Relationship to Pleasure
I recently spent time in the desert—visiting a handful of friends and family who have made it their part time home. I noticed a shift as I entered city limits. The energy is light and joyful. People are playful and engaged.
Jessica came to see me for sex therapy. She doesn’t understand why she doesn’t want sex with her partner. She wants to want it, but most of the time she could go without. Our work together is not linear. Rather,…
Brad was starting to avoid sex. He couldn’t count on having an erection, so his anxiety would spike at the thought of initiating intimacy. His partner noticed the avoidance but she did not link it to his occasional ED. She…
In our modern, digital age, the accessibility of porn has changed how we approach sexuality and if we prioritize humans over screens. While porn consumption is often seen as a private, harmless activity, its effects can be far-reaching. Human relationships…
How do you prioritize what matters in your life? People have very different strategies and expectations for setting and navigating priorities. My fellow Type A’s put most things on a list and take extreme joy and checking it off, whereas…
There’s a long-standing joke that therapy starts with “tell me about your mother.” While everything doesn’t come back to that single caregiver, much of our worldview does hinge on how we were raised and shown care. Unconscious expectations and perceptions are deeply rooted…
One of the questions I often ask my clients is why – simply why do you want to have a different or “better” s*x life? It seems like a given that everybody would want this, and yet most people don’t stop to…
Org*sms are not always easy to achieve—especially for women. They (mostly) require some or all of the following: focus, communication, patience, vulnerability. They also require that women put their own pleasure as a priority in the dynamic. This isn’t as…
I’m currently reading Betty Dodson’s Sex for One. I am delighted by her evangelism for the pursuit of pleasure. Starting in the late 1960s, Dodson, an artist, turned her focus toward eroticism. She began drawing nudes, and she had several…