Read Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship Online
Authors: David Schnarch
Tags: #Family & Relationships, #Marriage & Long Term Relationships, #Psychology, #Emotions, #Human Sexuality, #Interpersonal Relations
Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship (2 page)
(Lack of) Desire, Intimacy, Freedom, and Sexual Novelty Prompt You to Grow
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PART THREE
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SEXUAL DESIRE PROBLEMS:
HOW YOUR PERSONAL LIFE FITS IN
9. Normal Marital Sadism, the Devil’s Pact, and Other Dark Stuff
The Problem Isn’t Your Lack of Relationship, It’s the Relationship You Have
10. What Does It Take to Really Change Things? Safety, Growth, and Critical Mass
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PART FOUR
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USING YOUR BODY, REWIRING YOUR BRAIN,
AND CO-EVOLVING IN BED
11. A Collaborative Alliance Is More Important Than Perfect Technique
12. Curing Ticklishness and Noxious Touch
Collaborative Alliance: The Key to Resolving Ticklishness in the Moment
Oral Sex: Fabulous for Changing Your Brain with Your Body and Mind
Appendix A: Referral Information
Appendix B: Overcoming Discomfort with Oral Sex
Thirty years ago I developed a completely new approach to sexual and marital therapy.
1
You can learn a lot about desire as couples skid toward divorce. One thing I really focused on was sexual desire problems. It revolutionized my understanding of love relationships and at times left me astonished. I certainly didn’t expect sexual desire problems to teach me what they did about intimacy and love. This book is my best effort to pass it on to you.
People shop around for perspectives they prefer. So if you want a book that says your sexual desire basically runs on hormones and biological drives, this one isn’t for you. If you want to be told, “Just do it!” don’t waste your time here. If you’re invested in the idea that desire dies and never returns, read something else.
But if you want to
feel
more desire, or increase the depth and meaningfulness of your desire, you’re holding a goldmine. This book will not only change how you think and feel about yourself, it will change how you think and feel—period. It may even change how your brain works. It’s hard to imagine how all this comes from dealing with a sexual desire problem, particularly one you haven’t been able to solve at this point. That’s because you haven’t read this truly revolutionary approach. If you want a completely new understanding of desire, love, intimacy, and sex in emotionally committed relationships, read on.
A new approach offering new opportunities
Anthropologist Stephanie Coontz writes that throughout recorded history couples have married people they didn’t know in order to fulfill the financial, political, and kinship agendas of parents and kin. Husbands and wives had little or no say in who they married. However, in the last
two hundred
years, marriage has ceased to revolve around political and economic alliances. People have started picking their own marriage partners. And now, for the first time in history,
marriage hinges on love, desire, intimacy, and sex
. It seems absolutely reasonable to expect these things. And yet, sexual desire problems are a common cause of divorce today. But the solution isn’t staying together and giving up sex, or settling for lousy sex. The solution is working together to turn your sexual desire problems into a passion beyond your wildest imaginings.
Generally, you learn five views of sexual desire growing up: There’s sexual desire as genetic programming for reproduction, driven by genes and hormones. There’s the Freudian “libido” view of desire, in which sexual impulses forever try to pop out and get you into trouble. There’s the romantic view, proposing that desire is a natural expression of true love. And the horniness (blue balls) model of desire, centered on “doing what comes naturally.” Finally, there’s the view that equates sexual desire with biological hungers for food and water. Before I developed my new approach, conventional sexual desire therapy referred to low sexual desire as a kind of “sexual anorexia.”
Unfortunately, all these views presume—if you’re a healthy person in a healthy relationship—that you
have
sexual desire. And, according to these views, if you have sexual desire problems, there’s something wrong with you, your partner, or your relationship. You sure don’t want to have low sexual desire, because you would be
abnormal
.
This book offers a different view. It shows
why
normal healthy couples have sexual desire problems. It explains why you and your partner will have sexual desire problems sooner or later, regardless of your love, communication skills, or Tantra workshops.
Research indicates sexual desire problems are so widespread they are
normal
rather than abnormal. A 1994 study of 3,432 randomly selected
Americans found sexual desire was the number one sexual problem. Thirty-three percent of women and 16 percent of men reported sexual desire problems
in the past year
.
