Love and Sex

Activists have long combated extremist attacks on LGBT identities by highlighting the science showing that homosexuality is genetic — or, in the words of Lady Gaga, that gay people are “born that way.” It may be that simple for some, but research increasingly suggests that it isn’t for all — especially for gay women.

Lisa Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, spent over a decade tracking sexual identity changes in a group of 100 women for her book “Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire.” She wrote, “Women’s sexuality is fundamentally more fluid than men’s, permitting greater variability in its development and expression over the life course.” Based on her research, she describes three main ways that sexual fluidity is expressed: “nonexclusivity in attractions” (i.e., the capacity to find all genders sexually attractive), “changes in attractions” (i.e., suddenly becoming romantically involved with a woman after a lifetime dating men) and the capacity to become attracted to ‘the person and not the gender’” (i.e., a partner’s sex is irrelevant).

Diamond also differentiates between “change, choice, and control” as “totally separate phenomena.” As psychologist John Michael Bailey of Northwestern University told me in an email, “The sentence ‘I choose to prefer sex with women to sex with men’ is meaningless. Schopenhauer wrote: ‘Man can do what he wants, but he cannot want what he wants,’” he says. “We choose our behaviors but not our desires.” But it may be that women generally have a broader range of desires to choose from.

More than a decade ago, social psychologist Roy Baumeister proposed the idea of female “erotic plasticity.” In a paper on the subject, he explained that men tend to have rigid sexual preferences that “generally remain the same for the rest of the man’s life.” Women, on the other hand, “are more likely to switch back and forth,” he wrote. “Some heterosexual women may begin to experiment with lesbian activities in their 30s or 40s. Some lesbians begin desiring sex with men after many years of exclusive same-sex orientation.”

Copious research has revealed striking differences in male and female sexual orientation and arousal. In immensely awkward studies measuring men’s hard-ons while viewing various sexual stimuli, most guys have a strong response to either males or females; and their sexual orientation generally predicts their physical reaction. On the other hand, Bailey explains, “Women’s genital sexual arousal pattern is much less predictive of their sexual identity and their stated preferences,” he says. “Lesbians have a relatively weaker arousal preference for female sexual stimuli, on average, and straight women have no preference at all, on average.”

Bailey believes that “men’s differentiated sexual arousal pattern makes them sexually rigid, and women’s lack of one makes them flexible.” As for the Times Magazine piece, he says, “It does not surprise me that Cynthia Nixon can choose to express sexual feelings for women but not for men. Maybe someday we’ll understand why.”

Christan Moran, a researcher who has studied midlife changes in women’s sexuality, says the actress’s remarks are “a great step forward in advancing the discussion about sexual fluidity. Those who are heavily invested in the idea that sexuality is set for life need to step back and recognize the enormous gendered difference in this area.”

As popular as the theory of female “erotic plasticity” has become in the field of sex research, it is hardly without its critics; and many researchers are more inclined to highlight the sexual similarities between men and women. But beyond the ongoing scientific debate, there’s a strong political argument to be made against taking an unwavering “born this way” stance. Marta Meana, a clinical psychologist at the University of Nevada Las Vegas who has researched sexual fluidity, believes “it is a devil’s bargain to argue for acceptance on the basis of biology,” she explains. “The ‘I can’t help it’ argument retains the idea that something is amiss. The truly progressive stance is that all people should be treated with respect, dignity and equality regardless of the mechanisms that led them to prefer having consensual sex with one group over another, at any point in time.”

A big part of that is that the “romantic-industrial complex that nets billions of dollars from Valentine’s Day and weddings, and it needs you to ‘buy into’ outdated ideas of love and marriage,” she wrote in a recent Op-Ed for the Nation. “The more you express your love through candies, chocolates, diamonds, rentals and registries, the more the RIC makes!” (Indeed, it’s estimated that consumers will spend roughly $17.6 billion on cards, chocolates, flowers, jewelry and the like this Feb. 14.) But instead of just trashing V-Day — or VD (i.e., venereal disease) Day, as its biggest haters like to call it — she wants to honor “the different ways we engage in loving relationships.”

A less political alternative is one introduced by everyone’s favorite fictional mid-level bureaucrat, Leslie Knope of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation.” She celebrates “Galentine’s Day” every Feb. 13 by getting together with her lady friends for a brunch of her signature dish, whipped-cream with a side of waffle, to celebrate female friendship. Leslie doles out quirky gifts (sculptures of everyone’s spirit animal or mosaics of their faces made out of crushed diet soda cans, for example). She compares the celebration to Lilith Fair — “minus the angst and plus frittatas.”

