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Sexual Healing, Shame, and the Religious Impulse

A Book About Sexual Healing

In a recent article in PsychologyToday, we began to discuss a new book, An Intimate Life, by Cheryl Cohen Greene — the sex surrogate whose treatment of the profoundly disabled poet Mark O’Brien was the subject of last year’s film The Sessions. 

Those of you who saw The Sessions may remember the scene where Cohen Greene and her disabled client discover that they are both transplants to Berkeley — that they’re both originally from New England and were both raised Catholic.

O’Brien has kept his Catholic faith.  “I need to believe in God,” he quips, “so I have someone to yell at.”   In the film, Cohen Greene says she’s given up on the Catholicism of her childhood because of its negative sexual messages.

In her book An Intimate Life, we learn much more about what these messages were.  We meet her as a teenage girl in the late 1950’s — terrified that her nightly masturbations are going to condemn her to Hell.  We meet her a few years later, regularly having unprotected sex with boyfriends — terrified of pregnancy but lacking the self esteem to insist on birth control.

Paradoxically, her shame and terror of her own sexuality serve to keep her more sensible impulses silent and locked away.  Unfortunately, this is a common phemomenon among people who are strongly shamed when they are young. It accounts for a lot of excessive sexual risk-taking.

The memory of this early shame about her sexual self provides the fuel for her later career as a sex surrogate — working hard to help her clients find sexual healing, and to overcome negative messages about their sexual bodies and themselves.

The book traces an eventful life, shaped by particular moments in history (such as the “open marriage” movement in the 70’s, and AIDS in the 80’s).  And by encounters with some unusual people (particularly her first husband, who is quite strange and often dishonest but has some remarkable good qualities as well).

Through it all, she holds on to her gift for seeing the good in people around her, and for translating this vision into sexual healing for her clients.  Through all the tragedies and triumphs of her personal and professional life she remains true to her intuition of the power of good lovemaking to bring out the best in people.

See the movie if you haven’t already.  If you’re as intrigued as I was, then go read the book too.  And check out our mini-interview with Cohen Greene herself — about sex, healing, and many other things besides . . .

SexualityResource interviews sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen Greene from The Sessions.

 

 

© Stephen Snyder, MD   2014

www.sexualityresource.com

New York City

 

See also: 

The Healing Power of Erotic Love

  Sex Therapist at the Academy Awards — Helen Hunt in The Sessions

Sex Therapist at the Academy Awards, Part 2 – The Courage to be Seen

 

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Interviewing Sex Surrogate Cheryl Cohen Greene

 

 

 

What is a sex surrogate?  
And how is a sex surrogate different from a sex therapist?  

These questions go all the way back to the origin of both professions in the 1960’s.  The simple answer is that sex surrogates get naked with their clients, and sex therapists don’t.  (One might say sex therapy is the lecture course, and sex surrogacy is the lab).

Actress Helen Hunt received an Academy Award nomination in 2013 for her performance as sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen Greene in the movie The Sessions .  The film wasn’t a perfect account of either sex therapy or sex surrogacy.  But it took on sex, love, disability, religion, and a host of other issues with courage and grace.

A few months after writing about The Sessions, I happened to hear from Cohen Greene herself, the sex therapist whose work had been the subject of the film.   She had recently written a memoir,  An Intimate Life, about her life and work.  We spent some time afterwards on the phone discussing many subjects of mutual interest.  

Here’s an excerpt—

– – – – – – –

So you do have orgasms with your clients?

Yes, I do.   When I’m feeling like I can.  But the client has to be ready.

Ready?

He’s usually still trying to perform for me.  It’s hard for men just to be for themselves.  They need to be able to do that, before I can let myself go with them.

Where did you learn about men needing just to be for themselves? 

My husband Michael was the first man I met who could do that.  Michael knew how to be selfish about his passion.  Michael would get into himself, and if I didn’t follow then that was my business.  He didn’t care if I had an orgasm.  It was liberating.  He didn’t base his masculinity on it.

And that’s what happens with a client eventually?

Sure.  If and when he’s ready, when he feels more comfortable with himself and can really be present — then, if I feel excited, I might let myself go with it.

