SEX THERAPY: WORKING TOGETHER FOR PLEASURE
Here is some advice that can help you and your partner through this difficult time:
• Remember, no one is to blame. Assigning blame is always unproductive and often unjustified. Look to the future, not the past. Use your time and energy to get appropriate help solving the problem.
• Think in terms of we—not just he, or me. People who successfully overcome their difficulties work together as a team. They grow stronger as a couple as they confront and solve the problem.
Just examine Marianne’s story to find out how important these guidelines are.
Marianne, a 35-year-old personnel manager, has been happily married to Jack for almost a decade. If you asked her, she’d make no bones about describing herself as aggressive, smart and capable. She and Jack have had their ups and downs, but generally their marriage has been strong. Their friends call them a happy couple.
But their friends haven’t seen their private side. When Jack lost his ability to get an erection, Marianne felt threatened and blamed herself. Although she usually communicated well with her husband, she knew this subject upset him. Rather than make him more worried, she kept her feelings a secret for a long, painful time. The results were far-reaching. “I thought it was my fault—initially,” says Marianne. She had always been might mean the end of something important that she enjoyed, that also brought them close emotionally.
But in many ways, Marianne was fortunate. Jack, although hurting and depressed himself, was able to reach out to her and reassure her that she was not to blame for his difficulty, and that he still found her attractive and wanted her sexually. And Marianne had other responsibilities, like her job, that demanded much of her energy and prevented her from becoming obsessed with the sexual problem. And even though she was emotionally hurt, Marianne was determined not to let the erection difficulty create a barrier between her husband and herself. She made special efforts to let Jack know she cared about him and wanted to be physically close to him—intercourse or not.
Although Marianne was careful not to spend all of her time concentrating on the lack of potency, neither did she withdraw from her husband. She gave him plenty of affection and didn’t shy away from being physical with him.
And perhaps as important, she took an active role in getting help. She urged him to check whether there was a physical cause. As it turned out, tests showed that Jack did not have a physical cause for his lack of erection. What he did have was an overload of stress, anxiety and tension—feelings he had been keeping bottled up inside. Sex therapy turned out to be the right treatment.
Marianne’s openness and willingness to help were important to the sex therapy. She didn’t regard the erection problem as Jack’s alone, and she did not withdraw sexually. She examined her own expectations and beliefs. She worked to keep her tendency to blame herself from overwhelming her by encouraging her husband to seek a solution.
Marianne and Jack had a number of important things in their favor:
• They were very committed to each other.
• They had a history of a mutually satisfying and pleasurable sexual relationship,
• They made efforts to communicate with each other, although both felt bad.
• They sought help early on in the situation.
In short, they took an active stance instead of a passive approach.
Encouraging Jack to get an evaluation was a smart move on Marianne’s part. Sometimes knowing the cause makes it easier to cope with the problem, because it removes the stress of being in a state of limbo.
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