Graham Stevenson

Sex and Relationship Therapist and Coach, Exeter, Devon - working online.

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June 16, 2020 By Graham Stevenson

Why Does Sex go Wrong? (part one)

Most people will have a bad sex story and it will probably have been more than just an embarrassment.  Sex is such a core aspect of who we are that we can be very sensitive to negative feedback … better fake it than lose face or expose a loved one.

When sex is on the menu, whoever notices the wallpaper in the bedroom?

If we really understood how important the wallpaper was to our sexual enjoyment, it would be one of the first topics of conversation.  The wallpaper I’m talking about is the backdrop of our minds on sex.  It is the subtle but powerful array of influences that have been forming you and me from the day of our birth, if not before.

Culture

Culture is like water to a fish; the air we breathe from life’s first breath.  Each people group has a story that gives them understanding of the context in which they live.  It is handed down and reframed with each generation so that it still makes sense of the present in the context of the past.  In specifically sexual terms, it will define who they can touch, when, where and how.   

The method of making sure everyone keeps within cultural norms is the weapon of choice for social control – Shame.  Shame in this context tells you if you’re one of us or you’re on your own, excluded.

Culture is also the accumulated baggage of previous generations who were unable to work out their collective traumas.  The children of war and genocide will inherit tensions and anxieties that aren’t their own, except by virtue of an epigenetic inheritance.  Rape is deliberately employed as a weapon of war because it degrades so deeply.  The after-effects can be even worse, as the defiled victim becomes unacceptable to their own people and not one of us anymore.  Like other traumas, it will most probably affect subsequent generations.

Religion

Where culture speaks to us through the voice of our ancestors, religion goes one step further and speaks with the authority of God, the almighty, all-seeing and all-knowing One.  Accept ‘the Word’ or be condemned, because who do you turn to in an argument with God … who hasn’t already been judged?

When people try communally to represent a God of love, His/Her/Their unconditional acceptance often gets turned into law and judgement.  The grace-space is God’s special playpen in which to learn, and make mistakes without eternal repercussions, so that we can grow up spiritually.  Unfortunately, the freedom of expression that should encourage creativity and diversity ends up becoming more uniform and ordered, like a classroom.

Not all religions are hard on sex, of course, but it is those people who come from a conservative religious background who have the most problems.  It’s not just what you do, but also what you think, that you cannot hide from an all-seeing God.  If fear doesn’t keep you in line then there’s the other side of shame to deal with – Guilt.

Did patriarchy give rise to the three major world religions or vice versa?  In any event, these three religions have influenced many cultures in which men and women are restricted in discovering their true sexual selves.  Both genders have well defined roles and social positions in which men should be proactive and assertive and women compliant and submissive.  Similarly, men can be sexual but not emotional, except in anger, and women can be emotional, except in anger but not sexual.  Giving people permission to explore in the process of self-discovery is one of the most satisfying aspects of being a therapist. 

As people discern the difference between spirituality and religion, the public reverence that enabled the hypocrisy to be hidden falls away.  Spiritual leaders of all kinds are being outed for inconsistent and sometimes criminal behaviour.  The beneficial side-effect is that people are becoming more introspective and starting to access their own inner resources for their lives.  The realisation that we can have access to spiritual resources without any institutional middle-man is life-changing.  The realisation that we are all made in the divine image with a common spiritual destiny changes our view of ourselves and our relationship with all other humans.

Family

We are located in terms of culture and religion when we are born.  Our family nurtures us with food, ideas, experiences and values and these all go up on the walls of our minds.  The templates of how to be a man and how to be a woman will be enacted in front of our eyes by our nearest and dearest.  Our primary care-givers, like other authority figures, not only model behaviour but also embody values.  Before we can verbalise these values we construct avatars in our imaginations of the kind of people we aspire to be.  Then, like a distant North star, we unconsciously orientate ourselves in all our behaviour towards our intended future selves.

However, there aren’t such things as perfect parents, and families can also be the place where the worst of human behaviour is enacted.  From small ‘t,’ cumulative trauma, to big ‘T,’ incident trauma, many limp out of their childhoods with massive issues to resolve and big deficits of love and attention to make up for.  So often these get unconsciously projected onto others, and in intimate relationships they can play havoc.  When we become conscious of these undercurrents , we suddenly realise that we married our mother or father – our unfinished business.  This needn’t be a catastrophic mistake if we accept it as being our unconscious and wise choice for life and the freedom of mature love.

Education and Peers

Puberty comes to each child’s body at a different time, which can bring its own problems amongst peers.  Some cultures and families celebrate it, others cover it up or ignore it.  A rite of passage is helpful in making the transition in society, if it honours the body and the person within.  Circumcision only adds another trauma that will affect the body as important parts are mutilated or severed completely.

