Savage Love Episode 261

1. Dan!!

   Why happened to your standard advice to women who want to back out of lying for years about having orgasms with their partners.

   you used to tell them to white-lie “I don’t know what happened, but I’m not coming anymore, let’s try something new”

   It good advice.

2. Your advice about finding a therapist who won’t over-pathologize you is right on the money and it’s actually something that generalizes to issues other than sexual abuse. There are therapists that will not only open the wound again, but then pick at it and cause it to become inflamed and irritated. Instead of moving you forward, they keep asking you to stay in the past or to continue spinning wheels. Some therapists make things worse instead of better, because they have their own agenda and are not client-focused.

   I worked in the mental health field for awhile in a residential facility, so I do have some professional experience in this area. There’s a technique in therapy called “challenging” someone, which basically means to respectfully ask your client to confront a distortion in their thinking, but it’s supposed to be used gently and sparingly. If your therapist is disrespectful, combative and constantly “challenging” your version of events, then find a therapist who gives a shit and will actually listen to your side of things. You don’t want a therapist who doesn’t really listen to you or blows things out of scale.

3. Hi Dan,

   I loved your advice for the women who had been molested as a child by another older child! I work in the therapy services field and find that some therapists pride themselves on being able to find the “real problem” and don’t listen to what the client is telling them the problem is.

   If she decides to go that route, this woman should definitely find a therapist who understands exactly where she’s coming from and is just looking to be protactive in a scenario that is potentially emotionally harmful. But I agree that this woman sounds like she is doing well in spite of her childhood trauma.

   I also love your point about the perpetrator also being a child – he may not have known that what he was doing at the time was wrong. If this woman confronts this person, it could give them both an opportunity to move on and away from their unfortunate history.

   Mary

4. I just had some advice for the girl who has been masturbating since she was a toddler. I was the same way, and I’m not sure what she does, but I need to hump something (used to be stuffed animals). I was always way too embarrassed to do this in front of sexual partners and had never had an orgasm with a partner until this year. I started showing my man what gets me off, and then when we weren’t together, practising getting myself off with a dildo about his size inserted while I did what I liked. Now we can incorporate what I need with penetrative sex and I have really intense orgasms, and he feels ‘included’. So, I think for some women, maybe using a sex toy as a step might be helpful in linking the pleasure they can give themselves with the feeling of being penetrated.

5. Thanks for your response to the “queer” guy. I’m a bi girl and I’ve always been frustrated with the lecturing on “let’s just be free of labels! they’re for clothes not people!” stuff you see on some LGBT sites. Honestly, part of the beauty of labels is that they are limiting. Your sexual orientation is not supposed to describe your entire personality or even your entire sexual history, it’s about whether you like dudes or ladies or both or neither. That’s it! Why does it have to be complicated? The whole point of these labels is to give people a shorthand to understand whether they are a dating option or not. They don’t need to hear that, say, a woman who currently identified as lesbian is “fluid” because she used to be bisexual/straight. They just need to know “Do you like women/men now?”
   We’re all a collection of labels. I’m bi but I’m also introverted, white, a Democrat, a musician… none of these individual labels describes my entire personality and I don’t expect them to do so. But what they do sum about me is useful.
   Another thing I wish you had acknowledged is that there are a lot of bi people who choose to identify as “queer” (or “pansexual,” though there are legit reasons behind that label) just because they’re sick of the stereotypes associated with bisexuality, and it’s easier to choose something obscure that they can explain to people rather than have to debunk existing misconceptions. Those people can come up with all the lofty explanations they want, but ultimately, way too many people are choosing labels other than “bi” purely out of cowardice.

