Do you talk about sex with your therapist?

Yes, I talk about sex with my T. She brought it up early in therapy, asked me some questions. I was a little uncomfortable but she is so easy to talk to that it was okay.

We're both female and my T always tells me that no subject is TMI so that reassures me a lot. I've talked about sexual feelings for her and about my wants and desires. I'm not saying it's easy because I still can't even say anatomy words, or if I do, I blush. Still, I've managed to talk about it, and about my relationship with my H.

I can't imagine talking about sex with a male T, though. I think that's why I have always seen female Ts. I think if your T makes you feel safe, you can talk about anything. I imagine if I had a male T who made me feel that way, I would go ahead and blush, but tell him what I needed to.

Thanks. That presumably reflects the "butch top" lifestyle, but there was also reference to a "femme top". I do know what butch and femme mean, and the blogger looks butch for sure.

One of the captions said, "play with a top and you get bruised." So tops play rough but don't necessarily look rough. Am I close?

Actually, this wandering from the point.

Snuffleupagus, I think you are being a bit hard on your T.
Your T might be very supportive of lesbians yet still not know the whole vocabulary. Also, maybe she just wanted to know what "top" meant to you.

My T didn't know what a butt plug was. (And goodness knows, it's not hard to guess!)

And so (finally! at last!) my point is, that maybe it is our job to educate our Ts.

Eh. Still not interested, and that was exT.

Does anyone talk to their T. not just about their past experiences or problems with current relationships or lack there of....but about fantasies or desires? I'm concerned about some of mine and how they might relate to past or "acting out" past abuse? I have talked to T1 about PTSD triggers during sex and that was really really hard... I can't imagine talking about these fantasies and desires... I go to a Christian Psychologist (by choice) and it feels wrong and sick to have these desires in the first place...

Yes, I have talked about my sexual fantasies, some of them were about her, and some of them weren't, but they were quite... unusual . So it wasn't easy to talk about it, but she was AWESOME.

i can't imagine even trying to enter the arena of sex with my T, but she asked me once if i had any fantasies, so apparently she is ok with it

Did she ask out of the blue? O_O Or was that a question she asked that was related to something else earlier on in the conversation?

My T and I were talking about sex from the first session. It's an area I used to be miserably ashamed of - like years ago, when I was in my twenties - but at some point it stopped being a deal. Not sure why. Since my breakthrough (or whatever it was), the therapists I've had have tended to be far more squeamish about sex than I am.

Except for my current T. (He won't be current much longer, I'm terminating him today, sigh) Anyway, this is one area - to his credit, I think - where we haven't had a problem, at least in terms of just bringing up the topic.

What's weird is that he seems a bit obsessed with it, keeps returning to it even when I'm trying to focus on something else in regard to my relationship with my DH. For instance, a couple of different times now, T has wanted to know: "What are you thinking about when you're doing it?" Or, "What's it like for you when you're in the midst of it?" And, "How many times do you have it?"

The word prurient popped into my head during our last session. He's just WAY too into this stuff. It's sort of amusing though. T's are people after all. They get off on stuff vicariously just like the rest of us - though they shouldn't be using our sessions for that. And in his defense, he'd say that this is a problem area for me (it is) and we can't figure it out unless we barrel straight on through it.

I think this guy is just taking it a bit too far though. There are boundaries after all. (Another of my T's fave buzzwords.) I mean you can talk about sexual issues without having to paint a gawddamn picture every time. How much detail do you need? Sheesh!

Psychcentral QUOTE OF THE YEAR: My T didn't know what a butt plug was!

Thank you SO MUCH for the laugh CantExplain, I needed it today!

Oh - and you were discussing these items - why again?? (Just teasing you, LOL)

I second the emotion!

This is such a great question, Readytostop. One of my issues is that my fantasy life is very different from my sex life. I don't think it's that uncommon - when you look at or read porn, you see certain tropes and stereotypical scenarios and characters that emerge time and again, things that almost never happen in real life. They form a sort of entrenched alternate reality, a parallel universe in our culture, with by-now familiar elements and endless variations on those elements, that SO many people find intriguing.

I tried to bring this up recently with a couple of different therapists. I have incest fantasies which I'm ashamed of, because I'm not aware in "real" life of wanting to do the things that somehow work for me in my fantasy world (which is also a sort of nightmare world, at least when I look at it objectively). I wasn't sexually abused in a physical sense as a child, but I was treated inappropriately sexually from a young age. Something about my fantasy world is telling me, I think, that I have a need to re-enact scenarios based on the way I felt as a result of my father's behavior toward me long ago.

Neither therapist I tried to approach these things with recently wanted to get anywhere near them. So odd to me, because you'd think that sex and fantasy and abuse and all of this stuff would be their bread and butter. Yet another WTF head-scratcher.

