When you are a new mom or your kids a still little sex can be one more chore to check off the list. Kind of like a third shift after all the other duties of life.  Resentment easily builds between partners when decreases is sexual frequency follow the birth of a child/children  and the frequency never seems to return.  Husbands and wives can find this time very challenging to have any room for “us”.  I have a few things to tell you.

You are NORMAL. This time of life is bonkers. One of the best things you can do is give yourself permission to “outsource”. That means use your money to give you and your partner space to breath. For example a group of parents can pool resources to have someone come clean or watch a kids for a few hours rotating whose house the kids go to.

Next, advocate for childcare at any events you go to, community, church, school, clubs, even friends having a party. When child care is provided as part of an event more parents can come, AND you can actually enjoy the event. This means just ask about childcare, if there isn’t any, ask why, and what it would take to get some child care. Most of the time it just was not considered important and could easily be added to the event budget. Talk with other parents about adding child care and see if they would also ask about it. If a few parents mention childcare it will be on the radar for events in your community, neighborhood, school, church, and social events.

What does any of this have to do with sex? Everything! Without space in your life to be a whole person, sex is very difficult to care about making time for. So before even thinking about making room for sex, first make room for you.  This means you MUST restructure some things in your life and pool resources with other parents so you can be you and not just “mom” all the time.  It will amaze you how gaining a few hours a week can recharge you. Think about the main tasks like child care, food, cleaning, laundry that you and your partner manage and think about how to offload (pay someone to clean 2x a month) and or share the load with other parents.

Sex matters. The kind of sex you are having matters more. You should not have just any kind of sex but the kind of sex that YOU like too. This makes it possible to desire sex and also care about making time for it. If you are having a kind of sex that musters a shrug when asked if you like it…that means no.  Getting to the right kind of sex takes education, practice and patience with yourself and your partner.  The right kind of sex is the kind that is for both people, not just one person’s pleasure.

To get to a kind of sex you could enjoy and desire means communicating with your partner what you like and don’t like.  If you don’t know what you like, that is where practice comes in and a good book. Try to read out loud with your partner chapter two and three of “The Celebration of Sex” by Dr. Doug Rosenau or parts of  “the Way to Love your Wife” by Cliff and Joyce Penner. Sex is not just for your husband, it is for you too. It will be a while until sex is the kind of sex you would like too. Sex is learned, no one is born knowing how to do it. You have to help teach your partner how to be a good lover to you. That means if you are having bad sex or ok sex or your partner is a clumsy lover or you are having no sex at all…you have to take responsibility for part of that because you are not teaching him any better. He can learn! Be gracious with yourself and him and coach him toward what kind of sex you like. Sex is for both of you.

 

 

Sex is not a natural act, an innate instinctual thing you are born knowing how to do.  Sex is NOT like blinking, a natural  instinct to something flying at your face. Blinking is an instinct, sex is a learned behavior.  Don’t get those two things confused.

The part of “sex” that is instinctive is only arousal, the part that has to to do with your body and mind getting “turned on”. Arousal can look like a lot of things and includes physiological arousal (getting an erection, lubrication) and psychological arousal (mentally being aroused), which don’t always happen at the same time.  What you do with that arousal however, is completely learned.

All your ideas about how to perform sex have been taught to you, even when you didn’t know it. For example, how did you know what to do on your first date…ever.  You copied what you have seen, in person, in media, in relationships around you, in other friendships.

You need to educate yourself about sex. That means, read books, articles, take classes, attend seminars, go to conferences, talk to professionals. However, there is a LOT of bad information out there.  First, the interwebs is not your friend in this particular case because most searches will land you in porn-land or some other shady site.  Second, you need experts who know what they are talking about because not all opinions are created equal when it come to sex, or most things.  You need ACCURATE information, not just any information.

One of the places to start is an undergraduate human sexuality text book. Get one, read it.  Here are a few to look for “Understanding Human Sexuality” or “Our Sexuality”. There will likely be some things in there you do not agree with but be grown and read it anyways. The goal is not for you to agree, but to get you a baseline of information and to get you thinking.

Next, you need to read about how to have sex. Seriously.  And preferable read out loud with your partner. Have fun with it, laugh, be uncomfortable together, and learn together. This helps with better communication about sex. Some examples of what to read include “Celebration of Sex” or “The Gift of Sex” or “How to Love your Wife” or “How to Love Your Husband”.

