One of the top questions about sex people bring to therapy relates to what’s “natural.” There are two different aspects to this.
The first is about the ecology of sexual interactions: making time for sex, the process of initiating, discussing preferences, feeling adequate, and negotiating contraception.
People want sex to be “natural.” Men and women concerned about this generally mean that they don’t want to make dates for sex, want sex to mysteriously happen without anyone actually initiating, don’t want to communicate what they like and don’t like, want to believe that their partner is deeply satisfied without actually asking or noticing, and want the need for contraception to just go away.
In other words, people who insist that sex be “natural” want it to be like it was during high school or college, when no one had a clue about what was going on. You may recall that that sex often came with physical discomfort, pregnancy scares, self-doubt, and feeling isolated or confused. What a blessing that ten or twenty or forty years later, most people forget about that.
Of course, some adults try hard to reproduce the carefree sex of their youth. So we see some middle-aged people getting drunk to have sex, not a pretty sight. Or adult women who insist that initiating sex is “a man’s job,” or adult men who say birth control is “up to the woman.” In both cases, people seem unaware about how such demands distort relationships. Ditto for the naïve ideas of men who expect their penis to get hard without being touched, and women who expect that men will know what they like sexually without being told or shown.
That’s not how sex works. We may have an excuse for these such ideas when we’re 18, but not when we’re 40. And without making a date for it, most grownup couples don’t usually find themselves suddenly tumbling into bed together for sex—especially if they have kids.
My goal has never been to help people have sex that’s “natural,” referring to either the first or second meaning. My goal is to help people let go of the need to be sexually natural or normal, trusting themselves and their partner to simply create experiences that are enjoyable to the two (or more) parties involved. It’s a challenge grownups should embrace, not fear.