Most sex education curricula reflect the fears and anxieties of the parents and not the desires of the children for knowledge.  Some seem explicitly designed as a deterrent with minimal facts and only the bad news.  But pleasure-averse societies will not encourage their children to enjoy themselves.  Nor will it be easy for their loving and respectful children to enjoy themselves more than their parents.

With a deficit of knowledge and little available wisdom the door is left wide open for peers to find out for themselves.  Those wanting to know what to do, and how things work, will look to other sources such as pornography.  This is how acts such as oral and anal sex become almost mandatory for a relationship in certain age groups.

Thankfully, lessons on consent and boundaries, first developed in the BDSM community, are being more widely incorporated into educational establishments of every kind.  The aim is to clarify intimate interactions and the process asks us to feel our bodies’ responses.  Being aware of our body’s responses as well as our emotions helps us discern our real boundaries and able to make genuine choices.  Slowly and steadily, the wallpaper of our minds will change to reflect our choices and our tastes.

Filed Under: Relationship, Sex, Transformation Tagged With: culture, religion, sex education, sex therapy, spirituality

May 21, 2020 By Graham Stevenson

Why is Sex so Important?

exuberant sexuality

Sex is so important because it affects us in our bodies, our emotions, and relationships and can even expand our spirituality.

Let’s look at some aspects of the biology of sex.

Everyone came into being because two people had sex – our biological mother and father.  Sex is hardwired in our brains and without it we would die out as a species.  It’s hardwired into every form of life that reproduces in a myriad of fascinatingly different ways.  To live, reproduce and die is the most basic expression of life.  There’s no life without sex when you consider say, plant life or animal life.  It is the same energy working itself out in different life forms, either in a linear way (as in evolution) or in a cyclical way (as understood in re-incarnation).

The scientific evidence for the benefits of sex has been growing into a crescendo that needs to be actively paid some attention.  Even the financial advantages for healthier happier people should have governments and religious institutions actively promoting it.  Sadly, many cultures are still sex-negative and locked in ignorance and shame.  There is plenty of evidence that sex is good for:

  • your heart – reducing the likelihood of angina, heart disease and lowering blood pressure
  • your immune system – boosting the production of Immunoglobulin (IgA) by up to 30%
  • reducing stress by lowering ‘stress hormones’ like cortisol and epinephrine
  • improving digestion and lowering the risk of duodenal ulcers
  • improving brain function such as memory in older people
  • relief from pain such as headaches and menstrual cramps
  • strengthening core muscles and reducing the risk of incontinence and prolapse
  • reducing the risk of prostate cancer
  • heightening the sense of smell, improving dental health and skin lustre through increased DHEA production 
  • improving the quality of sleep
  • increasing libido and longevity of life.

Sex is one of the ways in which adults play.  As animals, our foreplay is about grooming, bonding and connecting.  This is how we down-regulate our survival instincts so that we can relax and enjoy each other.  Play then offers the space in which to explore roles and be creative, allowing hidden parts of ourselves to come into the open and connect. However, as groups of humans developed their cultures and societies, different views about sex arose.  Some were sex-negative and covered it with shame and embarrassment. Others were sex-positive and embraced it more openly exploring the subject further.  It seems that for the sex-negative, sex was a necessary evil for reproduction and they denied it. For the sex-positive, each person was affirmed as a sexual being who could also connect with the divine.

The emotional and relational benefits.

The biological systems that enable us to fight have to be shut down for good sex to happen and so we have to learn to relax. You can’t make love and war at the same time. The survival bias of our brains and bodies has to be pacified so that we can enjoy life rather than just keeping ourselves alive. In learning how to relax, we have to connect with our bodies, which enables us to access our innate embodied wisdom. This wisdom tells us about what we like and need, how to act and how to respond and how to find satisfaction in a healthy, natural way.  Great warriors seldom make great lovers as their skillsets don’t translate well to the bedroom; one is about taking life and the other about giving life … and celebrating it.  Sex itself is abused when it becomes a battleground in relationships and even more so when used as a weapon of war.

Whilst it is a primal urge that keeps the species going, sex doesn’t feature on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, although an updated version might include it.  Many disregard its importance because we can actually live without it, and many do, compared to say food and drink.  I personally think that although you might not die from being unable to have sex, something dies inside without it.  Like air, it’s not noticeably important until you’re deprived of it … then it becomes vital! 

