I wrote an article for SICK! on this topic which you can read here (this was eventually developed into my book The Psychology of Sex)

Also the festival have now published the podcast of our debate including some very interesting discussions about same-sex marriage and sexual ‘dysfunction’, amongst other topics.

The post Why be normal? Podcast goes live appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

They asked me to submit something that particularly addressed mental health in the context of relationships, so I wrote this article on supporting people in our lives when they’re struggling.

Most of us will experience a mental health difficulty like depression, anxiety or addiction during our lives. And at some point, most of us will have a friend or family member who is mentally unwell.

Our culture tends to view people with mental health problems in one of two ways. Either they have brought it on themselves and need to ‘pull their socks up’, or they have a ‘disorder’ and need help because they’re incapable of helping themselves.

When faced with a friend who is suffering it is tempting either to blame them for their problems and try to shake them out of it, or to leap into ‘rescuer’ mode and try to fix them.

Neither extreme is a good solution. We can end up angry and resentful if we hold them responsible for their problems, or burnt out from all our attempts to help. They can end up more defeated and self-critical than ever if they feel culpable, or kept in a guilty and powerless state if they can’t respond to our efforts.

As a therapist and psychology academic I am often asked to give advice on supporting friends when they’re in difficulty. Here are seven thoughts on how you can help without either rescuing or blaming.

1. Listen.

If we’ve had a particular difficulty ourselves, or know somebody else who has, it’s easy to assume we know what it’s all about. But these things can be very different for different people, so it is vital to start with listening to what it’s like for your friend. Some people experience depression as a flat low feeling, whereas for others it feels more desperate and frightening. Some people harm themselves for a release of tension, whereas for others it is a punishment, or a kind of soothing.

Similarly we might have thoughts about what will help our friends based on our own experiences or assumptions, but it is better to check in with them. If they are struggling they may not know for sure what’s best, but they might know what to avoid because it makes things worse. You could make a list together of some possibly helpful things to experiment with.

2. Be present with them.

Once somebody has a label like ‘depression’, ‘PTSD’ or ‘personality disorder’, people around them often start to treat them very differently. If somebody was distressed, or quiet, or acting strangely last time we saw them, it is easy to expect that they’ll be the same the next time. Often one of the best things we can offer, as a friend, is to be present with them however they are on this particular occasion, instead of treating them as their label, or as how they were last time.

It can be useful to have some time out ourselves, before seeing them, in order to put ourselves in a good place to be with them as they are today. We may have to scale down the kinds of things we normally do together, but doing an activity that isn’t all about their mental health can really help.

3. Get support yourself.

If somebody we care about is suffering it can take a big toll on us too, for all kinds of reasons. We may feel guilty or hopeless, we might give a lot of our time and energy to supporting them, or we might find ourselves picking up on their feelings and finding that we’re also low or anxious after seeing them. It’s important that supporters get support too. Think about who you could lean on a little more. There are helplines and counsellors available for carers and others in supporting roles.

4. Know the limits of what you can offer.

When somebody is suffering we often want to do anything we can to help, and it is easy to offer more than we’re able to give. The experience of offering something and then having to pull it away again can be rough on both of you. If your friend asks for a particular kind of support it is okay to ask for some time to think about it before responding. Think about the other demands in your life, what your limitations are, and how long you might be able to offer it for.

5. Be part of a wider support network.

Linked to point 4, everyone has different skills and none of us can be everything to somebody. You might be great at practical support but not very good at sitting with somebody who is crying. You might be a wonderful person in a crisis, but need a lot of space if you’re around somebody else day in day out. For these reasons the ideal situation is to have a network of support rather than just you. Think about whether there are others – friends, family, professionals – who could offer support too.