You can expect several things to happen when you start educating yourself. One, you will feel embarrassed about what you did not know and maybe a little stupid. Don’t! No one taught you and it’s not your fault you did not know.  Two, you may feel cheated and grieve a little bit when you realize what you have been missing out on, especially if you have been married a long time.  This is normal, but keep in mind there was no way for you to know better. None of the people around you knew better either.

In closing, waiting for sex to just happen “naturally” is like waiting for a kid to go from blinking when a ball is thrown to knowing how to play baseball.  Nope, someone has to teach baseball, blinking is an instinct.  You have to educate yourself and seek out good instruction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What exactly is sex? It turns out the vast majority of people define sex as a penis entering a vagina. We define “real” sex as the vaginal penetration portion and everything else is…well..not sex. The most extreme examples of this are seen in a small section (this is by no means a widespread practice) of college age women who engage in anal sex believing that they maintain their virginity because the vagina was not penetrated. Another consequence of the narrow definition of sex is that we develop hangups such as the belief that an orgasm must occur with penile thrusting or it is not a “real” orgasm.

There are consequences to such a claustrophobic definition of sex.  There are only so many ways to “keep it interesting” when your goal for every sexual encounter is penis entering vagina.  One of my favorite stories is a couple who walked into my office after a few months of my work with them, brimming with excitement and tears stating they just had the best “sex” of their lives. When I asked for more details they described laying a towel on their bed, getting naked and giving each other oil back and butt massages, laughing, kissing each others bodies (no oral sex), and then falling asleep naked in each others arms, no genitals involved, no penetration of any kind.  The encounter ended is tears for the wife who for the first time felt like her pleasure mattered to her husband.  This encounter opened up their sexual life is ways that the previous prescribed notions of sex never could. Being free from the notion that penetration must always happen or its not real sex, or somehow the husband would be disappointed, opened up so much more possibility for play and creativity and simple pleasure.

When sex is defined with a penis entering a vagina, it prescribes this activity as essential to the encounter, as the goal of the encounter. The narrow definitions sets up a hierarchy of behaviors during sex that prescribes certain behaviors as more important, meaningful than others. This reduces the activity of sex to how fast the penis can get in the vagina and makes us think this is the activity that is supposed to produce the most pleasure. The problem is this is simply not true. Most women, in fact, CANNOT orgasm with penile thrusting alone and need clitoral stimulation of some kind.  Defining sex with an activity that does not produce orgasms for women is unfortunate. The extremely high rates of low sexual desire in women and lack of orgasm in women speak to the kind of “sex” men and women are having, and the need for broader definitions of sex that encompass activities that are mutually pleasurable.  There is a more sinister implication of the narrow definition of sex that produces and reproduces systems of inequality by reifying sexist notions and gender inequality in sexual intimacy.  The “goal” of sex is pleasure for everyone, which cannot be achieved if only one behavior defines “sex”.

 

 

You might think sex is about  how fast you can get naked, aroused, and orgasm. Nothing wrong with some or all of those things being aspects of sex, if you so desire.  However, understand that there is a kind of sex that is good and a kind of sex that is not. This means we in the church should be seeking the kind of sex that is good.  How you treat other people is not a matter of your tastes or preferences or individual differences but a matter of justice, wisdom and maturity.  Therefore, how you have sex with someone is equally a matter of justice, wisdom and maturity.

I am not concerned with the specific behaviors you engage in such as if you masturbate or have anal sex. We should take seriously the fact that there is no exhaustive detailed list of unacceptable sexual behaviors in the Bible and we should ask ourselves what this means.  The specifics of what you do in your  satin sheets is of less concern to me than how you treat the person you do those things with.

There is, however, much less ambiguity in the Bible about how to treat other people and why this is a matter of justice.  This should gnaw at the recesses of you buried consciousness.  The principles of conduct require maturity not an infantile approach to following a prescribed list of “correct” behaviors.  The garbage conventional wisdom that says it would hypothetically be “easy” if I just had a list of do’s and don’t is predictably creating garbage disciples.  I want to rip this conventional refuse out of your mind and peel it from your corpse because it fundamentally eradicates your ability to become the kind of person you are envisioned to be, and consequently makes good sex impossible.

