Sex & Relationship Therapy
What is Sex Therapy?
You are a sexual person from the day you're born to the day you die. Acceptance and enjoyment of sexuality varies depending on the individual, life experience, cultural norms, values, and your relationship.
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Sexuality has a paradoxical role for individual and couples. When sexuality is healthy, it is a small, integral factor in the person's life and intimate relationship. Healthy sexuality has a 15-20 percent role of energizing the relationship and reinforcing feelings of desire and desirability. However, dysfunctional, conflictual, and especially avoidant sexuality has an inordinately powerful negative role, subverting feelings of intimacy and threatening relational stability.
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Sex therapy is best understood as a sub-specialty of couple therapy. Couple sex therapy is not to compensate for past problems or have the couple become the sexiest couple in the community, but to restore sexuality to the 15-20 percent positive role of sharing pleasure, reinforcing intimacy, and sexuality as a tension-reducer to help deal with the realities of life and intimate relationship (McCarthy & McCarthy, 2014).
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Sex Therapy can be a primary intervention or an intervention integrated into couple therapy. Sex Therapy strategies and techniques can be utilized by individuals without partners or by those whose partner is unwilling to attend therapy. Sex Therapy is applicable to gay couples as well as to individuals and couples with a history of sexual trauma. Sex Therapy is a resource for couples from their 20's to 80's and above.
How can Sex Therapy help?
We help people to increase the knowledge of and comfort with your body and its natural healthy sexual response to create sex that can't fail (or succeed) using your sexual intelligence.
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We utilize:
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Psychobiosocial Model: We emphasize psychological factors in sexuality and sex therapy because it is better fit for dealing with couple sexual dysfunction, especially desire problems. The prime function of couple sexuality is to energize the bond and reinforce feelings of desire and desirability.
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Sensate Focus Sex Therapy: Sensate Focus is a series of structured touching and discovery suggestions that provides opportunities for experiencing your own and your partner's bodies in a non-demand, exploratory way without having to read each other's mind. Non-demand exploration is defined as touching for your own interest without regard for trying to make sexual response, pleasure, enjoyment or relaxation happen for your self or your partner, or prevent them from happening.