Why We Resist Sexual Pleasure

by Stella Resnick, Ph.D.

Continued from Part I

Sexually Liberated and Still Not Free

Sheila was a tall, attractive, single woman in her early thirties who had achieved quite a bit of success as a stockbroker. Everything was going well for her, and she had just started to see a man to whom she felt very attracted, physically as well as emotionally. She yearned for this relationship with Eddie to work out, but when they started to be sexually active, Sheila felt very disappointed. Though she prided herself on being "a sexual woman" and enjoyed dressing in sexy lace teddies, frilly garter belts, and stockings, Sheila regretfully admitted that she didn't get very turned on with Eddie, and as usual, she couldn't have an orgasm.

In one session, as I watched Sheila's mannerisms while she talked, her gestures seemed overly feminine, almost as though she was striking poses. She sat with her chest thrust forward and her back slightly arched, punctuating her words with shoulder gestures that reminded me of old Betty Boop cartoons. I asked her to pay attention to her body language, and, though she protested at first, she began to catch herself playing the vamp. She realized she had picked up this ultra feminine way of acting from the movies, hardly ever seeing real men and women interact who genuinely cared about one another.

Sheila was aware that she rarely just relaxed with Eddie, feeling like she had to be "on" with him, to entertain him, to keep him interested. So just as I had asked her to observe her poses in my office, I asked her to pay attention to how she kept herself on edge when she was around Eddie. I suggested that she pay particular attention to her breathing and to look for how she may be tensing her body while she and Eddie made love.

The next time I saw her, Sheila told me that she did, in fact, notice that she often posed during sex, held her breath, and kept her buttocks and thighs tight. She admitted that she also tended to hold in her stomach because she felt a bit heavier than she'd like to be. I suggested that she might also be afraid of letting go, and that holding her belly tight was part of a whole pattern of muscle control she had been unaware of that was keeping her from getting fully aroused sexually.

The more Sheila paid attention to her mannerisms, especially during sex, the more she saw how her self-conscious body language projected a tacit message that proclaimed, "I don't trust you enough to relax and enjoy myself with you. Looking good is more important to me than feeling good." As Sheila examined her programmed feelings toward men, she decided to risk being her "own true self with Eddie — whatever that is." When she did, she discovered that without all that body stiffness she was indeed the authentically sexy woman she always knew she could be.

Sexual Potential: Focus on Experience

Like Sheila, most of us at one time or another have been concerned about our sexual performance, not just in terms of how our partner will judge us, but also for how we rate ourselves as a sexually adequate male or female. Men want to be able to have strong erections and to postpone their ejaculation so that they won't disappoint their partner. Women want to be sexually responsive and to enjoy orgasm, not just for their own pleasure, but often because it would please their partners.

Sex therapy, too, has emphasized performance in offering to help people achieve "sexual adequacy" and only recently have sexologists begun to move away from the narrow emphasis on defining and treating performance difficulties and moved into the vast world of human sexual potential. To Dr. David Schnarch, a leading figure in this new development in sexology, great sex is not, as it's usually defined, about having intense orgasms. Rather, it's about increasing the capacity for intimacy and eroticism within the context of a committed relationship.

Schnarch suggests that when people put up with sex that is not great but "good enough," they do so because they are unwilling to go through the personal development and growth within a relationship that can enable them to tolerate more intense sexual feeling. Just as children grow by mastering appropriate developmental tasks such as learning to walk or being able to play with others at certain stages of their young lives, the ability to enjoy deeply fulfilling sex with someone you love, to Schnarch, is one of the most important developmental tasks of adult life.

Wilhelm Reich, probably the original pioneer in the field of sexual potential, was concerned mostly with what he called "orgastic potency" — the capacity to surrender to the flow of biological energy without any inhibition. Reich observed that when sex partners allow their excitement to build gradually, energy flows from the genitals into all areas of the body and results in a melting kind of sensation, which he called "streamings". When these "oceanic" or wavelike streamings are allowed to flow through the entire body, not just in the pelvis, the capacity to surrender is complete and results in what he called "total orgasm", involuntary pleasurable spasms of the musculature that envelop the entire body. Reich emphasized the importance of strong orgasms to mental and physical well-being. But he also believed this kind of orgasm could happen only between people who loved each other and who could express genuine feelings to one another.