Like you did with Mark O’Brien in The Sessions?

Yes, the movie was accurate there.   Sometimes afterwards a client will say, “Wow, you were there.”  And I’ll say “Yes I was. I wasn’t worried about you.  Just like you shouldn’t be worried about your partner.”   But I have to be careful not to let myself go and move too fast if they’re not ready.

You sound a little maternal there.

I see men who have been so wounded by life experiences, and have gotten so little compassion from the people around them.  Being a sex surrogate is kind of like raising kids—paying attention to them, distracting them from negative paths, coming up with ideas – “oh, let’s try this!”

Do you think being a mother influenced your work as a sex surrogate?

Absolutely.  It’s like you see a child crying, and you want to know what’s going on.  With a man, I’m listening and I know his story.  I know what happened when he was a child, and in his early sexual relationships.

A month after Michael and I got married, I found out I was pregnant.   I’d ask Michael whom he’d save in a lifeboat.  He said, “You, because we could always make another baby.”   Then I looked at my first baby and I told him, “Remember that lifeboat?  Forget it.  I’m saving the baby, and you’re going to save yourself.”  He said he knew that was going to happen.

– – – – – – –

See also:

 Sex Therapist at the Academy Awards — Helen Hunt in The Sessions

Sex Therapist at the Academy Awards, Part 2 – The Courage to be Seen

– – – – – – –

One Sex Surrogate’s Private Life

Your husband Michael was a habitual liar, rarely earned any money, and fathered children with another woman.  But you stayed with him.

I LOVED him.  He was the first person who told me I was intelligent.  I am dyslexic, and it affected my confidence.

I still think of him a lot.  In good ways.      

But how did you handle your feelings about all the bad things he did?  How did you become so forgiving?

Life brings you these things.  You don’t let that be the end of it.

From your book, it’s clear that your husband Michael’s insisting on an open marriage was pretty traumatic for you.  Yet you eventually embraced a non-monogamous married life, and it eventually led to your work as a surrogate.   The line between adventure and trauma can be a confusing one for people.  What’s your take on non-monogamy at this point? 

I did get into it, for about a year and a half.   There were about six men.  Some of  the sex was fantastic.  But I always picked men that I knew I wouldn’t have married.

How did you handle the jealousy? 

Jealousy is a cancer of the emotions. It eats you up.  In Berkeley in the 70’s, Michael met another woman, and she asked me to speak to one of her women’s groups—because they were confused about my work and my lifestyle.   They asked her, “Is THIS your Michael’s other partner?”  I said, “No, he’s OUR partner.”  They asked about jealousy.   I said “I’m extremely jealous of her.  She’s young, beautiful, and so intelligent.  I thought he was going to leave me for her.”    She said she had TRIED to get him to leave me, and that he said he loved me and wouldn’t.  I couldn’t believe we were  saying all this in the public in the middle of this group.

Do you think he was a sociopath?

Things happened to him when he was three years old.  He awoke from anesthesia from hernia surgery, and they restrained him and send his parents away for 2 weeks.  He was inconsolable for a year afterwards.  He loved women, but he had to abandon them first, before they abandoned him.

Are you still non-monogamous?

When I met my current husband Bob, his qualities and ability to love were so different from what I’d experienced before.   I’d never met anybody until him that I’d felt all those things for.  He’s helped me understand what “unconditional” means.  I’d felt that way with my kids, but to have a partner treat you that way—I’d never experienced that.   After meeting Bob, I chose not to be with anyone else except him and Michael.   Now since Michael has died, Bob and I are strictly monogamous (outside of my work as a surrogate).

Has growing older changed your feelings about sex?

When I was a younger woman, I felt I was being dragged around by my hormones.  Now I feel I’m in the driver’s seat.   I’d hold back more with clients when I was younger.   I’d often masturbate after a really great session with a client—especially if I had to be careful not to use that energy with them because they weren’t ready.  Now if I’m with a client and that time comes, then I just let that happen.

 

Sex Surrogacy For Men with Anxiety

So many men have anxiety problems that interfere with their being present sexually.  What works best for that?

