Sexual desire is an extremely complex situation affected by the nervous system, endocrine system, biological structure, psychological factors, social and cultural structures.
All authors agree that sexual desire is essentially an instinct. However, it is a known fact that emotional and social problems can affect a person's sexual desire level in the same way that stress, psychological trauma, and relationship problems affect our sleep patterns and nervous system.
According to world-famous sexual therapist Helen Kaplan, sexual instinct is bidirectional. It has a mechanism. For example, a comfortable and reliable environment and appropriate sexual stimulation (an attractive partner, an emotional environment, appropriate physical contact, pleasant music, etc.) arouse sexual desire, while the opposite environment or an unsuitable environment, an unsuitable partner, causes the opposite effect. It can negatively affect sexual desire.
Decreased sexual desire disorder in DSM_ IV is defined as a persistently recurrent lack of sexual fantasies and low or no desire to engage in sexual activity.
Assessing a decreased sexual desire is an extremely delicate task and it is essential that the sexual therapist is experienced in this regard. Because reluctance is affected by cultural, religious, psychological, physical and social factors. One or more of these effects may initiate, maintain, or even prevent the solution of sexual reluctance.
It is important to take a careful and detailed history in evaluating sexual reluctance. A client who applies with this complaint should definitely be asked what his or her marital relationship is like. Because a decrease in desire can also be a reaction to a relationship that is fundamentally negative. For this reason, the structure of the marriage, basic conflicts, power dynamics, the partner's approach to sexuality, and sexual behavior patterns should be carefully examined. If there are problems in these areas, these problems should be resolved first.
The likelihood of sexual problems arising is higher in societies where sexuality is suppressed and approached with the logic of shame, prohibition and sin. There is no sexual education in these societies. Lack of sexual education It paves the way for the spread of false, exaggerated beliefs and expectations. Especially in cultures where women's sexual pleasure, fantasizing, masturbating, actively participating in lovemaking or initiating sexual behavior are presented as shameful, forbidden and sinful, young girls who grow up suppress their sexuality from an early age and tend to erase all kinds of sexual activity from their minds. They may even deny the existence of their own genitals. As a result of all these, the woman becomes alienated first from her body and then from her emotions. Therefore, he becomes alienated from his sexuality.
In the clinic, sexual desire disorder is often seen together with arousal and orgasm disorder. Arousal and orgasmic disorders cause the person to have repeated negative sexual experiences, which naturally leads to reluctance.
Sexual reluctance appears in two cases: primary sexual reluctance and secondary sexual reluctance.
Primary sexual aversion:The person has never felt desire for a partner before in any situation.
Secondary sexual aversion:The person has never been willing before in another situation. Reluctance emerged later.
Sexual reluctance may begin in adolescence, or it may begin later in any period of life, or reluctance may arise situationally against a certain situation and person.
In the evaluation, the primary reason for reluctance is ? secondary? Or is it situational? The distinction must be made carefully. Because the treatment approach will be built accordingly. Another issue that should be emphasized about sexual desire is the fact that sexual desire does not have a standard and will vary from person to person.
Reasons for Sexual Reluctance
In the individual dynamics of sexual reluctance, the individual's sexual desire There may be complex unconscious conflicts about letting go of experiencing pleasure. These conflicts can be listed as deep fears of being harmed, feelings of guilt, fear of closeness, fear of losing control.
Having feelings towards members of the opposite sex or a certain person. Feelings of unconscious hostility and fear of rejection prevent the person from surrendering himself to his feelings and sensations. If these emotions dominate the person's system, sexual reluctance is a defense maneuver against these emotions. These defensive maneuvers prevent the person from responding appropriately to sexual stimulation and sexual pleasure. So the person may avoid being sufficiently stimulated. He may prevent himself from responding to his partner without realizing it.
One of the important reasons for sexual reluctance is partner rejection. Some people who experience sexual reluctance may not even be aware of the intense feelings of anger they feel towards their partners. They feel misunderstood, criticized, deceived. However, the presence of these feelings prevents the sexual responses of the partners to each other. In such situations, sexual desire is dominated by emotions that the person cannot cope with on his own.
