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Why isn’t self pleasure more pleasurable?

One of the many innovations in Sexological Bodywork training is a focus on how we might teach our clients to masturbate in a way which is more embodied, more pleasurable and less formulaic.

To this end, Joseph Kramer, the creator of Sexological Bodywork, invented something called ‘Orgasmic Yoga’.

This is a series of practices to get people to masturbate differently. But to understand these practices, we need to understand where they came from.

From Joseph’s perspective, working largely with men, there were four issues, which had been around for a long time, which more recently had been amplified by something else.

What were the four? They’re familiar:

Firstly, people tended to stumble across masturbation as children, when they carried out the act quickly and furtively and alone. So there was the issue of shame.

Second, once they had learnt how to masturbate, they kept doing the same thing, which over time meant they had to progressively turn the dial up. And the repetition would tend to make it compulsive rather than relaxed and pleasurable.

Third, they tended to be pretty disembodied while they were doing it. They would lose awareness of the rest of their body, or certainly sensations and emotions which weren’t part of their arousal.

Fourthly, they tended to be very focused on the outcome, orgasm, which they would tend to want to reach as quickly as possible.

The newer factor was the ubiquity of internet porn. He would see a lot of men who said they had a porn addiction, spending a lot of time every day watching their computer or phone screen; completely disembodied.

Orgasmic yoga was the cure for both this porn addiction, and for unsatisfying and repetitive -and generally male – masturbation generally. It was based on embodiment rather than based on fantasy porn.

Who it didn’t address was people who had issues with arousal, because that wasn’t the problem he was trying to remedy. But if we forget the problem that Orgasmic Yoga was meant to solve, and blithely universalise it, taking arousal as a given, we risk pathologising those people.

This was an issue Kat and I had to look at when creating our School Of Conscious Touch training programme.

We thought that the assumption that self arousal was straightforward and easy risked shaming and marginalising those students – and future clients of those students – whose sexuality wasn’t like that. So we needed something to go alongside Orgasmic Yoga.

But how could we conceptualise what that might be?

The famously intellectual Taoiseach, Dr Garret Fitzgerald, once said “That’s all very well in practice, but how does it work in theory?”

But that’s the thing: there’s nothing as practical as a good theory, because it helps us constellate our experience differently. It makes us see disparate shapes as parts of the one structure. Patterns appear.

And it’s like that with our innovation of distinguishing  two different aspects of our sexuality, The Sexual Body and The Erotic Body, [which I describe in more detail elsewhere],because if we just shoehorn embodiment into our existing perspective on sexuality, embodied masturbation practices come with the same limitations that sensate focus exercises do. And like sensate focus,  if all that’s missing is a bit more presence, space and length of time, then orgasmic yoga is ideal. For porn guys, or people with straightforward arousal, it’s ideal. For others, not so much.

For these people, we felt two things were important. First, we had to get them in touch with their Erotic Body, and we worked out several ways to do this. Our identification of The Erotic Body was the theoretical game-changer, because it was it, rather than The Sexual Body, that these people required to engage with first, because the former was much more inclusive of all experience, and far less likely than the latter to provoke feelings of performance anxiety.

Once they were in touch with The Erotic Body, we would then let them wonder creatively in fantasy and memory, noticing what triggered interest, and they could then start to picture -not, at least at first, enact – what an erotic practice authentic to them might look like.

What we’re trying to create with The School is a perspective on sexuality which, while remaining embodied, moves away from the traditional language of needs and drives, and pays much more attention to how each individual constellates their sexuality, which is almost always revealed at the level of fantasy, providing we neither get stuck at the narrative level, either of the fantasy itself, or a general story of what sexuality is.

If you’re interested in working with me, you can contact me here

 

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Orgasm and Emotion

What is the relationship between orgasm and emotion?

When my dad died, 22 years ago, I felt emotionally blocked. I was upset, but I couldn’t cry.

I’d recently split up with my girlfriend, but because she was a very kind and generous person, when she heard about my loss she wanted to comfort me. And as we were having sex, I remained aware of my emotional disconnection, but vividly remember that when I reached orgasm, a wave of grief, like electricity, jolted through me, and I cried out, then started sobbing.

That’s often how people think – if at all – about the connection between orgasm and our emotions. Orgasm disinhibits us, so emotion can come flooding out. But – so the view goes – emotion doesn’t have any impact on whether we orgasm or not: that’s a matter of arousal, which is physical and energetic, not emotional.

