Let's Talk About Sex Real Stories from a Therapist's Office

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Contents

Introduction
1 Symbiosis: Too Close for Comfort
2 My Life, My Sex

3 Looking Closely in Sex Therapy

4 Passion Crash: When Men’s Equipment Lets Them Down
5 The Best in Us, the Worst in Us

6 Whiteout: Blurred Boundaries

7 When to Go, When to Stay
8 The Lanzarote Effect: The Child in Adult Relationships

9 Shutdown: When Legs Are Crossed

10 The Four Spheres of Sexuality
11 Come On! Men and Their Bodies

12 Macho Men

13 Be My Echo: Narcissism in Relationships

14 Desire Chooses Its Own Path: Fetishes, S&M, and More

15 Sex and Gender

16 What’s Left to Say

Acknowledgments
About the Author
Introduction
_______________

A LITTLE WHILE AGO, I gave a lecture on sexuality at a professional

development week for orthodontists. Maybe you’re asking
yourselves, What on earth does orthodontics have to do with sex? A
lot, actually! The pelvic floor, which spans the area beneath the
pelvis, is indispensable for good sex and also works in close alliance
with the jaw. Both are part of the human fight-or-flight mechanism,
and if someone is being stubborn or for some other reason gritting
their teeth, it is highly likely that changes are happening down below,
too. It is precisely for this reason that a good sex life leads to so
much relaxation—even later, at the office!
I arrived at the orthodontists’ event under blue skies and glorious
summer temperatures, just in time for the lunch break. The
participants, in good humor, were eating on the hotel terrace
squinting against the sunshine, or sitting in deck chairs with sea-
blue-striped cushions enjoying a post-meal coffee. At small bar
tables, others happily chatted away. Once I had loaded my plate and
squeezed myself into a place at a table, there was a sudden hush in
the conversation—the sexologist had arrived. And there it was, that
common tension: “Oh, so now it’s all about sex!”
All in all, the week was a success. I was able to communicate my
ideas, and the four lectures I gave were well attended. On the first
day I asked the participants to take full-length cellphone portraits of
their neighbors. What does your body look like? How do you hold
yourself? Are you aligned and perpendicular? For the final lecture, I
decided to get everybody to end with movement—I wanted us all to
sing and dance erotically. But would the orthodontists play along?
I needn’t have worried. Ten seconds after I’d started the music,
the whole group was on their feet. The participants draped their suit
jackets and sweaters over their chair backs and began swinging their
pelvises with gusto and singing along with me: “Ich hab Sex
Appeal”—“I’ve Got Sex Appeal,” a Georg Danzer song. Thirty-seven
singing, shimmying orthodontists: a sight for sore eyes—and ears!
It’s always a joy to witness how much fun, positive energy
sexuality can release. It often begins with giggling that quickly
develops into a deep-down belly laugh full of pure life. I try to convey
this sense of fun on TV talk shows when I’m demonstrating thrusting
techniques, on my vlog when I sit on a table in my socks saying,
“Today I’m feeling menopausal,” and through my day-to-day work in
my practice. People come to me because they want to solve a
problem, to learn to speak about their sexual desires, or to
reintroduce energy to sex and their relationships. Almost all my
clients are surprised about just how much is possible.
Are these things connected to love? Fundamentally, yes. When
I’m discussing sex, I like to talk about the “practice of love,” because
for me love becomes relevant when it’s experienced practically and
not just talked about. Practice, a word with Greek roots, means,
among other things, “deed” or “activity” but also “execution,”
“completion,” and “encouragement.” It is a word that suits sex well
because sex is one of the most important acts for turning love and
relationships into reality.
Sadly, whether with a therapist or their partner, many people
simply don’t dare talk about their sexual acts. It seems to me that we
still, or once again, live in an uptight society. Recently a pastor wrote