6. Maintain your boundaries.

Most people who are suffering will be kind to those around them, but some people can become quite insular when they are struggling. It is definitely important to give them a break on this, but it is also important that you know your boundaries. For example, it’s not okay for your friend to ask you to keep the fact that you’re supporting them a secret; or to expect you to be their only means of support or their therapist; or for you to be the recipient of threats or other behaviours which would be considered abusive under other circumstances. It is okay for you to change what you can offer if these things happen, or if your situation changes.

7. Be flexible.

Finally, it is easy to get stuck in your role as your friend’s supporter. Over time this can actually make it more difficult for them to shift out of their role as the one needing support. Don’t treat your friend as somebody who only gets help and never gives it. When we’re suffering it can feel incredibly powerful to realise that we are valued and still capable of supporting others – even in small ways.

Also, there will certainly be times in your lives when your positions are reversed and you are the one needing help. After what they’ve been through your friend may well have just the expertise and experience you need, so be prepared for your roles in each other’s lives to shift over time.

More information.

Mind has an extensive section on supporting people with mental health problems, and lists of further contacts.

Rethink provides information and a helpline for carers, friends and family.

There are also support groups and helplines available for those offering ongoing support through www.carersuk.org and www.carers.org.

The post Supporting each other through mental health struggles 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.

I’ve reviewed the book over on Network Magazine.

The request from Network magazine to review New Directions was a timely one for me. The book raises issues that are very much alive in my world of UK sex therapy at the moment, as well as in the American and Canadian context in which most of the contributing authors are writing.

In some ways the book’s subtitle is more accurate than the main title because it presents a genuine alternative to standard thinking in sex therapy. Rather than providing one possible newdirection, it gives us a much-needed critique of existing ways of understanding, and working with, sex in the therapy room.

The backdrop to this, for those who aren’t familiar with sex therapy, is one of increasing categorization and measurement of sexual problems, and medicalization and individualization of treatments. Several of the contributors to the collection set out a history of sex therapy which began with Masters and Johnsons’ attempts to determine a sexual response cycle across all humans; continued with the delineation of different “sexual dysfunctions” in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM); and culminated in a post-Viagra rush to pharmaceutical and physiological solutions and randomized control trial tests of their effectiveness.

The authors in this edited book share a skepticism toward this standard approach to sex therapy and a supreme discomfort with the underlying assumptions about sex. Instead of categorizing sexual “dysfunctions” (such as “erectile disorder” or “female orgasmic disorder”), contributors suggest that any sexual experience (including erections, orgasms, or their lack) will have very different meanings for each person, related to the relationships and wider culture in which they are embedded. Therefore instead of “treatment” of problems with specific medical or behavioural interventions, the therapeutic task becomes one understanding clients’ experiences and what they mean for them. Read more…

The post Book review: New Directions in Sex Therapy appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

My award was the last one of the night to be announced so I was extremely nervous by the time they got to me. Despite regularly talking to large audiences, the thought of going up on stage was absolutely terrifying. My main worry was that nobody would know why I was there: that they would see me as something of a fraud compared to all the performers, activists and practitioners who had preceded me who are so well known in these worlds.

The audience mainly consisted of members of the kink and related communities who were also staying on for the rest of the Night of the Senses ball, including those in Outsiders (the sex and disability charity which the event was fundraising for). These are very important groups for me because so much of the academic work that I’ve done has been within such communities and with the aim of increasing awareness of them beyond the stereotypes and myths that frequently circulate. I’ve always tried my hardest to make my work accountable to the people who are involved in it, and to the wider communities that they come from, but this seemed to be a real test of that. Would they see my writing as valuable? Would they even know who I was?

I needn’t have worried because the announcement of my award received a wonderful round of applause. As I made my way to the stage my legs were shaking, and I have very little recollection of what I said other than of hugging the startled compere. So I’ll use the opportunity of the rest of this post to say what I wanted say then about why this award meant so much more to me than almost any other that I could have received.

