Latest news with #SophieLaybourne
NZ Herald
21-07-2025
- General
- NZ Herald
Advice: Should I see a sex therapist? I don't know how to satisfy my wife
This is such an interesting question, and must be the bread and butter of psychosexual therapists. As you say, you're in a rut. It's not a drought (you can both have sex if you desire to, even if it's unsatisfying) but it's gone off the boil and you're blaming yourself for the fact that when you make love, she knows what's coming next – and it's not her. I'm sure many couples will relate to your letter on a deep level. Let's face it: in a relationship that lasts more than a few months, or even years, sex can stop being the glue that sticks you together. As the decades pass, it can stop being the solvent that sunders you apart, too. To your great credit (you don't say how long you've been together), you have acknowledged the problem and want to tackle it. Or you want your partner to, it's not clear. Whatever, you want to get your sex life done, as if it's Brexit, or smashing the gangs. It may be more complicated than that. Or, indeed, more simple. It could be that you're just not that into each other. As I've said before, there is nothing so capricious as Cupid. We can have fantastic sex with people we despise and terrible sex with people we adore. Chemistry, innit. This is where, I suppose, stimulants and sex toys can play a role to bridge the animal attraction gap. I've deployed the experts to answer, and useful websites are at the end. Sophie Laybourne, a relationship therapist, says: 'An unsatisfying sexual experience is the best predictor of future unsatisfying ones, unless you take stock – because fearing that things will go wrong generally becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in this particular department.' She suggests that old favourite – self-focus exercises: cuddling, soapy showers, stroking. 'They might then move on to graded sensate focus exercises, where penetrative sex is initially taken off the table and the hectic pursuit of orgasm replaced by no-pressure touching and stroking of different parts of the body,' she says. Sexual desire in the female is not 'uni-directional', and can be turned off by small things. Dirty sheets, even a bad haircut, can send a woman toppling backwards down the old 'Ladder of Desire'. To make sure you're on the same rung, you need to communicate. It's not always a simple case of, 'Go and brush your teeth, darling'; it's to do with accelerators and brakes too, she says. Accelerators can be a quiet dinner together where you ask her questions, laugh at her jokes, and listen. A brake is expecting her to be up for it when your mother-in-law is staying, children apt to break in at any moment and the dog barking. You know. Laybourne explains: 'Most women, as [American sex educator Emily] Nagoski points out, experience what's known as 'responsive desire', which means that they are not like three-day eventers waiting for the off but more likely to experience desire in response to something like, say, a fun night out with a man who asks them lots of questions about themselves and displays a side-splitting sense of humour.' It was the turn of the married therapists David and Ruth Kern next. 'The role of a sex therapist is to understand and work through various areas of a couple's life, to pinpoint where the block is and then help the couple work through this – often with the use of exercises, although this is not effective without the deeper psychological work first,' they say. 'Before any real work can start, it's important to rule out any underlying medical/biological problems that may affect sexual connections. If there are no underlying issues, then there is a need to look at and understand the psychological aspect to this problem' – stress, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and, of course, loss of attraction. They dig deeper, too. This blockage could track back to your childhood, which is father to your adult attitudes to sex and relationships. 'A lot of psychological blockages to sexual connection can be due to loss of control: during orgasm, the body and mind have to completely let go to achieve climax. Losing control can be scary and feel vulnerable, thus 'not letting go'. It's understanding the deeper reasons for this that may include negative reinforcement of sex and relationships as a child; sexual abuse in any form; over-smothering from mother as a child; your personal space not being respected, which can lead to intimacy issues later on; or being raised in a family system where you felt unheard, unseen and not given choices.' Ah, the traditional, old-fashioned childhood, then, could be to blame for your shared experience of repression now, and the tendency of many to lie back and think of England for as long as it takes. The Kerns go on: 'With Jim and his partner, it will be good to work through the above points to see if some of their issues lie in those areas. This is about both of them and how they relate to each other sexually; unless there is a medical issue, both partners have a role in why their relationship is where it is. One thing that we do advise is to take sex off the table completely for a month or so. This takes the pressure off and gives some breathing room to talk and discuss what the underlying issues may be for them both.' Back to me. You say you love each other dearly. Have you ever talked about this issue, or is it too painful to acknowledge that you don't click in bed? My instinct is that it is something you can't change – love and sex not always being on the same page – but if you do love each other and want to stay together, that may be more important in the long run than the earth moving every time for you both. Oh yes, websites: to find a therapist working in your area, visit the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists' site: If face-to-face is not important, try for a psychosexual therapist to work with online. Thank you for your letter, Jim – you sound nice and, most importantly, kind.
Telegraph
07-03-2025
- General
- Telegraph
My husband is neuro diverse and doesn't want sex – is this connected?
