Here’s one that I did on sex in long term relationships. This topic is covered in more detail in my book and website with Justin Hancock, and in my book The Secrets of Enduring Love.

What are the signs that lust is dead?

I’d prefer not to use the word ‘dead’! Evidence suggests that our sexualities are much more fluid and flexible than many people think, so it is completely normal to go through periods of not feeling sexual. These might last or they might be temporary. Sexuality might bubble up again or take new forms.

What are the usual causes?

It can just be completely normal fluctuation with no specific cause. However it is also quite common to feel less sexual when we are tired or stressed (although some people respond in the opposite way and feel more sexual at such times). For many people relationships become less sexual over time and this can be absolutely fine. However if one person then has higher desires than the other it can be difficult for both if they don’t have other ways of meeting those desires.

What is the emotional fallout for individuals and couples of the death of lust?

The only times it is a negative thing is (a) if the people involved feel that there is something wrong with them or under pressure to stay sexual and (b) if one person wants to be more sexual than the other one. Otherwise it can be fine if we challenge the messages we get from society that it is so vital to be sexual. There is so much more to relationships than that.

A really important thing is not to make either or both people feel that they should have sex that they don’t really want. The more you do have unwanted sex, the harder it becomes to tune into your sexual desires and the more sex becomes something that you want to avoid.

Some partners decide to get some of their sexual needs met in other relationships of various kinds (open non-monogamy). Even in a monogamous relationship it is important that both people are able to engage in solo sex without guilt – so partners are not the only place they can get sexual desires met.

What can be done to prevent it?

If it is important to you that sex remains part of the relationship then you can do several things. Remaining tuned into your own changing desires is important. Give yourself time to fantasise or look at images or stories. Be open with yourself about what turns you on. And keep communicating with your partner about what those things are, finding any common ground (and accepting there’ll be differences too). Remember that it is fine to change and to enjoy different things. Take the pressure off sex being a certain thing (eg penetration or orgasm) and play with exploring each other’s bodies and fantasies. Finally a baseline of kindness in the relationship is important. Being open about sex can feel vulnerable so it is hard to do if you don’t trust each other. Relationship therapy can help if you’ve got into a bad place.

Crucially, if you fail to prevent it, can you really revive it?

If you both want to then certainly it is possible, but do make sure that you really do want to, rather than just feeling under pressure to do so.

Can you make yourself fancy someone you have never really lusted after?

Sexual desire works in all kinds of ways. Certainly we know that love and desire can grow over time in some relationships as well as diminishing. Try not to be so fixed on an equation that sex = good and no sex = bad. That pressure tends to make us even less likely to feel sexual. Instead open up time to be emotionally and physically close with no pressure, and try to be present to that with no expectations.

Are there any cases beyond saving and how can you know?

If you’ve got to a very conflictual or unhappy place in the relationship I would suggest addressing that before worrying about sex.

What are the 7 highly effective habits of couples with successful sex lives?

Successful sex means that both people are able to tune in to any sexual desires they have, communicate about them, and enjoy the sex they want in a guilt free way. This might involve the couple having lots of sex, occasional sex or no sex!

7 habits that spring to mind are:

1. Cultivating the ability to tune into your own sexual desires
2. Accepting when you or your partner doesn’t feel sexual
3. Not putting pressure on sex, or assuming that sex has to involve certain things
4. Open communication
5. Prioritising each other’s wellbeing over any ideas about what you ‘should’ be doing
6. Being open to each other having some sexual desires met separately (e.g. solo sex)
7. Recognising that the amount and type of desires that we have change over time

Is there such a thing as too much pressure?

Definitely! That is the biggest problem that we have at the moment – all the cultural pressure that relationships have to be sexual and that sex only means certain things.

Should you ever ‘just do it’?

Often one person will feel more sexual than the other and that is fine, but I do think it can be very damaging to have sex when you really don’t feel like it, or to feel pressured into it. It is disrespectful to our partner if they are assuming that we do want sex when we don’t , and it is an unkind way of treating ourselves.

Should you work at it?

I don’t really like the ‘work at it’ idea because making it into work suggests that it isn’t ok not to be sexual. Also it will likely mean we never want to do it! Instead maybe it is about valuing each other enough to protect time for play, and not worrying about what form that takes (whether it is sexual or not).

