The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com

Lisa, you have a question on sexuality?

Yeah.

Hi, Dr. Kenner, thanks for taking my call.

Oh, of course. What's your question?

Well, I'm 27 years old. I have a career that I really enjoy. I seem to be a happy person, but I have no sex drive. I would consider myself asexual, and it's been like this my whole life. As a teenager, I was never… I mean, I was attracted to boys, but never really in a sexual sense. More just, I wanted to be friends with them or talk to them, things along those lines. And my understanding of sexuality is that it's a response to one's highest values. And if I don't feel this sexual urge, I'm wondering if… it doesn't really bother me, except that I wonder if I have some deeply held, you know, philosophical premise that I shouldn't be holding that's preventing me from experiencing sexual enjoyment.

Well, something’s going on, because it's such a glorious part of a person’s life if they allow it to be. I mean, many people destroy it. Many couples destroy it. Typically, the man wants sex more than the woman. I mean, that's not always the case, but you get a discrepancy, and then the woman feels like she dutifully has to respond, and then it's no longer a value. It's no longer hers because she's doing it for the guy. That's not the case with you. So, what are your earliest memories of sexuality?

Well, I'm not really sure I have any. Or else I may be not properly defining sexuality. I never really got bored with myself. No, I'm not sure on that.

Okay, so you never self-pleasured, right?

Okay, well, that would be a beginning place. Have you ever had a massage?

I have.

Have you enjoyed it?

Not in particular. I wouldn’t say I kind of enjoyed the fact that it was releasing tension, but I didn’t gain any kind of emotionally pleasurable experience.

Okay, you may be blocking it, you may not be letting yourself go there, because you have to hook up the connections. It doesn’t come automatically. A lot of people think… I mean, guys who have looked at playboys their whole life and who have fantasized and whatnot… you know, they have different apparatus than we do, and it’s quite obvious. They typically get a lot more practice than women. And partly, you need to be able to connect your thinking to what’s going on. Are you there? I think we just lost you.

Well, I will continue anyway and talk a little bit about this. If you're wanting to develop a sense of sexuality, Lisa, what you need to do is to first consider self-pleasuring. And you can do that. There are wonderful books and even programs. I’m holding right now something called Loving Sexual Enrichment Program by Lonnie Barbach, and it’s a Sexual Desire Workbook. And I have another workbook, a Discovering Orgasm Workbook by her, and she’s written books on… oh, let’s see… just how to enjoy your own sexuality, how to discover your own sexuality and really get a wonderful sense of fulfillment.

You know, psychologists will talk about different sexual disorders. For example…

Hey, I’ve got to interrupt this because we’ve got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that’s it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back.

Romance. I wish I knew more about what girls want from a relationship. Well, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where’s that ad I saw… here it is… The Selfish Path to Romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at selfishromance.com and buy it at amazon.com. Huh? The Selfish Path to Romance… that is interesting.

You know, psychologists will talk about different sexual disorders. For example, Sexual Desire Disorder, where you just don’t have any sexual fantasies. They’re either deficient—they’re not enough to raise it to the point where you could enjoy an orgasm—or they’re just absent. You haven’t allowed yourself to think about them. Or a Sexual Aversion Disorder, where someone who was maybe very highly abused as a child may just have associated sex with trauma, and they just want to avoid it. It wasn’t enjoyable; it was painful. Sometimes there’s another division, a Sexual Arousal Disorder, where you may have some sexy thoughts and fantasies, but you can’t maintain it until completion. And all of those are things that you can work on to recapture your own sense of sexuality and sensuality.

There are wonderful books out there. As I mentioned, one is The Great Sex Secret. This is for women, What Satisfied Women and Men Know That No One Talks About; that’s a book by Kim Marshall. He’s actually a guy, but it talks about how to get to know yourself and how to express that to a potential partner so that you can enjoy sexuality. But the book I was thinking of earlier was by Lonnie Barbach, For Yourself: The Fulfillment of Female Sexuality, and it gives a lot of exercises on how to value yourself, how to basically know what’s going on in your own body, how to experiment, how to do what they call Kegel exercises—which they may also train you for when you’re preparing for childbirth—and those exercises can be very helpful, too, just to train yourself to let yourself have sexy thoughts. You can read some erotica—hopefully it’s decent erotica—and that can help you discover your own sensuality. You can see a sexy movie. And it doesn’t have to be an X-rated movie. There are some very decent movies out there, some scenes in them that are just very arousing. And you can ask yourself, “When in the past have I felt that?”

So, if you’re having no urges at all, you could also try counseling. You could go… you can use any of these workbooks in counseling that I talked about, or books. You could go to the Academy of ct.org. I always recommend cognitive therapists, and that link is on my website, DrKenner.com, and that may be helpful for you. So listen, I wish you the best. I hope you’re able to recapture your sexual desire and have fun with it. It’s not a duty, and the fact that you’re intrigued with figuring out what’s going on with you is a very good sign. It’s your wanting to understand yourself and seeing if you can discover that sensuality within yourself that you can someday share with a partner that you truly value. And you may have actually repressed your sexual desire, and if so, when it opens up, you may be in for some wonderful surprises.

And here’s a little more from Dr. Kenner.

You finish medical school, and you’re on your own, then you can do as you damn well please. But until then, you do as I tell you. Is that clear, sir?

Yes, sir. I’m sorry.

You know how much this means to your mother.

Doctor?

Yes, sir.

Now, that’s from Dead Poets Society, and if you saw that movie, that’s a very poignant movie, a very poignant scene. And the essence of it is the question: Whose life is it? Is it your life or not? If you’re planning your future, do your parents have a right to tell you exactly what to do, that you have to go to medical school, that you have to stay in it, and that after what—10 or so years of schooling, post-high school schooling—then you can make a decision on what you want to do with the rest of your life. And if it’s in a very different direction, if you want to be an actor or an actress, and you’ve lost 10 years of your life and the training and the experience. And if you don’t like medical school, what type of a doctor would you be?

I’m Dr. Ellen Kenner. I’m a clinical psychologist, and my show is The Rational Basis of Happiness. And the goal of your life is properly to define, within your own means and within your own range of knowledge, what you would like to do with your life, what you would enjoy, and what’s feasible. You want to try to consider, “What could bring some pleasure to my life that is rational?” I don’t mean drinking and drugging in ways that are self-destructive, or gambling, or being promiscuous and coming down with diseases and the rest. I don’t mean that. I mean valuing your mind and your life and your happiness for…

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com

Here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Dr. Ellen Kenner.

One romance killer is when one or both partners are too often in a bad mood. Sometimes the causes are obvious. Often they’re hidden. Hidden issues, psychological orders aside, typically center around one of two things, or both: My partner doesn’t understand me, or My partner doesn’t value me. Establishing a positive relationship environment presupposes identifying and resolving these issues. If you can succeed in this, create and maintain a positive climate daily—not just in terms of important issues, but also in many small ways. A song from the 1950s says, “Little things mean a lot.” Small gestures like a hug and wishing your partner a good day at work and later asking how the day went may seem simple, but they make both of you feel valued by the other.

You can download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com.