Sexual Healing

by Barbara Keesling

  You can create a delectable Tom Jones dinner at home for you and your partner. First, choose some sensuous foods. You might consider fruit (especially juicy ones, such as oranges and peaches), hors d’oeuvres such as cheese and crackers, any meat that can be pulled off a bone, and anything messy that can be licked off fingers and body parts. In general, anything that is creamy or juicy will feel especially good in your mouth. For beverages, serve wine or champagne, sparkling water, or fruit juice.

  I’ve prepared this dinner many times, and one of my favorite foods for it is artichokes. They’re fun to eat, and you can throw the leaves all over the place. If you are not into cooking or consider it a chore, go to a local bar or restaurant and buy a couple of orders of chicken wings, which work perfectly for this dinner. (This is starting to sound like a recipe book. Maybe my next book should be a recipe book for food to eat while you’re making love. Not to mention, this section of the chapter is starting to make me hungry.)

  To begin the Tom Jones Dinner, arrange the food on a sheet or piece of plastic to protect your carpeting and furniture. Or set the foods up outside if you have a private area. Take off your clothes. Relax and caress each other if you need a transition, then begin to feed each other. Go slowly, just as you would in a caressing exercise. Eat with the goal of feeling every sensation as the food passes your lips and through your mouth. Place food on your partner’s body and slowly lick it off, or offer food to your partner on your body. If you want a drink, take one, and then, with a kiss, share it with your partner. Finish the Tom Jones Dinner by washing each other off with warm, wet towels or by taking a sensuous shower.

  Exercise 104. ACTING LIKE AN ANIMAL

  A big part of being intimate is recognizing that lovemaking is playful and doesn’t have to be serious, that you can really let your hair down with your partner. Sex is a basic animal activity, and sometimes you may want to use it just to express that animal urge. This exercise is based on an exercise called Wild Thing from one of my previous books, Talk Sexy to the One You Love. I used to call it Quest for Fire, and I have elaborated on it here.

  One of you will be active while the other is passive. The passive partner lies on his or her back. The active person then uses the partner’s body to indulge in and gratify his or her “animal urges.”

  When you are the active partner, lick, stroke, and suck your partner as if you were an animal. Make a lot of animal noises while you do this, such as grunting or moaning. Rub yourself against different parts of your partner’s body. Groom your partner. If you are a woman and your partner has an erection, squat on top of him and thrust up and down. If you are a man, push your partner’s legs back and penetrate her, or roll her over and enter her from behind. Be creative and have fun with this, but don’t do anything that might hurt your partner.

  Exercise 105. SEX GAMES AND ROLE-PLAYING

  You can be creative and make up your own sex games that may or may not involve role-playing. This is a sex game I made up called “Snake in the Sleeping Bag with Unsuspecting Camper.” (And yes, I had been drinking when I made it up.) One person is the camper and one person is the snake. The “snake” crawls down to the bottom of the bed under the covers and lies there motionless. The “camper” then gets into bed and turns off the lights, pretending he does not know there is someone in the bed. As the camper relaxes, the snake awakens and slowly starts to slither and crawl up the camper’s body, stopping to lick or squeeze at various points. The secret to enjoying this exercise is for the snake to go as slowly as possible and make a lot of creative movements involving oral sex and wrapping around the partner’s body.

  Verbal Intimacy

  The following few exercises teach you to talk to each other in nonthreatening, productive, and intimate ways. The first three are incremental steps in a process to explore and improve your body image. The way you think about your body can have a profound impact on your sexuality. Sharing feelings about your body with your partner can also help you build trust.

  Exercise 106. BODY IMAGE, PART 1

  The body-image exercises are not sensate-focus exercises. They are communication exercises or processes used to help each person learn to become more comfortable with his or her own body and with his or her partner’s body. In these exercises, you will examine your nude body in detail in front of your partner, and you will tell your partner what you like and don’t like about your body. You will also discuss whether certain parts of your body have positive or negative feelings associated with them.

  For Part 1 of the exercise, the room should be well lit and should have a large mirror, preferably full-length. First, take off all of your clothes, and stand and gaze at each other for a minute. Stand about three feet apart and look into each other’s eyes. Slowly take in your partner’s facial features. Notice things that you have never noticed before or things that you haven’t taken the time to notice in a while.

  Now both partners should lower their gaze to take in the chest area. Think of this as a sensate-focus caress using your eyes instead of your hands. Let your eyes move slowly over your partner’s body, as if you were caressing him or her. Take your time, and gaze at each body part for as long as it takes to visually enjoy it. Mutually shift your gaze downward over your partner’s chest, abdomen, and legs. Take time to look at each other’s genitals. Each partner should then take turns turning around so the other person can look at the backside of his or her body.

