HOW RESTRICTIVE UPBRINGING AFFECTS SEXUAL LIFE?

HOW RESTRICTIVE UPBRINGING AFFECTS SEXUAL LIFE?Many factors indicating an excessively strict moral or religious up-brining are commonly reported in the histories of dysfunctional clients and their sexual impairements are often alleged to have originated in these early experiences. In restrictive homes there seems to be either no discussion of sexual matters together with prohibition of television, English films reading material or children are repeatedly told about singleness, immorality or dirtiness or sex. Boys are warned that impure thoughts, masturbation, nocturnal emissions and petting are unacceptable. In childhood many manifestations of sexual interest or exploration are viewed as disgusting or immoral and discovery entails humiliation, disapproval and punishment.
What is the drawback of restrictive upbringing?
Such children become grossly lacking in proper sexual knowledge and are deeply imbibed with negative sexual attitudes. The long association of fear, guilt, and disgust with sexuality may not be easily reversible on marriage as a result enjoyable and socially valued sexual relationship is impaired by some form of dysfunction.
What are moral and religious contraventions in sex life?
Any form of sexual activity that contravenes a personal moral or religious standard may be stressful. This feeling may continue even after marriage. Man may be unable to have a satisfactory sexual relationship with his wife because he thinks her too pure and sacred.What do you understand by inadequate sexual interest?
Norms of sexual interests are purely subjective. Persons may feel periods of disinterest in sex when they are ill, fatigued or are preoccupied with other more pressing matters. If one partner does not like the other, then they cannot have satisfactory sex. Person who anticipates that sexual activity will prove unpleasant, harmful or unsuccessful may well avoid these threats by losing interest in sex.*113\301\2*

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ISD AND RELATIONSHIPS: RELATIONSHIP CONFLICTS AS A SOURCE OF ISD

ISD AND RELATIONSHIPS: RELATIONSHIP CONFLICTS AS A SOURCE OF ISDYour relationship is the setting in which your needs and expectations are fulfilled or thwarted. A confusing, chaotic, or strained relationship that makes you feel like your needs or expectations have been pushed aside will not make you want to be physically close to your partner. No couple we have ever; treated has illustrated this point more dramatically than the one we are about to describe.Frank, a local TV news anchorman, and Liz, who owns and; runs a successful art gallery, have been married for less than two years, and although he is forty-five and she is forty-one, this is the first marriage for both of them. Frank and Liz look like the perfect couple. Attractive, articulate, extremely successful in professions that keep them in the public eye, they are apt to be seen in all the right places rubbing elbows with all the right people and playing the parts of adoring husband and wife. However, what looks like the ultimate intimate relationship from the outside is a disaster behind closed doors—including the closed door of our office.”Everything is me, me, me,” Liz sneers, shooting a venomous look at Frank, who is, as usual, the source of her wrath. She begins to imitate him. “How do I look? Look what I did. I really impressed so and so, didn’t I? Aren’t you going to thank me for the flowers? Don’t you think it was nice of me to take you to the opera?” She shudders with disgust and wraps up her latest tirade. “He’s like a drooling puppy dog, always begging to be patted on the head.”"Really, Liz, you must be talking about yourself.” Frank shoots back a poison dart of his own. “But then that’s all you can talk about.”"Oh, please.” Liz laughs derisively. “I can’t get a word in edgewise. If you aren’t tooting your own horn, you’re sulking or whining about something. When I was considering having a child, I didn’t mean marrying one!”"A child of yours would die from lack of attention,” Frank retorts. “There isn’t a maternal bone in your body. You’re about as loving as a Sherman tank. But then you don’t have a heart. You got rid of it to make room for your ego.” He turns to us, hoping to drag us onto the battlefield. “Tell me the truth, now. Have you ever met anyone more self-centered than my wife?”"They’ve met you, haven’t they?” Liz hisses and they are off and running again. Things really heat up when the topic of discussion is sex.”Frank has this fantasy that every woman over the age of twelve wants to have sex with him.” Liz pauses to light a cigarette, then continues her attack. “I say, ‘Go ahead, because you aren’t going to get sex from me.’ “”Fine. I’m tired of trying to turn you on. You’re just a frigid bitch,” Frank snaps. “You aren’t exactly a sex goddess, you know. Ninety percent of the time you don’t want to have sex, and when you do, you just lie there expecting me to do all the work.”"Wake me up the day you do any of the work,” she snarls. “You’re so into yourself during sex, you don’t even know I’m there. I’m surprised you don’t call out your own name.”Actually, both Frank and Liz are “takers” in bed. They both want to have a thoroughly satisfying sexual experience and become quite absorbed in getting pleasure for themselves! To make matters worse, when Liz “instructs” Frank on how she likes to be touched, even if she is not being critical, he becomes enraged. He perceives a neutral request like “Touch me more softly” as meaning “You don’t know what you’re doing, you clumsy jerk.”Unfortunately, Liz reacts in a similar manner when Frank attempts to provide her with sexual information. The principle of getting, not giving, applies to their relationship outside the bedroom as well. Even when they talk about more neutral subjects, one partner often ends up feeling injured by what is truly an innocuous comment.Liz and Frank both want to be number one in each other’s lives, but that position is already occupied—by themselves. Their life together is an endless—and futile—struggle to get what they need from someone who has too little to give. As a result, they have what psychologists call a hostile marriage—-one in which both partners feel extreme anger toward each other. This anger may not always be expressed in words, but it invariably gets acted out in every area of the relationship. This constant conflict has left Liz and Frank too furious with each other to have sex. Indeed, they feel no sexual desire for each other, and ended up in our office with each demanding that we teach the other how to be a decent lover.*112\261\8*