But I wonder if we have it precisely wrong.

When I work with people who have issues with orgasm, what’s most apparent is their focus on orgasm as the goal of sexual pleasure. And the tragic consequence of this is that they often experience neither. So my focus when I work with them is to take them out of this self defeating future orientation, and start feeling more what’s actually going on in their body. In this way they can relax into pleasurable experience, and within that experience, they can find arousal and orgasm. I don’t ask them to have a particular focus on what they’re feeling emotionally, although that’s part of it. I’m equally interested in what they’re experiencing imaginatively, or somatically.

Before I do the bodywork part of a session, I discuss with the client how they are feeling and what they would like from the session, and afterwards they will say what they experienced and noticed, but often, the prior talking part can be quite brief.

I recently met with a client who wanted to talk quite a lot before we started, and I fretted I wouldn’t be able to give her a long enough bodywork session. To my surprise however – and her greater surprise – quite soon into the bodywork, she had an orgasm.

When we reflected on it afterwards, we agreed that the difference between that and prior sessions was that this time, in our talking, for the first time, she’d been freely emotional, and felt completely accepted by me in her emotionality, in all its ebbs and flows, its sometimes abrupt changes and transformations. And because I accepted that, she could accept it too.

And I wondered if that was a more general issue: we repress, censor or modify our emotions because we think they’re not welcome. And that’s because they weren’t. But the effect of that is to suppress our aliveness, which has a major effect on our capacity to orgasm.

Let me use an example from my own life: my mum is a naturally optimistic, outgoing person. I’m not; I’m quite moody and sensitive. When I was like that as a child, it was obvious that my mum would have preferred me, understandably, to be happy, so I came to view my own nature as problematic, and suppressed it. But, of course, you can never be someone else, you can only be a more cramped version of yourself.

It took me a long time to understand that my sensitivity, far from being something to be sidestepped or covered over, was an essential part of who I am.

I think a lot of us have known something similar. Our emotions go from something natural to something that we need to monitor, adjust and modify, and that has a double effect. The first, which is clear from psychotherapy, is that we become distanced from our emotions. The second – and less noticed – is that we become distanced from our body, because our experience is all of a piece: if there is a something in my experience, I will experience it in thought, in imagination, in feeling and in my body, and all these are different aspects of the one experience. 

And that explains something that has always puzzled me: people who are freely emotional don’t seem to have an issue with not being able to orgasm.

And in turn, that suggests a way of working with the emotions. We don’t regard them as irrelevant to whether we can orgasm or not, we regard them as central, because the repression of any one part of us is a repression of the spontaneous functioning of all the other parts too. And just as we would have learned, when little, that certain emotions were not ok by a signal from [usually] a parent, and so they then became not ok to us, we can reverse the process: in your session with me, I can welcome your emotions, whatever they are, and, gradually you can welcome them too, and then something in you can become relaxed, yet enlivened at the same time.

 

 

 

 

 

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What Is Sexual Fantasy and why does it matter?

I remember first reading Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden, a collection of her interviews with women discussing their sexuality and fantasies, and being amazed at their wealth of detail, ingenuity and richness. The book was published in 1973, and her primary motivation for writing it was to confront the widespread belief at the time that women didn’t have sexual fantasies. When asked about it, she said that “more than any other emotion, guilt determined the story lines of the fantasies”

In an ironic turn of events, many women now feel guilty at not having sexual fantasies.

On enquiry, what they tend to mean is that they don’t have a story like structure that they find arousing and masturbate to.

What is Erotic Fantasy?

In the Immortal Words of Bonnie Tyler:

Somewhere after midnight in my wildest fantasy

Somewhere just beyond my reach there’s someone reaching back for me

Racing on the thunder and rising with the heat

It’s going to take a Superman to sweep me off my feet

Doesn’t a small part of us die when the talk turns to our “wildest fantasy”?

Either we feel awkward about not having one at all, or that if we did say what it was, people would either be dropping off to sleep or calling child protection.

In my exploration of fantasy work with Rachel Connor, what we’ve noticed is that almost everyone does have sexual fantasy, it’s just it doesn’t necessarily appear in a story like form. Because it doesn’t, it’s disregarded. And being disregarded, it becomes formulaic and repetitive, and loses its capacity to be creative and expansive.

