When couples come to therapy with problems involving desire, arousal, and orgasm, therapists often fall into the trap of thinking of them as somehow broken and in need of fixing.
Here, sex therapist and author Suzanne Iasenza explains a different approach, a three-part therapeutic process that helps couples find alternatives to rigid scripts about what fulfilling sexuality is supposed to be like.
As Iazensa explains, there’s a clear-cut way to help couples become a sexual-discovery team, exploring their own idiosyncratic pathway to pleasure.
“If you want to rekindle your sex life,” Iasenza writes in her article, “Transforming Sexual Narratives,” you need to “put desire aside—at least for the moment. Instead, start by telling each other intimate stories.”
Suzanne Iasenza
Suzanne Iasenza, Ph.D., teaches at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, the postgraduate program in couples and family therapy at Adelphi University’s Derner Institute, and at the Ackerman Institute for the Family. She’s coeditor of Lesbians and Psychoanalysis and Lesbians, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis: The Second Wave.
Lauren Dockett
Lauren Dockett, MS, is the senior writer at Psychotherapy Networker. A longtime journalist, journalism lecturer, and book and magazine editor, she’s also a former caseworker taken with the complexity of mental health, who finds the ongoing evolution of the therapy field and its broadening reach an engrossing story. Prior to the Networker, she contributed to many outlets, including The Washington Post, NPR, and Salon. Her books include Facing 30, Sex Talk, and The Deepest Blue. Visit her website at laurendockett.com.
