had visited a website where he took an “Are you a sex addict?” quiz prepared by someone who bills himself as the preeminent expert in sex addiction, and with every answer, Rodger sank into deeper gloom. Yes, he looked at porn. Yes, he jerked off. He even looked at porn while he jerked off. According to the site, Rodger was a sex addict.
“Really?” I asked. I ran through a series of basic questions: Was he functioning at work? Did he have a decent social life? Stable relationships? Stable finances? Did masturbation interfere with any of those? Was anyone being hurt by his behavior? At the end I said, “You’re doing great at work, you have an active social life, and you make good choices. I don’t think you’re an addict.”
“So why do I jerk off so much?”
“Perhaps you like it,” I smiled. “I know I do.”
He blushed. “Yeah, yeah, I do. At least until I start worrying about it.”
This, of course, is the biggest problem with masturbation; not the masturbation itself, which is without doubt the single most ubiquitous, universal behavior, but the guilt, the shame, the anxiety, even the despair that people suffer over it.
I asked him how often he masturbated for it to cause him enough concern to visit a sex therapist. Rodger told me once or twice a day. I told him that I recommend that male clients have a sexual release once a day for health reasons, he laughed in surprise.
“Medical studies have proven that men who masturbate five times a week reduce their risk of prostate cancer by up to 60%. You can confirm that with your urologist,” I said. “Orgasm plays a vital role in male sexual health. So I think you’re in good shape. In fact, I’d be concerned if you only masturbated a few times a month. Daily orgasms are one of the best things you can do for yourself.”
Rodger told me that since his teens he had been tormented with anxiety because he was told that jerking off was wrong. He worried that if he did it every day, he’d turn into a “pathetic freak” or that he wouldn’t be able to get it up anymore. I gently let him know that his constant worrying and guilt trips were more likely to damage his health than masturbation.
I take a holistic approach in therapy. I believe that sex always spills into daily life and vice versa; if Rodger was shirking responsibilities or fleeing intimacy to escape into masturbation, I would consider it problematic. Simply to enjoy yourself with something that harms no one (including yourself) is not a problem.
I continued asking him questions about his life and habits. Other than his anxieties about masturbation he was fairly happy, upbeat, and high-functioning. Looking at the whole of Rodger’s life, it was also obvious that he had much more control over his impulses than he’d credited himself for having. We talked about his personal history and background. He was raised in a conservative household where sex was never discussed. When the subject arose, the message from his parents was clear: sex was dirty, undignified, taboo. The only acceptable sex occurred between husband and wife. In Rodger’s mind, by masturbating he was, in effect, disappointing his family and at risk of disgrace should anyone ever find out.
I gave him all the latest and greatest information culled from studies on the voluminous benefits of masturbation. When I informed him that having an orgasm daily is physically healthier than not having one, he was at first stunned, then palpably relieved.
The man who came to my office afraid that his daily masturbation meant he was an addict was transformed by that conversation. It alleviated a burden of shame he had carried since he was twelve. More often than not, clients like Rodger don’t need to see a sex therapist more than once or twice. Sometimes, once they finally admit what they always considered a “terrible secret,” they already feel better and more in control. Putting voice to their fears and then realizing that they are just fears, not realities, is in itself deeply therapeutic.
What Is Masturbation?
Masturbation is the fundamental building block of adult sexual performance. It is the first step we take towards defining what we like sexually and learning how our bodies respond to sexual stimulation. Consciously, we may be driven by nothing more than the fact that it feels good but, developmentally, masturbation teaches us how to elicit and control our sexual responses and, most importantly, to achieve the all-important sexual release.
Margo L. was a 50-something woman, married to Jim, her high school sweetheart. They had several children but Margo had never had an orgasm with Jim and now, facing menopause, was frightened she never would. She was angry and blamed Jim for being cold and selfish. Jim wanted sex almost every night, had his orgasm, and turned over to go to sleep, leaving her awake and frustrated. He didn’t seem to care how she felt. Early on, he tried harder and did some foreplay, she said, but he’d long since given up and only focused on his own needs. She was hurt to the point of rage about Jim’s attitudes. He made her feel unloved and unappreciated. She had packed her bags more than once. Sex was all about him and she just didn’t want to do it anymore. Having sex with Jim only served as a grim reminder of how empty it made her feel. At the same time, she really didn’t want a divorce — he was a good husband and great father — so she continued to engage in sex that she found joyless.
In the course of taking her sexual history, I asked her at what age she had started masturbating. There was a long pause. She never masturbated. She was raised in a different time, she said, a time when women didn’t do that sort of thing. So it wasn’t just that she didn’t have orgasms with her husband. She said she’d never had an orgasm at all. She was raised to believe that sex was reserved for marriage, and so she waited to be married, with the expectation that once they began having sex, she would learn to enjoy it. Instead, she had been waiting all those years for Jim to figure out what would work and then do it to her. As she saw it, her sexual pleasure was entirely in his hands — and he had failed her as a husband by refusing to provide it.
She was first hostile, then humbled, when I told her that if you don’t know how to give yourself an orgasm, chances of someone else knowing how to do it are slim to nil. Two sexually healthy adults can have orgasms together if both of them want the experience and each of them knows what it takes to achieve that climax. Exactly how they get there varies enormously but the better you know how to achieve your own orgasm, the greater your chances of having one with someone else. There are always marvelous exceptions — the magical lover who seems to know exactly how to touch you and where and in what way and at what moment. Sadly, such serendipitous occasions are rare. Infinitely more common are adults who suffer for years because they don’t know how to give themselves orgasms or how to be orgasmic with partners.
Margo’s belief that her orgasm was entirely up to her husband virtually guaranteed that she would never climax. She didn’t understand her own sexual anatomy or response. She assumed that because she couldn’t climax from five minutes of thrusting after perfunctory, almost non-existent foreplay, something was wrong with her. She should have known better; she’d read enough on the subject to understand the importance of foreplay for women. But she was so hurt and embarrassed by what she viewed as her own inadequacy, that she didn’t know how to ask for more and immediately backed down when her husband didn’t show an interest in giving her more.
Margo’s problems were deeper than orgasmic capability, beginning with her passivity and low self-esteem. In addition to talking through all her deeper issues, I gave her assignments to begin the process of learning how to give herself pleasure, including gentle exploration of her genitals in the shower, and the purchase of a simple vibrator. A few months into therapy, Margo excitedly reported that she had finally achieved the orgasm which had eluded her for 50 years. She now understood that the key for her was a long slow build-up, with a lot of caressing and kissing to tease her into readiness. I could see the positive changes in her mood, body, language, and eyes. Margo looked as happy as a kid with a new toy.
How