2
In 2006 I developed an online survey for NBC TV’s
Dateline
. About 27,500 people participated over four days: 22 percent said they were in the “sex is alive and well” category, and another 10 percent said their sex is “robust, erotic, and passionate.” However,
68 percent
had sexual desire problems. That’s two out of every three people! Thirteen percent said their “sex life is dead,” and 22 percent said it is “comatose and in danger of dying.” Thirty-three percent said their sex is “asleep and needing a wake-up call.” This came on the heels of
Dateline
running a one-hour program showing two sexless couples going through therapy with me. After the show aired, I received over two thousand requests for help.
Looking at this survey through conventional views of sexual desire, you’d have to conclude people are pretty messed up. This book says just the opposite: It means these people are
normal
. I’ll show you, in detail, how normal healthy growth makes sexual desire problems common. Understanding why
normal
couples have sexual desire problems is entirely new.
This book shows you how to create the intimacy, desire, love, and sex that modern couples expect and demand. The kind of desire that makes you want to stay with your partner and be happy you did. The kind of life-giving desire that spreads through your life like wildfire.
This book has four sections.
Part One
, “Why Normal People Have Sexual Desire Problems,” will revolutionize your understanding of human sexual desire and sexual desire problems. These chapters explain how it is possible—and likely—that when you have sexual desire problems nothing is going wrong. You’ll get new perspectives on your situation and what may be causing it, as well as what to do about it.
Part One
provides the framework for the three sections that follow.
Part Two
, “How We Co-Evolve Through Sexual Desire Problems,” shows how partners push each other to grow through sexual desire
problems. You’ll learn about the Four Points of Balance™, which will help you in every aspect of your life. (You’ll probably wish you knew these facts of life before you started dating.) These chapters explore how partners grow through four conflict areas involving differences in desire, problems with intimacy, questions on monogamy, and sexual boredom.
Part Three
, “Sexual Desire Problems: How Your Personal Life Fits In,” explores how your particular life experiences, whether from childhood or yesterday, affect your sexual desire problems. You’ll learn how to harness this knowledge into powerful forces for personal growth. These chapters cover volatile sexual desire issues, such as not wanting to want, normal marital sadism, and safety and security issues.
Part Four
, “Using Your Body, Rewiring Your Brain, and Co-Evolving in Bed,” shows you how to kick the people-growing process into high gear by getting your body involved. This part is more sexually explicit, detailing physical things you can do with your partner to enhance desire and create better sex. Four chapters offer time-tested ways of resolving sexual desire problems (including one that hasn’t failed in over twenty years). We explore how to create sex worth wanting, and how to change your situation and become the person you want to be. Two chapters show you how to do this without even taking your clothes off. The two remaining chapters are better attempted with them off. You’ll find a passionate, tender, loving sex that can fill your soul and maybe change your brain, and a mind-blowing, sizzling eroticism that can do the same. Bring with you a sense of humor, a good grip on yourself, and a spirit of adventure.
(If you’re interested in interpersonal neurobiology and the latest cutting-edge brain science, you’ll find it referenced and documented in
Part One
and
Four
’s extensive end notes.
Intimacy & Desire
is written so you don’t have to read a word of science, but if you want to follow the underlying facts and research, it’s all there.)
Relationship to prior books
If you’ve read my prior books,
Passionate Marriage
and
Resurrecting Sex
, this one will fit right in.
Passionate Marriage
contains the most
in-depth coverage of marriage’s core dynamics.
Resurrecting Sex
focuses on sexual dysfunctions (like arousal, lubrication, erection, and orgasm problems). It covers sexual desire problems from medical causes. But if you’re having sexual desire problems, the book you’re holding is meant for you.
Suggestions for reading this book
While reading
Intimacy & Desire
, forget any presumption you have that something must be wrong with you, your partner, or your relationship. Read from a non-defensive position. Try to leave what you already know behind.
Your brain will try to grasp new things by using past experience as a frame of reference. That makes it hard to see things differently. Put your assumptions aside as best you can. Don’t get crazy when your usual ways of seeing things are challenged
.
You’re going to meet couples struggling with sexual desire problems. Don’t focus on how they differ from you. Read with an inclusive attitude. Focus on things that apply to you, even if some aspects differ. You’ll find something relevant in every case. Here’s the important part: Visualize in your mind what’s happening to these people, and what they’re feeling and thinking, even if they are your complete opposite. Let yourself imagine what’s going through these people’s minds. It’s easier for your brain to comprehend interactions between people than to work from abstract principles. The intuitive understanding you’ll develop by putting yourself in each person’s situation will help organize the novel concepts and ideas you’ll find here. Also, I alternate using “he” and “she” throughout the book whenever giving generic examples, instead of using “he or she” in every instance.