If you and your partner have different desire levels, have trouble communicating your sexual needs, or have stopped having sex altogether, it may be time for you to try sex therapy as a couple. Sooner is better than later in addressing issues of intimacy.
What happens in couples sex therapy?
You each:
- get in touch with your sexual desires,
- accept your erotic self,
- build a vocabulary for discussing sexual problems, and
- learn exercises to rebuild intimacy.
If you are experiencing specific sexual function problems, coming to sex counseling together can help you solve the issues as a team, which in itself helps create closeness.
Starting at the Beginning
Sometimes negative experiences, such as PTSD, guilt, shame, abuse or trauma, can impact on your sex life years or even decades later. A negative body image, excessive pornography and infidelity can also impair one’s sexual interest or performance.
In couples sex therapy, we first take each person’s sexual history to determine whether something from the past is still part of either partner’s current sexual feelings/behaviors.
We look closely at any functional issues–such as erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, vaginismus, difficulty with orgasm and/or low libido–to determine whether there may be a physical or psychological element to the problem. Sometimes this involves referring the couple to a doctor or psychiatrist.
Many couples have been misinformed about what constitutes a “normal” sex life looks like. Sex therapy for couples can include relationship and sex education, for example, how satisfying other sexual activities–besides intercourse—can be.
Sex as Part of a Healthy Lifestyle
Marriages and committed couples can survive low- or no-sex relationships, but the partnership will not be optimal. Sex is part of health, and if your life does not include sexual encounters, you are missing out as an individual and a couple!
Therapy that addresses couples sexuality builds more satisfying lives. It aids intimacy and closeness, essential to the longevity of any dedicated relationship.