But don't expect your partner to applaud when you tell the truth about yourself. Learn to lick your own wounds—it's not your partner's job to soothe you, it's yours. Try to tell the truth for the right reason. Being honest doesn't mean being vindictive. "The idea is that you are telling each other the truth, even when it is difficult, out of caring and commitment, not because you're pissed off and want to carve each other up," he says. The irony, says Schnarch, is that rather than increasing conflict between couples—as you would think might happen—emotional honesty has the opposite effect. The issue is no longer about what your partner does or doesn't do: You can accept that they, like all people, have their own limitations and failings. Instead, the focus shifts to you, and whether you're being a grown-up—or not.
The Joys of Adulthood
Schnarch is still something of a maverick in the field of sex therapy. Talk to 10 sex therapists (I did), and you'll get 10 strong opinions. Some think he's done the sex and marital therapy version of cracking the code of DNA. Others find his ideas interesting, but don't believe that they apply to all couples. Many say they incorporate a little of what he preaches into their practice—like a spice in a tomato sauce." The Atlanta-based marital therapist Frank Pittman, author of a self-help book called Grow Up: How Taking Responsibility Can Make You a Happy Adult, is one whose approach resembles Schnarch's. "What he's doing is teaching people the joys of adulthood," he says, "of the wonderful things that can happen in a relationship when you take responsibility for yourself, whether you've got your pants on at the moment or not."
The reward for all of this hard work, say Schnarch, Pittman and others, is a kind of intimacy that helps you be more of the person you want to be and supports an intense lifelong bond. In return you are seen, known and understood—truly—for who you are. And loved and desired, to boot. It's a rare thing, perhaps the most powerful connection we can hope for.
With this outing of yourself, so to speak, goes a greater freedom in bed. You're no longer pretending. Schnarch considers the ability, for example, to look into your partner's eyes while engaged in a sexual act or in the midst of orgasm to be the height of intimacy. It's an act of mutual self-revelation that cannot be matched almost anywhere else in life. "Once people try it, they totally get what real intimacy is about," he says.
Eye-to-eye sex is not for the faint of heart. Even Schnarch's wife, psychologist Ruth Morehouse, who now works with him as a marital and sex therapist and uses his techniques, confesses to having had her doubts. At the time that her husband was developing his ideas in the 1980s, she says, she wasn't crazy about them. She describes herself at that time as fairly reliant on others to give her great feedback about herself, personally and professionally. She wasn't too keen to grow up, in the way her husband advocated. And the eyes-open thing, well. "At first, I was mad at him for even suggesting that this is something that people were supposed to do," says Morehouse. "It was a stretch for me. At first, I literally couldn't keep my eyes open. After a couple of times, I was able to do it, and it made sex more emotional and meaningful. It's now a routine part of my sex life."
Does this mean that all sexual issues can be solved this way? Probably not. Growing up won't do a lot for a faulty blood vessel that's contributing to an erection problem. Or for the couple who are genuinely exhausted from chasing small children around all day. But it maps out some promising new territory, where personal growth and existential concerns become as much a part of sexual therapy as do anxiety and pathology. Schnarch is creating a new way of thinking built on growth and possibilities. Making relationships, and sex, better. How could anyone not be fascinated by the potential?
As for me, I suspect I still have a lot of growing up to do. (Arguing about reality? Guilty.) And I haven't dared bring up the idea of eyes-open sex with my husband yet, for fear he'll take me up on it. I have a feeling I'd have to keep my eyes open with pliers. But I am intrigued. And now, as I stand on subway platforms or street corners, watching couples who really ought to get a room groping one another without shame, I don't feel as if I've been banished to the land of slippers and ratty bathrobes. Because according to Schnarch's model, in which sex only gets better as you get older and wiser, I'm ahead of the game. Or at least those couples. And that makes me feel smug all over again.
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