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ANALYSIS OF THE FAMILY PLANNING CONSULTATION – SELF-MONITORING (CONCLUSION)

The second purpose of self-monitoring is to avoid or allay stress in the doctor. Neighbour (1987) mentions various techniques either during or between consultations to reduce stress levels. For example, an exercise where one is aware of one’s breathing can be used during a consultation and making a telephone call or reading the post are diversionary rituals which can be used between consultations. An aggressive patient may make us feel angry or upset and we owe it to the next patient to dissipate these feelings before we see them, as carry-over into the following consultation would be very unfair.

*352/197/1*

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PSYCHOSEXUAL PROBLEMS IN THE CONTRACEPTIVE CONSULTATION – RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS (CONCLUSION)

Patient presented a sexual problem which she envisaged as being due to the Pill. She had difficulty in reconciling her fantasy script of love, engagement and marriage to her childhood sweetheart, with the reality of a relationship with a selfish and immature youth. She needed the opportunity to expose the reality and to have her anger acknowledged as a reasonable response to it. Although many people had told her previously that this boy was not husband material, she had hidden the knowledge behind the defence of a sexual problem due to her method of contraception. The doctor, by recognizing the defensiveness and refusing to take the problem at face value, had enabled her to look behind the defences at the real problem.

*313/197/1*

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CONTRACEPTIVE CARE OF THE OLDER PATIENT – AGE AND SEXUAL FEELINGS (CASE)

Mrs G. was a 37-year-old mother of three. Two of the children were from a previous marriage, and she had a five-year-old daughter of the present marriage. She had been trying desperately for another baby for the last few years, but all the fertility tests were normal. Menstrual problems and a dilation and currettage were finally followed by an admission that sex did not seem to mean much any more and was not worth the effort. She felt she was passing into the phase of old age and it was as though there was not going to be much to look forward to. At a subsequent visit she talked further about the baby she had not conceived, but she looked more cheerful and said she had just become a grandmother. She went on to say that she was beginning to come to terms with the fact that she probably was not going to become pregnant. She added, ‘I’ve bought myself a dishwasher.’ It seemed for a moment a strange thing to bring into the conversation, for her talk was usually about gynaecological problems, fertility tests and her feelings about pregnancy. She was not one of those patients who talked about the mundane things at home. The doctor suggested that the remark was about what she felt, and she replied, ‘Well, I don’t see why I should spend so much time at the sink, there are other things I could be doing now!’