These alternative forms of sexual fantasy include:

Fragments

Fragments can be visual, or can involve on of the other senses. A visual fragment is something very short, a second or so of something, like an item of clothing being lifted up. An auditory fragment might be a phrase [“She put her hands inside my pants and pulled them down”]. A fragment could be an imagined smell or scent, or taste.

Images

Many people seem to have an arousing image, or a series of arousing images [ a bit like a pack of playing cards]  

Anticipations and Memories

Remembering something arousing which happened to you, or anticipating something which has not yet happened is sexual fantasy too, but tends to be ignored because it seems to be “life” rather than “fantasy”

How can we open all these varieties of fantasy to our wider life, and make them creative, embodied and relational?

Rachel and I have uncovered a number of ways to do this, and we have got to the point of sharing these methods and approaches more widely.

We ran our inaugural course on Erotic Fantasy over 4 x 90 minute sessions, which started Thursday 17 June. In 2022, as we come out of the pandemic, we will start in person workshops.

If you want to be kept informed of our activities, please subscribe to my newsletter. The subscribe button is on the Home Page here

 

 

 

 

 

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The Myth of Female Sexual Dysfunction

In my intake questionnaire, one of the questions I ask is whether there’s a difference between the experience of orgasm [or lack of it] in partnered sex and solo sex.

A frequent response from women seems to be that they have no problem reaching orgasm when they masturbate, but that partnered sex is often problematic. Understandably, this produces patterns of disappointment, frustration and resentment, but also something more fundamental: these women think that there’s something wrong with them, or even that they’re “broken”.

It isn’t that they don’t experience arousal in partnered sex, rather that the arousal is experienced as incomplete, partial and unsatisfying. There is often the sense of hitting a glass ceiling during arousal, making orgasm frustratingly near, but unattainable.

Often this pattern plays out in a belief that is takes “too long” to reach orgasm, a belief that isn’t made easier by a perception that their partners are impatient or tired with the “length of time this is taking”, as if it some kind of chore, or that orgasm is a kind of performance to send the audience home happy.

Because there’s an underlying belief that sexuality is arousal, and that arousal comes from stimulating the body – stimulating the genitals – the temptation is to think that more stimulation – harder, faster – is the solution, and even though it’s uncomfortable, that uncomfortableness should be broken through.

Does any of this sound familiar?

I think there’s a risk that we keep making the same error in a slightly different form. We can move the focus from penetration to the g spot, or from the vagina to the clitoris, but throughout, there’s the underlying assumption that all that’s needed to get to orgasm is bodily stimulation, and if that doesn’t work, there’s something wrong: with the stimulation, or with the person.

But what if the assumption is wrong? And wrong in a particularly harmful way, namely that it works well enough for a while, until it doesn’t, with the inevitable conclusion “What’s wrong with me?”

I say the assumption is false. It assumes that the body in its natural state is neutral, but with stimulation can become pleasurable. My view is that the body is naturally pleasurable, and sexuality is a integral part of that, but most of us don’t feel that way because our bodies are habitually stressed, particularly with regard to our sexuality. So, the real issue is to deal with the stress, re-discover the inherent pleasure of the body, and to witness, enjoy and express the sexuality which naturally flows from that.

Our society’s normal route is to create enjoyable stress [arousal] to overcome habitual stress, to get to orgasm experiencing a temporary release from the habitual stress. That’s why we need more and more arousal to get to the same place: why people when self pleasuring go from soft slow touch to faster stronger touch, then repeat the process with vibrators, until that doesn’t work either.

But why is the stress there in the first place? There’s a number of causes:

-we think of sex in terms of performance and comparison

–we separate our sexuality from the rest of us: our feelings, our imagination, our playfulness, our relatedness

– we are overfocused on the body

-rather than being with the actual experience, we are focused on where we are going and what we should be experiencing

-we lose connection: between our sexuality and the rest of us, and between ourselves and the other

In my opinion, attending to ‘Dysfunction’ means attending to the cramped and restrictive notions about sexuality which society gives us through embodied, heartful, relational work. It’s not ‘fixing’ something, it is a release from the idea that the body is something to be ‘fixed’

If this makes sense to you and you’d like to explore it further, why not consider a chat with me on Zoom? The link is here

You can read more of my articles here

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The Benefits of Sex Therapy Online

Sex Therapy Online: the benefits

 

How can we work with sexual issues remotely? Surely it’s essential to at least have the option of working with the body?