Good sex is a matter of justice because if you don’t know how to pursue your sexual pleasure mitigated with concern for your partners pleasure then your are violating their humanity and dignity, treating them as sub-human. That is the heart that matters more than the specific behaviors you engage in.  How you go about pursuing your sexual pleasure is the indicator of your attitude, your heart, toward your partner.  We see the outward behavior but God sees the heart.

Your heart shows in how you initiate sex (with or without considering time of day, location, partners stress or fatigue), how you respond when your partner declines (do you pout or hug them and ask what other thing they might enjoy), how you make bids for certain sexual activities (do you constantly ask for the one thing you know they don’t like), how you listen and accommodate (or not) their differing preferences.  Good sex is a matter of justice because these attitudes indicate the murder of your partners humanity in the pursuit of your sexual pleasure.

Pain during sex is real. Don’t let anyone tell you its just in your head. If they do, tell me who they are and I will personally come get them. I suspect if you experience pain during sex at some point some idiot doctor or gynecologist or well meaning pastor or friend told you something very stupid about it being psychological or just in your head or something along those lines.  This infuriates me so this post is going to be a bit of a rant. Church, we must do better. It is not acceptable to me to have men and women in relationships suffering in silence through painful sex due to shame and self blame and misinformation about sex.

Men and women, do not make the mistake of thinking the pain is self inflicted or in the control of your wife. No, it is a reflex, response that is not in their control, like a blink. We will talk more about this.  However, pain during sex deeply effects both the man and women in different ways and is difficult for different reasons.

Do NOT push through the pain. Stop immediately attempts at penetration. First, you are not alone, many couples experience pain during sex and are not able to achieve penetration. So much so in fact, that there are even treatment protocols specifically designed for “unconsumated marriages” or relationships that have not been able to achieve penetration during sex.  Second, this is very treatable!! Yes that is correct, there is very effective treatment out there with almost 100 percent success rates. So, hang in there we can treat this.

If you are experiencing pain you need to do two things first. One, go to vaginismus.com and read all the material. This website lists a lot of helpful accurate information that can give you guidance as well as resources to help you understand what might be happening.  Second, you need to meet with a sex therapist and then have an examination by a pelvic floor specialist so they can figuring out what is going on physically when there is pain.  The examination by a pelvic floor specialist is invasive so some preparation might be needed if you have a history of sexual trauma. Hince, see a sex therapist first.

After these two (three ish) things you need to stop all attempts at penetration. But this does not mean stop all intimacy and sexual activity. It is important to expand our often too narrow definitions of sex. Sex is not simply a penis entering a vagina. Sexual intimacy is the mutual sexual pleasure co-determined by two individuals. There is so much sexual pleasure to enjoy even if penetration is not possible at this time.  Put penetration on the shelf for now and learn about each others bodies and what other kind of pleasure you each enjoy.  Don’t let the lack of penetration for this temporary time rob you of the kind of sexual intimacy you can still have.

Ok, so the medical side is only one aspect. The relationship side is a whole other story. If your relationship had any issues before, they will likely be exacerbated when you are faced with something as difficult as sexual pain and or inability to achieve penetration.  If you are selfish and immature it will become immediately apparent when you or your partner become angry and resentful toward each other. While, experiencing pain during sex is deeply frustrating and can illicit a roller coaster of emotions such as anger, frustration, shame, depression, confusion, anxiety and many others, the mark of maturity and wisdom is what you do with these emotions, i.e. don’t blame each other.

This is where I am mad at the church. We have not done our job in growing wise mature disciples who know how to value the mutual duty prescribed in marriage, the duty to mutually value the pleasure of each other. That means I am required to ALWAYS value the sexual pleasure of my partner as  I pursue my own sexual pleasure. My pleasure must always be mitigated by CONCERN for the pleasure of my partner, period. No exceptions. It is never ok to to just suck it up and have painful sex or tell your partner to suck it up and push through the pain. This does so much damage to the relationship because it communicates a very profound disregard for the humanity of yourself  (if you are making yourself suck it up) or your partner (if you are telling your partner to suck it up).  It is challenging to recover from this profound dehumanization, thus, it is so important to not push through the pain and get the right kind of help as soon as possible.  You have to ask yourself if you interact with others and your partner in ways that affirm the value of their humanity or in ways that degrade that humanity. How we interact in relationships is a matter of justice because there is a right way of relating that promotes the value of their freedom and self-determination and their is a wrong way of relating that oppresses and degrades them. Sex is not for you if you are small. You have to be grown and mature to pursue the kind of sex that is just.