*275/197/1*

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CULTURAL PERCEPTIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS – PERCEPTIONS OF POWER (WESTERN AND NON-WESTERN DOCTOR)

Almost as uncomfortable as the feeling that one is trampling on someone’s cultural sensitivities is the feeling that one has been given arbitrary power that is on a par with their religious advisers. In most areas there is a choice between a western and non-western doctor. Some of this author’s Asian patients have made the racist assertion that they find English doctors better, and the doctor is further discomfited by statements such as, ‘Next to Allah, I trust you -whatever you think is best.’ This has its obvious parallel in older indigenous patients who are uneasy with modern holistic approaches and want the doctor to take all responsibility for their care – ‘Your life in their hands’. Finding the narrow path between pater-nalism/maternalism and re-education is hard.

Abdul Miah was faced with giving consent for a caesarian section when his wife’s third labour was not progressing well. He refused to give consent until he could obtain the permission of either his priest or general practitioner. Both in the event assented and all was well. This may seem immature but, in fact, how often have any of our patients wished that someone who knew them well and had authority was there when faced with a difficult decision in hospital about a close relative?

*237/197/1*

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THE SEXUAL NEEDS OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES – PHYSICAL/PRACTICAL NEEDS (INTRODUCTION)

Against the background of emotional stress the actual physical and practical difficulties need to be explored. Doctors may feel uneasy or inhibited for fear of appearing intrusive when addressing the practical problems, but it is necessary to do so.

As with all patients, a clinical examination of the genitalia may be a moment when feelings about sexuality and other deep emotions are revealed. In addition, it is important to discover the exact nature and extent of any physical disability, for instance flaccid or spastic legs that cannot be controlled by the patient, or difficulty in abducting the hips. The patient will be aware of these problems which may make intercourse difficult, but be too embarrassed to say so. It behoves the doctor, then, to note these feelings and to overcome his or her own inhibitions. A sensitive but simple and explicit discussion of the actual difficulties needs to be held. If a couple is attempting to have intercourse then the aim is to put an erect penis into an available and accessible vagina. Problems can arise in any of these areas. For a couple with a recently acquired disability, attempts at lovemaking using their previous techniques may have been unsuccessful with an inevitable spin-off of feelings of failure at a very vulnerable time. It may be that a whole new technique needs to be developed. This may involve changes of position, making love in a chair or using such a position as ‘spoons’ (Association to Aid the Sexual and Personal Relationships of the Disabled (SPOD).

*199/197/1*

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THE OFFENSE BEHAVIOR: SEXUAL BEHAVIOR

The actual sexual activity that takes place in a sex offense which involves a second person may range from no physical contact of any kind to vaginal coitus. Between these two extremes lies a wide area of possible behavior. This includes touching, casual or more extensive petting (genital or nongenital), mouth-genital contacts (mouth-penis or mouth-vulva), and attempted coitus. Supplementary sexual techniques may extend to anal coitus, either heterosexual or homosexual, or there may have been a general physical attack with underlying sexual content, even though no specific sexual behavior occurred. When one classifies the exact sexual activity in each of the over 2,000 offenses on which such data are available in the present study, instances of all these types of behavior are found. The incidence with which they were reported varies widely among the general types of offenses and more particularly among the age-of-object subclasses. Before classifying these data the heterosexual techniques were arranged in the following order of priority: (1) coitus, (2) attempted coitus, (3) mouth-genital contacts, (4) genital petting, and (5) simple or nongenital petting. Each offense was assigned to a single sexual technique classification, except in the case of mouth-genital and anal contacts occurring together in homosexual offenses, which are discussed later. Thus, if coitus occurred, the offense is classed as basically coital, even though various types of petting, genital or nongenital, may have accompanied the intercourse. For the noncoital offenses, the behavior that was specified as constituting the offense was used for tabulation purposes, even though other sexual activity may have also occurred. Omitted at this point in the analysis are, of course, the sex offenses which did not have a specific person, male or female, as an object of the offense. These comprise somewhat over 1 per cent of the total sample and include cases such as masquerading, fetish theft, and zoophilia.

