Romantic & Sexual Intimacy

Sometimes people don't think of themselves as having difficulties that warrant professional attention...until they've experienced a series of disappointing, tumultuous, or frustrating relationships. 

You may notice that you tend to gravitate towards people who don't treat you the way you wish, or who are ultimately unavailable to provide the kind of commitment you'd like. 

Of course, such experiences can happen to most of us occasionally. However, if you detect a pattern of unhappy endings and don't understand why your relationships are mostly unfulfilling, even while you're in them, psychotherapy can help demystify your bad romances (apologies to Lady Gaga).

A wise professor once told me that much of what people struggle with boils down to figuring out how close or how distant from others they'd like to be. 

Of course, this is a major oversimplification, but it is true that even in long-term relationships, partners may have vastly different perspectives on commitment, sexual proclivities, sexual frequency, communication styles, areas of privacy, arguments, and relationships with family members. 

When couples get stuck in negotiating these basic elements of relationships, individual and/or couples therapy may be fruitful.  

Here are just a few of the problems with intimacy with which I've helped my patients:

- self-defeating behavior in relationships

- compulsive selection of inappropriate partners 

- sexual performance anxiety 

- inability to effectively convey desires and needs 

- third-party intrusions upon relationships (infidelity, in-laws' or parents' objections, among other issues)

- conflicting value systems

- sexual preferences that appear incompatible

- difficult choices regarding family-planning and child-rearing