So Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Sex

Chapter 1

Sex in Action

Andy and Eva (both in their early thirties and engaged to be married) came to see me complaining of feeling sexually mismatched, which was frustrating because they felt they were on the same page in so many other aspects of their relationship. Eva, it seems, could only reach orgasm from receiving oral sex and had sought me out as a therapist because of her appreciation of my book She Comes First, which she had given to Andy in order to help him “get cliterate.” But, to Eva’s consternation, Andy still wasn’t getting with the program, and she was angry and frustrated. Why was he so inept? Did he just not care about her pleasure? Was he being passive-aggressive? Did he secretly want out of the relationship?

Andy didn’t understand what he was doing wrong. He had read my book twice; he had been listening to Eva’s feedback. So why did she need to constantly interrupt him during oral sex to tell him what to do? Why did she have to be such a sexual boss? And why did it always have to be cunnilingus? Why couldn’t they have intercourse too? Why couldn’t the oral sex be mutual? What about his needs?

“So, tell me about the last time you had sex,” I asked after learning a bit about the situation; and, no surprise, the last time they had sex was much like every time they had sex.

Basically, their usual sex script went like this:

(I know what you’re thinking: An hour of cunnilingus? What the…? While that might seem unusual, I typically see more than twenty-five patients per week, and when it comes to a faulty sex script, there’s always some kind of discrepancy or impasse. It may not be forty-five-plus minutes of cunnilingus, but it may be one or the other partner feeling like there’s too much or too little intercourse, not enough or the wrong kind of foreplay; too little imagination, too much pressure; anxiety, panic, pain. Boredom.)

UNDER THE BED

Beneath their sex script, emotions ran deep for Andy and Eva: she felt ignored during sex and believed that he was selfish and uncaring. He felt controlled by Eva, de-masculinized, and inadequate. They both longed for connection. In terms of their overall relationship, the sex script itself was clearly just the tip of the iceberg, but it was also the part we could see, grab hold of, dig into, and potentially change.

What was immediately noticeable about Andy and Eva’s sex script from the get-go was the utter lack of foreplay and eroticism. Without any kind of warming up or percolation of arousal (either physiological or psychological), they were going straight to direct clitoral stimulation. (By “physiological” arousal I’m talking about sensual touch, and by “psychological” arousal I mean engaging the erotic mind—much more on this to come.) No wonder it was taking forty-five minutes or more for Eva to approach orgasm—they were relying on one activity to do all of the work of generating arousal.

As I said, no patient leaves my office without a clear understanding of the problem and an initial homework assignment. Based on those assignments, we continue to refine the sex script from session to session until we have a version that’s working more optimally. In Andy and Eva’s case, I wanted them to take oral sex off the table for a few weeks in order to create a sexual milieu in which they could write a new sexual first act—a prologue to their current way of having sex that would encourage more arousal—so that by the time they transitioned to oral sex, Eva would be that much closer to orgasm.

As Andy and Eva’s current sex script was deeply rooted in physical behaviors, we decided together to focus on the cultivation of “psychological arousal” and tapping into fantasy. Later I will detail the homework assignments I gave them to reach this goal, but, suffice it to say, over the course of a half dozen sessions every two to three weeks, Andy and Eva created a new sex script together, one that built more arousal at the outset, included more sensual activity above the waist, segued into cunnilingus at a more appropriate point in Eva’s arousal arc, and, eventually, also included intercourse.

But just as with playwriting, sex scripts sometime require multiple drafts and revisions. Up until the intercourse part of the sex script, the sessions had been progressing nicely. But Eva feared that once Andy stopped giving her oral sex and transitioned into intercourse that her pleasure would get left behind. This anxiety was causing her to shut down mid–sex script. Once again, Andy didn’t get it: they’d been making progress throughout the sessions. They were talking, adding to their sex script, and working together to build more of an arousal runway. So why were they getting stuck now? Why would he leave her behind? As it turns out, in the transition from oral sex to intercourse, history was behind Eva’s fear.