*375\161\2*

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SEXUAL AROUSAL FROM SEEING OR THINKING OF FEMALES: AGE PREFERENCE FOR FEMALES

We have thus far been discussing the response of males to the sight or thought or depiction of other humans, particularly human females.

The important question as to the appearance, in fact or in fantasy, of these females was not asked. However, when we did question our subjects, it was implicit that neither they nor we had babies or senile crones in mind since we used the terms “women” or “girls.”

After the first years of our research we began routinely asking all of our subjects who had coital experience what age coital partner they preferred. The reply was sometimes given in the form of a specific age or, more commonly, as an age-range. We have established categories of age and tabulated the preferences; if an individual’s preferences overlapped into more than one age-category, he was counted in each.

The major factors in this matter of age preference are:

Our concepts of physical beauty tend to confine preference to, roughly, ages sixteen to twenty-five—an age-span which would include the great majority of beauty-contest winners.

The realization by experienced males that older females are frequently more satisfactory coital partners tends to raise preference to ages twenty-five to forty or older.

Society punishes couples who are radically different in age, and there are few persons who are in a position to withstand this condemnation and ridicule. In addition, more subtle pressures are exerted: a middle-aged man, for instance, may not wish to meet the competition of young men. The thought of, say, a barn dance lasting until 2 a.m. makes him shudder, and in the back of his mind he anticipates the humiliation of being cuckolded by a male more nearly the age of the female. On the other hand, a young man is often vaguely uneasy in a sexual relationship with a considerably older woman; he may admire her beauty and appreciate her sexual ability, but he feels somehow insecure and wonders if he is the seduced rather than the seducer. Furthermore, the young man of twenty may avoid the woman of twenty-seven because she might look upon him as a “young punk”; the fifty-year-old man may cross the female of twenty off his list of prospects because he suspects she would regard him as a lecherous old rou?.

We made some effort to get our subjects to disregard these social factors and give us an age preference as though all females of all ages were equally available without social complications. This effort was not particularly successful; most of our subjects, we feel, could not clearly envision such an abstract and hypothetical situation. In fact, our efforts sometimes backfired, and we received statements such as, “I wouldn’t care if she was eighty if she looked like she was twenty,” or “As long as she was built like a woman, I wouldn’t care how young she was.” Such responses necessitated rephrasing our question in terms of average females.

The interaction of the three factors listed above determine preference, but as men get older some factors decrease in importance while others increase. By and large, the range of preference widens with age. Thus a male of twenty may prefer women from sixteen to twenty-five, but when he is fifty his range is likely to be twenty to fifty-five. Concepts of physical beauty tend to anchor the younger end of the range in the twenties, while the other considerations stretch the older end of the range up into menopausal years but rarely beyond.

Most of the men in our sample gave ages twenty-five to thirty-four as a preference. From the viewpoint of beauty combined with sexual responsiveness this is an astute selection and one in keeping with the average ages of the groups (most ranging from twenty-six to thirty-nine).

Three groups indicated their preference for coital partners aged eighteen to twenty-four. These were the heterosexual offenders vs. minors and adults, and the homosexual offenders vs. minors. One group, the peepers, had an equal number expressing preference for ages eighteen to twenty-four and twenty-five to thirty-four.

In general, the age preference follows the ages of the group members: the older the average (median) age of the group, the older are the women they would choose. Physical beauty, however, evidently sets a limit on this trend somewhere in the early thirties. While the males aged into their fourth and fifth decades of life, their age preference for sexual partners (note we speak of preference, not of acceptability) halts with women in their thirties. Only our oldest group (average age fifty), the incest offenders vs. adults, found women aged thirty-five to forty-four more attractive than women of other age groups, but if one calculates the median choice of the men in this group, she would be below her middle thirties.

