Dear Justice,

I recently found a local counsellor I like, but when I revealed that I enjoy BDSM and kinky sex (impact play, objectification, dominance and submission etc) she became visibly distressed. Her jaw literally dropped. She told me that what I do is unhealthy and that I should deal with my issues and trauma in other ways. I thought she was going to be a good counsellor for me, but her reaction made me really uncomfortable. What do you suggest? Any insight would be appreciated.

Sincerely,
Kinky and frustrated

Dear Kinky and frustrated,

Although the situation has improved since BDSM was removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 2013, some counsellors and therapists remain ideologically opposed to BDSM and kink.

Counselling and therapy includes dozens of different modalities and approaches, each with their own theoretical and philosophical foundations. Sometimes these various modalities are contradictory to one another. One therapist might well support your kinky lifestyle, another will not. This can reflect the type of therapy or counselling they do, but it’s more likely based on their own personal biases and prejudices. The arena of human sexuality is especially fraught with shadow and difficulty, and counsellors are not immune. Our cultural puritanism runs deep, and often leaks into the counselling office, where concepts of normalcy get pitted against concepts of deviancy.

I’m curious – Are you indeed dealing with your “issues and trauma” through kink and BDSM? Or is this your counsellor’s assumption? Are your kinky proclivities troubling to you? Or are they just troubling to her? These are useful distinctions.

If you otherwise like this counsellor you could ask her about her possible prejudice and see if a way forward together is possible. If sex figures heavily in your counselling work, and if you want someone who can accept your enjoyment of BDSM and kink, you might have to cut your losses and look for a counsellor who is kink-friendly and BDSM-aware. Some counsellors and therapists will openly advertise this, or you can ask explicitly in your initial consultation.

My approach is to treat kink and BDSM as a rich and fascinating area of sexuality. Certainly there is important psychological material there, but it should be met on its own terms in a spirit of curiosity, not with reflexive disdain, criticism, or moralizing.

Kink and BDSM can be seen as a space for playing out particular sexual or erotic psychodramas. These psychodramas are not necessarily damaging, and can be the rare places where certain dark myths get a voice. Consensual BDSM is not literal abuse, it is symbolic and metaphorical. Unfortunately, not all counsellors and therapists understand this.

Beyond the psychological implications, kink and BDSM can also simply “feel good” for some people. There are plenty of physiological and biochemical explanations for this, ie – the dopamine release that comes from a sense of accomplishment or the endorphine cascade produced by certain kinds of strong sensations.

Plenty of research is available to support the health and legitimacy of kink and BDSM practices. All your counsellor or anyone else has to do is search “BDSM research” online and they’ll see about a million results. If you’re feeling generous and want to do your counsellor’s work for them, you can always send them a link to this Introduction to BDSM for Psychotherapists.

Is it possible for BDSM and kink to be unhealthy? Of course. If you have concerns about your sexual inclinations, taking these concerns to a therapist or counsellor is an option, but it’s the counsellor’s job to examine these possibilities with you, not to project their own shadow or assert their judgements onto your sexuality.

Bottom line? It sounds like your counsellor’s reaction to your sexuality is professionally outdated and inappropriate. You can agree to disagree with her on this one point, you can try to educate her, or you can look for a kink-friendly counsellor who understands or at least won’t judge this aspect of you.

All My Best,
Justice

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Learn to use kinky sex and BDSM as an awareness practice for healing and growth (like you might use yoga, meditation, or martial arts).

~ Bring more awareness, creativity, and intention to your sex life.

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~ Make a place for consensual Dominance and submission alongside equality and respect

~ Confront the shame, doubt, or self-consciousness that thwarts or confuses you.

Trying to grow, fix, change, understand or save your marriage? I provide individual counselling, marriage counselling, coaching and mentoring to individuals and couples on the issues that make or break relationships. Serving clients worldwide by phone/skype. Email justice@justiceschanfarber.com to request a client info package. www.JusticeSchanfarber.com

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Valentine’s day takes as its icon the innocent, though mischievous smiling image of Cupid, plump and cute, shooting his heart-tipped arrows playfully, with love blossoming like a flower wherever the arrow lands. This image of Cupid is a far cry from the Cupid of Apuleius’s “Metamorphoses” (aka “The Golden Ass” – circa 158 AD).