 

 

A very common sexual problem individuals and couples face is Erectile Dysfunction (ED). It is pretty much guaranteed that if you are male you will experience erectile problems at some point.  So, lets take the shame and stigma out of this because it is completely garbage to think performance problems are abnormal. Everyone will experience ED at some point and there is nothing abnormal about you if you are or have experienced ED. For you men out there, ED has nothing to do with being less of a man. For you women out there, ED has nothing to do with your partner not loving you anymore.

How a person responds to ED and how a partner responds when it occurs is very important. Do not freak out. Let me say this again to make sure you hear me, when this happens for the first time, and it will happen to you, stay calm and tell your self “this is normal”. If you are the partner it is equally important that you also do not freak out and that you understand how essential it is to stay calm, realize this is normal and do not jump to any conclusion (such as my partner thinks I’m ugly or fat).

Another important thing to keep in mind is how imbalanced we are in defining “sex” by penile penetration. Just because your penis doesn’t show up for the party does not mean you can’t have a great time. There is a lot of fun to be had doing other things.  When we define sex so narrowly we lose site of what makes sex meaningful. What is all this for? What makes sex meaningful is the person you are with and the pleasure it is meant to bring both of you.  So when ED occurs it may simply mean penile penetration will not happen in this encounter, but that does not mean you can’t have good meaningful sex enjoying pleasuring each other.  Take a step back and enjoy each others bodies and find creative or simple ways to pleasure each other.

There are so many causes of ED such as anxiety (you could just be stressed from work or lacking sleep), alcohol (thins the blood making it unable to flow into and stay inside the penis for an erection), health, depression, medication side effects (there are MANY sexual side effects to medication, so ask your doctor), relationship problems, having young children in the house (maybe your just anxious about kids interrupting), aging (erections lose some of their hardness over time and will just be softer) and many others.  As you can see there are countless reasons that ED occurs and it is imperative that you not assign a cause inaccurately. When you or your partner make assumptions about the cause often times you are not correct and only doing more damage.

Why is it important to not make assumptions? First, you don’t know anything, so most of your assumptions about what is causing erectile problems will be false. You are not a doctor or a sex therapist so unless you are you should not assume you know what is causing the problem. Second, when you make your false assumptions you are often pointing false blame at yourself or your partner. Blame only exacerbates the problem causing shame, embarrassment, and you or your partner to withdraw. Third, when you make assumptions about what is causing the problem you make solving the problem impossible. For example, if I think my husbands ED is because he doesn’t love me than I will falsely continue to conclude that his ED will only go away when he loves me again making it impossible to look for other solutions.

Erectile problems are only something to be concerned about if it starts happening more frequently than not. There are some amazing resources for you if that is the case. One is of course coming to see me if you live in the Atlanta GA area. However, since I know you don’t want to talk to anyone about your problem, there is an amazing book called “Coping with Erectile Dysfunction” by Michael Metz and Berry McCarthy that you can find on Amazon and is a very small and easy to read book that will guide you through all the things you need to know.

There are many aspects of sexual intimacy that we get wrong. One of the most common ones I encounter is attitude.  Many couples come into my office thinking I am going to teach them new skills and then they will magically become great lovers and have great sex. While skill is certainly something I spend time on and teach a lot on some basic sexual education (ex. anatomy, sexual response cycle, arousal and stimulation) a lot more time is spent on peoples attitudes towards each other.  Because, it does not matter if I teach you the correct way to stimulate your wife or husband, if you are an asshole they will still not like having sex with you.