Granted, Galentine’s Day started as a comedy punch line, but the concept was popular enough in the real world that this year NBC put together a guide on how to create your own Galentine’s Brunch. Bon Appetit even cooked up a special waffle recipe for the occasion. It’s also inspired DIY-ers to make Galentine’s Day e-cards and re-create some of Leslie’s more memorable gifts, like crochet flower pens.

Of course, “Parks and Recreation” didn’t invent the idea of single friends getting together on Valentine’s Day — that’s no doubt been around as long as the holiday itself — it just popularized a cute term for it. Let’s not forget the gender-inclusive Palentine’s Day, Singles Awareness Day or the concept of having a friendly “anti-valentine.” Greeting card companies are increasingly cashing in on anti-Valentine’s Day card for friends, including — gasp! — Hallmark itself.

A similarly heartwarming option is Quirkyalone Day, founded by Sasha Cagen, author of “Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics,” a book about people who “prefer being single to dating for the sake of being in a relationship.” She tells me, “I’m not against Valentine’s Day, but I have never been particularly inspired by it. The aim of International Quirkyalone Day is to offer a fresh alternative where you get to create your own day free of all cliches.” It’s an excuse to “celebrate yourself and your whole life,” she says, and that can manifest in a number of different ways: “take a long walk alone (leave behind your cell phone), buy yourself daisies, start a neglected creative project, buy yourself hot lingerie, get a massage, host a dinner party.”

Of course, not all Valentine’s Day alternatives are so charmingly earnest. Anti-V-Day events across the country call on bitter singles to bring a photo of their ex to put through a paper-shredder or pin to a dart board, or exact some other form of questionable revenge. And make no mistake, while it’s nowhere near a $16 billion industry, there is a market for Cupid-hating goods — from cards reading “Love stinks” to T-shirts featuring upside-down hearts to candy hearts with sayings like, “U left seat up” and “Dog is cuter.” The social network game Farmville even has virtual anti-Valentine’s Day items for purchase, like a barbed heart and a black flower. The truth is this isn’t anything new: Long before there were pithy e-cards, there were Victorian-era vinegar valentines, insulting cards sent to one’s enemies.

Why has the holiday generated such cynicism and, sometimes, downright hatred? Cagen says, “Valentine’s Day has this way of making people feel bad, whether they are single or in a relationship. If you are single, you feel left out. If you are dating or in a relationship, you feel pressure and expectation to have a romantic evening.” She’s all for “a pure celebration of love in all its forms,” but “the problem is when we narrow that definition of love to a romantic connection.” Cagen explains, “Almost 50 percent of American adults are single, so people are bound to feel left out. It’s sort of like a Thanksgiving that only 50 percent of the population feels invited to.”

It isn’t the sexiest directive, but it might actually get you somewhere. Klein has drawn on more than 30 years of counseling experience for this smart handbook on how to develop what he calls “Sexual Intelligence,” which he describes as the thing that “gets you from hormone-driven sex to sex you choose,” “from ‘sex has to validate me’ to ‘I validate my sexuality.’” The challenge here is to let go of notions of what “successful” and “normal” sex looks and feels like. The reward is a sex life where “failure” is virtually impossible.

Salon spoke to Klein by phone from his office in Palo Alto, Calif., about why so many sexual problems can be blamed on idealizing sex and our bodies as they were in our youth.

What is it, based on your experience with clients, that people most want from sex?

Well, if you ask people what they want from sex, they say some vague thing — some combination of “pleasure” and “closeness.” But while a lot of people say that, I find from my practice that what a lot of people really want is emotional satisfaction; sometimes it has to do with the connection with their partner and sometimes it has to do with their own sense of themselves. What a lot of people want from sex is to feel youthful, graceful, manly, normal, adequate or competent.

What should we expect from sex? What expectations are more realistic and more likely to bring actual satisfaction?

Well, partly that depends on what people are willing to put into it. You could say, “What’s realistic to expect from a meal?” and if you have very little in the refrigerator and you only spend five minutes cooking and you don’t have a decent pot or pan and you’re talking on the phone while you’re doing it and not paying attention, it’s unrealistic to expect a gourmet or satisfying meal. On the other hand, if you put enough time and effort and care into it, it’s not unrealistic to expect a good dining experience.