to me that he had covered the subject of “responsible acts in love
and partnerships” in a religious education class for sixteen-year-olds.
He was immediately suspended from teaching. No nudes were
necessary for that step to be taken—a few Bible passages, such as
1 Corinthians 13, and François Villon’s raunchy poetry were enough.
I had a similar experience. In 2013 a writ from Germany’s Federal
Review Board for Media Harmful to Minors arrived in the mail. There
was to be a hearing about whether my first book, Make Love, a sex
education guide for teenagers, was spreading compromising
material. Fortunately, I later received an official notice telling me that
the matter had been dropped. The whole thing was absurd, because
at the same time I had been nominated for a national children’s
literature award.
In Germany, where I live, official guidelines govern what can be
broadcast and when. My TV show can be broadcast in its entirety
only after ten o’clock in the evening; the same applies to accessing it
on the internet. Apparently, it’s easier to accommodate fictional sex
and violence on TV than it is to accommodate proper information
about sex.
Inhibitions about and blockades put up against the subject of sex
also arise in my practice. The media is full of sexual messages and
sex is omnipresent in advertising, yet despite this—or maybe
because of it—people still haven’t got used to a relaxed handling of
the subject. A lot of people are ashamed, some so much that I’m
reminded of previous centuries. My clients often explain to me how
uneasy they feel inside their bodies and with their sexual desires.
Only small children are relaxed and natural about their bodies and
desires, and for me this is the crux. Sexual attitudes are planted
early in people’s lives and develop over the years. One of my major
concerns is achieving some sort of balance over sexuality from the
very start. If parents are relaxed about these issues, then they can
also be relaxed about their offspring’s sexual and bodily curiosity.
It seems to me that Scandinavians are less inhibited about sex.
When I was growing up in Denmark, the subject was pretty much
incidental. When we wanted to buy an ice cream at the shop across
from my school, we had to pass a porn magazine vending machine
right next to the entrance. It was a rectangular box with lots of
square glass windows; you placed money in a slot and opened up
the flap to take out the magazine. We never did—we didn’t have the
money for that—but depending on how the shop owner had
arranged them, the loosely rolled magazines sometimes offered a
clear view of a crotch or a blow job. We didn’t find the magazines
particularly special; we were indifferent to them. They didn’t damage
me, and they weren’t against the law. Pornographic narratives and
images were legalized in Denmark in the ’60s, making Denmark the
first country in the world to permit them.
With this book, I would like to give you a sense of what it means
to be a sexologist and to show you my work with my clients. (Don’t
worry—you won’t recognize your neighbors: all the people appearing
in these pages are disguised to such an extent that they wouldn’t
even recognize themselves.) I am convinced that the problems,
wishes, and sexual desires that clients bring to my practice will be
familiar to many readers. I also want to talk about sexuality in a
shared language, one that is relaxed and professional with a pinch of
humor. I’ll not only enthuse about sex but also illustrate ways you
can take your sex life to the next level.
People who don’t want to talk about sex don’t have to. People
with problems, however, sometimes do want to seek help and need
to learn how to talk about those problems. Sexuality is inherent in us
all, and this notion unsettles many of us: shouldn’t it mean that things
therefore automatically go smoothly in bed? And if things don’t work
that well for me, could something be fundamentally wrong with me?
This is rarely the case as, hopefully, this book will demonstrate. The
beauty of life is that one never ceases to learn throughout it, as
shown by brain research. And talking to each other helps the
process.
1

