Relationship Archives - Dr Graham Stevenson

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.

May 21, 2020 By Graham Stevenson

Why is Sex so Important?

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.

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:

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

November 3, 2016 By Graham Stevenson

Designer Relationships by Mark A Michaels and Patricia Johnson

Relationships have historically been prepackaged – ’till death do us part monogamy. However many people have failed to live within these limits with painful consequences to themselves and those around them. Now there is a move towards designer relationships based on the participants needs and preferences. The move towards conscious sex is bound to affect the relationships we make with each other. This book is a great contribution to that ongoing debate that has seen the equal acceptance of women, homosexuals and now each person’s own unique sexuality.

Written by two people who live in a ‘designed relationship’ for many years it covers and comments on all the possibilities that are currently available. There are reassuring quotes from those who have found the benefits of various combinations. As we have largely inherited the package of monogamy the writers assess its precepts and practices over a long history. They then challenge the misconceptions that have grown up around non-monogamy.

A key issue raised by monogamists is commitment and cheating. This is covered by the need for design’’ to include all the parties consensually. In contrast to monogamists the main issue that polyamorists champion is of honestly dealing with jealousy, which taints so many relationships. In confronting jealousy’s real roots they have discovered a new experience called compersion: ‘taking pleasure in the pleasurable experiences of others.’ Although it sounds like an obvious aspect of healthy love it is severely challenged in close sexual relationships.

There is a good chapter on relationship skills, which have to be so much more attuned when dealing with more than one partner. For those wanting to explore crossing the boundaries of their current relationship there is plenty of advice about how to go about it safely. Overall this is a good guide to how to have happy monogamous and non-monogamous relationships.

[amazon template=iframe image1]

October 11, 2016 By Graham Stevenson

The Chalice and The Blade by Riane Eisler

The Chalice and The Blade is one of my ‘significant’ books. Riane Eisler looks at a broad sweep of social history from Neolithic times to the present day and nature of the Divity that was worshipped and how it affected the culture.
The book starts with an anlysis of Neolithic artefacts and archeology that indicated that the people of those times were in awe of the lifegiving powers of womankind. They recognised that it was out of the female of all creatures that life was born into this earth. They revered the human woman as the apogee of all created feminity and carved many small ‘venuses’ as representations of her that have subsequently been dug up around Europe. The power of men in these cultures was directed into productive and artisitic activities and the societies were generally equitable and peaceful with settlements without defenses and few armaments. She suggests that the sexes co-operated in an interdependent partnership that had synergistic creative energy.
In contrast the pastoral groups of the plains had a different orientation and their ideals rested in the male power of taking life and dominating nature. Their gods were warrior gods and their artefacts were weapons of war. Their attitude to women was one of domination and possession as a means of production. When these two groups met the aggressive pastoralists overpowered the agriculturalists and in successive invasions changed their culture – they moved away from the life-giving Chalice to the life-taking Blade.
The overriding cultural perspective from the fall of Crete to the present day has been predominantly masculine with women relegated to a subservient position of reproach as worker and producer. This masculine drive to dominate and manipulate nature has lead to all the technological advances that have improved human life thus far but at the expense of social development and the environment. Life is lived in the context of powerful men and the threat of war with huge national ‘defense’ budgets and little spent on birth control and things that affect women’s wellbeing.
Riane calls for a return to a gylanic (life-generating) female perspective to inform our culture before our male androcratic (dominator) culture comes to it’s inevitable conclusion in a war that will bring global catastrophy. Anyone who wants a big picture context for the issues of the world should read this book. It is incredibly useful in providing a new view of an old way of life that is the answer to much of humanity’s current groping in the dark. For anyone with a female partner, the future lies in the woman standing next to you. It seems so right that men’s power should be in providing a safe space for women to discover their sexuality and space to express it multi-faceted creativity. Obviously you can’t make war when you are making love.

[amazon template=iframe image1]