For very shy men, we’ll start with hand or face caressing.  But most clients are OK to undress in the first session.  I tell men, “If you get an erection that’s fine.  But you’re not going to use it the first time you get one.  And 90% of guys don’t get erect the first time.  So if you don’t, then welcome to the 90%.”

In the fourth or fifth session, I’ll sometimes suggest I hold their hand and stroke my own vulva with it.  Kind of like using their  hand as a toy.

People are so serious about sexual matters.  Very few parents are saying when they see their child masturbating, “Look at you!  does that feel good?  I like to do that too!  But right now it’s distracting me a little.  Why don’t you go in your room and take your time!   Don’t rush!”

 In The Sessions, you’re depicted as falling in love with your disabled client.  Did that really happen, or was it just added for drama?  

It was added for drama.  We felt really strongly about each other.  We really liked each other.  But it wasn’t the kind of romantic love depicted in the movie.

I want clients to understand that they will have a better experience if they respect and like the person they are with.  The work I do is really not about sex.  It’s about intimacy and vulnerability.  It changes people’s lives when they understand they are OK and lovable.

 

Copyright © Stephen Snyder, MD   2014

www.sexualityresource.com   New York City

 

 

 

 

 

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Sexual Anxiety, Social Anxiety, and What I Learned on TV

What It’s Like for People With Social Anxiety on a Third Date

Referrals for sex therapy often include some mention that the individual has some kind of “performance anxiety.”   The problem isn’t always anxiety.  In fact, any negative emotion can cause sexual trouble.  It can just as easily be guilt or shame or sadness.  But anxiety is right up there as one of the commonest.

Some people seem to have sexual anxiety because they’re extremely shy — what we psychiatrists call “social anxiety.”  At the core of social anxiety is a dread of being the center of attention.

Sounds odd, right?  Attention is something most of us enjoy.  But it can also make us nervous.

Last summer I was asked to field some questions about sex on CBS This Morning.  It was my first time on national TV, and  I was deeply worried that 3 million people were going to see me make a total fool of myself.   As I waited in the Green Room, my heart pounding, I suddenly thought, “This is what it’s like for my patients with social anxiety — on a third date.”

 

Sexual Anxiety in a 70 Year Old Virgin

In her new book An Intimate Life (which we’ve been discussing at some length on these pages and on PsychologyToday), sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen Greene (the one portrayed by Helen Hunt in The Sessions) describes her treatment of Larry, a 70 year old virgin who has been terrified of sex his whole life.

When Larry was in his thirties, he finally got up the courage to court a woman.  Sitting on her bed and kissing her on the lips after a romantic night out, he recalls “I felt like I was being speared through my chest and I could feel my stomach convulsing.”   He ran out of her apartment and never got physically close to a partner again until coming to see Cohen Green at 70.

Chapter 7 of An Intimate Life describes how a sex surrogate works with such an individual in treatment.  (Yes, I know the verb “work” seems odd in this context, but we’ll leave that for now.)

Like all behavioral treatments, this one involves learning to relax, doing easier things first (just lying down together for the first time makes Larry break out in a sweat), then progressing to more difficult things such as intercourse.  (I don’t think science has yet answered the question of why intercourse is especially anxiety-provoking for people, but that’s often the case).

 

Recognizing Social Anxiety, and Moving Past Sexual Anxiety

 

A few years ago when I started to screen new sex therapy patients for social anxiety on a routine basis, I was startled by how many had it.  Like most anxiety problems, social anxiety is a quiet thing.  People don’t shout it from the rooftops.  But it’s readily identifiable once you know what questions to ask, and it’s almost always treatable.

When writer John Fortenbury interviewed me for his article, “On ‘Late’-in-Life Virginity Loss” for The Atlantic, I told him about the high prevalence of social anxiety in men presenting with sexual anxiety in my office.  I told him that some of the dating difficulty for individuals with social anxiety comes from the fact that as humans we tend to fall in love and mate with people we don’t know very well yet — that is to say, with relative strangers.  Not many of us fall in love with our longtime acquaintances. That makes things especially difficult for people with social anxiety, for whom opening up to strangers can be a big challenge.

This tends to be especially a problem for men with social anxiety, since in conventional courtship the man is supposed to take the risk of initiating. It’s a lot harder for a man with social anxiety to take that kind of risk.

