The greatest love
When sex therapist Ken DeSeve and his wife relax by the pool on their spring vacations in Mexico, they can’t help observing the mating rituals unfolding around them. Inevitably, it’s college spring break season. The young women lounge on beach chairs, displaying their perfect bodies; the young men strut by, pretending not to notice; and the conversations, when they happen, can only be described as shallow. These potential romantic partners have youth, beauty and fitness – the high values of American culture – yet they lack the crucial elements DeSeve believes are required for lasting, long-term relationships. For truly rewarding sexual intimacy, DeSeve urges couples to seek the authenticity and depth that can only come with maturity. “This version of sexuality is for adults only,” he says. “It doesn’t usually work too well with 20-year-olds. They’re not old enough to do it. Even 40- and 50-year-olds need to buckle their seat belt. It has a lot more voltage than most people are prepared for.”
DeSeve, who practices in Spokane, bases his work with couples on an approach developed by David Schnarch, an Evergreen, Colo., therapist and author of “Resurrecting Sex” (HarperCollins, 2002). Both men believe American culture presents ridiculously low expectations for middle-aged and older couples.
“It’s usually not until the fifth or sixth decade of life that men and women come into their prime sexually,” DeSeve says. “We confuse genital prime with sexual prime. It takes us a lot of time to grow up and a lot of maturing before we have the courage and the integrity to really be sexually intimate.”
In the 1970s and 1980s, American sex therapists focused on techniques and mechanics, giving couples homework designed to increase the level of excitement in their sex lives. But, DeSeve says, that turned out to be a dead end.
“There’s only so much you can do to generate excitement,” he says.
He calls intimacy the fuel that powers long-term committed relationships. He defines it as a mutual sharing and understanding of each partner’s heart, mind and soul.
To continue the metaphor, he likens excitement to gasoline and intimacy to diesel.
“Gasoline has an explosive property that diesel doesn’t have,” DeSeve says. “Diesel is much more stable, but it certainly powers some very large engines. I think for couples that are interested in long-term committed relationships, that the fuel that’s missing.”
In the last decade the field of sex therapy has moved closer to the work of traditional marriage counselors, with an emphasis on the quality of the relationship. But unlike therapists who focus on building communication skills and teaching conflict resolution, DeSeve starts with a couple’s sex life.
He and his partner, Julie Stevens, are the only sex therapists in Spokane certified by the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors & Therapists.
Some couples arrive in his office with a “desire discrepancy.” They often assume it’s the partner with a lower desire level who has the problem.
“Not at all,” DeSeve says. “Sometimes the person with a lower desire is exercising good judgment. What’s being presented isn’t very desirable.”
With those couples, he starts a conversation about what’s going on in the relationship and how they’re approaching one another. Many times they’ll reveal an emotional connection that’s superficial.
“So we start talking about a deeper engagement with each other, risking emotional truths, sharing the unfolding journey with one another,” he says. “It’s not a race to the finish line.”
Few couples could tolerate the vulnerability of looking into each other’s eyes as they reach orgasm. That’s been called “eyes-open sex.”
“The real ‘eyes-open sex’ that I’ve tried to promote is the capital ‘I’ open to the capital ‘I’ of another,” DeSeve says. “It’s that heart, mind, body connection that goes way beyond body mechanics.”
He suggests that partners explore each other’s experience while making love. He warns them against waiting until afterward and asking, “How was it for you?”
“A lot of couples have their own private sexual experience,” DeSeve says. “They might be together in terms of genital contact, but they’re really in their own private world.”
He advocates slowing the process down. Couples can start opening up to each other by asking, “What are you thinking?” “What are you feeling?” and “What’s this like for you?”
Most couples, he says, simply aren’t brave enough to share their answers.
And women, contrary to myth, are no more courageous than men when it comes to this level of honesty.
When couples work with DeSeve, he pushes them to stretch inner muscles that have atrophied. Couples wind up feeling like they’ve just come away from an emotional workout.
DeSeve calls the goal “self-validated intimacy.”
“This is where men and women learn how to begin speaking, putting words to their private world, sharing with someone they trust, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if it’s scary,” he says.
He encourages each partner to speak their own truth, to tolerate and explore what they’re believing, thinking and feeling. He urges them to work with their anxiety, not attempt to escape it, and to stay true to themselves without capitulating or surrendering.
In the 1970s couples arrived in sex therapists’ offices needing solid information and even permission to explore their sexuality. Today they show up with a more mature understanding of the physical aspects of sex.
But many have fallen into newer traps, such as cyber sex addictions. “Anybody who dabbles in it needs to do so at their own peril because it can be slippery,” DeSeve says.
Others resort to the shallowness of infidelity. “Sadly, a lot of people jettison their partner and start again and again and again with somebody new,” he says.
But the wisest couples DeSeve treats use their relationship conflicts as a catalyst for growth.
Americans love the image of a happy couple swooshing down a mountain highway together on their 10-speed bikes, he points out. That’s an image that sells.
“What doesn’t sell,” he says, “is the holy sweat on the backside of the mountain – the hard upper pedaling.”