This topic is covered in more detail in my book and website with Justin Hancock, and in my book The Secrets of Enduring Love.

The post Sex in long term relationships appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Yesterday The Observer published its special issue on sex. Based on their survey of British sexual attitudes and practices, the issue contains several interesting articles about current understandings and expectations around sex. They interviewed me and a couple of other sex therapists about what we thought was going on in this area, from our work with clients. You can real those interviews here, and I’ve included the full version of mine below. I addressed a few points in greater depth than they could cover in the article.

Overall I was pleased with the interview they published, especially with the fact that they used my quote ‘stop trying to be “normal”‘ as the headline. However, in retrospect I think I might have added a caveat: ‘stop trying to be “normal”. But that is really really difficult to do in a culture that puts so much pressure on people to conform to a certain idea of “normality”, so go gently on yourself.’

What are the most common issues raised in sex therapy by men?

Definitely problems with erections: either struggling to get and keep erections, or ‘premature ejaculations’ which mean that they feel they orgasm too quickly. There’s a lot of pressure on men around performance, so men’s sexual problems tend to relate to not feeling able to ‘perform’ as expected, and anxiety that this makes them less of a man.

Could you just tell me about how this has that changed since Viagra?

Viagra and other similar drugs have certainly changed things. Of course they have been very helpful to many many men in helping them to have the kind of sex they want. However it’s important to remember that they only work to keep erections in guys who can already get erections. So they can be disappointing for people who aren’t getting aroused in the first place.

At the same time, I think a lot of people have understood Viagra to mean that all sexual problems can be physiologically fixed and that this must mean that they are physiologically caused. That isn’t the case. A lot of sexual difficulties stem from the huge cultural pressure to ‘perform’ sexually in certain, limited, ways, and the anxiety that causes. Sexual difficulties can also be a really useful message from our bodies that they are not happy with what we’re trying to make them do (e.g. having sex that we don’t really want). The risk with drug therapies is that they encourage us to ignore those messages, and they may discourage us from trying to change the wider culture around sex which is such a big part of the problem.

What are the most common issues raised in sex therapy by women?

Mostly, for all genders, it is worries about anything that gets in the way of having the kind of sex that people feel is expected of them. With women, for example, if they don’t feel aroused enough or if their vagina is too tight or painful for penetration they often feel anxious. For a lot of women there’s a big fear that if they don’t have the ‘right’ kind of sex they might lose the relationship.

What are we most scared of when it comes to sex?

This one is easy! People are very scared of not being normal. By far the most common question I’ve heard as a sex and relationship therapist is ‘am I normal?’ And people come to sex therapy with the hope that it will make them normal. Generally what they mean by ‘normal’ is the ability to have sex that lasts a certain amount of time, that happens an average number of times a week (whatever that is!), and that involves penetration and orgasm.

Do Britons have a healthy attitude to sex?

No! The NATSAL survey of sexual attitudes and lifestyle found that 42% of men and 51% of women reported experiencing sexual difficulties.

Why is that the case? I’m sure it’s because we have this strong cultural ideal of normal sex and how important it is. Everyone is trying to match up to whatever they’ve seen on TV or read about in magazines instead of realising that sex is hugely diverse. There’s massive variety in the amount of sex people want, how long they want it to last, the kinds of things they enjoy most sexually, the people that they find attractive – all of these things. It is perfectly healthy to experience no sexual attraction or to have a high level of sexual desire or anything in between. We need to stop caring so much about normal and start embracing diversity.

Online porn: good or bad influence?

Both! As with most things porn opens up some possibilities and closes down others. In a world where we still have shockingly little decent education about sex, porn does provide a lot of people with a place to find out about how bodies work and different sexual practices. Also it can help people to realise that there are lots of things that they can do sexually and that is okay.

However, if people only view the most available kinds of porn they could easily come away with another set of ideas about ‘normal’ sexually, which could make them feel worse rather than better. For example, it wouldn’t be helpful to measure your body against a porn star’s body (in terms of how it looks and what it can do – they are like the Olympic athletes of sex!). Plus it is important for people to find their own sexual scripts of what they enjoy rather than feeling that they have to copy any standard script (whether it is porn or Hollywood movies).

