About Health & Medicine

When I left my department-manager job and took over the whole store, everything changed. I felt different. Happy and sad at the same time. I was proud and excited, but sad that there was no going back. I would never be quite like I was before. I know that adjustment affected our sex. I was sort of afraid to have sex for some reason after the promotion. I don’t know if it was superstition or not, but it was like I was insecure, didn’t want to rock the boat, jinx myself. I got so busy trying to prove to everybody that I deserved the promotion that I never thought about deserving my wife or what she deserved.

HUSBAND

As I indicated earlier, mid-life crises are life crises that are finally getting our attention. There are as many books on transitions in life as there are transitions. Attention to sexual intimacy at times of change, no matter what “stage” we feel we are leaving or entering, preserves and enhances our intimate relationship and helps us through any transition.

I have listed some of the most recent sources of research on transitional life changes and adult development in the notes for this chapter. One of the most carefully researched approaches to adult development is by Dr. Gerald Levinson. He mixes sound research with interesting insights about the fact that development is not just something children do.

I noticed that at every major professional meeting on sexuality, professionals talk about overall life development more than about genitals. They do so because sex and development are one and the same. I have designed my own informal “adult sexual development cycle” that was used by the couples to discuss their own feelings about their sexual “place” at various times in their own lives. These are not steps or stages. Each phase is more like an overlapping spiral within which we move back and forth. Adults, like children, never “enter” a stage. They encounter life challenges and cope using their available resources at that time. So, as you look at each adult sexual cycle derived from my interviews, view them as reciprocal and interwoven, as stimuli for more learning, not places or stages.

SEXUAL PASSAGES: CYCLES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTIMACY

Early Childhood

Integration of physical and emotional sexual sensations, combining touch with feelings

School Age

Overcoming sanctions against sexual self-worth and enhancing sexual self-esteem

Preadolescence

Developing sensitivity to*and for other gender and accepting sensitivity to same gender

Adolescence

Integrating love needs with sex needs

Young Adulthood

Expressing vulnerability and transcending needs to withhold

Adulthood

Learning value of stability and coping with pressures for variety

Mature Adulthood

Enjoying inclusivity, sharing in balance with autonomy and individuality

Aging Adulthood

Remaining creative in balance with accepting and tolerace

The sexual histories and the multiple therapy visits of the couples, as well as the thousands of other interviews of persons coming for sexual help, revealed a pattern of recurring sexual cycles that related to the development of each spouse’s love map. Here are the eight cycles briefly outlined. The future of therapy for sexual problems rests in this family and developmental approach more than the discovery of new techniques, postures, and genital reflex controls.

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For example, some surgeons recommend very major surgery for locally extensive cancer of the cervix (neck of the womb). This operation is sometimes recommended for cancer of the cervix that has grown into nearby pelvic organs: removal of the entire womb, upper vagina, fallopian tubes, both ovaries, all pelvic lymph nodes, the bladder and the lower bowel. The woman is left with bags on openings in the abdominal wall for both urine and faeces. People who agree to such surgery only because it gives them a chance of being cured altogether, should be checked very, very carefully for blood-borne secondary deposits beforehand. The check on the lungs I described above would not be sufficient if surgery like this was planned. Because the lungs are a common site for secondary cancer of the cervix they should be checked with a CT scan before such a drastic operation.

On the other hand, some of the less drastic operations aimed at cure also have a secondary aim. Surgical removal can be the best way of preventing or relieving symptoms from the primary growth. Thus, even people who are not cured may stand to gain something important from these operations—prevention or relief of unpleasant symptoms. Find out whether this is true for the operation that has been recommended for you. If you are sure that the operation is worth having even if if doesn’t cure you, it doesn’t matter so much if small secondary deposits are not found before the operation. Finding them after the operation like this would certainly be disappointing, but just think how much worse it would be for a patient who had had the operation for cervix cancer described above—it would be a complete tragedy.

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