Symbiosis:
TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

_______________

ALMOST ALL MY clients are physically and mentally healthy. They may
arrive convinced that something is wrong with them, that they’re
totally different from other people. They might even have received
medical diagnoses that seem to support their doubts. However, they
mostly leave their first visit to my office knowing and anticipating that
they’ll learn something about themselves, and feeling that they’re as
normal as everybody else. Physically, everything is fine: all that’s
wrong is their mental perceptions and their lack of knowledge about
themselves and their bodies.
An example: A young woman who had never had an orgasm
asked me once whether there was anything she could do about not
coming. Her problem was most likely hereditary. As an alternative
cause, she suggested that she’d “ruined something while riding”—as
a child she’d been a keen horseback rider.
First of all, no woman “ruins” her ability to have an orgasm by
horseback riding. Just the opposite: riding gives the sex organs a
boost through pelvic movement that encourages circulation; in the
brain, synaptic paths that are also switched on during sex are
energized and boosted.
 But women who haven’t yet learned to climax often despair. They
tell me that they’ll be deserted by their partner or will no longer be
able to find one because a “certain something” is missing. Many men
and women are totally convinced that it’s easy and normal to have
an orgasm.
A woman who doesn’t come can still be rejected as “frigid.” She
ends up like a broken clock, destined to be stashed in a dark drawer
for years . . . but a clockmaker could easily get her ticking again.
Frigid means “sexually cold.” The term came into use years ago
by doctors who neither understood nor tried to understand female
sexuality. I never use the word; it has become obsolete. What
exactly is to be understood by it is, in any case, unclear. Inability to
have an orgasm? Certainly not. A client once told me, “My girlfriend
can’t come, she’s frigid.” On closer questioning, he admitted, “Well,
okay, she can come when she does it herself, but never during sex!”
I wanted to know what he meant by “sex,” and he explained that she
normally came with oral sex or fingering but never during “actual”
sex. She was simply “frigid.” Aha! Evidently, this man considered
only vaginal orgasms to be “proper” orgasms—another
misconception. Only a small percentage of women come solely from
penetrative intercourse. Looking at it from a different angle, in this
man’s judgment a large percentage of women are frigid.
“Up to now, all the women I’ve been with have come,” he added.
Did he realize that, on their own admission, 90 percent of women
have pretended to climax at least once? Incidentally, the man in
question had never had a long relationship; he was always the one
dumped. I suggested bluntly (I couldn’t speak any other way) that he
reconsider his ideas about women. Inwardly, I was asking myself
whether with such limited ideas he could be a good—meaning
sensitive—lover and partner.
At least my client had a thoughtful look on his face as he left my
practice. Of course, he never returned. From his perspective, he
wasn’t the problem. Sometimes, however, the cause of being uptight
really is to be found elsewhere.

One Call Too Many

I REQUIRE CLIENTS to make appointments by email; my assistant,
Anika, takes care of the details. Many couples believe they have to
prepare me for their problems before the first appointment, as if we
need a bit of foreplay. However, the less I know, the more impartial I
am at our first meeting and the better I can concentrate on their
medical history. So I avoid the telephone.
However, Andrea, who was about to have her initial consultation,
called the office shortly beforehand because something urgent had
cropped up. I accidentally picked up the receiver, intending to make
a call myself.
“Hi, I’m Andrea Schulz,” she said. “I’ve never been to your office
—my first appointment was to be next week—but I’m afraid I’ll have
to cancel it.” She had a young voice, though I thought she was
probably over thirty. There was uncertainty in her inflection, but not
only that—sometimes she sounded as if she was used to issuing
orders. I imagined she was a mother. Mothers are always having to
explain things to their children, to get them to understand what
they’re allowed to do and what they’re not. As a mother myself, I
know the sound of this voice. “Do you have any other appointments
free?” she asked. I took a moment too long to answer, so she
repeated the question.
“Yes, of course,” I replied. “Are you coming alone or with your
partner?” I asked this to find out whether we needed a sixty-minute
or a ninety-minute appointment. At that very moment I realized that
dear old Anika should be taking care of all this, not me!
A short pause. Finally, Andrea said in almost a whisper: “With
Harold.”
“Harold is your husband, is he?”
“Yes, and the father of our two children. We would like couples
therapy.” So I wasn’t far wrong—Andrea was a mother, of two, in
fact. And from the way she said “couples therapy” I had the
impression she was giving the words extra emphasis, which said to
me that she was not thoroughly convinced about what she was doing
at this moment and that she would actually have preferred to cancel
the appointment instead of rescheduling it. But somehow she
persevered—something was impelling her to follow the path she had
already started on.
“Could you contact us again by email?” I asked. “My assistant
doesn’t like me messing with her appointment calendar!” I laughed.
“She’s trained me well. Anyway, then we’ll have things in writing.”
Andrea apologized profusely, although she had done nothing
wrong, while I promised myself, and not for the first time, never again
to touch the office telephone. All the same, I was curious what this
couple was concerned about. Sexuality? Love? Or maybe, as so
often, both?
Love and sex: Most people think they belong together—often
because they don’t want to properly come to terms with the
differences between them. To do so would mean dealing with their
own personality and their own love and sex lives, and for many
people this is not pleasant.
For a long time it was thought that women in particular, almost by
their very nature, were unable to separate sex and love. Men, on the
other hand, could, which was also given as a reason why, as was
assumed to be the case, they were more often unfaithful. This
assumption, however, contradicts the facts: women are also
unfaithful—and just as often. As far as numbers are concerned,
there’s no marked difference in this between men and women. So
the cliché that women can have sex only when love is involved is
also wrong. In my practice I’ve heard women say countless times, “If
only—just once—my husband would just want sex!” These women
want nothing other than to get laid, just to get down to business, to
screw—with or without love.