Finally there is very little discussion of sexual consent in either porn or mainstream media sex scenes. Given the high rates of sexual abuse and violence that is probably the most vital thing – to get people negotiating sexual consent. It’s shocking that this is absent from most media representations of sex, and from most sex advice too.

Could you tell me what you mean by negotiation?

Negotiation really means having some kind of conversation about sex before having sex. This would cover things like what each person likes and doesn’t like, as well as how they will communicate to each other during sex if they aren’t enjoying it any more. This is very important as research suggests that – currently – couples who have been together for a decade still only know about 60% of what their partner likes sexually, and only about 20% of what they don’t like!

Kink communities have a lot of good ideas about how people might negotiate – given that it can be so difficult to communicate about sex. For example, with a ‘yes, no, maybe’ list you list all of the sexual activities you can think of (either together or on your own) and then go through the list writing ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘maybe’ beside each one, to get a sense of what your shared areas of interest are, and also what each person’s hard limits are. This can be a pretty exciting and fun way of opening up a conversation. It’s also good to revisit it every year or so as, of course, these things often change over time. Kinksters also have ‘safe words’ that people can say if the sex they’re having starts to feel uncomfortable in any way (e.g. the traffic lights of green = go, red = stop, and amber = slow down a bit or check in, I’m not sure about this).

One of the positive sides of online technology for sex is that people can also negotiate online prior to having sex in person. Email and online messaging can be great places to talk about sex, to share fantasies, or to try things out in role play (although, of course, it’s important to remember that none of that communication is completely private because online messages go through so many places in their way from A to B).

Have the anxieties you hear in therapy changed in the last five years? (And how?)

I did an analysis recently of the kinds of anxieties that people were writing about to the main newspaper sex problem pages in the UK. That gives a pretty good sense of what people are most worried about at the moment. The top two problems were worries about sexual orientation, and worries about infidelity. So people are most concerned about whether they, or their partner, might be bisexual or gay, and about whether they, or their partner, is having an affair. The next most common fear was around not being sexually normal (the kinds of thing I’ve already mentioned).

So I think we definitely need to open up more conversations, in sex ed in school, in the media, and in sex advice, about the diversity of sexual orientations, and about how people manage the rules of their relationships around monogamy. From the research it seems that over a third of people have attractions to more than one gender, and over half people have sex outside of a monogamous relationship.Clearly people are very anxious about these things, but many don’t have the information and awareness to navigate their ways through it.

What sexual practices are you seeing more of?

After 50 Shade of Grey there is definitely more awareness around kink and BDSM, again without much good information for people about how they might engage in those kinds of sex. The novels definitely don’t give a great sense of how people might do this! There are some very useful books out there by people like Tristan Taormino, Mollena Williams, and Dossie Easton if people are looking to explore those areas.

What’s missing from the novel? In what ways is it not helpful as a sexual education? 

In the novel, the kink relationship takes place in a very unequal power dynamic. Ana has no experience at all, and Christian has loads, and he is also a hugely rich and powerful man. It’s really important, in real life, to think about power dynamics when it comes to sex because they can easily make one person feel that they can’t really say ‘no’ to something they dislike, or open up about what they’d like to do sexually. Ana is given very little opportunity to say what she might like to try – just a list of what Christian is into.

Also, Christian does not respect Ana’s boundaries in their wider relationship. He follows her when she’s asked for some space, and interferes with her work life. He also tells her that she can’t talk about the relationship to any of her friends, which is a big danger sign for abusive relationships. Both characters are trying to change each other into something they’re not. It is hard to have consensual sex under such unequal conditions.

Do you think we’re having better sex than previous generations?

Nope, sadly not. I’m always dismayed when I go and talk to students about these topics because their sex ed is generally no better than what I had thirty years ago. Also the current popular sex advice books (which I’ve just been analysing for a research project) just perpetuate the idea that there is one kind of ‘normal’ sex that everyone should be having. They emphasise penis-in-vagina sex and orgasm, and really don’t give any sense of diverse bodies and sexual practices, or much guidance around the issues of sexual orientation and monogamy that people are actually most worried about. Many are mostly a list of different positions in which to have penis-in-vagina sex, which really isn’t much help!