I certainly thought this, and had steadfastly set myself against working online or by phone until shortly before the present health emergency. By pure coincidence, a potential client [let’s call her Robin] approached me through my website in late January 2020. Although she lived locally, she explained that coming to see me straight away was just too big an ask for her, and would I be willing to have a couple of sessions on Zoom, which she hoped would establish enough connection and safety for her to then move to in person sessions?

I wasn’t keen. When I left the therapy world, and embraced working with sexuality, I  thought of myself primarily as a bodyworker, working mainly through touch rather than words. That touch needed to be agreed, boundaried and safe of course, but touch was, I thought, my metier.

As time went on, and as I accumulated invaluable experience with actual clients, I gradually modified this view.

I discovered that what was essential to make positive change happen wasn’t what was done in a session, but what the client felt and specifically, how the client felt different. And particularly, that it was an absolute prerequisite for meaningful change that the client felt safe, listened to and in warm compassionate connection. For almost all clients, this was the foundation for any bodywork, and often it would take a number of sessions to get there. Of course, some clients didn’t want bodywork. They just wanted the chance to talk, to communicate. Others wanted guidance on how to broaden their sexual range, or to feel more confident in asking for what they want, which didn’t  need to involve touch at all.

 

Anyway, returning to Robin, I agreed to work in the way she asked, as the first step. Lockdown followed several weeks afterwards, which compelled us to keep working online. To my surprise, it was  surprisingly beneficial working in this way, and so I adapted my work for Zoom, working out ways of working with both individuals and couples.

The sessions are shorter: one hour instead of two, and more frequent, usually weekly, so there is a clearer continuity between sessions.

So, what sort of issues can be addressed in this way? Well, if you have a look at my questionnaire, which you can access on the website via Contact John > links and resources > EBL questionnaire, you’ll find it asks quite a lot of distinct questions, and you might speculate how we could work online with these. I’ll break this down to individuals and couples.

Working  with Individuals

Talking and Communication. We shouldn’t underestimate the power of this. We need to talk, to be heard, and to be constructively engaged with. Sometimes, when people talk to me about sexual issues, they haven’t  talked to anyone about them before.

Embodiment through somatic visualisation. One of the things I love doing is to work with a client to get them into a relaxed receptive state, then getting them to experience their body in a much more pleasurable, deeper way, using imagery, memory and association, as well as somatic and breath awareness,  which changes both how they feel about themselves and how they can relate to others. This works best with the cameras switched off.

Changing our Patterns. A lot of people feel stuck. So, for example, they might have quite monotonous and repetitive ways to pleasure themselves, but have no idea how to change. And likewise, with their partners and lovers. That’s exactly the kind of thing I can help with. I can help with masturbation coaching, and I can also significantly widen a client’s repertoire, both physical and emotional, so they can get off the treadmill of unsatisfying sexual engagement.

Learning New Ways of Relating. I have extensive experience of working with people so they can become able to ask for what they want, not endure what they don’t want, and become much clearer in their thinking about consent, so they can ask and answer “Who is this for?”

Learning New Perspectives on Sexuality. I work with multiple ways of approaching and thinking about sexuality which is a brilliant way to think freshly about and explore the whole varied terrain, to give you some ideas about what you might like to experiment with. So, for example, exploring tantric ideas of sexuality, exploring role play and fantasy, working with trance like states, and so on.

Learning new skills. A lot of people are very lacking in confidence about their sexual techniques or relating with a partner. I can help with that.

Sometimes people ask  if they will have to do awkward or embarrassing things on screen. You don’t. If I give exercises, I will give instructions, and you do them in your own time, privately.

Working  with Couples

My online work with couples combines two things: the belief that there are distinct and equally legitimate modes of human sexuality, and what I’ve come to call The Compass of Sexuality, which is my fancy term for categorising all the multifarious ways we view sex.

I meet with the couple online for an initial chat to see if we might be a good fit, and if they want to go ahead, and if I think I can help.

If they want to go ahead, I ask them both to fill in a detailed questionnaire, and then I speak to each of them separately, to get a sense of where the imbalances and issues in the relationship might be, and how these might be progressively resolved.

I then give them a couple of exercises to do in their own time, and meet with them a week later [20 minutes individually, and 20 together] to find out how they got on, correct any misunderstandings, attend to any mishaps, vary the exercises as appropriate, and give them further exercises.

I’ve found this works very well. Things which they might not have thought of before, or thought too risky, become much easier when they are done as part of an ongoing, open enquiry. Because I’m prescribing the exercises, there’s much less chance of shame or judgement. Any hiccups can be blamed on me, and they don’t stop the couple moving forward.

