Sex Therapy at The Intimacy Center
We believe that our sexuality has the potential for great brokenness and also for great love and fulfillment. We believe that our sexuality goes down to the core of who we are as men and women.
In Italy, all roads lead to Rome. It seems that in marital relationships, all roads eventually lead to the sexual relationship. That is, it is common for the difficulties a couple is having with emotional intimacy to eventually show up in the sexual relationship as well. The sexual relationship in a marriage is often a good barometer for how the relationship is functioning in the other areas of intimacy.
We often get calls for therapy for specific sexual problems that people are having. For men there are often specific difficulties such as erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation. For women, there may be problems with achieving orgasms or painful intercourse. But the most common picture is that a couple is at odds around the problem of low sexual desire for one (more commonly for the wife) and sexual frustrations for the other. The low sexual desire is invariably combined with a number of difficulties in the sexual relationship that usually involve one or more of the problems listed above, but also include a sense of emotional disconnection around the sexual relationship and a general lack of satisfaction with the sexual experience.
We don’t “treat” sexual dysfunctions. We help couples learn how to express what they are experiencing sexually and how to build positive sexual experiences with each other. Our methods are based on the early research by Masters and Johnson in which they discovered that couples who practiced giving each other affectionate caresses (using “sensate focus exercises”) learned how to enjoy and give sensual touch. We combine these sensate focus exercises with communication exercises and also specific sexual learning exercises to give the couple the opportunity to figure out “what they are doing wrong” and to have experiences that are pleasurable, loving, and freeing.