  Your experience of this part of the body-image exercise will probably be different from my experience of the exercise with clients. When I did this exercise with clients, it was the first time we had seen each other nude. You may have seen your partner’s body naked many times. If that is the case, use this part of this exercise (looking at each other) to appreciate, rather than to see things for the first time.

  Even if you have seen each other nude many times, it may not have been acceptable in your relationship to stare at certain body parts, such as breasts or genitals. Or you may be in the habit of wearing sleepwear to bed, and sexual activity may take place only with the lights off. Partners may not be in the habit of walking around the house nude due to the presence of other family members. For whatever reason, you may not have much experience seeing your partner nude or being seen in the nude, so nudity itself may cause anxiety. If you feel anxious or self-conscious during this part of the exercise, take some deep breaths and tell your partner that you feel anxious. This is the only verbal communication in this part of the exercise.

  If your partner expresses that he or she feels anxious, you should nod and say, “I understand.” No other verbal feedback is necessary.

  You may encounter other sources of anxiety during this part of the exercise. Men and women usually have different anxieties about their bodies and about being nude in front of a partner. For men, there are two common beliefs that may cause anxiety in this situation. The first is the feeling that one’s penis is too small. Every male client I ever worked with expressed the belief during this exercise that his penis was not large enough.

  A second source of anxiety for men during this exercise is whether or not they will have an erection. Men have different ideas about how long it should take them to get an erection when they are naked with a woman. Some men expect to have an erection immediately; others may allow themselves one minute or five minutes. Others think they should not have an erection at all and are embarrassed if they do get one. The body-image exercise is not a sexual exercise. Try to determine what your “time frame” is for having an erection, and take the pressure off yourself. If you do have an erection during the exercise, just enjoy it and keep doing the exercise. Don’t try to make your erection harder, and don’t try to make it go away. It is perfectly normal to either have or not have an erection during this exercise.

  While men’s anxieties tend to be about their genitals, women tend to worry about being overweight, and about whether their partner will find some of their body parts unacceptable. Most women tend to think that their breasts
are too small or too saggy, and that their hips and thighs are too wide. Part of their reason for feeling overweight is that our culture and society place a totally unwarranted emphasis on thinness, idealizing a body that is quite honestly unattainable for the vast majority of women. Hopefully, doing this exercise and the ones that follow will help you to be more accepting of your body.

  If you do feel anxious about whether your partner finds your body attractive, just accept the fact that you have these feelings for now. Doing the body-image exercise does not require a body that meets certain standards of attractiveness.

  Your anxieties and feelings about your body and about your partner’s reaction to it are real. These exercises will help you learn to accept negative feelings about your body and learn to not let those feelings get in the way of your sexual enjoyment. You will also learn how your partner feels about his or her body. I hope that the outcome of the body-image exercises is that you are able to develop an attitude that says, basically, “While there may be certain aspects of my body that I am not ecstatic about, my body is capable of feeling good. I can have sensual and sexual enjoyment of my body if I accept myself the way I am.”

  Exercise 107. BODY IMAGE, PART 2

  In the next part of the body-image exercise, one partner is passive and the other is active. Let’s say the woman decides to be active first. She should take a long look at herself in the mirror and describe all the parts of her body and her feelings associated with each part. Her partner will sit comfortably and watch and listen.

  While you are listening, you may find that you disagree with your partner’s description or feelings about certain body parts. As the passive partner, you should not interrupt, make comments, or ask questions. You will have an opportunity for feedback when you are both through with the exercise. Try not to negate your partner’s feelings; just accept that he or she feels that way.

  When you are active, look at yourself carefully in the full-length mirror. Use a hand mirror to examine the back of your body. Starting with your hair, tell your partner whether you like or dislike it, what you like or dislike about it, any good or bad feelings or memories that are associated with it, whether you like to touch it or have it touched, and how it feels.

  Do the same for all your other body parts. Here is a list so you don’t leave anything out: hair, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, face, neck, shoulders, back, breasts/chest, arms, hands, stomach, waist, hips, thighs, buttocks, genitals, legs, and feet. Also include height, weight, body hair, and any characteristics such as moles, birthmarks, or scars.

  After you have described your body parts and told your partner how you feel about them, examine your body as a whole. Tell your partner what your favorite and least favorite parts are. What do you consider your best and worst features? What parts of your body cause you anxiety to think about? Which parts do you like to have touched or looked at? Which parts don’t you like to have touched or looked at, and why? If you could change anything about your body, what would you change? What would you like to look like, and why?

  After you have switched roles and your partner has described his or her body, discuss the following. Did you feel that your partner was realistic about his or her body? Why or why not? Which part of your partner’s body do you especially like? Finally, be sure to believe your partner’s feelings about your body, even though they may not coincide with yours.