You could definitely say that many of the places that people are going to get help with sex are actually part of the problem, given that they still buy in to the idea of normal sex that everyone should be having, instead of emphasising diversity and helping people to tune in to what they want and to communicate that consensually to others.

What counts as cheating these days? Are we less monogamous – are there more shades of grey?

The evidence suggests that people do not have open conversations, early on in relationships, about monogamy. They generally just assume that the other person will have the same rules as they do. Many relationships then break down because they realise that they have different rules when something goes wrong. One person thought it was fine to stay friends with their ex and the other didn’t. One person thought it was okay to look at online porn and the other didn’t. The lines around monogamy and non-monogamy are blurred, and there are lots of different ways of doing relationships (think about friends-with-benefits, hook-ups, monogamish relationships, and polyamory, for example).

Again I think people just need more awareness about these things and guidance about how they might navigate differences in how much emotional and/or sexual openness they might like. We go into relationships assuming that we will share our monogamy rules and our sexual desires, but actually there are bound to be some differences. Assuming difference from the start, and talking about it it, could be a lot less painful than finding this out down the line.

Is that like the conversation about whether or not you want to have children –  important to have early? 

I think that’s another conversation that is worth having. In Rewriting the Rules, I suggest that it’s worth thinking about all the things that we often take for granted when committing to relationships (e.g. living together, sharing finances, having kids, going on holiday together, etc.) as well as monogamy, and having conversations about it. There are different ways of doing all these things, and it’s important to respect that each person can be coming from a different place and that is okay.

Is there a difference between how older and younger couples are negotiating or interpreting the new rules?

I’m not sure that there is much of an age difference here. Some older couples have found, through experience, that they want to do something differently to the perceived norm (e.g. living apart together, or having separate holidays, or swinging), whereas some younger couples follow what they think is expected of them. And, of course, there are older couples who feel that they can’t shift after a lifetime of following the perceived rules, and younger ones who do things differently from the start because of their politics, for example.

Do you think we’ve become more open minded and experimental, or more anxious and insecure?

Again I’d say the answer is both! There is both more openness and more anxiety.

What is still taboo?

We still have a lot of cultural bogeymen in relation to sex. The sex advice books that I read talk about a ‘sexless relationship’ like it is the worst thing in the world and would definitely lead to break up. They encourage people to have sex even when they don’t want it in order to avoid this. I think that is really problematic as it encourages non-consensual sex, and also lots of relationships are not sexual and are totally fine.

There are also taboos about people being ‘too sexual’ or having the ‘wrong’ kinds of sexual desires. People get so scared of being labelled a sex addict, or a freak, that they often try to hide from their sexual desires, rather than exploring them in a safe space, and figuring out which can be acted on consensually, and which they want to keep to fantasy only.

Are fantasies quite taboo in general?

Yep, people are often worried by their fantasies, again because we aren’t open about the reality that it is – in fact – normal to have a range of sexual fantasies, including about things we’d never act out. Like dreams, sexual fantasies can be a place where we work out all kinds of things. Emily Dubberley’s recent collection of British women’s sexual fantasies is a great place to look to realise just what a range of things people fantasies about.

What’s the most common advice you give out in therapy?

The most common thing I do is to try to help people to gently explore their ideas about what is normal and what everyone else is doing sexually. Those NATSAL statistics – that half of people see themselves as having sexual difficulties – definitely help with that.

Once we can stop trying so hard to fit a certain box of ‘normal’, then we can start to explore what our own desires actually are, which is a much better starting point.

What issues seem to be most upsetting and pertinent in therapy?

I think those I’ve already mentioned. People feeling that there are certain kinds of sex and relationships that they should have, and that they are an unacceptable human being if that isn’t what feels right to them.

This feeds into many mental health problems, particularly anxiety and depression, and also many relationship problems and conflicts. We really could help people a great deal if we could put out a different message of sexual and relationship diversity.

Do you think have any examples of the most common situations that you see in sex therapy?

One kind of situation I’ve seen a lot of is young people – often, but not always, women – who find penetration sex painful, but keep having it because they feel like this is what their partner will want, and they fear they might lose the relationship if they don’t. Often this is wrapped up in wider discomfort about their body. They’ve learnt to worry greatly that they are unattractive, so they can’t relax during sex. They’ve also never really learnt to enjoy their fantasies and their bodies so that sex might be a pleasurable thing.