In one session, I asked Eva to close her eyes, take a deep breath, and try to locate in her body the anxiety and panic she experienced around intercourse—where did she feel it, what did it feel like—and to “float back” in her mind’s eye to other times she had felt that same anxiety and panic. Rather than follow a thought back in time, I wanted her to follow a feeling. Was it old or new?

Eva identified the anxiety physically as a tightening in her gut and tingling in her feet, and then eventually drifted back to a childhood recollection of her father. An avid fly fisherman with traditional views around gender roles, he clearly preferred her older brother and rarely if ever included Eva in their regular weekend outings. Eva recalled once tearfully begging her dad to take her with them, and even trying to impress him with her own painstakingly crafted, hand-tied fly, only to be left behind once again. And so Eva resigned herself to weekend chores with her mother, spent time with her friends, and eventually stopped seeking out her father. But although she found other ways to keep busy and have fun, the sense of rejection and neglect from her father was always there beneath the surface of consciousness—“in the basement,” as I like to say.

FINDING INTEGRATION

Andy was well aware of Eva’s history with her father—he knew the story—but he had never really felt the impact it had on her or connected the story to their sex life. And why would he? More than two decades separated the hurt of Eva’s childhood from her relationship with Andy. But now, for the first time, Andy was able to witness and appreciate Eva’s pain. He understood that oral sex fulfilled her need to be cared for, to be doted on, and to be included—to not be left behind by a primary male attachment figure. This insight gave Andy a new level of empathy and love for Eva, as well as a desire to be tender toward her and soothe her—emotions he could channel into all aspects of their sex script, especially when he was going down on her. It was this tenderness and care that had been missing from his approach to oral sex; his technique hadn’t been the problem. Finding this new emotional connection enabled Andy to experience giving pleasure differently: not as a task to be performed, but as lovemaking. This breakthrough allowed him, for the first time with Eva, to get pleasure from giving pleasure, which manifested in a strong erection he was able to sustain throughout. As for Eva, she was able to finally let go and lose herself in arousal without worry. In this shared place of connection, they were ultimately able to expand the sex script with other behaviors, including, eventually, intercourse, which, for Andy, was a merging with Eva in a way he had always yearned for. Finally, they both felt emotionally safe during sex. Now, regardless of what they were doing, neither was going to get left behind.

Not only did Eva and Andy create a sex script that worked up on the main floor of life in that it delivered pleasure, arousal, orgasm, and connection in ways that accommodated their respective preferences, but it was also a true example of sexual healing, of how sex can soothe emotional wounds that are often resistant to other forms of treatment. It was too late for Eva to change her father’s past rejection, and too late to change the past string of romantic relationships that had seemed to repeat the cycle of neglect, but knowing that she had a partner in the here and now who wouldn’t leave her behind was the balm she needed. And who knew that all that history had been under the surface of their initial sex script? As my friend and colleague sex therapist Suzanne Iasenza often tells her patients, “All sex is group sex. You’re in bed with your partner, your/his/hers/their family dynamics, intergenerational traumas, body image, religious upbringing, gender/sexual identity/race/class experiences, on and on. It’s crowded in bed!”¹

My belief: Deconstruct the sex script and you can pinpoint the hurt. Reconstruct the sex script and you can heal that hurt.

Homework

Welcome to your first homework assignment. (Forgive the word “homework,” which I know for many of us brings up tedious and anxious associations from our younger years. But now, in the school of life, I promise to try to make these assignments fun and enlightening. And nothing is required, just encouraged. So no pressure.) Now would be a good time to create a dedicated “sex in action” journal for your responses to my prompts. If you and a partner are working through this book together, please journal separately, but then feel free to share your notes with each other, either at the end of each chapter or later when you’ve finished the book. Rather than remind you at the end of each chapter, please always have your journal handy when reflecting upon the homework.

Think about a recent sexual event and describe, in detail, the underlying “sex script”:

Take the time to really reflect, so you have a baseline sense of where your sex script is currently and what you’re working with. What issues would you like to work on? How would you like to change your sex script?