In fact, there's now evidence to suggest that the lack of loving sensations during sex can affect the health of the heart as well as prevent fulfilling sexual experience. In his investigations, Dr. Alexander Lowen has collected research showing that the inability to experience emotional satisfaction during sex can have a negative impact on the heart. In several studies on coronary patients, about 66 percent of men and women hospitalized for heart attacks admitted to being sexually dissatisfied in the weeks or months just prior to their attack compared to 24 percent in the control group.

While it is possible to reach a physical climax without feeling any emotional satisfaction, Lowen suggests that the inability to surrender emotionally during sex prevents the fullness of discharge in the coronary muscle that would release tensions in the heart. On the other hand, when the chest muscles and heart are relaxed, and love is felt as a genuine sensation, orgasm releases energy from both the heart and genitals at the same time. The result is an extraordinarily loving experience of fulfillment through sex.

Sex therapist and researcher, Dr. Jack Morin, takes a somewhat different approach to investigating sexual potential. Morin is one of the key figures today working at expanding the scope of modern sex therapy by investigating, not problem sex, but peak sexual experiences. Morin developed a survey questionnaire that enabled him to ask anonymous respondents to disclose intimate details of their most memorable sexual encounters and to say what they thought made these events so exciting.

When Morin analyzed the data, he found that the answers most often included several basic ingredients. Their peak sexual experiences were likely to be intensely physically arousing — they talked about how hot they got and how much desire they felt for their partners. Their experience often involved strong emotion — the lovemaking had some special significance for them; often it was particularly loving or intimate, but sometimes there was an element of anger or fear present that charged the air and turned up the intensity several notches. It was very erotic — with some kind of sexy drama or adventure about it or even a degree of risk that intensified their sexual longing. Frequently, they had explosive orgasms. And sometimes they said the experience transcended ordinary reality — describing it as something magical, mystical, spiritual, or as an altered state of consciousness.

Obviously, reaching your pleasure-potential in sex involves becoming more expansive on many different levels. When you and your partner are ready to be more experimental with one another, however, you need to start by looking at a very key issue: how you define sex.

The Penetration Imperative

Most of the time when we make love, it's not to bring a new life into the world but to bring new life into ourselves. We're not looking to make babies but to enjoy the physical replenishment and emotional connectedness that good lovemaking nurtures. But the way we typically make love more closely supports the objectives of a procreative rather than a re-creative sexuality.

When a couple starts to play sexually, there's a consistently held belief that the activity should proceed toward penetration. Yet, nothing interferes more with enjoying the emotional and physical pleasures of re-creative sex than compulsive intercourse, what I think of as the "penetration imperative".

For couples, the sex-equals-intercourse equation means that unless they're willing to go the whole nine yards they won't go an inch. They won't be sexually playful unless they're available for intercourse because they don't want to lead their partner on. But then, this attitude places a greater burden on them when they are available. At that point, they have to build up their arousal from zero to whatever heights they can reach in an encounter that may last, from initial kiss to afterglow, all of ten to twenty minutes long.

All-or-none sex can't help but lead to sexual stagnation because doing the same old routine can be as exciting as watching grass grow. It reminds me of a story a young comedian told. He asked his father if he had been following the recent news on same-sex marriages. His father grimly responded, "I know all about it. Your mother and I have been having the same sex for years."

Many sexually vital singles also inhibit their sexual pleasure with all-or-none thinking. If they're not willing to go all the way, they may deny themselves the thrill of the turn-on, of kissing and holding someone they like but may not love. Or just the opposite, they may end up in premature intercourse when what they really wanted was affectionate human connection.

How much more spontaneous it can be when a couple is playful in sexually arousing ways without immediately moving into intercourse and orgasm. When energy is allowed to build over several days or even longer, they can reach a level of genuine intensity that makes intercourse infinitely more exciting. However, this does mean that they need to be willing to end a sexual encounter while still turned on, and for a lot of people, this won't be easy.

Why are we so afraid to stay turned on? Is it the Victorian in us that demands we get rid of the excitement once it's there? Or else what? . . . that we won't be able to think or work? . . . that we'll turn into a sex fiend? . . . that we'll grab a stranger off the street to have sex with?

On the contrary, sexual energy is the life force made manifest. It is the ultimate creative drive that inspires and animates us. Arousal is not something we have to shake. What we have to shake is old-concept sex.

This article is excerpted with permission from her book The Pleasure Zone published by Conari Press, ©1997.

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