Of course what we really need to do about this is to change the messages that young people are getting about their bodies, and about sex and relationships. But until that happens, therapy with clients like this is often about improving confidence, helping them tune into their desires, and challenging assumptions about sex. For example, it might be that they are assuming what kinds of sex their partner wants, and actually both of them would be very happy to take the pressure off penetration sex, by doing other stuff as well, or instead (e.g. mutual masturbation, oral sex, watching erotica together, role-play games, massage).

Another common situation at the moment is people – often, but not always, men – who are disturbed by the kinds of online porn they’re looking at or how much they’re looking at it. Again, the ideas around ‘normal’ sex often mean that they are terrified to think too much about it in case they discover that they are abnormal or ‘deviant’ in some way. Often they then get into a pattern of just trying not to do it at all, and then going back to it and feeling deeply ashamed afterwards.

Again, the best answer here would be to change our cultural ideas about sex, so that we were much more open about the diverse range of sexual practice that are absolutely fine, as well as being much clearer about the lines between consensual sex and non-consensual sex. If sex education throughout school explored those kinds of things then young people would have a much better idea about how to navigate their sexual fantasies and online sexual spaces.

However, in the absence of that cultural shift, therapy can provide a safe space for people to be open about what turns them on, and to start to gently understand what it means to them (rather than just trying to avoid it completely, or get sucked into it totally). Exploring ideas of consent and ethical treatment of ourselves, and other people, can help clients consider their own ethics around watching porn, and engaging in sex, and the lines that they want to draw between fantasy and reality.

When was the last time you were shocked in the therapy room?

In a way every time that I hear another person in so much pain because they are trying to match up to this impossible ideal of normal sex, instead of exploring what they might actually enjoy. That is pretty shocking when you think about it.

If you could give one piece of advice to the nation when it comes to sex, what would it be?

Stop trying to be ‘normal’!

Find out more

My book, website, and podcasts with Justin Hancock address all these subjects in more detail.

The post Sex therapy: Stop trying to be ‘normal’ appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

The Sessions

The film, based on an autobiographical essay On Seeing a Sex Surrogate, follows Mark O’Brien (played by John Hawkes) as he attempts to find a sexual relationship. At 38, Mark has had to spend most of his life in an iron lung since having polio as a child and is only able to be outside of the machine for two or three hours at a stretch, still lying on a gurney and reliant on his mouth for typing or making phonecalls, and on paid carers to move him around.

After being opened up to the possibilities of love, but subsequently rejected, by a potential partner, Mark decides that he wants to experience sex. A therapist refers him to a sexual surrogate: an expert practitioner who engages in sexual therapy and education through both conversation and sexual intimacy with their clients (unlike sex therapists whose professional boundaries forbid physical contact). Cheryl Cohen-Green (played by a rightly Oscar-nominated Helen Hunt) sees the highly anxious Mark for a number of sessions and helps him to explore his fears and hopes around sex, as well as experiencing various sexual practices, with the aim that he will then have sexual knowledge and skills to take into future relationships. The film takes us through both the physical and emotional aspects of the sessions and reveals the impact of these on both main characters as well as on a number of beautifully drawn additional people in Mark’s life including friends, carers and his priest (William H. Macy on cracking form).

What can we all learn from The Sessions?

The film was moving without ever straying into sentimentality, and funny whist retaining a deep commitment to the humanity of all of the characters. It contained, for me, many important messages, particularly about the value of being open to connections with others (wherever those happen) and of being able to express one’s vulnerability and uncertainty. I loved that, whilst the main character did want to have a romantic and sexual relationship, we also saw that romantic relationships are not necessarily sexual, sexual relationships are not necessarily romantic, and the other relationships in life (such as those with the priest, friend and carer) are equally valuable in their own ways.

Just as Hope Springs (which I wrote about here) does for ageing and sex, The Sessions directly challenges the common, and deeply problematic, misperception that disabled people cannot and/or should not be sexual. Clearly Mark is just as needing, and capable, of both sex and love as anybody else, and those who are able to relate with him in any kind of mutual way (rather than being unable to see past his body) are the richer for it.