So, when it comes to sex, clearly it’s unrealistic in long-term relationships to expect the kind of heat and desire and passion that we typically experience in the early days of a relationship and in our youth. One of the reasons that grown-ups in long-term relationships don’t have much sex is they’re waiting to feel incredibly horny. What’s more realistic to expect from sex, if you put some effort into it, is to feel connected with somebody, to feel a sense of ownership of your body, a sense of a vacation from real life for half an hour. What’s not reasonable to expect is that sex at 45, with the same person you’ve been with for 10 years is the same as sex was at 25 when you were first getting to know somebody.

Why is it so hard to move away from that ideal of sex as it was in our 20s?

I have a few answers for that. One is that we live in a youth-obsessed culture where whatever our experience is in young adulthood, we assume that’s the best experience. So, we don’t prepare for a different experience and we don’t envision a different experience and we don’t want a different experience. If we experience the transition from adolescence to young adulthood as a dreadful loss of the best that life has to offer, then we’re not going to ask ourselves, “OK, how do I make sex at 35 the best sex of my life?” Most people are saying, “How do I make sex at 35 as near to what it was at 20?”

Most of us develop our vision of sexuality between 15 and 20. At that time we have a very particular kind of body: it’s young, it’s healthy, it’s flexible, it’s conventionally attractive. And so we associate that body and that body’s abilities with good sex. We say that good sex is the kind of sex you can have if you’ve had five margaritas, or you can have good sex when someone has a face without any lines on it.

The model of sexuality that we develop between 15 and 20, it just doesn’t work for us when we have the body of a 47-year-old, when you have to take ibuprofen an hour before you have sex. There’s also a different emotional and psychological context. There’s a different ecology. You have responsibilities, you don’t have a lot of time to kill, you have to wake up early the next morning, you have children you don’t want to wake up when you’re having sex. When we’re young, we don’t have to develop the skill of planning for sex, of being patient, of waiting for when it’s going to be the right time.

They want spontaneity.

Well, you know? You can’t have that. How many 40-year-olds who have any sort of a life do anything spontaneously? I mean, look at you and I, we wanted to have a conversation and we had to plan it. We didn’t say, you know, when you’re in the mood, give me a call.

This yearning for spontaneity is so poignant, because what people are really saying is, ” I yearn for the uncomplicated life that I used to have where sexuality was at my disposal 24 hours a day, rain or shine.”

You also write about how a lack of desire is a major concern for most of your clients —

Most couples, when one or both of them don’t feel incredibly horny, they think of that as something that only one of them is going to fix. “You lose weight and that will make me more horny” or “I’ll have fantasies or come up with a new position and that will make me more horny.” They don’t talk about it as a couple. The couple needs to sign up for it together — but that requires them to talk honestly about sex. Most couples would rather chew glass than talk honestly with each other about sex. They’re willing to say things like, “I wish you’d lose weight, I wish you didn’t bring work home, you’re always on the phone with your mother,” but most are not willing to say, “I used to have more desire for you than I have now, do you want to work with me to do something about that?”

Why is that? Obviously, there’s the desire to not hurt your partner’s feelings, but it also seems there’s more there.

I wouldn’t be quite so generous. I think it’s more like, “I don’t want to say these things to you because I don’t want to hear them from you.”

So, we’re afraid of having these conversations because if we start being honest with our partner, they might start being honest with us, and that might validate our deepest insecurities?

I think that’s part of it. I think people are afraid that if they start talking honestly about sex, they’re going to be opening Pandora’s box. I also think that not everybody has the vocabulary, not everybody can say exactly what they want or how they feel. A lot of people find it easier to say, “You did something wrong,” rather than to say, “Let me tell you how that felt to me.” Instead of saying, “You’re frigid” or “You’re too kinky,” you say, “I feel unattractive” or “it’s not that I don’t like oral sex, it’s just that whenever you’re going down on me I feel so exposed, I feel so foolish.” If only people would talk more about feeling foolish in bed, rather than what the other person is doing wrong. A lot of people talk about what’s wrong with sex, like sex did something wrong. When people say that in the office, I say, “Well, rather than telling me what’s wrong with sex, why don’t you tell me how you feel?”

