When I Say No, I Feel Guilty (40 page)

BETH
:
That’s true
, but I don’t understand.
What is it about dating and not marrying that’s wrong?
[FOGGING and NEGATIVE INQUIRY]

TED
: There’s nothing wrong with it. I just want to marry you, that’s all.

BETH
:
Is there something about our sleeping together without being married that’s bothering you?
[NEGATIVE INQUIRY]

TED
: No, not really. It’s just that the more I think about it, the more I want to marry you.

BETH
: Ted.
That’s really sweet to say that and I think it’s a great way of saying you love me
, but
I still get the feeling that you are unhappy about something. Are you sure something isn’t bothering you about the way we do things now?
[SELF-DISCLOSURE and NEGATIVE INQUIRY]

TED
: Somehow I feel less secure about us just dating. I’d feel a lot better about how much you cared for me if we were married.

BETH
: I don’t understand.
It sounds like you’re saying that I don’t care enough about you to marry you and that’s making you uneasy, is that it?
[NEGATIVE INQUIRY]

TED
: It’s making me uptight.

BETH
:
Do you want me to stop asking you questions about us?
[NEGATIVE INQUIRY]

TED
: No.

BETH
: Okay.
I’ve noticed something that’s bothering me. I think you’re a bit jealous of the other guys who talk to me at the pool. Am I right?
[SELF-DISCLOSURE]

TED
: (Defensively) Why should I be jealous?

BETH
:
I don’t know why
. Are you? [SELF-DISCLOSURE]

TED
: Just a little, but what do you expect with the way you are built and the way you talk to them?

BETH
:
You’re right, Ted, I am a bit of a flirt
, but
that’s me. That wouldn’t change if we were married
. [FOGGING and NEGATIVE ASSERTION]

TED
: (Silent, looking a bit hurt)

BETH
: If we got married, you would still be jealous,
because I like to flirt and that’s part of me
. But
it doesn’t mean that I’m hot to go to bed with them
. [NEGATIVE ASSERTION and SELF-DISCLOSURE]

TED
: How am I supposed to know that?

BETH
:
I don’t know. I guess the same dumb way I have to make up my mind about you
. [SELF-DISCLOSURE and NEGATIVE ASSERTION]

TED
: (With some finality) So you don’t want to marry me.

BETH
:
I don’t know
. [SELF-DISCLOSURE]

TED
: (Sarcastically) How long do you think it will take you to know?

BETH
:
I don’t know that either
. [SELF-DISCLOSURE]

TED
: So what do I do? I don’t want to tell you to shove it because I love you so much. But I don’t want to keep feeling uneasy about you caring for me.

BETH
:
Why don’t we live together?
[WORKABLE COMPROMISE]

TED
: How is that going to be any different? What kind of answer is that? We almost live together now!

BETH
:
That’s almost true
, but
I think it would make a difference
. Right now we are both as free as we can be, but living together we have responsibilities for each other. [FOGGING and SELF-DISCLOSURE]

TED
: We can’t live together!

BETH
: I don’t understand.
What is it about living together that’s wrong?
[NEGATIVE INQUIRY]

TED
: What if the neighbors found out?

BETH
:
What is it about the neighbors finding out that upsets you?
[NEGATIVE INQUIRY]

TED
: Nothing I guess. Probably half of them aren’t married either.

BETH
:
Okay, but we can get a new apartment if you want where no one knows us
. [WORKABLE COMPROMISE]

TED
: No, I’d rather stay here.

BETH
: Let’s move my stuff in next weekend. We have a lot to do.

TED
: What do I tell Mom and Dad?

BETH
:
What is it about us not telling them that’s so terrible?
[NEGATIVE INQUIRY]

TED
: They’ll find out.

BETH
:
So we handle that when it comes up
. Your mom and I get along okay. Do you want to use my brass bed or your twins? [WORKABLE COMPROMISE]

Although Ted was more manipulative than this dialogue shows, this shortened version simply summarizes the interaction that took place over the several weeks it took to work out the compromise of living together to see how compatible Beth and Ted really were. As it turned out, Beth’s doubts about Ted as a long-term life partner were proved true. After six months of living together, both Ted and Beth mutually decided to separate and go their own ways. As you might have guessed from Ted’s responses in the dialogue, their separation was an amicable one, based upon genuine differences in personality styles that became difficult to reconcile while they were living together. What could have been a very messy emotional and legal situation was avoided at the start by Beth listening to her own inner feelings and thoughts and then assertively acting upon them. Part of these feelings were doubts based upon Ted’s hidden agenda for proposing marriage; being married to Beth was supposed to give him the “right” to make her stop flirting with other men. Beth’s flirting was a behavior which activated Ted’s self-doubts about his own sexual attractiveness to women and his ability to keep Beth sexually interested in himself. In dialogues to come, you can see how learners cope with these hidden agendas in their mates, assertively prompting them to bring their anxieties about themselves or the close relationship they share out into the open in order to work out possible remedies for these hidden fears.

11
Really close equal relationships
—sex and assertion

After assertive learners are no longer novices, after they have a lot of practice in using their assertive verbal skills in class (or in group therapy) and in their everyday lives, I turn their attention to the many problems that Beth alluded to in the last dialogue: the problems that you and I have to cope with when we live with another person day in and day out.