The movie relays this message in a far more subtle and sophisticated manner than I could possibly do justice to so I will leave that point there. Instead, in the rest of this post, I want to ask what all of us might learn about sex from the sessions depicted in the movie. If we haven’t experienced disability it would be too easy to come out of this film assuming that what happens is only relevant to ‘other people’, or possibly to ourselves at some future time of injury, older age, or illness, but not now. Actually I think that we could gain a lot from considering the ideas around sex in this film as relevant to all kinds of people and bodies.

Sex in The Sessions

It is striking to me that the thing which makes sex with Cheryl most difficult for Mark has little to do with what his body is and is not capable of. Rather, as for so many of us, it has much more to do with his own anxieties about sex. These come from the messages which he has received about what kinds of sex are and are not okay, about what sex means, and about what it should involve.

It is extremely common for people to report sexual difficulties (more than half of people according to most surveys, as I mention in the sex chapter of my book). And even those who don’t report such problems have all kinds of ideas which get in the way of them having a pleasurable or fulfilling experience. This is a truly psychosocial issue because our psychological experience of anxiety, discomfort and self-doubt is intrinsically related to the social understandings of sex that surround us. That social stuff operates through us in the form of self-monitoring. It is like there is somebody inside observing and commenting that we might look ugly in this position; or that our partner is probably expecting us to do this now; that we’ve taken too long over something, or not long enough; or that it isn’t okay to do that because it is too dirty or weird or not ‘proper sex’. All of those kinds of internal commentaries relate to social messages about who should be having sex and in what ways.

So not only does Mark need help to believe that it is okay for somebody with his body to pursue sex at all, he also struggles with messages that sex is only acceptable in a certain kind of relationship (definitely not one with a sexual surrogate), and with ideas about what counts as sex. He has many ‘shoulds and oughts’ about sex which we will recognise from the social world that we share with him.

Cheryl challenges these perceptions well in her work with Mark. Instead of reinforcing his idea that penis-in-vagina sex is ‘proper’ sex, she introduces him to a wide range of sexual practices including those that do and do not involve the genitals, as well as the idea that certain roles or places (like motels) might be experienced sexually by people as well as certain acts. She jokes about taken-for-granted rules about sex like the idea that after fondling one breast it is ‘kindof a rule’ that you have to fondle the other one.

Whilst Mark does feel good when he meets his aim of orgasming inside a woman and her orgasming too, he later comments that it wasn’t any better than many of the other practices they engaged in, and not even as good as some. Mark also orgasms quickly on any kind of genital contact or even visual stimulation. At first he regards this as a failure but Cheryl helpfully challenges the common assumption that a (male) orgasm means the end of sex. They enjoy both sex without orgasm and sex after orgasm, and the concept that simultaneous orgasm is the epitome of good sex is challenged when it is clear that Mark can enjoy Cheryl’s orgasm more from having already had his and being able to focus on her.

What the film helpfully points out – if we are able to see it – is that we all have different kinds of bodies that work in different ways. Instead of this being a cause for shame and distress as we all try (or pretend) to meet up to some narrow, limiting standard of sex (or avoid sex entirely if we don’t), we could embrace this diversity and make it the starting point for each new sexual conversation. Rather than going in with assumptions about how our body, and our partner’s, ought to work, we could go in assuming that this will be a new and different body and being open to the inevitably new and different experience it will bring.

Our concerns could be not ‘will I get an erection?’, ‘will it last long enough?’, ‘will I be able to be penetrated?’, ‘will I come at the right time?’ but rather ‘how does this person’s body work?’, ‘what do they like having touched?’, ‘what other kinds of stimulation do they enjoy?’, ‘how do I respond to what they do?’, ‘what can I tell them about how I work with my words and with my body?’, ‘what new ways will I discover with them that I haven’t with other people?’. With such questions it ceases to matter whether or not we orgasm from penetration, or at all, or whether we get erections or can be penetrated. We can put down those anxieties and just open up to the conversation as it unfolds.

