Imagine Never Being Satisfied in Bed
Or maybe you don’t have to imagine.
But for now, imagine yourself in Franny’s shoes. Franny came to me for anorgasmia (she couldn’t have an orgasm). She’d read all the books on female orgasm and tried recommended techniques. Nothing worked.
She was in her 30s, healthy and fit. Her husband called her frigid. He justified having an affair with another woman who was, as he put it, “a real woman.” She was afraid her husband would leave her and wanted to win him back by learning how to orgasm.
Because she was unresponsive, she couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t have to force her into sex. It made her feel like an inadequate piece of meat. His chronic complaints about her lack of excitement convinced her she was broken. She couldn’t cum. She’d never cum. She had never even masturbated.
So, a ripe and lovely woman, bursting with potential and without any hormonal or reproductive issues complicating her life, had lived 32 years and been married for ten of them yet still never knew that most basic of human experiences: the ecstasy of orgasm.
When I asked her about their interactions, it was a predictably sad story. He was verbally abusive to her most of the time and promised to be a better man only when she threatened to divorce him. As soon as he felt secure that she was staying, he returned to his pattern of criticizing, blaming, and gaslighting her. That made her afraid no one else would want her either. Now her fear of abandonment ran high.
The answer to her problem did not lie in improved techniques. The answer was that her husband had never given her a good reason to trust him.
So why was Franny’s sex life as dysfunctional as her relationship?
Can your sex life really be better than your relationship?
Rarely. For most people having trouble in the sack, the problem begins with the most basic relationship question: do they get along outside the bedroom?
You may think a short angry fight in the afternoon would be forgotten by bedtime but often it isn’t, even if you try to push it away. Your brain remembers how your partner made you feel. It can bring that lust-zapping memory to bed. Then what happens?
Now there’s hostility where there should be desire. Doubt where there should be trust. Walls where there should be vulnerability. Desire, trust, and vulnerability are key ingredients in great sex.
When clients tell me they’ve lost interest in sex, my go-to is to ask them about their relationship dynamics:
- Do they treat one with affection?
- Do they treat one another with respect?
- Do they talk about their feelings without fighting?
Since Franny’s answer to those three questions was all “no”, it meant that her home life was drenched in insecurity. And that’s why I suspected that her inability to cum was not physical. So I asked her to do a simple test.
Could Franny get off?
To see whether she was physically able to orgasm, I asked Franny to purchase a waterproof vibrator and try to get off in the bathtub. She reported her news at the next session. She was amazed: she had a mind-blowing orgasm! She tried it again a couple of days later and had an even better one.
The problem was never her orgasmic ability, she realized. She could cum just fine when she felt confident and relaxed. That was an epiphany for her.
So what was stopping her?
Franny reluctantly came to grips with the reality that she had never felt fully safe with her husband. Her troubled childhood led her to normalize his nastiness. Her lousy self-esteem enabled him to intimidate her. Her fear of abandonment made her his emotional slave (though theirs was a conventional vanilla marriage).
She was still clinging to her image of him from when they first met. He seemed so wise, so powerful, so decisive. He was the kind of bad boy that turned her on.
Now she saw that her “bad boy” had grown up to be a bad guy. He treated her like a second-class citizen. He took out his issues on her. He told her the problem was “all in her head.” In a way it was. Her fear of him was in her head — but it was also in her everything else. Her mind, her body, her spirit were broken when she was with him.
Franny decided that she needed a place of love and security to thrive.
So, if your relationship isn’t a space for good sex, what are your options?
The Four Options
There are four different options that have worked for clients.
1. Repair the relationship. It can’t just be you doing the work, though. Both sides have to admit responsibility for the problem(s), learn to forgive each other for past mistakes, and commit to building better new experiences for their relationship. Of course, I am biased, but this is where a sex therapist can be an invaluable ally in resurrecting your sex life.
2. Compensate with masturbation. People who have a long list of reasons why they need to stay in their marriage — children, financial arrangements, family duty, etc. — can opt for self-pleasure and build a platonic marriage.
3. Mutually consent to an open arrangement. It can be a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy or a negotiated poly lifestyle. That way you can maintain family structure at home but get the missing erotic intimacy elsewhere.
4. Leave the relationship. It’s better to feel lonely alone than to feel lonely with someone.
Which Option Did Franny Choose?
Franny realized she was clinging to someone who blamed her for all their problems and refused to examine his own behavior. One day, he made a physical threat. It was time to go.
Franny moved to another town and started a new life. To her shock, she quickly met someone who gave her the support and tenderness she never had in 10 years of marriage. Now Franny is loving sex. And yes, she can cum.
Great sex is too important to deny yourself. If you’re ready to improve your sex life, email me about an appointment.