“Sweetheart, Can I Tell Ms. Henning?”

AT 7:00 P.M. on the dot, the office doorbell rings: Andrea and Harold
have arrived. Andrea is pale, with fresh rouge applied to her cheeks,
slim, and average height. Harold is also not a particularly robust
type. He’s a little less pale than his wife but obviously isn’t out in the
fresh air with his children as often as some other fathers. I imagine
that he does something in IT. I was slightly off on Andrea’s age—she
is, judging by her wrinkles, probably in her late thirties, so a bit older
than she sounded on the phone. Harold, I guess, is in his mid-forties.
I invite them to come in, which they do cautiously, with a quick
glance around the large room that opens up before them. Most
clients stand there for a while, turning on the spot—symbolic of their
situation, as it were. And so it is with Andrea and Harold. I read the
astonishment in their faces. They hadn’t expected a rose-red velvet
sofa with patterned cushions. Ditto the huge painting of three women
in a gentle, highly erotic bondage scene. Spread through the room
are other posters, on subjects like the pelvic floor or the brain. One
wall is covered with bookshelves—my library. Next to it is a large
mirror for exercises.
“The red wall is super!” says Harold, pointing toward the sofa,
which is in front of a wine-red wall. All the other walls are plain beige.
“Do you live here too?” asks Andrea.
I’m always surprised by this question. Okay, my office does feel
cozy and personal, but there are no personal things lying around. All
in all it’s tidy and uncluttered but, apparently, not like a typical office.
“I just want a warm atmosphere so that we feel comfortable,” I
explain. “After all, we aren’t going to be talking about shopping lists
here!” Although we do precisely that sometimes, when we discuss
lubes or condoms and one or the other gets written down on a list of
things to buy.
“Take a seat,” I offer. The two identical mauve armchairs seem to
literally invite Andrea and Harold to make use of them. The couple,
however, remain standing, and I register them both looking at me
inquiringly, perfectly synchronized. I begin to wonder whether I have
a symbiotic couple in front of me.
“You can sit wherever you like,” I add.
Nevertheless, Harold asks, “And where’s your favorite place to
sit, Ms. Henning?”
 I laugh. Many clients ask the same question. “I have no favorite
place,” I say. (However, I have!)
Now this slightly indecisive couple have to make a decision. As I
expected, Harold, courteous as a cavalier, now asks Andrea, “Honey,
where would you like to sit?”
Andrea answers immediately: “And you, sweetie?” After glancing
at me briefly, she adds brightly, “Let’s sit on the sofa—it’s your
favorite, isn’t it?”
I grin. Andrea has long since decided where her partner would
like to sit—without exchanging words.
“Of course.” Harold beams at her. I’m beginning to overheat from
all this mutual radiance.
The seating arrangements at the first session can reveal a lot
about a couple. Their choices give me a chance to hazard my first
cautious conjectures: Are they harmonizing? Do they sit close
together, or farther apart? Does a man drop immediately into the
armchair or sofa, without making eye contact with his female
partner? If so, does she then show her dismay? Would she prefer
that he be more gentleman-like, like in an old Rock Hudson or
Robert Redford movie? Then he should have sat down only once
she decided where she would sit. (And if she later has to go to the
restroom, then he had better get up politely on her return!) But he
didn’t. What now? Well, maybe they’ve got it just right, and he
doesn’t need to make allowance for her. But then again, maybe he
should, as she’s already pretty angry with him.
Sometimes both partners stand there helplessly, hesitating. They
can’t come to a decision and instead await instructions because they
really don’t want to make any mistakes. Is this what it’s like in bed