Studies have shown that sex:

  • raises self-esteem and improves self-image
  • reduces insecurity
  • increases connection through the release of oxytocin, the bonding hormone
  • increases connection and intimacy in relationships
  • lowers the likelihood of divorce or separation
  • increases relationship satisfaction.

The spiritual benefits of sex

In those few sex-positive societies that openly celebrated sex and explored its possibilities, we have a rich treasure of knowledge, from art showing the human form in sexual poses, to advice on ways of experiencing the life force in us and meeting the divine such as Tantric yoga.  This storehouse has helped inform a diverse discipline of practitioners able to deal with sexual issues to dispel our ignorance and shame and heal all the harm it has done.

Our immature duality of thinking that mirrors the male/female gender binary is challenged by these pathways to enlightenment.  Right and wrong no longer serve any purpose and whatever was a binary polarity becomes a continuum with the freedom to play along the whole spectrum of gender, sex and relationship.  The sincere enquirer not only enjoys the thrills and spills of new experiences but the ability to become more present and to be aware beyond the confines of self and the physical body.  When our consciousness includes not just the physical, but also the spiritual, we can deal with the blockages that prevent us fulfilling that sexual urge to merge and experience oneness with each other and all life.

As a result of our cultural backgrounds, the families we were born into and the experiences of our early years, many of us are cut off from our bodies and experience our sexuality at arm’s length, under the shadow of shame.  We don’t feel fully alive, as if we have been robbed of something precious, and, all the while, time and opportunity is passing us by. The experience of fully connecting with our sexuality enables us to feel whole and at peace, with a newfound vitality. Sex is life, and life is about loving creatively.

Filed Under: Relationship, Sex, Transformation Tagged With: health, Relationship, Sex, spirituality

November 21, 2020 By Graham Stevenson

Why Does sex go Wrong? (part two)

‘Which bit goes in which hole,’ was all the sex education that a young carpenter told me he had received.  He raised his eyebrows as if to say, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’  Most of our preparations for sexual encounters seem to rely heavily on instinct or inspiration.  I’ve often thought it would be good to have a National Proficiency Test to establish competence before letting anyone loose with such a powerful force.  Not dissimilar to what carpenters have to get before being let loose on your precious house and furniture.

Sex is essentially about connection which is why it has come to have so much meaning.  As social animals we depend on connection and when we put sex into the intimate category it gets loaded with meaning.  On its own it has none.  It is just an act … for pleasure or purpose.  

There are basically three areas of connection:

  • self
  • someone else or others
  • life, the universe, and everything.

Self

It has been said that you can only love another to the extent that you love yourself.   Self-pleasure then seems such a logical and natural way of learning how to love someone else.  Connecting with yourself and knowing how you get turned on is a fabulous gift to offer another person.  In contrast we sometimes offer ourselves up more like a booby-trapped obstacle course that leaves both parties confused and frustrated.

Meeting our own needs first is essential in making healthy connections for another reason. Neediness is a passion killer.  The process of dealing with our neediness is also about learning to be present.  Creating the time-and-place space to listen to our bodies … and being brave enough to be present for both pain and pleasure.

Shame is another big passion killer, along with guilt.  We use a lot of energy hiding our guilt and shame and in making sure that people don’t stray too near it. The biggest aspect of ourselves that gets shamed is our animal side.  Lovingly bringing it into our persona can release us from shedloads of shame.

The scientific name for our animal side is the reptilian brain.  It not only gives us the primal grunt to reproduce but also the spark of attraction, the sexual chemistry that sometimes scandalises our civilised minds.  Untamed it expresses itself in our basest sex acts such as rape and abuse.  Accepted and valued for what it offers it can continue to heat up the connection between two people for a lifetime.  

Getting disconnected from ourselves starts early on in life.  An upbringing where shame is used to control behaviour distorts our idea of ourselves and our bodies.  Having predefined ways of behaving as male or female without room for creative uniqueness can force people to conform to please others.  We end up dancing in other people’s shoes to keep others safe and not for the pleasure of just being ourselves.

Trauma is also about disconnection.  We instinctively dissociate to survive the overload of emotion.  Single events such as separation from mother at birth, abuse, or surgery can be traumatic.  Less obvious are the negative remarks about genitals and sexual behaviour that can incrementally build towards a traumatic tipping point.

We are all trying to find the way home to where we can relax with who we are and simply find our own way of being.  Sex is a way to connect deeply with ourselves, sinking down into our bodies, allowing the unconscious to become conscious.  

Learning to be at home with ourselves is also the safest place to be and builds resilience into all aspects of our lives.

Other(s)

Relationship is the ultimate reality.  Without someone to listen we have no voice … individuality is ultimately a myth.  Co-operation is how our species succeeds, like all our nearest primate relatives, we are social animals.