People often find online work easier. You don’t leave your home. You retain control. It’s more convenient. It’s patently safe. You can be anywhere: all you need is a computer and the English language.

If you’d like to chat with me to see if any of these ways of working are for you, please get in touch.

[You can read more about my approach to working with couples here

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Curing Sexual ‘Inexperience’

If one person feels something, that’s a personal issue. If a lot of people feel the same thing, that isn’t just personal; it says something about society too. The problem of sexual inexperience falls into this category.

We live in a hyper sexualised society, but a large number of us seem to have no or minimal sex, or have very unsatisfactory sex.

What’s going on?

Well, one factor is that we tend to view sexuality in terms of recreation, and of performance. It’s something that you do, not a central part of who you are.  We overemphasise the body and underestimate feeling and connection, partly because we often think of desire as a hunger. Like a hunger for food.  And we give the body only provisional value: if the body looks great and ‘performs’ well, then great, otherwise, not so much.

This Tinder-ising doesn’t work for a lot of people. But because the model is so dominant, they think there’s something wrong with them, rather than something wrong or incomplete with the model.

So, I get young women coming to me whose boyfriends have a very pornified idea of what love making should be, and they blame themselves for being inadequate. Other people can’t seem to get started, and don’t know how to.  It’s as if everyone else is speaking a language they don’t understand.

It’s really widespread, but silent, like a secret epidemic of shame.

I don’t do sexual surrogacy work.  It can be very valuable, but often it operates within the dominant model of doing, rather than feeling, being and connection.  It’s those latter qualities I want to bring out when working with clients who have issues of sexual confidence and sexual inexperience, because it seems to me that inexperience is in some sense a choice -perhaps an unconscious one – not to participate in this dominant mode of low-feeling, high action performative sex. However, I do offer intimacy coaching. You can read more about what that entails here

I also offer the option of you working with me and another sexuality practitioner, and that practitioner – male or female – not being just ‘the body’ upon which we can practice and demonstrate touch, but also a full participant.

My starting point is not somehow to reconcile the client to getting out there and get with it.  It is to start with an open enquiry into what the body and the heart feels and wants. Starting from that place, we then ask what wishes, sensations and worlds can come into being.

My perspective is that feelings of perceived sexual inadequacy or inexperience are best addressed not by fixing the body, but by opening and connecting the heart.  Everything positive flows from that.

You can make an analogy with conversation. As a society, we tend to think that the point of sex is orgasm.  But suppose we imagined that the point of talking was to make jokes.  Well, no doubt that would work for some people. And those people, doubtless, would accuse others of having a low humour drive, or being unskilled at punchlines.

It’s a ridiculous analogy, isn’t it?  But is it really?  Sexuality, like communication, involves the whole, unique, feeling person.  The range of expression is endless. It’s not something simple and straightforward, like appetite. Although, of course, it does involve hunger.  But hunger for what?

More prosaically, a lot of people feel that they are unskilled at sex. They don’t know how to do what they think they should do. For example, a lot of women lack confidence when it comes to touching a man’s genitals, so they tend to follow what they’ve learned from porn, or from friends, who have probably learned from porn. And so, they will touch a man’s penis rather like a plumber would approach a blocked drain: fast vigorous, anxious to get the job done as soon as possible. But where can you learn how to touch differently? Well, from me, for one.

And part of that is getting more confidence. How do you take the intiative? How can you open things out, so it’s not just the same boring journey, just a bit slower?

I don’t view my work as just learning  technical skills, so you can “make love like a porn star”, but as a way to get more confidence, and through that, finding a way of having more satisfying sex. So sometimes, in my work with a client, as a starting point I may work with them to acquire more skills, because that’s part of having more choice. If we’re under confident, we’ll either just do the same thing over and over, or we’ll be done to. And if that’s so, our society’s awful fixation on intercourse as the whole point of heterosexual sex becomes even narrower and more unsatisfactory. Being equipped with skills gives you the confidence which makes it possible to break out of this straightjacket, particularly if you are also equipped with a sense of what sex might look like from a tantric or kink or energetic perspective, for example.

[you can read my articles here

you can contact me here

if you’re interested in this work and want to work in person, but aren’t in Glasgow, check out my Links Page, which also details sexual surrogacy services]

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Increasing ‘Low Sexual Desire’ In Women

A remarkably high number of women claim to have low sexual desire. The figures vary, but it’s anywhere between one third and two thirds.

