Honesty is Critical When Couples Seek Professional Help for Sexual Problems

When a couple seeks therapy to help with a sexual problem such as sexual addiction or sexual dysfunction, what they don’t say during a session can be even more important to the process than what they do say.

Many couples who seek professional help for sexual challenges may avoid subjects that seem awkward or shameful, as noted in a recent article, but in doing so can avoid critical information toward the success of their treatment for weeks or months.

In many cases the information that is withheld relates to areas they may not even perceive as connected to their sexual problems, such as difficulty with desire or arousal and its connection to fears or anxieties over their occupation.

This can be especially true when one partner in the relationship makes significantly higher income than the other, or if one partner is working through unemployment. Issues like power, stress and dissatisfaction with a person’s ability to provide financially can all have a strong impact on the couple’s sex life.

In cases like sexual addiction, couples may withhold information about their physical attraction to others or their behaviors like paid sexual services and online sex usage. Their decision not to be honest about these behaviors is often connected to shame or fear.

However, by not sharing this information, they are severely limiting the success of their treatment and making the journey to identify key behavior triggers and solutions even more difficult.

Professionals who are trained in topics like sexual addiction can ask prompting questions to get to critically helpful information, but couples who invest in counseling or therapy must also be willing to be truthful in order to address the powerful and destructive nature of sexual addiction and move forward to a place of recovery.