Our evolutionary path can be traced in our bodies, and specifically in our brains.  The instinctive selfishness is probably more representative of our reptilian brain stem.  Reptiles are born independent whereas mammals need to nurture their young to independence outside the womb.  For this to work there needs to be pair bonding between the parents – the longer the time the stronger the bond. Humans are unique in the animal kingdom with independence taking anything from 15 to 30 years depending on the society.

The potent sexual chemistry of the reptilian brain can’t compete with the endless repetition of life’s chores and the drudgery of providing for all the needs of house and home.  Sexless marriages are becoming more common due to the pressures of our modern lifestyle.  Lovers slowly drift apart and end up as just mates, or more like siblings.

Restoring polarity is the key.  This is often in stereotypical roles where the primal urge to merge awakens in the mind of the body and offends our politically correct egos.  However, once the positive and negative poles have been discovered again then the energy can start to flow and the spark return.  Allowing a space for that erotic charge can reignite a relationship.  Learning to play with it expands our repertoire of erotic connection and our overall creativity.

Our attachment style in childhood will affect our adult relationships due to different experiences of intimacy and love.  Providing the nurture our childhood often didn’t give us allows the natural child in us to emerge.  As both children and adults, we all need the arena of unconditional love in which to open up and change. ‘Are you there for me?’ is the question we have to answer to our inner child as well as our adult partners.  It is then that we feel safe to be naked both physically and emotionally with each other.

Life, the Universe and Everything

Quantum physics is bringing science and spirituality together.  We know the universe is made up of energy in different states of form and flow.  We, ourselves, are body and spirit with a consciousness that encompasses both. We live in an energetically interconnected system where butterflies cause hurricanes across the globe.

Connecting with the energy of life that flows through our body forms is an art.  It takes application to develop the specific awareness of what is already there but not conscious.  Deliberately arousing it through Tantric massage of the physical body allows a consciousness of the ‘energy body’ to be developed.  This exists beyond the limitations of the physical form and blends with the flow of life all around us.  

Through learning to ride this erotic wave we can experience oneness not just with ourselves, nor even just with others but with the whole of creation.  By connecting with the flow of life in ourselves we can connect with its flow everywhere.  The real happy ending is not in a climax so much as an ongoing state of ecstasy that is orgasmic … connecting us to the background state of the conscious universe.

The things that stop this journey have already been mentioned because this path starts with our own self, gets refined and expanded in connecting with others, and then finally takes us into life and the universe as we connect with the One universal consciousness and everything that resonates with energy.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: intimacy, Sex, sexual issues

April 20, 2018 By Graham Stevenson

COMPLAINING … Am I Right?

Your rights

 

Everyone has a right to complain, don’t they?  If we didn’t complain we would just end up being doormats.  Somebody has to stick up for your right to an opinion … and it’s best if it’s YOU who does that.

The benefits of complaining

Complaining can get things off your chest.  Make you feel that you have done something in the face of impossibilities – that you’re not powerless.  At the very least, you have exercised your right to free speech. Being assertive also builds up your sense of worth and self-respect.  That in turn makes others respect you and think twice before putting one over on you, doesn’t it?

It also helps to build community.  When people hear you complain they often sense communality in the grievance. It provides a talking point upon which to build relationship and a sense of belonging is what we all need. Complaining is very catchy and soon people add their own issues to yours and end up making a mountain out of all their molehills.

Complaining is actually not good for you

As we have such efficient brains we tend to build stronger neural pathways for the things we do most often … and that’s what makes them easier to do.  Add that to the fact that we already have negatively biased brains for our survival.  We are therefore likely to see the glass half full, complain about it, and then find it easier to focus on how half-full it is, all the while vocalising it more and more.  That is why complaining tends to lead to states of sadness and melancholy that affect our whole lives.

It’s bad for your health

Complaining is like setting off an alarm.  It causes the stress hormone Cortisol to be released. This increases blood sugar and raises blood pressure.  It affects the hippocampus where all our creative, intelligent thinking happens. We end up moving into fight-or-flight mode as emotions rise and can only see things in terms of black and white.

Over time this compromises the immune system and makes the body prone to diseases like diabetes, strokes, obesity and heart disease.  Is it really worth it, we might ask?

How to stick up for your rights without killing yourself

The trick is to encourage your hippocampus to talk and not your emotions.  That means dealing in facts and being positive.  Complaining without a solution in mind is just venting and gets nowhere.  Solution-focused complaining suggests:

  1. Have a clear purpose in mind
  2. Start whatever your going to say with a positive statement
  3. Be specific about the facts and report the emotions rather than feeling them again
  4. End on a positive note.