 

When a figure is this high, does the problem lie with the thing itself, or how we think about it?

 

The standard model of sexual desire -along with much else – derives from Masters and Johnston. That model is desire, leading to arousal, leading to sexual activity. We feel sexual desire, we become aroused, and we then act that out.

 

And when a man and a woman first get together, it seems to be like that for both of them. But, as the relationship matures, the woman often feels there’s something wrong: she rarely feels sexual desire anymore. And if she doesn’t feel it, she doesn’t want to do it. And that becomes a problem for both parties.

 

Rethinking desire

 

But is the real problem how we think about desire?

 

Rosemary Basson certainly believes that to be so. She’s the Director of Sexual Medicine at the University of British Columbia, and in her view, the problem is that the standard model is wrong.

 

In her model, desire is the result of arousal, not the cause. The sexual cycle starts off from choice, not from desire. A woman experiencing emotional intimacy, but who is sexually neutral, is receptive to sexual stimuli. She allows it, or looks for it. This stimuli is then processed in the limbic system of the brain. If the emotional response to the stimuli is negative – you don’t feel close, you’ve just had a row, you feel terrible about yourself – you won’t feel sexually aroused, even if bodily it appears that you are. If your response is positive, you feel arousal, desire follows, and away you go.

 

You can read my related post ‘The Myth of Female Sexual Dysfunction’ here

You can read more of my articles here

You can contact me here

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Overcoming Sexual Shame

Shame is endemic in our society, yet nobody talks about it. Which is strange, because it is the silent killer of sexual love. The heart isn’t cut to pieces in battle. It unknowingly dies, like a sleeping person in a room gradually filling with carbon monoxide.

 

Shame reveals – and hence conceals – itself differently. For each person, and for each gender. 

 

With due regard for generalisation, for heterosexual men, it works something like the following abusive dialogue which a man has with himself:

 

  • I won’t be able to get an erection. I’m useless
  • I’ve got an erection, but I’ll lose it. I’m useless.
  • Maybe I won’t lose it but I’ll come too quickly. I’m useless
  • Anyway, she’s not had an orgasm, or at least not the one she’s supposed to have, so I’m completely useless

 

And because it’s shameful, it can’t be talked about. So if you’re a woman, trying to make sense of this behaviour, you might think your partner is selfish, inconsiderate, rushed, disconnected and performance focused.

 

Shame explains something weird about women’s experience of male behaviour: it’s really important for him that as a woman that you like the sex, but if you helpfully propose something to make it better, generally, he doesn’t want to know. Why? Shame again. Change is a admission of past uselessness, which is hard to bear.

 

As a woman, how does shame affect you? Well, you might think that you’re to blame if there’s any erection issues, because you’re not sufficiently attractive, or arousing, or sexy, hence there’s something wrong with you, or you didn’t have an orgasm, or at least, not the right kind of orgasm, which means there’s something wrong with you, and so on. Shame again, but slightly different in its location.

 

A person, finding the shame hard to bear, might attempt to displace it onto their partner, through blame. Silence, shame, blame. Shame doesn’t come bearing weapons, but cuts you to pieces regardless.

 

Between the sexes, shame is intractable if we don’t understand that both genders have it, but in slightly different positions, meaning that the shame of each gender is invisible to the other, unless we communicate.

 

Shame is kept in place by the false notion that sex is about performance rather than about connection, but it’s difficult to be inoculated against it whilst we have such an impoverished idea of what heterosexual sex is, namely that it’s about intercourse leading to orgasm.

A particularly tragic form is shame is when an older man, in what may have been and continues to be a very long and loving relationship, starts to have erectile difficulties. He will tend to avoid intimacy with his partner through a fear that it will lead to an expectation of sex, in which he will be unable to ‘perform’. But he can’t say this, because to do so would be shameful, and so the couple gradually drift apart, no-one saying anything.

A first step is to broaden our idea. In my work I gave couples examples of other forms of sexual encounter which aren’t necessarily orgasmic, but are connecting and heartfully intimate, not just sensation based, but deeply feeling. A large part of my work is to elaborate and expand upon our sexuality in such a way that it cumulatively engages all our erotic and connecting potential, and gets us off the treadmill of performance, and frees us from the burden of shame. 