I will leave the details of how this might work in practice to future posts on sex communication and consent (and several suggestions are also already made in my book). However some ideas – many of which are touched upon in the movie – which can be helpful include:

• Exploring the whole of a partner’s body rather than focusing on assumed ‘erogenous zones’ and asking a partner to feed back to us on how each touch is for them (avoiding what they dislike in future), and doing the same thing the other way around.
• Practising mindfulness, or being in the moment. at other times in life (washing the dishes, sitting still, walking) to cultivate that capacity and bringing it to sex.
• Reflecting on our assumptions about sex, whether they are helpful, and how they can get in the way of our pleasure and ability to be in the moment.
• Communicating about what we enjoy sexually with partners outside of explicitly sexual situations (e.g. in conversation, on the phone, or online), perhaps sharing fantasies or considering all the possible sexual practices that we are aware of together.

Find out more

Since writing this blog post I’ve written a whole book, with Justin Hancock, which explores many of these ideas further: Enjoy Sex (How, When and IF You Want To). Also check out our joint website: megjohnandjustin.com.

The post What can we all learn about sex from The Sessions? appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

On one level I loved the movie. The performances were all astonishingly good, the comedy was pitched perfectly and had me laughing out loud, and I shed a tear or two in the darkest hour before the dawn because it was such a good depiction of how lonely it is possible to be in a relationship.

However, as soon as I left the theatre, I started to reflect on the messages about sex and relationships in the film and found some of them pretty problematic. In this post I’ll go through a few of the ideas from the film, saying why I question whether these are good sex and relationship therapy.

Spoiler alert: I have written in detail about the film so don’t read on if you want to suspend disbelief and enjoy the movie like I did before engaging your critical faculties!

Fiction: Relationships are tough – Fact: Relationships are tough

One of the best things about the movie is that it doesn’t present a totally Hollywoodised version of relationships as some perfect happily-ever-after. The couple, Kay and Arnold, have not found that the love and sex that were present at the start of their relationship have stayed constant all the way through. They have changed over time, as all people do, and they have found they can’t communicate very well and don’t feel close any more. Kay captures a common experience well: ‘It shouldn’t be hard to touch a person that you love. But it is.’

Fiction: Older people can still want sex – Fact: Older people can still want sex

Another big plus was the depiction of people in their sixties as just as sexual beings as the people in their twenties and thirties who we are more used to seeing in films. This includes a number of realistic sex scenes which are a rarity in mainstream cinema. It is often assumed that people cease being sexual as they age, with a great deal of prejudice and ridicule around sex between older people, so it was nice to see this challenged. Also the therapist in the movie did not make the assumption that the couple should stop caring about sex, which many professionals do make when confronted with older people, or people with disabilities or health problems.

Fiction: It’s good to communicate in relationships – Fact: It’s good to communicate in relationships

The relationship between the main characters does improve and this seems to be due to the fact that they’ve started communicating with each other during therapy. However I did have some sympathy with Tommy Lee Jones’ character when he questioned whether blurting out all of the resentments that had developed over the relationship was really a good idea. In the early weeks of relationship therapy I often see clients individually (alternating weeks) so they can have a free space to talk about how the relationship is for them and think about the ways in which they might kindly communicate this to their partners.

Secrets and lies are not a great idea in relationships, but it is also valuable to learn what each other’s vulnerabilities are and to tread gently around these. Having some empathy for how what we say might be received makes it easier for the other person to hear it.

Fiction: Space can help a lot – Fact: Space can help a lot

One key moment in the movie was when both characters went off and had a day on their own. This seemed to enable them to become closer and take more of a risk with each other. I thought that this was a nice portrayal of how valuable space is for a relationship. Time apart helps to remind us of who we are with other people as well as with our partner, so we are less focused just upon the relationship and how difficult it is. We can also get some fulfillment from ourselves and from other people so that we stop expecting the relationship to be everything for us. For example, Kay got the reassurance she wanted from people she met in a bar and that took the pressure off Arnold. Arnold was able to calm down. Time apart also often means that we are able to see our partners more fully rather than fixing them as just one side of who they are (boring or difficult, for example).