In the old stories, the arrows of Eros (Eros being the pre-Romanized Cupid) are suspected to be poison. They pierce real flesh, and they hurt, inflicting the pain and torment of erotic love – not just the flush of delight – upon their target. The passionate love of Eros is understood to be a mixed blessing/curse; passion here including meanings of fury, overwhelming feeling, being acted on by external forces, and suffering. Does this not describe well the reality of erotic love?

The Cupid of Valentine’s day cards symbolizes our insistence upon maintaining an attitude of innocence toward erotic love. Erotic love, that unshakeable blessing/curse kind of love characterized by Eros, has proven too psychologically troublesome and so has been replaced by a watered down version: “romantic love,” with an angelic Cupid as its mascot.

If romantic love is bubbly and sweet, erotic love includes deception and ill intent. When one is shot with Cupid’s arrow, expect swooning. When one is shot with the arrows of Eros, expect to bleed. Watch your back. There will be suffering.

This is not to say that erotic love should be denied (as if we have a choice!), rather we should view it with appropriate humility, deep curiosity, and perhaps a healthy fear or apprehension. Cloud-bound romantic love has little to offer of the earthy depths, but erotic love is bound to psyche, to soul, and wants to take us down as much as up.

The classic tale of Eros is also the tale of Psyche; their destinies are entwined. Eros loves Psyche, and Psyche loves Eros, but their love is not exactly the “romantic” kind. Psyche is a young woman living under a curse who is whisked away to the God Eros. Their love affair begins in blindness, deception, and mistrust… and goes downhill from there. Numerous external forces exert their influence. Eros pricks himself with his own arrow and fixates on Psyche. It’s a hot mess.

Through the many trials and tribulations of their love, Eros and Psyche come to mean something extraordinary to each other. In our lives too, erotic love means something extraordinary for us psychologically, and psyche means something extraordinary for our erotic love. This is no simple equation, and no fleeting romance; the relationship between Psyche and Eros is long, profound, and rife with difficulty.

Erotic love (Eros) is attracted to psychological being (Psyche), infusing psyche with desire and beauty, but also difficulty. These difficulties are not problems to be solved as much as rites of passage to be suffered, observed, even celebrated. And psychological being too is attracted to erotic love, infusing it with greater depth, and also difficulty, and again these difficulties can be understood as necessary and ever-deepening initiations.

This is what we must remember: Erotic love hurts us, and it is necessary for psychological being. There is no point in the infantilization of erotic love (a la Valentine’s day sentimentality), other than to avoid the uncomfortable psychological deepening that erotic love demands.

Is this a pessimistic view of love? Not at all. Erotic love is a necessary and beautiful calling, but it also necessarily contains frictious elements and tragedy.

In the myth of Psyche and Eros the lovers persevere in the face of tremendous obstacles including family betrayals, attempted murders and botched suicides. The couple’s eventual triumphs are hard-won, but it isn’t their personal heroics that save them; on the contrary, they effort endlessly, as they must (as we must), but their best efforts often backfire; then when all appears to be lost, fortune smiles serendipitously upon them.

The potent relationship between Psyche and Eros is full of importance, but is difficult to understand, just as the relationship between psychological life and erotic life is important and difficult to understand. Our best option is not to attempt to explain away the impact of psyche on eros (or vice versa) from an objective distance, but rather to enter the fray personally, to experience the dark mystery itself, and to report on what we find. I wonder – What kind of Valentine’s Day cards might result?

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Calvin and Rosa had been working with me for six months. We were in the integration/completion phase of therapy, and were reflecting on significant themes and milestones. Rosa was reflecting upon a particular fight in which Calvin had said terrible, hurtful things to her. In this moment of our session she was noticing how she had been changed by that event. “I don’t think I’ll ever be the same,” she quietly mused.

I concurred, “I don’t think you will either.” I went on to explain, “We might enter a love relationship or marriage with innocence, believing that real love is always kind. When we discover otherwise, it changes us. We lose that innocence. We might then turn our back on the relationship, believing the love must be gone, or we might harden ourselves and turn our back on love altogether, believing it must be a lie, an illusion. Another possibility exists, one that I believe is more aligned with the deeper truth of the matter. We can expand ourselves, we can grow our capacity for holding the true complexity and inherent contradictions of romantic love. This changes us. We lose our innocence, but gain something deeper. And we’re never quite the same.”