6. Thanks for saying what you did about therapists, Dan. Some people get a lot out of therapy, so it can be a great thing, but man are there some terrible therapists out there.
   When I was a young teen I went to see one. I was having the normal anxiety issues (I realize in hindsight)of being a sensitive girl trying to figure out my identity in a shitty small town, but this therapist kept insisting my problem had to be sexual. She kept asking if I had been abused, or if I was a closeted lesbian, and she grilled me on whether or not I masturbated (I didn’t at the time, but she didn’t believe me). I only saw her for a couple of sessions, but the whole experience was so terrible I still get angry about it 10+ years later.
   I wish there was a better way to screen therapists before you see them – they can do a lot of harm, and I always get sad when I think of someone who needs help ending up in the hands of one of the bad ones.

7. Yeah, a bad counselor can turn someone against the entire psychiatric profession. Look at how all the therapists in the show Skins are either incompetent or harmful, simply because writer and co-creator Jamie Brittain had some bad experiences with psychiatry and therapy in his youth. And through having characters be better off self-medicating with drugs than with seeing therapists, he’s passing on a horrible message to the show’s audience of mostly teens and twenty-somethings.

   I saw counselors a lot in my youth due to custody issues and other family problems, and in my case, there was a lot of psychological abuse coming from my bio dad and stepmom (some physical abuse in her case, too) and so I really needed the therapy. I had some terrific counselors, but I had some really horrible ones, too. A lot of ones who, like you describe, had an agenda – I’m pretty sure that when my bio dad got a choice in who I saw, he was screening particularly for those who would be sympathetic to his story about 9-year-old me being a shrewd, calculating devil looking to ruin his life for attention, or for religious shrinks who’d want to believe the more religiously-conservative parent (him) would automatically be the better one. But the terrific ones were good enough for me to realize it’s not the profession that’s the problem with those bad apples, it’s just that they’re biased assholes – and people who, by the standards of the profession, probably shouldn’t be in the business of counseling.

8. Re Psalm 100:

   a.) Isn’t an anti-gay a capella group a bit like a white supremacist rap group? That is to say, how can one be anti-gay when doing something that’s so…gay?

   b.) Why would a gay person want anything to do with religionists? As the guest said, not all are anti-gay, but it seems that if you’re both religious and gay you would eventually come to realize that only one of those identities is optional. And since homosexuality is so often demonized by religionists–even in the literature of those who choose not to demonize it–I would think you’re either one or the other, not so much a spectrum thing as a toggle.

9. “What are you in to” is 5 words…

10. Oh god… wait… I’m an idiot.

11. @8: What you’re essentially saying is that all religions are exactly the same and because some of them are anti-gay, that should mean that no gays have anything to do with them. That’s like saying because so many straight people are bigots, no queer person should have anything to do with straight people. Those of us who believe in God don’t just stop believing because some assholes want to use his name to justify their own homophobia. I think many atheists have difficulty understanding religious liberals because the only part of religion that they regularly wrap their mind around is the institutional part of it- the part where people go to church on Sundays and have church groups and take up collections. Religion is not all the practice- in fact, most of us think that religion is about belief, and since atheists lack belief, many of them often don’t even try to understand what it’s like to have it.

12. Dan,

    Give us another “one-minute” podcast episode! Some of the questions you are airing are becoming painfully long again (e.g.- girl worried about her friend being labeled a slut on this episode).

    Thank you.

13. @11: No, I’m not saying all religions are the same, but I will say all forms of Christianity regard The Bible as their authority and mandate. And when it is explicitly addressing homosexuality it’s quite clear in its opposition to it. Some Christians may say the general message of Jesus trumps the Old Testament, but we can only guess since he never addresses homosexuality.

    If religious literature is regarded as secondary to one’s personal relationship with God and the number of religions is exactly the same as the number of people who believe in God, then religious belief is arbitrary. In that case, barring any outside authority (i.e. The Bible) to lean on, we are all–liberals and bigots alike–correct in our belief.

    Regarding atheist belief: What many religionists don’t seem to realize is that most atheists haven’t always been atheists. Many of us were theists of one kind or another at some point. Personally, I was a full-Bible Christian, then a Gospels-only Christian, then a deist and eventually came to see a belief in the supernatural as superfluous.

    Sorry to all. I don’t wish to turn this board into yet another battleground for religion–there are enough of those already–but I think in the case of the Psalm 100 kid it’s a valid consideration.