Fiction: Relationships must be sexual – Fact: Relationships can be sexual or not

Perhaps the main problem with the movie is that it reinforces the common myth that the romantic relationships must be sexual all the way through and that not being sexual is a sign that there is a problem. This is a big ask given how long relationships last, and Esther Perel has written very well on the difficulties of sustaining relationships that are both warm and hot. Many relationships go through long periods of not being sexual, some are never sexual, some cease being sexual at a certain point, and some involve partners who get their sexual desires met in other ways (e.g. with other people or with pornography, erotica, fantasy and/or solo sex). Interestingly open relationships are twice presented as a big joke in the movie. Of course they might not be the thing for Kay and Arnold, but they do work for many people so it is a shame to ridicule them.

Asexual communities are currently raising awareness of the fact that it is perfectly possible to not experience sexual attraction. The therapist in Hope Springs seemed to assume that Kay and Arnold had to recapture their sexual relationship, rather than really exploring whether this was something that they wanted and, if so, why it was important, and the different possible ways of doing this.

Fiction: People should sleep together – Fact: It is fine to sleep apart

Another common myth reproduced in the film is that sleeping in separate beds/bedrooms is a sign of relationship problems. This is not necessarily the case at all. Some people love sleeping together and some hate it, and it may well change over a relationship (for example if people develop different sleeping routines or if one person snores or moves a lot in their sleep). Indeed having separate rooms to retreat to could be a very helpful way of getting the kind of space that can be so valuable to relationships.

Fiction: There is one thing called intimacy – Fact: There are many different kinds of intimacy

Carrell’s therapist also seems to equate sexual, physical and emotional intimacy and focuses on getting Kay and Arnold to be physically and sexually close. Personally I would have focused more upon their relationship in general rather than forcing physical/sexual closeness before they were communicating well. And, as mentioned above, it is perfectly possible to have each of these kinds of intimacy without the others.

Fiction: Sex is penis-in-vagina intercourse – Fact: There are many different kinds of sex

There is a moment in the movie where the couple are about to have sex and Arnold loses his erection. Kay is very unhappy after this and nearly leaves because she assumes that it means that he doesn’t find her attractive. Everything is better when they manage to have ‘successful’ penis-in-vagina intercourse. There are a whole load of sex myths in here. Clearly penis-in-vagina intercourse is represented as ‘real’, ‘proper’ sex, and sex is seen as requiring an erect penis and ending in ejaculation. There isn’t, for example, the possibility of sex which is focused on Kay’s pleasure, or the possibility of Kay and Arnold enjoying less genitally-focused forms of pleasure. Also erections are equated with attraction when these things may, or may not, be related (there are many other reasons why somebody might lose an erection).

Fiction: It is okay to go ahead with sex without much communication – Fact: Communication first is vital

When the therapist asks Kay and Arnold what they fantasise about sexually Kay struggles to come up with anything, and Arnold manages a couple of possibilities (oral sex and threesomes). The conversation is left there rather than pursuing Kay’s desires or really checking out whether she shares any of Arnold’s desires (teasing apart the cultural views of these activities from her own feelings). The real danger of this is that people will then feel forced into having sex that they don’t want.  At the end of the film Kay seems to be so relieved that she and Arnold are finally having sex that what she might enjoy sexually seems to have disappeared (she has been vague about whether missionary position sex is pleasurable or orgasmic for her).

If people don’t communicate about their sexual desires there is a significant risk that the sex they have will not really be something that they have consented to. It can be very painful to be a person who ends up having sex that they really don’t enjoy (like Kay when she attempts oral sex in the movie theatre because she thinks this is what Arnold wants). It can also be very difficult to be a person who realises that the person they are having sex with isn’t enjoying it (as Arnold speaks about as a key reason why he stopped having sex with Kay).

With somebody like Kay who struggles to know what she desires I would want to work with her on this before doing anything (e.g. reading erotic fiction, exploring her own body). Also it would be useful to explore the menu of what is possible physically and sexually to see whether there was any common ground (rather than pushing them towards one, restrictive, version of sex). It would be useful for Kay and Arnold to make a ‘yes, no, maybe’ list of all the sexual and physical practices that they are aware of, and whether they are interested in them (one of the possibilities I discuss in the sex chapter of Rewriting the Rules).

Overall it is great to see a movie depicting the challenges of romantic relationships and including sex and relationship therapy as a possibility. However it is about time that film-makers started to think a bit more critically about sex and about the diversity of possibilities for a good relationship.

Find out more:

Check out my book with Justin Hancock, Enjoy Sex, and our joint website.

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