One of my teachers said that the only cure for shame is courage. But it isn’t true. The only cure for shame is connection. But it takes courage to make that possible. I’m here to help. You can contact me here

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Dealing with Premature Ejaculation

When we talk about premature ejaculation, we’re really talking about several different issues, and it’s helpful to distinguish them.

 

The first is a euphemism for unsatisfactory sex, particularly for the woman. The man just comes too early. But what is it that is really premature, the ejaculation or the intercourse?

 

Because culturally we’re so fixated on intercourse ( the giveaway being that we regard everything else as foreplay, the warm up act for the main event), men will frequently initiate intercourse before the woman is ready. Women, understandably, are likely to find this selfish. But it’s important to be aware of men’s anxiety around their erection.  They are very frequently worried that their erection will suddenly go away.  This would, they think, expose them to shame and ridicule. So, they have to ‘use it before they lose it’.

 

One of our friends did a social history film about sex. The film is about 30 years old now.  She got a group of older people to talk about their early experiences of sex.  One of the participants, a man, said that it would never have occurred to him that woman got pleasure from sex. He paused and said “I would have thought that orgasm was a kind of beer”.  There was then a long pause, and his face got sadder and sadder, thinking of all the waste.

 

We’re not suffering from the results of patriarchy in this way anymore, thankfully. But instead of making our focus a lot wider than the act of  intercourse, we’ve simply added an insistence that men should be able to control when they ejaculate.  And then it is shameful for a man if he can’t do this. Where are we to find intimacy, connection and pleasure in this jailhouse of expectations?

 

Oftentimes, men look for technical solutions, so they can go on and on, like Sting!  But the solution is embodiment and connection, not a technical fix.

 

I work by reconnecting men to their bodies, by resensitising them, and by providing a safe space where these issues can be talked about, free of shame. I teach men about breathing, about how to be more aware of rising levels of excitement, and how to bring those energies down.  So rather than experiencing a sudden spike and it’s all over, you can reach a plateau and then continue. But the most important thing is that I emphasise connection, rather than performance.

 

If you think I can help you, please get in touch.

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Sex Counselling for Couples

One thing that affects sexual confidence for couples is that a surprising amount of people have only had sex with one person: their present or former partner.

 

I sometimes get couples coming to me who have had a long relationship, but somewhere along the way, one of them loses interest in sex. Or, somehow, the sex has become perfunctory, or repetitive, or unsatisfying.

 

The nightmare couple, for me, comes in two versions.

 

The first is where the partner who has lost interest  and isn’t interested in enquiring why, or doing anything about it. They are there reluctantly, to humour or placate the other partner. I am probably their second stop, after Relate, which won’t have worked either.

 

The second, but less frequent nightmare couple is where one partner wants us to change their partner, without countenancing any change for themselves. So, someone might want me to magically make their partner desire them. Good luck with that.

 

I can’t work with either of these type of couples. They would be much better seeing me separately. That way, they can reclaim their sense of themselves as a feeling, sexual being, distinct from the relationship. Often, the pressure of the relationship, and the weight of familiarity leaves people feeling a bit disembodied.

 

The couples I can work with are people who are brave enough to look at their own behaviour, their way of relating, their expectations and their assumptions. Sometimes, I might think it better to refer them to a therapist I know and trust, for example, where one person doesn’t want to have sex because they’re resentful about something else in the relationship.

 

But very often there isn’t that. It’s just that the fire, mysteriously, seems to have gone out.

 

Familiarity is often the enemy of desire. What I mean by that is that couples often get into a way of having sex, and that way gradually becomes more and more impoverished, until it stops working altogether. It isn’t helped by us thinking that Sex is all about having an orgasm, rather than being an opportunity to connect, feel and experience, within which orgasms may happen.

 

So one of the ways I can help is by shaking things up a little. Identify who initiates, and change that. Experiment with different modes of sexuality. If one is always the do-er, change that. If one never asks for what they want, change that. Introduce  more options to experiment with. And always, focus on embodiment, connection and communication.

 

We can get very fixed around sexuality. Imagine you had to start and end every conversation with a joke, wouldn’t you get tired of that? Wouldn’t you see that there were loads of great conversations going unspoken?

 

If you want to work with me , I’ll usually meet up with you in a public place or online for a coffee and chat, so we can both see if we’re a good fit. If we are, then I’ll design with you a bespoke programme of sessions to take you in the direction most satisfying for you.

If you feel a bit stuck, and you both want to do something about it, please get in touch.

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