Why is it that the typical self-help approaches don’t work when it come to sex? Why isn’t it as simply as the ten hot new moves you need to try tonight?

Let’s compare it to something else — say you want to take care of your health. What we know is that articles like “five ways to burn fat better” just don’t work. There’s a step before that and that’s creating the emotional environment in which people can take advantage of that information. For most people, the emotional environment for taking advantage of those “hot new moves” just isn’t there. People aren’t up to what moves they should do, they’re stuck thinking, “I’m afraid that if we have sex with the lights on he’s gonna think that my butt is too big.” If someone is stuck on “My penis is the most important thing that I bring to sex,” then talking to them about what to do with this finger or that hand or this foot is just pointless. But that’s what self-help books focus on constantly when it comes to sex: what to do with your body.

Obviously, there is so much bodily insecurity going around — how do you even start toward that point of feeling sexy in your own skin?

Part of it is getting the idea that it is possible to detach how you look from how you feel and that sexiness is not a product of what your body looks like from the outside, that sexiness is a product of how you feel on the inside. Part of it is acknowledging that somebody somewhere has the ability to feel sexy independent of how they look on the outside. We have to get the concept that it’s possible for some people to feel sexy based on what’s on the inside rather than what’s on the outside. From there it’s a question of a person tuning into what do I have to offer somebody else sexually, and what do I have to offer myself sexually? If a person enjoys kissing a lot, regardless of what they look like they could say to themselves, well, that’s part of what makes me sexy.

You write so much in the book about how people worry about being sexual normal. What is sexually normal?

Most people who want to know what’s sexually normal, they’re not going to use that information in a wholesome way. Most people want to know what’s sexually normal so that they can compare themselves or their mate to that standard. If I say 80 percent of 30-year-olds have oral sex at least once a month, somebody’s gonna compare themselves to that and say, “What’s wrong with me that I don’t do that?” Or they’re going to look at their mate and say, “What’s wrong with you?”

Now if you want to know what’s statistically common when it come to sex, as I say in the book, it’s that people have sex when they’re tired and when they feel self-conscious about their bodies.

David Jay, founder of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), tells me the show’s treatment was “disturbing but not unexpected.” Not only does the episode assert “that asexuality is problematic and pathological,” he says, but it also tells people who actually accept asexuality as a valid sexual orientation — an acceptance Jay has long fought for — that “they’re wrong.”

OK, so it’s a popular network TV show, and a medical-mystery drama at that: The bar for nuance and sensitivity is set pretty low. It’s also medically possible for a pituitary tumor to cause a lack of sexual desire — but it certainly isn’t the norm among the 1 percent of the population estimated to be asexual. (Although, asexuality as a whole is underresearched and poorly understood.)

The petition, which urges Fox execs to reconsider future portrayals of asexuals, argues, “The episode encourages viewers to meet asexuality with skepticism rather than acceptance, to probe asexual people for causes of our ‘condition’ rather than to accept us as a part of the natural spectrum of human sexual diversity.”

Asexuals hardly need to be investigated by “sexuals,” says Jay. “If someone identifies as asexual, chances are they’ve already done a lot of deep self-reflection and analysis to come to that,” and that can include the possibility of a pituitary tumor, a hormonal imbalance or past sexual trauma. “There’s such a strong message that there’s something wrong with you if you don’t like sex, it’s very hard for people to accept this about themselves,” he says. “It’s hard to be on that journey in an honest way and to be avoiding something. [Asexuality’s] not an easy out.” It’s not like “you identify as asexual and then you’re done trying to understand yourself,” Jay explains.

As for the wife on “House” who faked her asexuality to please her husband? Jay’s not buying that either. He has several asexual friends who have been in relationships with sexual people for years; and each couple finds a way to make it work, whether it’s non-monogamy or negotiating sexual interaction within the relationship — kinda like in relationships between sexuals! Believe it or not, he says, such arrangements are not uncommon in the asexual community, and he says they work “because of really good, honest communication,” not because one partner is lying to the other. But that does make for better TV.

We’re talking about real abuse here, not the “consensual non-consent” that the scene is built around, as Mayhem’s story of her first assault makes clear. As an 18-year-old member of a kinky student club at the University of California, Berkeley, Mayhem helped raise money to bring a prominent BDSM educator to campus for a workshop. Afterward, he singled her out for a private “play date” and she was flattered. “I thought this was the best person I could start to learn from,” she says.