A decade ago when I started researching sexual communities, very few people in my discipline of psychology studied the kinds of groups that I was working with: the kink, bisexual and polyamorous communities. Those who did were generally seeking to conduct research which would explain why some strange people deviated from ordinary sexual behaviour: by engaging in practices other than genital sex, by falling outside the gay/straight binary, or by being in sexual relationships with more than one person.

I felt that the much more important, and less patronising, question to ask was what we could all learn from people in these communities who had – by necessity – examined issues of sexuality, gender and relationships closely and come up with many different ways of doing things. Inspired by the work of Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues, my assumption was always that there were a diversity of possible ways of being sexual and relating to others and that there would be real value in making people more aware of this. My work as a sex therapist has brought home just how much rigid ideas around sex and sexuality are responsible for all kinds of pain and suffering: from the teenage girl trying to figure out what to do sexually so as not to be labelled too tight or slutty, to the person who forces themselves to have sex for fear of losing their partner, to the people with disabilities who struggle to find any representations of themselves as sexual beings, to the many people who live in fear of their sexual desires (or lack of them) being exposed because they don’t fit into what they’ve been told counts as ‘normal’.

It hasn’t always been easy working in this area. At the start many colleagues found it embarrassing and questioned the legitimacy of what I was doing. Being open about my own involvement in the communities I was studying – so that people could evaluate my work with knowledge of my potential biases – led to exposure and judgement that was very painful at times. But over the last few years it seems that more and more academics have been taking these areas seriously and asking the same kinds of questions as me, as you can see if you check out the papers in the journal I co-edit, Psychology & Sexuality. Also colleagues in other areas have become much more interested and supportive. And public awareness has shifted such that media reports are far less likely to demonise or ridicule either the communities or the research.

Last year I published my book, Rewriting the Rules, which brings much of the work that I’ve been doing to a general audience. The response has been completely positive from academics and non-academics alike. I’m very grateful to my university – The Open University – who have been nothing but supportive, publishing The Bisexuality Report, launching my book, and publicising my Erotic Award on their website.

This year Christina Richards and I are publishing a book on sexuality and gender for therapists and health practitioners. This will hopefully make professionals more aware of the needs of people across diverse sexualities and genders, whether ‘normative’ or ‘non-normative’. I’m engaging again with kink communities to explore the sophisticated understandings of consent that are developing there which may be helpful more broadly given the current climate regarding sexual abuse. Finally, I’m starting a project with Rosalind Gill and Laura Harvey analysing sex advice in self-help books, problem pages, and TV shows. I’m hopeful that this work can lead to the publication of some more positive sex advice which is inclusive of all of our sexual practices, identities and experiences.

I’m so grateful to all of the people and communities who have supported my work over the years and who have taken part in it for little direct reward. There is no way that I could have done all this without them, and that is why this award means the world to me.

The post Erotic Award 2013: Why it meant so much 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.

The post Sex and relationships: Fiction and fact in Hope Springs appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

For the Sexual Cultures conference at Brunel 2012 I gave a presentation about how we view sex in our culture, specifically focusing on the way it is understood in medicine and mainstream sex therapy, compared to the way that it is understood by people in various sexual communities.

Mainly I’m making the point (which I also make in Rewriting the Rules) that the mainstream sexual categories we have give us a rather limited and fixed idea of what sex is. Straying outside this idea is seen as being abnormal or ‘dysfunctional’. In contrast, groups like bisexual, asexual, BDSM and slash communities, often have a more diverse and fluid understanding of what sex is and how it may differ between people and in the same person over time.

The idea in the presentation was to revisit Gayle Rubin‘s ‘sex hierarchy’ diagram (from her classic paper: Thinking Sex) where she illustrates how the dominant way of viewing sex in our culture is that we have to stay within a ‘charmed circle’ of good, natural, normal, acceptable sexuality, and that we will be seen as bad, mad, dangerous or wrong if we stray outside of this:

I started to wonder what the circles might look like if we placed the different understandings of sex, which have emerged from various sexual communities, in the centre. This is what I have come up with so far, but it’s definitely a work in progress:

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