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	Thursday, October 14, 2004

Schnarch expands on the theme I discussed yesterday:

[Wha]t part of you do you use to touch -- meaning make contact with -- your partner? Do you touch your partner from the best in you? Or do you reach out from the part that feels inadequate or wants to hide? If you do it from that part, you'll drop the emotional connection and resort to [just] touching each other's genitals to try to get something going.

Part of Schnarch's thesis is married sex is often an impersonal act. Yes, really. He thinks that couples tend to hold themselves away from each other even in the so-called "act of love," because participating fully can be too scary.

It seems to me that so-called "frigid" women do this from the front end, literally holding off their desire. If they don't feel like having sex, they won't have to expose their inner selves to their husbands -- or have to see and acknowledge his distance in the act. Men who are holding themselves back from their wives, on the other hand, tend to become fixated on fantasy or the physical acts and sensations they want in order to avoid personal exposure or deeper disappointments. (Their wives intuit their distance and feel "used" as a result: "He doesn't love me, he just wants to get his thing in me.")

Schnarch believes that our culture induces us to believe some things about relationships that just aren't true, that cause couples to create false expectations for their marriages (my emphasis).

For example, we've taken one kind of intimacy -- the type in which our partner accepts and validates us -- and convinced ourselves this is what intimacy is per se. Thus, we assume that intimacy hinges on acceptance and validation from our partner. Likewise we've confused "good communication" with being understood the way we want and getting the response we expect. ...

We're driven by something that makes us look like we crave intimacy, but in fact we're after something else: we want someone else to make us feel acceptable and worthwhile. We've assigned the label "intimacy" to what we want (validation and reciprocal disclosure) and developed pop psychologies that give it to us -- while keeping true intimacy away. We've distorted what intimacy is, how it feels, how much we really want it, and how best to get it. Once we realize that intimacy is not always soothing and often makes us feel insecure, it is clear why we back away from it.

Another thing that screws us up, Schnarch holds, is our truncated view of sex as a simple biological drive, just like our need for food. This is why some therapists view a lack of desire as "sexual anorexia," sort of an erotic "eating disorder." That idea also holds the hope that we can or will soon be able to medicate the problem away.

Superficially, the common idea that sex is a natural biological drive seems reasonable. After all, isn't sex drive a function of hormones? Isn't sex encoded in all animals? If sex drive weren't "normal," wouldn't our species die out?

While there's some truth to these notions, they limit our perspective on human sexuality and interfere with sexual satisfaction. We don't realize that seeing sex as a "drive" makes us focus on relieving sexual tensions rather than wanting our partner. It may be true that the more tension ("horny") people feel, the more they tend to seek relief -- but if that's the only reason you think your partner wants to be with you it tends to kill sex....

This strictly biological approach is also the reason why so many common kinds of sex therapy don't work. Most of them involve training yourself to be detached from the total experience of sex with your partner, either in your mind or in your body. For example, in the "squeeze" method of treating premature ejaculation, a man has to concentrate on his reactions -- and not let his partner "get" to him -- in order to be able to withdraw his penis and clamp down on it to prevent his orgasm (a procedure Schnarch calls a "sexual Heimlich maneuver"). Needless to say, this ruins the continuity of the experience for both partners.

I can just imagine the poor wife being tuned to only one internal channel while she's having sex with her husband under this treatment regimen: "He's getting too excited...I better not let myself go too much, it might make him come...is he going to whip it out NOW? or maybe NOW? or NOW?

Talk about Distraction!

These "re-training" approaches can actually make things worse between a couple than they were before therapy, because all the emphasis is on the mechanics of sexual activity (positions, procedures, performances). And as with any endeavor that emphasizes Doing Things Right, anxiety always follows.

Our near-sightedness blinds us to the ways our incomplete views of sex make us feel inadequate: once you adopt the seemingly sex-positive view that "sex is a natural function," the only way to explain sexual dysfunction or disinterest is to look for pathological explanations. When something goes wrong sexually we're set up to ask ourselves, "If sexual response and interest are natural, then why am I not responding or even wanting to respond?" ...

In the midst of marital discord few of us have the courage to consider that the beliefs and practices we share with many couples are the source of our misery. We usually think problems with sex and intimacy are caused by how we're uniquely screwed up. I propose, instead, that they're often caused by being normal. If you're well-adjusted to ill-fitting beliefs that permeate society, you're going to have trouble.

Notice that Schnarch used the word "courage"? More on that later.

Next: My childhood made me do it?

Passionate Marriage Discussion: 1 2 3 4

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