Although most of the males of all groups preferred females eighteen or older, a not inconsiderable number chose younger girls as their ideal coital partners. Nearly one quarter of the heterosexual aggressors vs. minors and homosexual offenders vs. minors preferred sixteen- to seventeen-year-olds. Seventeen per cent of the heterosexual offenders vs. minors, 16 per cent of the prison group, and 16 per cent of the heterosexual offenders vs. adults concurred. This finding agrees with what we discussed earlier: the four groups with the highest percentages of men preferring girls sixteen to seventeen include two groups who expressed the greatest preference (i.e., the modal percentage) for females eighteen to twenty-four. In other words, many of those who like girls young preferred them still younger. A rank-order of preferences for girls sixteen to seventeen finds three of the four groups whose sex offenses were against persons aged twelve to fifteen occupying the upper three ranks. It should be parenthetically noted that of the groups discussed in this paragraph most were characterized by having had relatively young first coital partners.

Turning now to females aged twelve to fifteen, we see few individuals preferring them. In a rank-order, three of the four groups of sex offenders against children (i.e., persons under twelve) are in the upper five ranks along with two groups whose sex offenses were against girls of that age.

So few males expressed a preference for children under twelve that nothing can be said beyond reporting this simple negative finding which, however, is an important one. It is our conviction that individuals primarily interested sexually in prepubescent children are extremely rare.

Since society is so deeply concerned about adults who engage in sexual activity with children or young people in their early or middle teens, it is worth noting that the problem is not so much one of a predilection for youth as it is one of lack of discrimination against youth. Thus our data show the great majority of so-called “child-molesters” would prefer sexual activity with adults, but are willing to turn to children if adults are unavailable or if the man is intoxicated or under stress. The lower age limit every male sets for himself in his own mind is to some degree elastic, depending upon the situation and physical appearance of the female.

*337\161\2*

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PREMARITAL COITUS: NUMBER OF PARTNERS

In discussing the percentage of men in our sample who had had premarital coitus, we noted that the heterosexual offenders and aggressors vs. minors and adults led the other groups. Three of these same four groups are also characterized by having had as their partners large numbers of nonprostitutes—19 for the average (median) offender vs. adults, 16 for the offender vs. minors, 14 for the aggressor vs. adults. The average prison-group male, who while intermediate in an “ever-never” rank-order rated high in the tabulation of accumulative incidence of premarital coitus, had 18—the second largest number of coital companions. In other words, the groups with a relatively large proportion of individuals experienced in premarital coitus tend also to be the groups whose members had coitus with relatively large numbers of females.

The incest offenders vs. adults and the homosexual offenders vs. adults, the two most heterosexually restrained groups, had the fewest companions—five. The incest offenders vs. minors also had five, a rather unexpected finding since they had the largest proportion (97 per cent) of individuals who were experienced in premarital coitus and also rated either intermediate or high in accumulative incidence. They are atypical in having confined their substantial amount of activity to so few partners. The control group, a comparatively sexually restrained group, had an average of eight coital partners, placing them in the lower third of the order.

Premarital coitus with prostitutes presents a quite different picture, and a somewhat confused one. The incest offenders vs. children and the aggressors vs. children rank first with an average (median) of 18 prostitutes. The exhibitionists are second with 17, and we shall subsequently see that an unusually large number of them not only had experience with prostitutes but had their first coitus with a prostitute. The incest offenders vs. adults and the homosexual offenders vs. children had had coitus with between 16 and 17 prostitutes. This concentration of offenders against children is striking. Moreover, these same groups had premarital coitus with more prostitutes than companions: in the case of the incest offenders vs. adults the ratio is somewhat more than 3 to 1; among the other groups the ratio is less one-sided, but still markedly in favor of prostitution. A reliance upon prostitutes suggests an inability or disinclination to find companions, or an inability to maintain lasting sexual relationships, an inability that in later life may have contributed to the selection of children rather than adults as sexual partners. Conversely, the groups characterized by much heterosexual activity (such as the heterosexual offenders vs. minors and adults and the prison group) had substantially more companions than prostitutes in premarital life and, in subsequent years, devoted their sexual attentions to females over the age of puberty.

*299\161\2*

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