I've written about CSA and given it to my T, but that's the extent of talking about sex with her. I can't bring it up and she hasn't asked. I have a real problem with it. Wish I could bring it up somehow. Not sure how she would feel about it. I'd want her to handle it well, so that I would be okay about it. Oh, she did ask me if I thought I was gay.

When I started developing, I was pretty much horrified and wanted my breasts removed. I put an ace bandage over them. I asked my mother several times if I could have them removed - called them "the appendages." To this day, I hate them. Not sure if that's a sexual thing or not. It just didn't go with my anorexic look that I wanted.

So many things I wish I could talk about....

Wow, Wanting, this is so interesting to me -

I had some similar things, with variations. It was weird, I wanted breasts, was ashamed because I thought mine were too small (at age 11. I now think I was feeling pressure to develop and not develop at the same time - my father was sexually interested, my mother was jealous of me)

But I HATED my period when it arrived. (Mother didn't help much, she actually yelled at me about it.) I thought I could do a power-of-positive-thinking thing (I'd been reading Norman Vincent Peale) and just will my periods to stop, by concentrating on it mentally. It actually worked for a while. They didn't stop altogether, but I could go for three months without getting one. And they were irregular for years after...

Developing sexually was something I couldn't help, of course, but both parents treated it as some sort of betrayal. They were just furious about it, and I did what I could do deny the evidence. It never worked, and just filled me with shame and self-hatred. Still dealing with body shame today because of it.

Anyway, it might be interesting to work through why you felt that way about your body. This is something a therapist should be able to explore with you...giving you some virtual courage to try to bring it up!

((((((((WantingtoHeal=courage))))))))))

Kitten, it saddens me to read about your experiences of bringing up your fantasies in therapy and how no one wanted to touch the subject - reenacting the same thing your parents did to you .
I strongly suggest that you do your research and find someone who works from a psychoanalytic perspective. Hopefully, you will find someone who is open minded and devoted enough to deal with whatever material you may bring into the relationship.

Hi vaffla, thank you so much for your sweet words today. Your compassion is so great, I feel so much better. Been feeling kind of sad that I keep striking out with therapists. I've had intake sessions with four who didn't work out, and I've seen two others for shorter and longer periods. Nothing is working...

Yeah, gotta start pounding the pavement again I guess! (argh) Thanks again for your encouragement!

Hi Kitten

I'm sorry that you felt shame about your body too. Parents can certainly do a number on us, can't they?

I don't really remember how I felt when my period came. I remember feeling physically sick and dissociated - very distant, dizzy. I was at an honor band practice. I believe I told my mother and asked her not to tell my father. Later that night, my father made some revealing embarrassing comment to me about my becoming a woman that infuriated me. I hated my mother for telling him. It was all awful. I already had an eating disorder before I started, so mine were never regular for years.

My father was always looking at me sexually, so I think I didn't want a body at all. He was always making comments that I didn't like.

I've not brought this up in therapy, don't think. Thanks for the courage

WTH

Band practice, oh no

Wanting, your quote here could be at the heart of women's struggles with body image. I think this is a widespread problem. Why is the influence of fathers so rarely mentioned?

I think this is the crux of it. Our fathers and their reactions are SO important to us at this age. It is so critical not to get sexual messages or mixed messages, it's the last thing you need. You need to know that your father loves you - not desires you. If you sense the latter, it totally messes with your expectations around relationships. In my case, it made me completely cynical about boys and men. I assumed they were only interested in me for sexual reasons, and I just didn't take them seriously. I didn't believe sexual love was viable at all. I thought love was some gigantic cultural mindf**k being perpetrated on the public by advertisers and the entertainment industry. And I hated my body for attracting the kind of attention that was utterly useless to me. I felt nothing but contempt for men for years. (That's changed now, thank gawd)

The thing is, I never minded my dad thinking I was beautiful, in fact I craved that - and felt on top of the world when he said something like that.

But the other stuff - comments on my boobs at the dinner table - nope, nobody needs that crap, least of all a girl who worships her dad, wants to feel like a princess forever!

Hugs to you today, Wanting!

I dont bring it up but my T does. She talks about ANYTHING. I find it nearly impossible to discuss even tho i know i have no reason to get embarassed about anything in front of my T, she never judges.

In those days I wasn't comfortable with the fact that I liked it.
There I was, sharing my innermost secret shame, and she didn't know what I was talking about!
I took it in to show her.

..."about sex" ... "with your therapist"? or "about"... "sex with your therapist"?

either way, No.

ECHOES ( LOL ) ....u made a funny..... With my ex t, I did have conversations about sex....( and also about sex with him ) .....With my current T NEVER!!!!

OMG! So great, good on you!

Eats shoots and leaves!

Aww man.... I feel self-conscious about my writing now... gahhh! XD Very funny. Still haven't mustered up the courage to talk about it.... maybe the problem will go away in time... then I don't have to go through the awkward burden of asking!