When it comes to sex mutuality is essential. This means mutual care and concern for the self-determination or your partner as well as the wellbeing and sexual pleasure of your partner. What gets in the way of mutual pleasure is multidimensional and often includes a fundamental attitude toward and about ones partner.  Sex with another person involves negotiation and in that negotiation there has to be an attitude of concern and care for the pleasure of the other balanced with my own pursuit of my pleasure.  If I am only concerned with my own pleasure and gratification then I might as well be having sex with a blow up doll because my attitude toward my partner is as though they are a commodity for my use and consumption rather than a person who deserves equal right and access to sexual pleasure in our encounter.  If your pursuit of pleasure is not mitigated by concern for the other persons pleasure, than this is an attitude problem not a skill problem.

The symptoms that result from the wrong kind of attitude toward your partner are wide and varied, everything from lack of orgasm, sexual pain, low sexual desire and others.  Many sexual problems are multidimensional (lots of factors implicated in causation) and there is not just one things that causes them. However, attitude is a HUGE factor because how you view your partner matters a lot, since they are the person you are having sex with. Seems basic but it is essential to value the pleasure of your partner equally and to equally value their freedom to determine what sex between the two of you will look like.

So what is the right attitude? It is an attitude of respect for the person you are having sex with, that looks like respecting their freedom to self-determine what they want and like (not what you think they like or should like but what they actually want and like) as well as an attitude of concern for their pleasure while you are pursuing your pleasure.

The first part of that, as you can probably see, most of us get this wrong because we want our partners to want or like certain things instead of respecting their right to want and like whatever it is that they truly want and like (what is really representative of them). Instead we are immature and get mad at our partners either not believing them (i.e. there is not way he likes giving me oral sex) when they say what they like, or not wanting them to like what they like (i.e. I don’t want you to like giving me oral sex because I think its gross down there).

Now, there is a caveat to this, many of us don’t know what we want or like in sex because we have not been exposed enough or educated enough about anatomy, biology, sexual response cycle, etc.  In order to figure out what you want and like in sex you need someone like me to educate you about sex and your body. That is part of the goal of this blog and my upcoming youtube show Ask Andrea. To help give you all the tools you need.

 

 

 

There is a vague sense from a lot of people, Christian and non-Christian, that pornography is bad and somehow they should not be viewing it and/or masturbating to it. However, when I press them for specifics these same people are not very good at articulating reasons why porn might be bad. It just is? The Church has not done its work in articulating what good sex is and thus, there is no solid ground to stand on when arguing why porn might be bad.  “Porn is bad just because” is garbage sexual theology. My Church people, we need to do better than this. Doing better than this starts with a sound theology of sex, a sound understanding of what good meaningful sex is.  Otherwise what possible rationale can you give for why someone should or should not look at porn. Everything is fair game if you don’t believe is good meaningful sex, i.e. that their is such a thing and you should be having that kind of sex.  If I don’t know what good meaningful sex is than I can’t possibly know how porn detracts from that kind of sex.

One thing I do hear people say is that porn is objectifying to women. What does that mean and why would that be bad? Well, again you have to know what good sex is. Good sex is the kind of sex that is co-determined by two autonomous self-determining people such that the sex they are having (what they do in sex) is freely representative of them (the who that is having the sex) and negotiated as such.  What makes sex meaningful is that it represents me and my partner mutually and what we create together (the sex we have) is uniquely us (represents both of our wills).

Where does porn fit into this. Well, porn is not mutually co-determined or representative of two people’s wants, desires, and will. It is one persons will, wants, and desires exercised on the passive object (often the female). What does this mean, it means that our ability to engage in meaningful sex is hindered when we have a habit developed of pleasurable but meaningless sex. A kind of sex that teaches us to only value our own desires with no regard for the desires of the other participating party.  Our ability to pursue our own sexual pleasure mitigated by keeping the pleasure of the other person in mind is deeply marred when the only kind of sex we engage in is one sided.  Good sex is a developed skill and learned behavior as well as an attitude of regard for the pleasure of the other.  The attitude required for good sex (i.e. caring about my pleasure mitigated by concern for my partners pleasure) is impossible to cultivate with significant pornography use. Period. I cannot learn to care about my partners pleasure when the sexual activity I engage in excludes mutuality entirely.  Sex is good, seeking sexual pleasure is also good. Good sex however is about mutual pleasure and meaning derived from the co-determination that is mutually representative of who each person is.