(Otherwise know as the shit sandwich in some more military environments.)

The environment that sees the most complaining is probably the home. Here it steadily destroys relationships bit by sound bite, chipping away at the deposit of love and building a wall against intimacy.  There is a specific way for partners to learn how to complain, save you self-respect and possibly your relationship.

Countering the effects of complaining

Quite simply cultivate an attitude of gratitude … and all the best things in life will come your way.  Your outlook will be positive, your body will be calmer and healthier, you will live longer and people will like being around you.  It’s a win-win situation that is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive.

Complaint-proof personal armouring

The following simple and yet profound steps will give you super human abilities to withstand the fatal effects of a lifetime in an environment of complaining:

  • Learn to be flexible and adapt to changing situations – it’s how we survived the dinosaurs
  • Cultivate mindfulness to be aware of your body, become an observer to your emotions and down regulate your fight-or-flight response
  • Be future-orientated as hope motivates and the past has gone and can’t be changed
  • Be non-judgmental by walking in another’s shoes before you criticize them
  • Accept what is beyond your control and concentrate on what you can change
  • Be ruthlessly honest and accept your failures as well as your strengths and successes.

By being aware of the benefits and all the pitfalls to complaining it allows us to use it to maintain balance in our lives.  That is the greatest achievement in human history, true for the species and for the individual.

Filed Under: Relationship Tagged With: arguements, complaining, overcoming faults

February 8, 2018 By Graham Stevenson

PLEASURE AVERSION

It is a sad fact that we are hard-wired for pain. Our old brain is constantly looking out for danger. Survival is its primary concern. It is a risk to enjoy pleasure because we have to relax … let go … and be vulnerable.

You deserve it

We meet pain from birth onwards and learn how to deal with it. It is the first confirmation we get that we are alive. By contrast pleasure is strange and we are not sure if we can survive its intensity and so we often resist and play safe.

All this freely available pain has a subtle message – somehow or other you must deserve it. In the simple logic of the dualistic mind pain is conflated with being bad, possibly evil and destined for eternal pain, or hell. We end up hating ourselves for deserving it and not knowing why. We can’t accept pleasure because we don’t deserve it and to do so would be wrong, only confirming what we already knew – perfect catch 22.

Crowd control

This is probably why so many religions major on pain. Salvation through the cross, self denial and making up what is lacking in the suffering of the saviour … as if there was a lack. The cycle of reincarnation and suffering that purifies the person on the way to a higher state of consciousness. Very few religions major on pleasure or seem to endorse it as the true purpose of the body and its nervous system. No wonder the clitoris was such an enigma to the Victorians … a God-given organ … with no other purpose than pleasure, and that in multiple, seemingly endless, orgasmic spadesful.

Another deterrent to pleasure is the pain when the pleasure ends. In another twist of logic it becomes safer to not participate in pleasure to avoid being tortured by the memory of it. What you haven’t tasted you can’t miss and so ignorance becomes bliss.

The truth is that everybody understands pain. Suffering is the universal human condition in which we see another’s pain and feel a oneness with them, known as empathy. Pleasure is almost an affront. People who enjoy themselves openly display a separateness that only minorities such as the rich, famous and elites willingly foster.

A just reward

So, if we deserve pain, then we have to earn the right to pleasure. It comes in packages like heaven, nirvana and paradise… all at a very high price. Of course, if you control the market on pleasure you can exercise amazing power over people. How so? Because deep down we know it is all a lie and we know this because we have hope. This hope yearns for better things, a better life and a better world. We believe in justice, which is the ultimate balancing of pain and pleasure – the true and right perspective on life.

Having had authority endorse our unworthiness for pleasure we often need authority to allow us to enjoy ourselves. True authority would say be free, go ahead and enjoy life until you are replete … even if you vomit along the way. False authority says no, it is sinful, unholy, unlawful and can only be metered out in proscribed behaviours on set days in certain circumstances … ALL of which are controlled by US, the God-ordained authority! Of course, some authorities are self-appointed and thus they keep the divine authentification in-house.

Heaven on earth

Thankfully, these days pleasure is being seen for what it really is … the human raison d’être.   It is vital for life and the source of both physical and psychological health. Justice is the glue that holds communities together and makes a better world. Heaven on earth is what a God of love would surely want … so go out and enjoy yourself. Maybe, with just one caveat … ‘do unto others what you would like them to do unto you’, consensually, of course.

Filed Under: Sex, Transformation Tagged With: authority, heaven, pain, Pleasure aversion, religion

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