I start them practicing in situations where they can learn how to be assertive to the people who really count, those whom we most care about, whose opinions are genuinely important to us—our mates and lovers, wives and husbands. To quicken the pace of learning in this most important equal relationship, I suggest that they start practicing (at least in class) in a particular behavior area, one which has an innate, psychophysiological guarantee to arouse and capture our attention and interest—
sex!
I start learners in practicing to verbally assert their own sexual wants or fantasies simply because sexual matters do command an intense interest from most people. When I first talk in class about the basis of sexual problems and how being assertive can help in resolving these problems, occasionally I stop and look for feedback from the students. Every eye is riveted on me and it’s often so quiet that I can hear the students breathing. This same intense interest is carried over into the assertive role rehearsal of sexual wants and I put this interest to work for them. Because of the way we are built, because of our psychophysiology, it is impossible to be anxious about something and deeply interested in it at the same time. If any of our ancestral cousins could accomplish this psychophysiological feat, they are now extinct. Those who could just stand there, intensely fascinated, while the beautiful saber-toothed
tiger charged are gone.… Those poor souls found out the hard way why it would have been better for their interests—and other good feelings—to be overcome by their fears. In the same way that intense fear can overcome your enjoyable feelings of fun and interest, so can intense interest and other good feelings overcome some of your anxiety. Since close relationships are those in which students experience the most anxiety when learning to be assertive, I try to give them an edge, to set up the odds in their favor, to give them a slight advantage in coping with these anxieties by having them first practice in a situation that is innately interesting and also fun! A second benefit that typically occurs in working with sexual material is that the student learns that if he can cope with these potentially embarrassing (in spite of the so-called sexual revolution) personal wants comfortably, can his other wishes be so difficult to express? The teaching format I follow then is to talk about sexual behavior, sexual wants, sexual problems, and the interaction between sex and assertion. After exposure to this material, I have learners begin practicing to be assertive sexually and when they are comfortable when expressing their sexual wants, to change the topic and assert themselves with their practice partners over any of the common marital conflict situations: getting a job, use of leisure time, taking care of the kids, use of family money, buying a new home, etc.; the list is endless. After learners become more comfortable in practicing to be assertive with their mates generally, I suggest that they turn back to the area of sex and assertion to examine for themselves the links between nonassertion, manipulation, coping poorly with marital conflict, and sexual difficulties. As a last exercise in class, I suggest they practice being assertive to a hypothetical partner who has a sexual difficulty in order to help that person overcome it. As you may see in the following discussion, many sexual problems have their roots in the passive, nonassertive, or manipulative style of the sexual partner.

One of the closest and most meaningful ways we can communicate is the sharing of a sexual experience with
someone we care for. Many experiences you share with this person and others you are close to are equally important to your well-being, to your feeling good about yourself, but sexual communication as an act of love is special. While sex is only one link in the chain of communicating with your mate (it is basically primitive behavior and in large part, mechanical), it is different from the other links. Its disruption is not only a loss in itself but can complicate the mutual working out of problems that have nothing to do with sex. If close sexual activity is often disrupted or falters because of pressure from external problems or because of difficulties with the sexual act itself, a unique, private way of communicating with your mate may be lost. We, as members of
the
cortical species, who praise ourselves on the accomplishments of our intellect would be greatly surprised, I suspect if we knew the true survival benefits to mankind from the number of conflicts settled between the sheets after a satisfying sexual experience. My humble guess is that the results of these nocturnal negotiations far outweigh the gains of all the Metternichs, Kissingers, and Chamberlains of our species, who throughout history have brought us “peace in our time.” Unfortunately, many couples in equal relationships have difficulties with this natural anxiety-reducing outlet, an outlet producing a climate of closeness which can help in working out conflicts through true mutual compromise. The experience and research of myself and my colleagues who have studied a human sexual functioning in the clinic and the laboratory have taught us a number of things about sexual difficulties and how they can compound problems in other areas of a close, equal relationship. Thankfully, not only have we learned how to treat many sexual difficulties with relative speed to ease the patient’s psychic pain, we are
also
beginning to learn that being assertive with a sexual partner may not only aid in eliminating the sexual difficulty itself but can help in resolving the problems of living together that cause certain sexual difficulties. To understand the relationship between nonassertiveness and sexual difficulties, let’s briefly examine some of the
types of sexual problems we can clinically isolate and treat, the three basic psychotherapeutic treatment models of these difficulties, and then see where and how being assertive with one’s mate may help in overcoming them.

The three basic treatment models for sexual problems and the therapists most associated with their use are: the
anxiety model
(Dr. Joseph Wolpe, Temple University, Pennsylvania; Dr. Zev Wanderer, the Center for Behavior Therapy, Beverly Hills, California), the
anger model
(a host of traditional “talk” therapists), and the
mixed model
with elements of both the anger and anxiety models (Dr. William Masters and Ms. Virginia Johnson, Reproductive Biology Research Foundation, St. Louis, Missouri; Dr. William Hartman and Ms. Marilyn Fithian, the Center for Marital and Sexual Studies, Long Beach, California). As you can see from the descriptive titles, our primitive coping patterns of fear-flight and anger-aggression rule us all when we get into trouble, even sexual trouble.

The anxiety model assumes that if you (or anyone else) are in good physical and neurological condition but have
certain, specific sexual problems consistently
, you have acquired a conditioned or learned anxiety response triggered by sexual stimuli that interferes with your sexual performance. In plain language, the anxiety model says: “You aren’t built to enjoy yourself sexually and worry about things like your income tax return at the same time!” If you are a male, these specific sexual problems are premature ejaculation, and lack or loss of erection; and if you are a female, vaginismus (involuntary contraction of the vaginal opening preventing intercourse), lack of orgasm with a specific partner where no problem existed with him or other partners previously, or the lack of orgasm with any male (or female) partner when orgasm occurs regularly in another context such as solitary masturbation. Treatment given under this model assumes that these difficulties are conditioned or involuntary, learned
phobic
or fear responses (generally called erotophobia or any of a half dozen other frightening labels) and are the same as any other
phobia, for instance, fear of heights (acrophobia) or fear of enclosed places (claustrophobia).