Sensate Focus: The Sexual Give that Gets

Dear Dr. Pinhas,
My name is Nicole and I am in your Human Sexuality class. In class you  have taught us something that I know will change my relationship with my boyfriend dramatically. You taught us a 10 stage process that will change our sex lives forever. This process was called the Sensate Focus. This process was wonderfully designed for people who are having trouble with “making love” and are just having sex to get it done. I am not saying that I just do sex, but when my boyfriend wants to have sex he will introduce it in a very annoying way that does not turn me on but truthfully turns me off. I brought this process up with him and tried to explain it to him. Not only did he shoot it down but he also thought that I wasn’t into him anymore.. Please tell me how I can bring up this topic again to him and not scare him off. I want to get our sex life back on track where we both are wanting it and not just him .

By the way…I am going to miss your class so much next semester. You have taught me a lot of things that I try to re teach to my friends all the time to get them to understand topics that I didn’t  know before.

Response from Dr. Pinhas

Hi Nicole

I am soooo sorry that your boyfriend doesn’t understand the exercises that we talked about in class.  For people not familiar with the techniques of Sensate Focus, let me repeat them here.  These were originally sex therapy behavior modification techniques for both men and women who had performance anxiety leading to problems with desire/excitement and orgasm in women as well as erections in men.  These 10 sessions remove the pressure of sexual intercourse and start with non-genital touching and then move into the sensuality of  genital touching and tasting with no masturbatory or oral intentionality. Each one hour exercise builds upon the next with increasing levels of erotic touching.  Orgasm is built into the exercises  by masturbation only, after the full hour, if necessary.  We live in a society with so many demands for  sexual performance that both men and women suffer unnecessarily.  Women oftentimes feel that they must quickly conform to a man’s touch in a way that doesn’t allow relaxation and a slow build  to erotic sensual pleasure.  It is unfortunate that many women, as a general rule, “do sex” for their partners rather than “feel” sex for themselves.  They do not have the pleasure of learning their bodies in a slow sensual “stay in the erotic lustful moment” way.  They do not feel in charge of fellatio and feel unsure and insecure about cunnilingus.  They need to be able to respond to a “pianissimo”  touch on the part of their lovers.  These exercises take sexual intercourse out of the equation which takes the goal and demand of  sexual intercourse  out of the equation.  Performance to “come” is lessened; slow sensory awareness of erotic pleasure is intensified.  Pregnancy is avoided and STD’s are minimized.  Women typically feel very much more in control of their eroticism throughout the slow sensual one hour give and get turn- taking between partners.  Both partners need to put the emphasis on sensory sexual awareness without any demand for the expectation of performance or sexual “show”.  They learn to bring down their arousal and slowly stretch it out throughout increasing levels of sexual touch and arousal.  These exercises are the ultimate in erotically charged safe sex, where both partners have incredible control over their arousal. How cool is this???  My experience in teaching these exercises to multitudes of people is that the majority are thrilled to have an option to the laboriously boring male dominant “wham, bam, thank you, mam” oriented approach to sexual intercourse which leaves most women not only without orgasm but bored, angry, and unresponsive.  In many instances it leaves  guys with rapid ejaculation, or worse, erectile inhibition.

These exercises conform to an “abstinence only” model of sexuality and unfortunately, according to the feedback I’ve gotten from dogmatically religious types ( in contrast to feedback from a secularly oriented crowd) is considered by them as negative.  Those schooled in religious dogma feel not only that sex before marriage  is misguided and more importantly that LUST is sinful.  THIS  IS BUT ONE OF MANY PRE-SUPPOSITIONS THAT CREATES SEXUAL DYSFUNCTION. According  to those associated with these principles, sexual behavior is to be saved for marriage.  Do not misunderstand me.   There is nothing wrong with this value system for those who chose to conform to it.  But why must sexual lust or the experience of sexual excitement and arousal (a k a horniness) be sacrificed?  For example, when a couple takes marital vows and participates in sexual pleasuring, the ensuing guilt, shame,  and lack of sexual desire come flooding into the bedroom.   Just because someone says ” I DO” doesn’t decondition them from years of sexual guilt, shame, and inhibition just when they start to become sexually participatory. They cannot shed  their negative ideas about erotic feelings as being bad and wrong even though they may have taken vows.   As a result,  many women produce “anti- fantasies”.  These are thoughts which just  randomly come into their  heads to kill off  sexual desire.    If a girl/woman was raised on a diet of sexual negativity, whether she is married or not,  she may be producing all types of negative sexual ideation.  She may be  having sexual relations while thinking about her horribly  uncommunicative parents, the dog that needs to be walked, the sale at Bloomingdale’s, what to make for dinner, etc.  If her  partner is tuned in to her distance, he may sense her “far away” state and say to her  “come back to me baby, stay with me……”  But alas, she cannot seem to get herself in the mood for sex ( sexual desire) or turned on by sexual stimulation (sexual excitement).

When a man feels bored or anxious with performance oriented sexuality where he is responsible for the initiation of sexual behavior and orchestration of sexual behavior for both him and his partner, sensate focus might look awfully appealing to him as well.  Many a man would love to fulfill his “passivity” fantasies and allow a woman to slowly and sensually pleasure him in such a way that he doesn’t have to “work so hard” at being sexually active.    So sensate focus has benefits for both genders.

Nicole, as far as your boyfriend is concerned.  Explain to him that you want to try something different.  That the problem isn’t him… but you need something different, NOT SOMEONE different.  You want him to ” turn you on,” by a slow teasing, make you want to move to him” touch.  A touch that slowly drives you erotically crazy.  Ask him if he wants this for you as well as himself. If he doesn’t feel criticized, he may more than likely want to try and give both of  you a different sexual experience.  Tell him you just can’t jump into it.  Most women can’t jump into it.   Often they pretend that they do by faking orgasm.  Tell him you want something really meaningful with him, not just a fast f…….”  I am sure that he’ll get what you mean.