In other words, complex internal dynamic factors, marital problems, play a significant role under sexual reluctance. The couple's marital relationships are problematic. Relationship emotions are dominated by negative emotions such as resentment, anger, and despair. Underneath this resentment and anger may lie power struggles, projection of negative and unresolved interactions with parents during childhood onto the spouse, attachment problems, hypersensitivity to rejection, mutual blaming, depression, criticism, neglect and abuse.
Loss of sexual desire, emotional and social. It may be caused by problems or medical reasons such as alcohol and substance abuse, endocrine diseases, and side effects of medications. Internal dynamic factors or interpersonal interactional reasons that cause sexual reluctance cause the person to engage in sexual avoidance behaviors that he/she hides from others and his/her partner, to focus on the negative aspects of the partner and the interaction with the partner, and to perpetuate the problem by obsessing over stressful problems before, during and after lovemaking. In addition to these, fear of failure, avoidance of adequate tactile or sensory stimuli during sexual experiences, suppression and denial of erotic fantasies are also added. ir. Therefore, it is a very fine line to recognize and distinguish these factors in treatment. Because the treatment is formulated in the light of these factors. The most common reason for applying to the clinic regarding this problem is that there is a significant difference in the level of desire between couples. The couple cannot find balance on this issue. Even if the conflict is minor at first, it grows over time and causes the couple to become tense. In other words, the reluctant spouse begins to become more reluctant, and the willing spouse begins to become more willing. Another reason for application may be that the client may have noticed this on his own, or it may have been brought by his partner, or the couple may have applied to each other to feel more desire.
Sexual reluctance may also appear at the same time as other sexual dysfunctions. For example, painful sexual intercourse, arousal and orgasm disorders, premature ejaculation, delayed ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, etc. These problems can negatively affect desire not only in the person himself, but also in his partner. For example, a man whose partner has an orgasm problem may feel resentful when he does not receive a response despite making a lot of effort to achieve it. Even if his partner is enthusiastic, his interest in sexuality may decrease. He may even lose interest. Likewise, a woman whose partner is struggling with erectile dysfunction may experience desire problems over time, even if she initially maintains interest.
Reluctance may also be a defensive reaction against a hindering relationship that is perceived to be costly. Likewise, the person may think that good sexuality will make him addicted and lose control. Sometimes it can be a symbolic expression of anger, tension, guilt and shame experienced in the relationship.
One of the most common reasons for reluctance in women and men is performance pressure. Women and men are also afraid of being inadequate during a relationship. However, each spouse, under the pressure of his own fear, overlooks that the other is also like him, that he also has a heart, and therefore, he is afraid of being inadequate like himself. In general, men are unable to achieve sufficient erection or cannot keep their partner from having an orgasm. While women are afraid of ejaculating, they are afraid of not being aroused quickly, not having an orgasm, or having a late orgasm. As such, these fears may negatively affect sexual desire.
Sexual Reluctance Treatment
The reasons underlying sexual reluctance should be quickly investigated and revealed. If organic causes are suspected, the client should be referred to an expert on the subject and receive appropriate help.
If the reluctance is thought to be caused by psychological or interpersonal relationships, the underlying negative emotions should be sought and found.
Generally, these emotions are anger, shame, fear, guilt, and anxiety. It takes time and effort to find and uncover the connection between the client's decreased sexual desire problem and their emotions. For example, shame can be in the form of being ashamed of fantasies, passions, one's own body, past experiences, rejection, or parents.
The client should be given good spiritual social information and good sexual information. In therapy, this information should be given carefully, without rushing. For many people, sexual reluctance is a form of defense against anxieties arising from the way one perceives one's sexuality. In most cases, consciously or unconsciously, allowing a person's sexual fantasies and desires causes him/her to become anxious. The decrease in sexual desire serves to prevent these internal conflicts from disturbing the person. At this point, the task of the sexual therapist is whether the client is conscious of this. or is it unconscious? is to find out what he/she is doing and then enable the client to accept the strong underlying feelings and move toward conscious decision-making. This is followed by helping the client understand what experiences they have had to make these decisions and what other options they have. Some types of sexual reluctance are expressions of anger, tension and shame that arise as a result of sexual dysfunctions such as premature ejaculation and inability to orgasm. In the presence of such situations, the sexual therapist deals with the client's underlying dynamics with a strategy appropriate to his/her feelings and thoughts.
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