The scene that they negotiated was “fantastic,” Mayhem says, but then things took a turn. “I found myself tied up and unable to get away when that individual decided that he was going to have sex with me,” she says, tears welling in her eyes, “even though we’d specifically negotiated against it, even though I was saying that it needed to stop, and even though he was not wearing a condom at the time.”

For the most part, she kept the experience to herself, but on the rare occasions when she did tell people in the community about it, she says, “I got one response … which was people saying [things like], ‘I don’t do drama. This is a respected person in the community. I’m very sorry that you had a miscommunication during your scene that made it not very fun for you, but I don’t want to hear about it.’”

As she pushed deeper into the scene, trying to put this experience behind her, she had countless more encounters where her boundaries were blatantly ignored. As she gained experience, she started to talk more confidently and openly about these experiences – but, again, she got the “I don’t do drama” line. At the same time, she realized that such abuse was prevalent: “It started to look more like a systemic issue,” she says. As Stryker wrote last year in an essay for Good Vibrations magazine, ” I have yet to meet a female submissive who hasn’t had some sort of sexual assault happen to her.”

BDSM has long been a target of criticism from outsiders, but these two are devoted members of the scene. Stryker argued in her essay, “I Never Called It Rape,” that the community is so “focused on saying how BDSM isn’t a cover for abuse that we willingly blind ourselves to the times that it can be,” she wrote. “How on earth can we possibly say to society at large that BDSM is not abuse when we so carefully hide our abusers and shame our abused into silence?”

At one point during the event, Carol Queen, an infamous sex educator and co-founder of the Center for Sex and Culture, takes the stage and tells a story about how her partner, Robert, had been alerted a few years back by various insiders that someone was drugging girls and raping them at local play spaces. “Robert actually acted to try to stop that guy and the pillars of the community, some of them, did not feel very good about that,” she says. (The scene, which not only faces outside criticism but also serious legal threats, is “really invested” in not talking about this, Stryker explains.)

Queen, a guru of progressive Bay Area sexuality, also reveals that despite still being a submissive woman, she “doesn’t play anymore” or “go out to community dungeon spaces,” in large part “because of issues we’re talking about here.”

The problem spans from unwanted overtures to rape, say Mayhem and Stryker. “When I start to think of the number of times I have been cajoled, pressured, or forced into sex that I did not want when I came into ‘the BDSM community’, I can’t actually count them,” Stryker wrote in Good Vibrations’ magazine. “As I reflected on the number of times I’ve … been pressured into a situation where saying ‘no’ was either not respected or not an option, or said that I did not want a certain kind of toy used on me which was then used, I’m kind of horrified.”

Beyond black-and-white cases of rape, there is a cultural disdain for safe words, they say. “When I was a submissive,” says Stryker, now a dominant in both her personal and professional life, “I felt the pressure to not safeword because I felt like that made you a bad submissive.” That’s because she witnessed submissives who used their safe word being criticized as “difficult.” At the “consent culture” event, Stryker asks the audience, “Is it the fault of the submissive who didn’t safeword when they should have or is it the fault of the dominant who didn’t notice that their submissive didn’t safeword [when they should have] or is it the fault, as I think it is, of the community that makes it complicated?”

Complicating things further, there are the times when a scene doesn’t have a clear start, so a safe word is never negotiated (although there are universal safe words, like “red” or the exceedingly obvious “safe word” that any experienced dom should recognize).

Mayhem and Stryker don’t expect much sympathy from the outside world about the problem of pushed boundaries within a scene that eroticizes pushing boundaries, but they did hope for a better reception from the people within their own community who are throwing these play parties. It’s their discussion of the pressure to not safeword that has courted the most controversy within the scene. One critic, Janet Hardy, author of several popular BDSM books, including “The New Bottoming Book,” tells me, “My general thoughts are that it is tremendously important to build a safe word culture but that bottoms have to hold up their share of that responsibility,” she says. “A bottom who refuses to safeword when he or she has actually withdrawn consent has just turned me into a rapist or assailant without my consent, and that is not OK.”

Hardy, co-author of the bible on polyamory, “The Ethical Slut,” doesn’t deny that sexual assault is a problem in the community, but she takes issue with arguments about the social pressure to not safeword. It has “some of the flavor of the kind of victimhood that we see from some second wave feminists,” she says, “and I don’t want to get too deep into this because I’m going to get myself into trouble, but you know where I’m going with this.”

