Hot Topic: Assumptions, Resistance, and Responsibility

Both as a sexologist and as a therapist I am trained to avoid making assumptions about the attitudes and behaviours of any person or people. I’ve learned to ask questions so that clients feel safe revealing their truths early, and I gather as much pertinent information as necessary with as few questions as possible. It’s one of the reasons that sex therapy is brief and often brings relief quickly.

This speed, though efficient, relies on an absence of assumptions, and sometimes those can sneak through even the most fortified filters. This happened recently, and proved to be a valuable “a-ha” for me. Let me share the lesson I learned (again).

A couple came to see me to improve their sexual communication and negotiation. They defined themselves as being in love, being happy, and being swingers. They did not identify swinging as a problem, for had both been ‘in the scene’ for some time and were informed and honourable. I made an assumption. I assumed that because they were savvy about swinging that they practiced safe sex, a major tenet of the group. It was several visits before I learned that was not the case. When I asked “Why not?”, the clients responded that they believed STDs didn’t affect their ‘class’ of people. I offered accurate information about who can catch sexually transmitted diseases, which is everyone, and given this knowledge, they chose to change their behaviour.

I was troubled by my assumption, which caused me not to ask the question about safe sex early. I wondered how it was that they’d missed that vital piece of information.

I began to ask others about safe sex and found that many of us want so badly to believe we are invincible that we deny the risk. I heard from a sex educator that she, herself, had briefly practiced unprotected sex following a painful separation. She knew full well how crazy her behaviour was, yet felt compelled to dare chance. Besides, it was so unfair that sex, perhaps our most passionate activity, should be so consequence-ridden!

I understand that. No one would argue that dental dams and condoms enhance sexual pleasure. We think “we’d rather not, thank you”, but we must. Before the advent of the pill in 1960, sex was so fraught with consequences that our whole social dance formed around harm prevention rather than damage control. If we had sex before 1960, our chances were good that we’d get pregnant. It effectively kept women from enjoying our sexuality, at least until menopause, by which time our sex-negative messages were firmly entrenched anyway. We were robbed! And no less for men, forced by unintended pregnancies to wed unwitting and unwilling. Many abandoned their posts. Many lived lives of quiet desperation. Now we have AIDS, which is cruel and fatal. Who wouldn’t rebel if they could!?

I believe that rebelling against safe sex guidelines is one way we fool ourselves into believing we can outwit fate. Many of us refuse to take responsibility for our sexuality, pretending that we’re not planning to have sex, or that we were swept away on a wave of romance. It’s the myth responsible for our soaring teen pregnancy rate and epidemic STDs. Couple this with inadequate and incomplete public sex education and sexual and relational messages we get from media (I can’t remember a couple mentioning safe sex on TV or in the movies), and we’ve got a recipe for fear and ignorance, not great components for managing our sex lives well.

Of course we’d rather not have to bother with latex and chemicals, but if we want to claim the privileges of sex (wonder, power, desire, arousal, connection) then we must pay the cost, which is that we protect our bodies and those with whom we share them. We must question our assumptions, resist our fear of claiming our sexuality, and take responsibility for this most wonderful of expressive gifts, sex.