14. This week’s podcast really touched me. Dan, you had solid advice to the woman who was abused as a child. It’s really up to her to decide if she needs to find counseling, and should she decide to seek it, she can freely walk away from therapists/counselors who insist on trying to find something where there is nothing. Some people are just capable of dealing with events like that; it is part of our history, part of our journey in life, but it does not dictate who we are or how we must…be. It is a piece of our life, it does not take over our life. But it’s not the same for everyone, and it’s important to understand that.

    I was lucky; after I was assaulted at 17 by a stranger, I went into counseling to deal with the assault and PTSD, and my counselor was incredibly helpful and supportive in helping me. She helped me through the court process, and gave me a solid foundation for understanding myself. Today, I am a happy, healthy, functioning adult, and have been so for nearly 15 years now.

    Good luck to the caller; she seems to be quite together and self-aware.

15. More advice/ ideas for the woman who’s been coming the same way all her life: I too learned to orgasm as a little child, by humping stuffed animals, the edge of the bed, pillows, whatever. But I needed that posture and clit stimulation to get off. I was in a hetero relationship for 10 years, and I faked it for a long time. I came once or twice while having penetrative sex, by being on top and leaning way forward to grind my clit on his pelvic bone, but it was only a few times.
    Eventually, our relationship opened up and I fucked a lady–and surprise! Ladies like to grind clits. I then went back to my boyfriend, newly confident that I wasn’t a freak, and rubbed one out (literally) on his hipbone, laying on top of him.
    He liked it, to say the least. My shame and embarrassment had kept me from sharing orgasm with him for almost a decade…he didn’t care what my coming looked like, he cared that finally I was really coming and that was the hottest thing ever for him.
    I still masturbate the same way, but am slowly learning new ways to have fun and hopefully come in different postures. Good luck to you!

16. Love your podcast. However, I was a little upset about your discussion of the findings from the study examining pornography and rates of rape and sexual assault (from the Scientific American, July Issue). You stated the scientist’s findings that an increase in pornography use (or the presence of internet access in the second study) was seen to occur at the same time that rates of rape dropped. The way that you read the article made it seem as if you were implying there was a “cause and effect” relationship between pornography consumption and the decrease in rates of rape. You conveniently stopped reading directly from the article right before the sentence that said “It is important to note that these associations are just that—associations. They do not prove that pornography is the cause of the observed crime reductions.” There could be many other confounding factors that are influencing both the access to pornography and drop in rapes and sexual assault.

    Considering that the general public in the US, sadly, has a relatively low-level of scientific literary, and thus may not understand the difference between causation and correlation, I would have liked for you to have at least acknowledged the fact that there is still some uncertainty surrounding the issue. Maybe this is just a science pet peeve of mine – but usually you seem to examine topics skeptically and critically; hence my disappointment.

    Otherwise, the podcast this week was great and I thoroughly enjoyed listening.

17. @16: The authors of the paper stated the porn/rape relationship wasn’t causal because it’s virtually impossible to make such a connection authoritatively, even if it’s clear there is a cause/effect relationship. The best anyone can do is nod and say, “Hmmm, interesting.”

    I understand what you’re saying–and you’re absolutely correct– but a personal pet peeve of mine is when good data/information is watered down with disclaimers that cover what is (to me anyway) obvious.

18. Hey Dan, I did like your advice to the woman who had been abused. I experienced minor abuse as a kid and ended up OK without therapy, telling my parents, etc… and some therapists are damaging and shitty, and so on… I will just say that a natural reaction to sex abuse is to minimize it, hide it out of shame, make excuses for the abuser (they were young, or drunk, or mentally ill, or whatever, I forgive them, it’s not their fault). I know that for many years I put on a facade of “Look at me, I am so strong and resilient, I am A-OK!” which WAS partly true, but partly just that- a facade. It took me a while to sort out the extent to which I had genuinely gotten over it, and the extent to which I was simply whitewashing it in my memory because I didn’t want to view myself, or have others view me, as damaged or weak or whiny. Even though I was a little scarred, and this woman sounds a little scarred, too. I’d recommend that she talk to someone– someone good, not a pathologizer– just to sort out some of her conflicted feelings, because she obviously still is conflicted about it.

