What is sex therapy?
Sex therapy is a type of mental health treatment and talk therapy that addresses a couple’s issues or an individual’s struggles with sex and sexuality. There can be many goals in sex therapy, but in marriages or long-term relationships, the goal is typically to have a healthy sex life. In fact, many people in relationships have issues with sex. Approximately 43% of women and 31% of men say that they have some kind of sexual dysfunction during their lives. A sex therapist can help alleviate problems surrounding physical intimacy in romantic relationships.
Common sexual problems in romantic relationships
There are many reasons a couple might seek sex therapy. Here are some common issues that arise.
- Erectile dysfunction
- Lack of libido
- One or both members of the couple not being able to orgasm
- Intrusive sexual thoughts
- An unfulfilling sex life
If any of these things sound familiar, sex therapy could help with your interpersonal romantic relationship. You don’t have to settle for a relationship in which you feel sexually dissatisfied, and increased communication can help a couple in that situation.
How sex therapy works
Just like any other form of therapy, going to sex therapy is about honesty and working through struggles that arise in your life. However, with sex therapy specifically, you’ll be talking about potential issues surrounding sex and sexuality. If you’re an individual going to sex therapy, you’ll work with your therapist and talk about a variety of things including past sexual traumas, fear or discomfort surrounding sex, and so on. As a couple, you’ll discuss things that affect you as a unit including each partner’s individual sexuality and how you relate to one another. If you’re a member of a couple that’s having intimacy problems, a sex therapist can help you navigate those issues. For example, it could be that your partner has a high libido, but you don’t, and as a result, you don’t want to have sex as often as they do. Your sex therapist can talk to you both as you work through that issue and help you achieve a solution or compromise.
How do you know if your relationship needs sex therapy
One way to tell if you need sex therapy is to consider how happy you are in your sexual relationship with a partner. If you feel satisfied, then chances are that you don’t need to go to sex therapy. If there are issues that you’ve tried to work through with your partner but no solution comes from it, that may be a reason to seek sex therapy. There’s no shame in seeing a mental health professional for any reason, including issues surrounding sex. Sometimes, opening up the dialogue in front of a neutral party can help you facilitate a healthy sex life. You may feel strange or uncomfortable talking to someone that you don’t know who doesn’t know the intricacies of you or your relationship, but it can also be freeing to discuss these issues so that you can gain clarity on the struggles you’re up against. A sex therapist is an expert on sexuality and can help you demystify the roadblocks in your sexual relationship or your personal relationship with sex and sexuality.
Are you compatible with your partner?
Just because you’re having issues with your sexuality in relation to your partner, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t compatible with each other. It means that you need a little bit of help figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Sex therapy can be a great place to discuss compatibility issues and figure out what you like and what your partner likes so that you can come together to make things work. Your sex therapist will help you communicate with each other and devise a treatment plan so that you have a structured way to go about working through sexual intimacy issues in your relationship. If at any point in therapy you and your partner realize that it really is that you’re not compatible in one way or another, whether that’s related to sex or not, a sex therapist can help you work through that realization as well and come to the next steps. You might decide to see a couples counselor to help you work through the separation peacefully if that is the case.
You deserve a fulfilling sex life
You and your partner deserve to feel satisfied in the bedroom, so whatever your issues are with your sexuality and relationship, a sex therapist can help you figure out what needs to happen to better your sex life and the relationship overall. Whether you work with a counselor online or with a clinician in your local area, sex therapy could be a game-changer for your relationship.
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