FOSTERING A HEALTHY ATTITUDE TOWARDS DESIRE: my Australian podcast
I was on a podcast out of Australia recently. Grab a beverage and spend 50 informal minutes with me. I haven’t done an interview like this before. I talk about: my lens on the world as a child how I developed a positive outlook on sexuality personal questions about my spare time communication during doggie […]
Erotic Integrity – Low Desire
It’s important to note that low desire is not a label, a permanent diagnosis, or a flaw – it’s a position in the system. Every couple is a system, and in each system there is generally a low desire partner and a high desire partner. Those positions are generally pretty stable. It is rare that both partners have the same appetite for sex all the time. When one person wants sex more than the other, it’s called Desire Discrepancy in sexological psychobabble. Low desire is a relational issue that causes suffering when it is at odds with the partner’s higher desire and interpersonal stress is incurred.
It’s never about sex
I’ve been saying for years that it’s never about sex. So recently I changed my tagline. Let me explain. People think that sex is easy, happens naturally, and that when there’s a glitch, it’s about the sex. The problem isn’t getting the penis into the vagina (assuming a hetero model for the sake of this […]
Unconditional love, or Personality vs the person
Unconditional love, or Personality vs the person Personality is the assemblage of defense mechanism, sometimes armor, that we develop early in life as a result of intolerable emotional pain. It’s a way that we disconnect from our authenticity. These defense mechanisms become a personality structure, sometimes diagnosable via a label from the DSM (Diagnostic & […]
Should I stay or should I leave?
In the 30 yrs since I became a sex therapist I have seen frustrated, sad, confused people who lie in bed at night next to a mate they feel estranged from, not knowing how to bridge the gap. They want to reconnect but are at a loss for how to do so. And then they […]
Desire vs Arousal
I know you may have heard me, either in my office, on the radio, or in my writings, mention the difference between desire vs arousal. But it bears repeating. Here is my brief video description of the difference. I try to offer this lens as a more compassionate approach. People often come in to sex therapy […]
