difficult to start listing what makes such a relationship unattractive.

In another blog post I mentioned Zibergeld’s – The New Male Sexuality and liked what he had to say about how our culture is dominated by a “Fantasy Model of Sexuality”. It was one that was based on performance, orgasm, passion and flawless forms as portrayed by the media, movies and the like. However, I find it interesting to note that “sex” as a human interaction is typically portrayed and experienced by many as purely physical, even though if you really think about it – sex starts and ends in the mind. After all, to begin one has to get in the “mood” by “feeling” erotically motivated and to finish one usually experiences a wave or waves of pleasure that equates to “feeling”. So for something we exponentially promote as physical – sex is really about feelings – a word that typically and unfortunately holds little value in our culture and society. If Zilbergeld was correct in his assumption about the “Fantasy Model”, then it seems apparent why many would choose not to play along.

Of course there are many other reasons as to why many would not find a sexual relationship appealing. For many their decision was based on unwanted sexual experiences in their life. For others, sex was just not that exciting, rewarding or gratifying. Many people have told me that sex is too much like work and not worth the effort. Others have stated that doing without eliminates any and all the anxieties they had previously experienced and were happy to be free of the constraints. Does it have to be that way? Of course not, but until we do something about changing what sex “looks like” and means in our society then many will choose not to engage.

The Mythical Life of Your Sexuality

As a sex therapist, I am always intrigued by the notions/beliefs/understandings my clients have regarding sex and sexuality. So I decided I wanted to start creating a list of at least the more prevalent ones.

Myths regarding sex and sexuality

• In order for sex to be “sex” it has to be intercourse.
• Sex is over when the “erection leaves the building!”
• Sex is only sex when both man and woman orgasm through intercourse – forget anatomical considerations it’s just media hype!
• Men are always ready for sex.
• Men are the Wizard of Oz when it comes to sex being the ‘Know All’
• Only boys are encouraged to masturbate
• It’s not healthy for a women to masturbate to learn about her own body, what pleases and pleasures her – that responsibility belongs to the man!
• Our sexual fantasies are our hidden desires of what we really want
• Sexual fantasizing while making love with your partner is tantamount to having an affair – you are only allowed to be thinking of the one you’re with – and no one else – forget the fact that you have an imagination.
• Like the magic beans from the Jack-in-the-beanstalk tale – E.D. drugs alone are the solution to the age-old [or young] problem – Help I’ve fallen and I can’t get [it] up!
• All men are sexually aroused and ready for intercourse by the sight of a naked woman
• Women love to be treated like porn stars or Pounding without Pleasure!
• The erection or the lack thereof is the only real indicator if a man is aroused and desires his partner
• A woman’s sexual desirability can be measured by an erect penis
• Once aroused you have to see it all the way through to orgasm

This list is far from inclusive and the purpose of it is to get you thinking about what myths do you carry around, accepting them as truths without really questioning them.

So how do these get started and why do they continue to flourish? 

Human sexuality seems to be and should be one of those wonderful life experiences that many of us enjoy and so few people understand or know that much about it. I think at some level we need to add a fourth “R” to schooling our children – Reading – wRiting – aRithmetic – Relationships. Human sexuality should never be defined for you, ever or in a way that severely restricts or limits your ability to experience a full spectrum of pleasure and fun. Hmm…so what myths are you entertaining these days?

Decoding the Psychology of Your Sexuality

Reprised from February 2010


So how does one go about understanding the psychology of their sexuality? As a therapist, based on my education, training and experience I have typically looked to a client’s biological parents to inform me about their relational patterns. Like it or not, Moms and Dads have a tremendous and life-long influence and impact on how we relate to one another.

So what and how have our parents contributed to our sexuality?
Well for most and appropriately so, not many of us even suspected our parents of ever having sex. Our parents kept it private and secret, which is where many of us are with sex as well. If your parents were uncomfortable discussing sex, then maybe you are too When you think back to when you were an adolescent, what kind of sex messages do you remember receiving – were they positive, negative or neutral? Again this would reflect your parent’s attitude toward sex, which you now may have adopted. Again reflecting on your parent’s relationship, what do you remember about how affection was shown – comfortable (or not), forthcoming, withheld, unconditional, forced, absent, unwanted?

Another issue that would significantly impact our psychology would be how nudity and body issues were handled. In some homes nudity was encouraged and embraced in healthy appropriate ways where there were no restrictions placed on the child to ‘hide her/himself’ from others, while I think most were encouraged and in extreme cases forbidden to allow oneself to be exposed for the gaze of others. How do you remember your parents dealing with their own nudity and body issues? Did your parents keep behind closed doors while dressing? At what age were you no longer allowed to accompany them while s/he changed? When you think about that message alone, it can certainly help form our attitudes that eventually morph into beliefs that we hold onto and enforce into our current way of being with self and others. The BSPI© (http://bspitest.com) asked the question whether one preferred the lights on or off during sexual activity. The results were that 75% of all the men sampled and 37% of the women preferred the lights on. So if we look into the psychology of men along side women, the findings suggest reinforcement of a Western cultural norm that men prefer to be visual. How much of that is the way in which we condition boys/men to be? Does that mean we condition our daughters differently? It would certainly appear so, but there are other implications that surround this question and one such is around body image.

Some people that I have discussed the results of their survey with have indicated that a strong reason for answering ‘lights off’ deals with body image issues and particularly when they involve another person and the fear of being judged. Again, I think culture plays a tremendous role in our reinforcing what the “acceptable body image” should be. If you look at the focal points of many advertisements, you will be hard pressed to find anything that is not young, fit, and thin as though they are the only people engaging in sexual activity. Even though one would think that body image is a visual thing, it really comes down to how one is conditioned cognitively to be able to accept or reject oneself.

This leads into gender issues, how we treat boys/girls and the expectations we have for them. As a sex thera
pist, I have yet to encounter a male who has not masturbated…while that appears to be the norm for boys, the same does not hold true for girls. The BSPI asked how one responds to their own sexual arousal through masturbation or through activity with a sexual partner, the results – 3 out of 5 men prefer to go it alone while the women were almost even choosing between the two options. I find this result particularly interesting given the nature of my work. I have seen many men “coerced” into therapy by their wives who “caught them” masturbating to pornographic images. In some relationships, it is expected that the partner will give up a life long pattern of masturbating and fantasizing to devote any and all sexual energy to the other. Personally, I have a huge problem with this, especially given the way in which sexuality has been discussed, promoted, and supported. There appears to be some serious mixed messaging going on in that we do not object to using sex to sell/promote just about everything until it crosses the thresholds of our relationships. It is totally unrealistic to think that someone who has self-pleasured a good portion of his/her life is going to stop once they are in a committed relationship, it is like expecting someone to never eat alone because they now have a partner to share meals with but yet these unrealistic demands persist. This is one reason why it is so important to have an open dialogue around our sexuality at the start of any new committed relationship and continue it throughout.