Sex Therapy – Is It Time to See a Sex Therapist?

In the summer of 2017, six years into her marriage, Kayti Christian booked her first sex therapy appointment.

Ms. Christian and her husband grew up in evangelical families, steeped in the belief that any sexual desires outside of marriage were sinful. When they got married, they expected sex to be intuitive — even transcendent. Instead, Ms. Christian said she and her husband felt numb during intercourse and ashamed after.

They prayed. They asked their pastor for guidance, but it did not help. Finally Ms. Christian, now 32, started searching for local certified sex therapists.

They went to five sessions; sometimes together, sometimes alone. The couple’s therapist recommended simple exercises, like facing each other, holding eye contact and stating their sexual desires out loud.

“It might sound silly, but talking about sex while not having sex was something that felt revolutionary to us,” said Ms. Christian, who is working on a memoir about evangelical purity culture.

Sex is complicated for just about everyone — influenced by an ever-changing web of psychological, physical, cultural and social factors. And many individuals and couples can benefit from therapy to better understand their sexuality. Sex therapists say their field has long been misunderstood — seen as a last resort for people in doomed relationships, or a fringe practice that involves embarrassing hands-on exercises. For people like Ms. Christian and her husband, it can take years of suffering before they finally turn to a sex therapist for help.

There is emerging evidence that we may be in the midst of a collective rough patch, sexually speaking. Over the past two years, several studies suggest, people were having less sex and worse sex, particularly in the early days of the pandemic. A 2020 Kinsey Institute survey found that 24 percent of married people in the United States were having less frequent sex than before the pandemic, and 17 percent of women reported a decrease in sexual satisfaction.

Yet addressing sexual problems — whether they emerged during the pandemic or not — is challenging. Medicine has been slow to embrace sex as an important part of personal health, and many doctors do not receive formal sexual health training in medical school, despite known links between sex and wellness.

The New York Times spoke to several sex therapists about some common misconceptions around sex therapy and why it sometimes takes their patients so long to find care.