Healthy Sexuality and Your Emotions

As a psychotherapist in private practice, when talking with my clients about their lives, it’s fascinating to look at the interplay of the emotions they feel and the sexual activities that evoke these emotions. Can anyone really separate them out? It seems like they are powerfully linked together. In this article, let’s look at a Healthy Sexuality where our sexual and emotional lives work together in harmony.As a psychotherapist in private practice, when talking with my clients about their lives, it’s fascinating to look at the interplay of the emotions they feel and the sexual activities that evoke these emotions. Can anyone really separate them out? It seems like they are powerfully linked together. In this article, let’s look at a Healthy Sexuality where our sexual and emotional lives work together in harmony.

I encourage you to?continually?be?curious?about your sexual and emotional life. For most of us, it changes over time…and it can be ever?better?the older we are. I encourage my clients to take a regular sexual inventory: How do you feel emotionally during specific activities? Just notice. There’s?no?right and wrong. There’s only what’s true for?you. And, it may change over time. With more experience, you may learn to enjoy things you didn’t used to.

Sometimes, because of a history of trauma, we don’t have good emotional experiences during sex. If you use sex like you use alcohol, drugs or food (to make yourself feel better) you may feel happier for a while, but don’t be surprised when it doesn't last. Painful emotions – like loneliness, depression and feeling unattractive – don’t go away by numbing or distracting yourself. Using sex to deal with them is like changing a bandage on a deep, old infected wound. You gotta clean out the wound.

So, if your sex life is really unfulfilling, stop and notice. Ask yourself:

• What am I having sex for?
• What emotions do I want to feel during sex?
• Am I enjoying certain sexual activities but not others?
• Am I enjoying sex with certain people but not others?

This kind of stuff is good to know. Don’t judge yourself (or anyone else), just use the information to begin to make changes – small changes. Big changes are usually too hard to sustain. Set yourself up to succeed: move slowly and deliberately when you’re working on your sex life and the emotions that go with it.

Do you find your sexual experiences to be fulfilling and exciting? If so, bravo! You’re doing something very right! But, why not fine-tune it even more? Ask yourself:

• What do I like best about sex?
• How can I get more of this?
• What was my best sexual experience ever?
• What about it made it so?

No matter how good (or lousy) your sexual life is, it can always change for the better. Start paying attention to who (and what) brings you pleasure?and – whether you’re eighteen or eighty – you too can develop a Healthy Sexuality.