I am in the business of helping couples learn what good meaningful sex is and then help them have it. What I run into is often a confusion about what meaningful good sex is and then also what conditions foster that kind of sex. So, lets get one thing clear. Meaningful sex is not some subjective thing that just depends on each individual couple. No, no, and no.  Meaningful sex, like wisdom, is an objective thing that is what it is whether you believe in it or not. For example with wisdom it does not matter what you think or believe about what you should do, what you believe is not the marker of wisdom, wisdom is the marker of wisdom.  Meaning making is an essential part of sexual intimacy. When you think sex is just sex then yes, the kind of sex you are having is meaningless. Mind you, it can still be pleasurable sex but it cannot be meaningful (i.e. I can still have an orgasm and enjoy myself but that does not make the sex meaningful).

Sex is intrinsically good, good in and of itself and good for its consequences (pleasure and procreation).  Meaningful sex is the kind of sex that is between two free people. That means the sex must be a reflective of each member (the who that is having sex) and concerned with the mutual pleasure of each member (the what that is done during sex) thus the activities must be co-determined. What makes sex meaningful is that what is being co-determined is reflective of the selves (who) that is engaging in the sex.  Put another way the meaning in sex is in the what (sexual activity) being reflective of the who.  This means that each member of the couple must have a distinct free self who co-determines what the activities are.  Freedom is essential for meaningful sex. What this looks like is that I must be free to be me and you must be free to be you so that the sex is an externalization of our mutual will/desires.  This is why sex that is only about one persons pleasure can never be meaningful no matter how pleasurable it might be for one person BUT sex that is freely co-determined can look similar but be meaningful. For example, I can freely chose to have a sex that is only focused on my partner “getting off” and it is meaningful because it represents what I really want (the who) and the activity is co-determined (the what).  The problem is many people are alienated from their desires in general and their sexual desires in particular. But that is the next post.

There are a lot of people who sit across from me in my office expressing various kinds of sexual problems and varying degrees of severity. Over the course of the conversation we come to the question of what they like or enjoy in sexual intimacy. Often the response to this question is a blank stare or is kind of a shrug and partners looking at each other say that one or both are not sure. This is very common. So lets talk about this.  What is going on that many people don’t know what they like in sex. Is it that they really don’t know? Is it that they really do know but don’t feel they can express it to their partner? Is it something else.  Well all of these things have to do with freedom in the relationship.  Freedom to be a desiring person (person with desires) and freedom to externalize those desires and have those desires acknowledged by the other person. It would seem then that a lot of people are in relationships without this kind of freedom.  What is hindering them from seeing themselves or being seen by their partner as desiring persons and what is hindering them from expressing or externalizing what those desires are.

There are internal (with in the person) factors, and external contexts that must be hindering the person and couple and thus they are alienated from their desires by either not knowing what those desires are or by not being able to express them for some reason.  So what is the solution? The contexts that are hindering desire much be restructured to allow the person to be free to know their desires and be able to express those desires and have those desires acknowledged.

When the barriers are internal that means the alienation from desires has to do with how the person may for example views sex as bad  (or just something men need) or how the person may have a complicated view of pleasure in general (feel guilty for having to much fun).  If for example I think sex is bad and that too much pleasures is bad you can imagine how that would translate to challenges with pursuing my sexual desires and taking time to figure out what I enjoy in sex.  Thus alienating me from my own sexual self and desires.

When the barriers are external that means the alienation is imposed by structures that don’t permit me to express my desires or don’t acknowledge my desires when I do express them.  For example, if my partner ignores me when I tell them what I like then over time I stop expressing what I like because it does not matter.  Or if I am in a relationship where the division of household labor and child care rests on me and thus I am not able to pursue my general desires such as hobbies, gym, time with friends then how likely is it that I will be free to externalize my sexual desires when I cannot externalize my other desires.

So in order to be in touch with sexual desires there are internal and external barriers that have to be removed. I suspect that low sexual desires is frequently tied to unfreedom in the relationship.  This unfreedom means that expressing desires in general is challenging in the relationship and that couple don’t know how to each express what they want and then negotiate with each others as equals.  That is what freedom looks like. I have desires and you have desires and we both express them and then we negotiate. sometimes I get what I want and sometimes I get part of what I want and sometimes I get none of what I want. That is what being grown looks like.  Good sex takes being grown.