Another detractor wrote in response to a recent interview Stryker did in the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

A bottom/sub MUST investigate who they are seeking to play with. They MUST insist that their safe words are honored. They should, when playing with someone new or unfamiliar, have someone they trust be present to look out for their safety. A bottom/sub should never play with someone the first time in a private location (someone’s home, hotel, etc.). If public play spaces are not available, try to set an arrangement where there will be someone to look after their best interests.

Stryker considers such criticisms “very victim blame-y.” She explains, “[There's] this belief that if I make sure I get references, have a safe call [a scheduled check-in with a friend to make sure things haven't gone awry] and negotiate using a checklist, I’ll be safe,” Stryker tells me. “But then you find out that you can do those three things and not be safe anyway, and that’s terrifying. You realize how vulnerable you are.”

Despite it being a marginal sexual community, these debates clearly echo conversations about consent that routinely happen in the world at large. Hardy says, “These things tend to happen by their nature in places where there are only two witnesses. To what degree can the community line up behind a problem when it’s one person’s word against another’s?” (Ah, the old “he said, she said” quandary.) Just as so often happens with assaults on college campuses, alcohol and other intoxicants are frequently blamed. “Standard BDSM gospel has it that you don’t play when impaired, but a lot of people do,” says Hardy.

No matter the context, victims of assault tend to engage in the same second-guessing of themselves. “It can be really confusing,” Mayhem says during her speech. “Was that a scene, what was that? Should I have expected that? Was it my business to go that far and then stop? Is this just how it works?” That sounds a whole lot like the more familiar, “Was I dressed too provocatively? Should I have been out that late at night? Did I lead him on?”

In many ways, the kink scene seems light-years ahead of other sexual communities when it comes to issues of consent. They have checklists that tirelessly detail personal limits and safe words meant to bring things to a screeching halt if ever someone’s boundaries are crossed. That’s theory — just like “no” means “no” for non-kinksters — but it’s not always so in practice.

I have asked her in recent months to recount what she told me 25 years ago about her sexual experiences. Not only will she not discuss it and gets angry about it, she now claims that she never did any of those things. Well, of course, I have some proof that she did many.

My question is why can’t I stop obsessing over her past sexual conquests (and that’s what they were — she seduced primarily married men), and why is she now denying and refusing to discuss her past?

I feel for your wife, man. You’re interrogating her about her sexual past after a quarter-century of marriage. There should be a statute of limitations on such things.

There must be a reason why this suddenly matters to you now. M. Gary Neuman, a therapist and author of “Connect to Love,” senses “some guilt or fear of the ‘what goes around comes around’ karma.” He says, “Maybe you now feel doomed to struggle since this relationship began through inappropriate behavior,” and adds: “It’s never too late to apologize to those you may have hurt in the past. Do what you need to in order to feel freer moving forward and allowing yourself to enjoy your marriage to the max.”

Listen to the man. He’s been on “Oprah,” yo.

Therapist Charles Foster, co-author of “I Love You but I Don’t Trust You,” says there are a couple of possible interpretations of what’s going on here. It could be that “after 25 years, their sex lives — so clearly in need of spicing up from the beginning — are developing rigor mortis, and his re-opening this can of worms is the best way he knows how to wake things up in bed.” Or maybe “for some reason, trust issues have reared their ugly head.”

Is your wife giving you new reason to mistrust her — based on her current behavior, as opposed to things she did when she was a young seductress? If not, this might be less about your wife’s actual trustworthiness than obsessive thinking.

Foster has little patience for this: “Come on, what is it you really want? Better sex? More closeness? More trust? Any of these could make you happy,” he says. “But satisfying your obsession will only stimulate the very itch that’s making you miserable.” Instead, he suggests that you “focus on your real needs, and work with your partner to get them met, and keep telling yourself that your obsession is just a sinkhole of misery.”

On a similar note, Diana Kirschner, author of “Sealing the Deal: The Love Mentor’s Guide to Lasting Love,” suggests that you start by simply listening to each other: Sit down and give each other 10 minutes to talk uninterrupted about whatever is on your mind. Instead of talking about past exploits, try talking about “sexual longings or fantasies you have right now and especially how you would like to act them out with each other.” She says, “Build a whole new relationship now that is so satisfying, the past just doesn’t matter.”