Have a sex or relationship question? Ask Rachel about it using the form below or email askrachel@ Dear Rachel, You talk a lot about men who want sex and women who do about when it's the other way? My autistic husband has had almost zero interest since our first child was two years old. He was 31. He's now 42 and has rejected me over and over for years. I don't know if I will ever be desired by him. It's breaking my heart (and our marriage). Please can you look at this dynamic and at neuro divergent relationships, or those where one is ND, one is NT? Thanks – NT Dear NT, NT stands for neuro typical, which is what you say you are compared to your ND (neuro divergent) hubby. It's interesting, isn't it? Eighty years ago (ie within dear readers' lifetimes) nobody would stick these labels on themselves or each other and would have just grimly 'got on with it' till death us do part. In your short letter to me, you have used three words (NT, ND, the third is 'autistic') that would have been Greek to my grandparents. Autism and Asperger's were first described as distinct conditions rather than merely different aspects of the human character in the 1940s, but didn't become part of 'the conversation' until the 1980s onwards. With that throat-clearing preamble out of the way, to your question and all I can say is…aaargggh! You have caught me out. On every front. You are absolutely right to flag the structural imbalance in the column, with so many of my letters – I'd say almost three quarters – from men mourning the premature death of their sex lives. It's hard to find new words and fresh answers to this very common concern (look, it turns out to be so common I am reluctant to say it's a problem). And you're right, we don't look at the inverse situation nearly enough, although I have had a letter or two from similarly rejected and dejected women that I've tried to tackle, perhaps not very successfully. Readers should know that I recognise the imbalance and am the hunt for a male therapist who can join the crack team of counsellors, but for now, I have asked Sophie Laybourne for her input. She points out that in couples where there is any neuro divergence it can be draining and thus affect the sex life. If you don't want to open up the marriage, she says, you may have to mourn the loss of the partner and relationship you will never perhaps have and 'celebrate the ND traits that will have consciously and unconsciously attracted you to your partner in the first place'. She has questions, as do I. 'Was sex OK in the past? What goes on outside the bedroom that may have led to a loss of interest?' Was it parenthood, for example? Your letter is so brief that it's unclear whether your husband's autism is an official diagnosis or whether he is yet another product of a bleak English upbringing/private boarding school with remote and unavailable parents or abusive teachers who were in loco parentis (I refer you to Earl Spencer's memoir of Maidwell Hall). If it's the former, rather than the latter, you should know that according to the expert Maxine Aston, once there is an official diagnosis of ASD (autism spectrum disorder) some partners chose to leave on the basis that the ND brain does not change and will not respond to insight. 'As for him not wanting sex – there may be squillions of reasons that have nothing to do with ND. He may be very angry (for example) at being labelled ND when he isn't,' Laybourne adds. 'She might also like to think about what unconscious investment she has in being 'rejected ' over and over again?' That's a thought, isn't it? You may have become hooked on this pattern in some way. At the beginning of my career, I interviewed a distinguished editor for some reason dressed for the occasion in a cream suit, like Tom Wolfe, who told me he'd been at his paper for decades and couldn't leave. 'It's like a bad marriage,' he told me, 'the longer it goes on, the more difficult it is to end.' It strikes me you are similarly frozen by dysfunction to take action beyond your cry of pain, and you should seriously consider ending or 'opening' the marriage. There's tons to read on this: Maxine Aston has written extensively in her mission to help couples where there is autism, Asperger's etc, in the mix and has produced workbooks that you and your husband, if you are so minded, can complete together. She has written half a dozen books with titles like Asperger's in Love which might help. Laybourne also says you could add Terrence Real's The New Rules of Marriage to your reading list. Lots of homework I suggest before you take any next steps. Dear Rachel, I am 79 and, although I live life to the full, I've gone off intimacy with my husband – but I wouldn't want anyone else. He is my second one after a complicated divorce, and I hardly see anyone but my grown-up adult children. I am content but I feel empty. Can you advise? – Anon Dear Anon, I've decided to ignore your age which you tell us and answer this letter as if it's not a factor here. As it happens, I'm listening to William Boyd's Desert Island Discs and he's just explained his theory of life which I will pass on as it's worth hearing. It's a version of carpe diem as these things tend to be. He says you should go through each day as if you are walking on thin ice, so at any moment you can plunge into the dark freezing depths and you might never come back. Try to bear that in mind and the savour of merely being alive and immersed in what the author calls the 'cinema of the world' could steal back into your everyday, even if you are not having it all in your marriage. We don't (or shouldn't) need Boyd to remind us that time is the most precious resource any of us have, and no matter how much sex or success or money or fun we can squeeze into our little lives, they are all rounded off with a sleep. To your letter, though. You feel empty, you say. You don't want sex with your husband but you don't want sex with anyone else. Perhaps this isn't about sex, then, but boredom? An absence of purpose after two marriages and raising children? I am going to make some obvious suggestions based on other people I know your age who are living contented lives. Start a book group or hobby such as embroidering kneelers for your church (I'm not joking, I'll never forget Tracey Emin once telling me that needlework was a substitute for masturbation). Volunteer, as the best way to instantly feel more cheerful about yourself is to do something for someone else. Join the Mother's Union or Women's Institute. Start making marmalade. Plan ahead. Cook. Travel. Read. Listen to music. Plant a garden, and watch it bloom and then brown. Accept the cycle of change and decay, and carpe diem!