 

Sometimes behavioral treatment helps.  But the effects can take awhile, and not everyone has the patience for it.  Sometimes medications such as serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRI’s) can be useful.  But it’s an art to find one that doesn’t itself interfere with sexual function.  It can take time to find the right combination of treatments for a particular individual.   But it’s usually well worth the time and effort.  The results can be spectacular.

Helping someone learn to handle erotic attention is one of the most rewarding professional experiences a sex therapist can have.  Because after all, giving and getting attention is what good lovemaking is all about.

.

© Stephen Snyder MD 2014

www.sexualityresource.com

New York City

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Sex Therapy and the New York Times: The New Bisexuality

The following article continues a discussion of new findings in sex research concerning bisexuality, prompted by the recent New York Magazine article, “Bisexuality Comes Out of the Closet,” by Benoit Denizet-Lewis.  See also—

On Male Bisexuality: The Elle Interview

Why is Male Sexuality Like the Higgs Boson?

Bisexuality:  Out of the Closet at Last?

 

Male bisexuality isn’t yet a hot topic among heterosexual couples.  But it should be, because it’s a big deal.

As I explained to writer and editor Holly Millea in Elle Magazine recently, the fact that male bisexuality is still a third rail in traditional heterosexual relationships — touch it and you die — causes much suffering for straight couples.  All of it completely unnecessary.

Kinsey famously classified men’s degree of bisexuality on a scale from 0 to 6.  It’s still a crude but workable system.  Kinsey 0’s are capable of responding sexually only to women.  Kinsey 6’s only to men.  And men in between are bisexual to varying degrees.

Let’s say Paul is a Kinsey 2:  “Mostly straight.”  He loves his fiancee Laura very much, and they have great sex together.  He had very satisfying sex with previous girlfriends too.  And once in college he had a brief thing with a male classmate.  They kept it secret.

Laura his fiancee had a gay relationship in college too.  Chances are that unlike Paul she didn’t feel the need to keep it a secret.  “Lesbian Until Graduation” (LUG) is so accepted that it has its own acronym.  Laura told Paul about her lesbian relationship when they were dating, and he accepted the fact of it without any difficulty.

But Paul now has a problem.  He has a sexual secret that he can’t talk about.  Any secret you can’t talk about will inevitably cause you shame, which is always trouble.  One night when he’s angry at Laura and can’t get an erection, his secret will whisper to him the dreaded words, “It’s because you’re really gay.”

He’s not really gay, of course.  He’s a Kinsey 2 bisexual who just happened to be angry at his wife.  But because male bisexuality must be kept secret, it will continue to torment him, and he’ll have no way to keep the shame from growing.  It will affect his sleep, his work, and his relationships.

He’ll start to withdraw from Laura in bed, afraid that if he loses his erection again it will prove he’s really gay.  And when he does, her mind will begin to furiously generate hypotheses about what’s going on.  Eventually there will come a time when she looks over at him across the cold expanse of their marital bed and whispers the dreaded words:  “You’re not really gay, are you?”

“Of course not,” he’ll say.  What choice will he have but to deny it?  He’ll lack the words to express the truth — “I’m a Kinsey 2, and I’d be fine except we Kinsey 2’s are expected to keep it all a secret. Ever since that time I was mad at you and couldn’t get hard, my mind has been torturing me about it, saying I’m gay, which is just not true but it’s driving me crazy.”

So he’ll just say, “Of course not,” and the marriage will proceed down the road to ruin.

All of it completely unnecessary.

Now you see why Benoit Denizet-Lewis’ article “Bisexuality Comes Out of the Closet” in this week’s New York Times Magazine is potentially such a big deal.

Male bisexuality exists.  Maybe one day we’ll grant it the same status as female bisexuality:  Nothing to be worried about, just one more point of human diversity.   Maybe then future couples like Paul and Laura won’t have perfectly good relationships destroyed by ghosts and shadows.

May that day come soon.  Until then, let’s all try to learn better ways of describing who and what we are.

Copyright © Stephen Snyder, MD   2014

www.sexualityresource.com   New York City

 

 

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