    btw, I read a really interesting 2005 article the other day talking about childhood sex abuse, and comparing it to a car accident, and how the damage depends on where you sit. Some people walk away fine, but I think it’s important to remember that it really can completely shatter and destroy people’s lives, and I don’t believe that anyone emerges completely unscathed.

    http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/1…

19. Hi Dan!

    I just wanted to let the masturbating toddler caller know that she is not alone. I discovered masturbation very early on also. I knew at an early age that it was best to keep my little secret to myself. Not sure if parents knew this but I would go to my bed and put the covers on and play. I am a healthy gay woman today but unlike your caller, I can orgasm in many many ways and have a healthy sex life with my partner. I think this is more common than many women and men want to admit. Everyone discovers their own sexuality at their own pace.

20. I was all ready to comment on your advice to the woman considering seeing a therapist. I see now that half of the comments have been about this woman. Good therapists are out there. I too wish there was a good way to sort the good from the less-than goods. Many therapists will give you time over the phone to lay out what you are looking for and if that’s something they can help with. Sometimes a good therapist knows enough to stay out of the way of a client’s healing and not interject themselves too much in the process just as a show of professional pride/arrogance.

21. RE Will Thomason and UNC Chapel Hill – Hey Psalm 100 go watch “Fish Out Of Water” already. Its on Netflix, watch it, seriously!

22. I listened to this podcast on the way Into work this morning and nearly drove off the road on hearing the first caller. I was shouting, “that’s me!”

    I’d been humping anything I could get my legs around since a very young age (I’m now 46) and I can’t say I’ve ever had a decent orgasm during sex. Non-penetrative methods don’t work either no matter how much my partner wants them to. In fact as soon as a man tries really hard to get me to cum, I lose interest, mainly because I know it ain’t gonna happen. Anyway, a couple of years ago I invested in a decent vibrator – mostly because all my friends seemed to be getting one – and wow, just wow! I haven’t humped anything inanimate since. Now I just need to find the courage to get a partner to use the thing on me and I’ll be laughing or screaming or both!

    So I’d also recommend your caller get herself some sextoys and experiment with them then try and replicate what works during sex.

23. Ummm… All toddlers masturbate. Humans masturbate in utero. Yes, they have video of that. Little boys are ridiculous with it, but the girls know how too. What did you think naptime in kindergarten was for? Girls tend to get stopped at a very young age, and more harshly than boys, by more people. They stop in public and sometimes in private (then have trouble orgasming later on? Just a thought….). They don’t talk about it. They often rediscover it at puberty. Be glad you never stopped. You are fine. If you need to grind, or use something like a pillow, or you don’t even want him to help (let the boy watch! He’ll love it), just do it. Why not? Guys don’t care, I promise. And take the first poster’s advice. Blame it on changing hormones or something. If you’ve got a special way, then it’s clearly not his fault he can’t get you off, he’s not being selfish, so no need to correct his sexual education= ok to white lie.

24. Orgasms anyone??? Discount Sex Shop

25. Um, what if that guy who allegedly preyed on the young gal remembers things a LOT differently, and honestly believes his version is more accurate?

    To wit:

    Her: I forgive you for molesting me in that closet.

    Him: Huh?

    Her: You know, that one time.

    Him: (realization washes across his face) Are you kidding me? I was watching the Detroit Lions play and eating turkey with Cousin joey, and you practically drag me into that smelly closet with the mothballs, to pull down my pants. I still hate the smell of mothballs to this day, you freak.

    her: uhhhhh…..

    Him: yeah, you heard me. Took me years to get over my shame and guilt, until I realized you had issues as a kid. Still do as an adult it seems, since you cannot cop to what you did. (stalks away)

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