Losing innocence in love

The experience that Calvin and Rosa had – losing their innocence in love, having their faith in love shaken, and beginning the journey of integrating their new, darker experiences of love – this is a rite of passage, a fiery initiation. It’s allowed to hurt. As we pass through the flames, our innocence is burned away and we emerge raw, shaken. Culturally, we tend not to recognize this critical milestone; certainly there’s little encouragement to honor or celebrate it. Instead we feel like a failure. As a therapist, I’ve come to realize that the appropriate response to someone who comes stumbling through this fire and into my office is not, “Oh, that’s a terrible thing that’s happened to you.” The appropriate response is, “You’ve come far on this journey. Welcome.”

Too many couples fight (themselves and each other) for too long trying to preserve their innocence. They stay stuck. Stuck is a word that comes up often in couples counselling. Each partner wants to preserve their own innocence, and to make the other understand, acknowledge, or validate them; in other words, to be understood as inherently good, doing their best, loving.

When love descends (it makes a thud)

Acknowledging our own cruelty, our own selfishness, our own weakness and fallibility marks our fall from innocence and begins the next part of our journey, where love descends from heaven and meets the earth with a thud. It’s a crucial step, but it hurts like hell, and hardly anyone talks about it or understands it, so it gets avoided.

We lie to ourselves. We tell ourselves, “My love is always kind.” This creates incongruence inside us. On some level we believe we have to be different from who we are in order to be in relationship, in order to love, to be lovable. Much disconnection results, from ourselves, from the world, from our partner.

Re-Connecting through initiation

Re-connection is not a matter of reclaiming our lost innocence or rekindling a love that once was (although it might include retrieving parts of ourselves that have been hidden away or rejected).

Re-connection asks us to recognize the initiation we are going through, and to keep going. The old relationship with our partner is finished, and that’s hard to accept. But when innocence is lost, something else is born. Birthing that something is our work. Like all births there is a natural momentum, a natural direction, a natural force of emergence that we can either align ourselves with or resist.

[This is an excerpt from my book The Re-Connection Handbook for Couples. To buy it or download a free chapter click here.]

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Like what you’re reading here?
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Read the first 10 pages free.

Trying to grow, fix, change, understand or save your marriage? I provide couples therapy, marriage counselling, coaching and mentoring to individuals and couples on the issues that make or break relationships – Sessions by telephone/skype worldwide. Email justice@justiceschanfarber.com to request a client info package. www.JusticeSchanfarber.com

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When: March 3, 1-4pm
Where: Flow Yoga – 58 Adams Rd. Campbell River
Cost: $69 + GST/person
To register: Email flowyogacr@gmail.com or call 250 204-3301

*** Register early to reserve your place. Space is limited. ***

Healing Misunderstanding in Relationships

The longing to feel understood runs deep in every marriage or relationship, and most of us know firsthand the frustration, pain, and conflict that feeling misunderstood can cause.

In this first instalment of the Relationship Skills Workshop Series, we’ll explore what it means to feel “understood.” We’ll learn tools for cultivating the kind of understanding that helps relationships thrive, and also tools for healing the misunderstandings that cause resentment. Join me and learn –

~ Why feeling understood is so important (and why misunderstandings hurt so badly)

~ How to untangle two distinct types of understanding (and work with both successfully)

~ Communication tools for creating understanding (and healing misunderstandings)

~ How to get to the real issue hiding within most misunderstandings (and make it better)

This workshop is for couples who want to actively nurture, deepen, and improve their marriage or relationship.

When: March 3, 1-4pm
Where: Flow Yoga – 58 Adams Rd. Campbell River
Cost: $69 + GST/person
To register: Email flowyogacr@gmail.com or call 250 204-3301

*** Register early to reserve your place. Space is limited. ***

Justice Schanfarber is an internationally renowned marriage counsellor and author of The Re-Connection Handbook for Couples. The Relationship Skills Workshop Series is an ongoing exploration of the most pressing relationship themes and issues of our time. The format combines lecture, discussion, live demonstrations, and practical skills building exercises.

Follow me on social media for sex and relationship tips, tools, and insights – Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Like what you’re reading here?
You’ll love my new book.
Read the first 10 pages free.

Trying to grow, fix, change, understand or save your marriage? I provide couples therapy, marriage counselling, coaching and mentoring to individuals and couples on the issues that make or break relationships – Sessions by telephone/skype worldwide. Email justice@justiceschanfarber.com to request a client info package. www.JusticeSchanfarber.com

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