  Please remember that this is not a time for bringing up any negative or critical feelings about your partner, or about your past or current relationship. It is a time to learn how you and your partner each feel about your bodies.

  This is not an easy exercise to do because we don’t usually discuss our feelings about our body with other people, even sexual partners we’ve been with for a long time. However, this exercise will accomplish several things. It will provide practice in communicating about your feelings, and it will provide information about how your partner feels about his or her body. This can be important, because a poor body image can cause people to shy away from sexual activities. In addition, your partner may have certain body parts that he or she is sensitive about. Getting your feelings and anxieties about your body out into the open can help eliminate further negative experiences. You may also learn that your partner’s reaction to being touched may have much less to do with the way you touch him or her than with his or her own anxieties about body image.

  A former client of mine, Alex, did not like to kiss, and it was causing a problem for him in relationships. During the body-image exercise, he revealed that as a teenager he had been in an accident and had broken his jaw. As a result he’d had to undergo major reconstructive surgery on his face, especially on his lips. The scars from the surgery were no longer visible, but the trauma stayed with him and made him self-conscious. He had never told a sexual partner that kissing created anxiety for him or why. The women he had been with had not known why he refused to kiss them. Consequently, they thought it was because of some problem he had with them, which made them anxious.

  It is possible that either you or your partner endured a past traumatic experience that has caused you to feel uncomfortable about your naked body or embarrassed about a certain body part. For example, a woman may harbor discomfort on a deep level because of a molestation episode in her past that she had previously kept secret. She may decide to tell her partner about the trauma during the body-image process, and she may feel a great sense of risk in doing so. If this exercise brings up a powerful memory or issue for you, remember that sometimes just getting it out into the open can help to release it, although you might need the assistance of a qualified therapist to deal with it. If a painful memory comes up for your partner, try to completely accept his or her feelings and to be very supportive.

  Another purpose of the body-image exercise is to find out if you and your partner have realistic views of your bodies. As a woman, you may find your body unattractive and think your partner is not telling the truth when he says that he likes your breasts or your thighs. If you are a man, you may feel that your penis is too small, when in fact your partner may like the way your penis looks and feels. These feelings about yourself and the way you look are probably not negative enough to stand in the way of doing sensate-focus exercises together. Problems arise when a person’s body image is either totally unrealistic or so negative that he or she cannot relax enough to enjoy sensual arousal. An example of a person with an unrealistic body image would be someone who is actually fairly good-looking, but whose self-esteem is so low that she thinks she is ugly. I use the example of a woman because this sort of unrealistic body image is more characteristic of women. Another example would be a man who has completely let himself go, to the point of neglecting personal hygiene, yet thinks he is good-looking and appealing to women. Neither of these people is realistic about her or his looks, but this fact only presents a problem if it interferes with doing the sensate-focus exercises.

  When I did the body-image exercise with clients, I found that most male clients had a positive attitude toward their bodies in general. Women are much more likely to pick themselves apart for not living up to a cultural ideal of attractiveness. I have worked with clients of all levels of attractiveness. I have never worked with a client who was so unattractive that it interfered with our ability to do the sensate-focus exercises. Both attractive and unattractive bodies feel good to touch. At the skin-to-skin level, it really only matters what your body feels like, not what it looks like. Looks have no bearing on sensuality, which has to do with touching and feeling rather than visual stimulation.

  I know of no research on whether attractive people have more satisfying sex lives than unattractive people. However, it is possible that there is some aspect of your appearance that you would like to change. A number of excellent resources are available on skin care, health, exercise, and clothing choice. You are an adult, and you have a large degree of choice about how you look. While appearance may be given too much importance in our culture, making yourself more attrac
tive can boost your self-esteem, and that is always worthwhile.

  Exercise 108. BODY IMAGE, PART 3

  Here are some further suggestions for healing your body image. Many people have found that writing or journaling about a body-related trauma has been helpful. A good book to use as a guide to doing this is Opening Up, by James Pennebaker, Ph.D. (see Recommended Reading).

  Sometimes a poor body image results from having no idea how you look to other people. If you have a body part you’re particularly sensitive about, you generally feel that the whole world is looking at it. Chances are, however, nobody but you is paying attention to it. By focusing on a particular body part, you’ve lost your sense of the big picture, which is the overall nonverbal impression you make on people who see you.

  One way to help change your view of yourself is to enlist your partner’s help and use a video camera. Have your partner tape you as you do various activities. When you watch the tapes, you’ll be surprised how much better you look than you think you do.

  As a further step to healing your body image, consider making a videotape of you and your partner making love. If you’re still self-conscious, use lighting and scenery to present yourself in the best possible light. (You obviously should only do this if you are 100 percent sure you can trust your partner. You don’t want this tape to end up on the Internet.)

  The next exercise will teach you and your partner how to communicate about sexual matters in positive ways.