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Understanding Sexual Integrity – a conversation with Dr Steven Davidson
1 Playsin 9 hours
Finding the Courage to be Yourself
This episode of Fit For My Age deals with adult themes; if you are listening in a public place please listen discretely.
Dr Steven Davidson is a registered clinical sexologist and clinical social worker who is a specialist in sexual integrity.
in this episode of the Abeceder health and wellbeing podcast Fit For My Age Dr Davidson explains sexual integrity to host Michael Millward
During their conversation Dr Davidson and Michael discuss
- What we mean when we say someone has integrity.
- How to be honest with yourself and your partner about what you want
- Why in relationships that do not have integrity; love is often not enough to build a successful relationship
- Why sex is often the only aspect of a relationship that we do not talk about with the person we are in a sexual relationship with.
- Sexuality as a psychological process rather than a physical one.
- The use of pornography.
- Why men and women view sexual integrity differently
- Why how we all see sexual integrity differently as we age
Find out more about Dr Davidson and Michael at Abeceder.co.uk.
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Buy the Book – Sexual Integrity: Finding the Courage to be Yourself from Amazon
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast Platform
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencaster. The all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make making podcasts so easy. All the details are in the description.
About 'Fit For My Age' Podcast
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello, welcome to Fit For My Age, the health and well-being podcast from Abysida.
00:00:22
Speaker
I am your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysida.
Guest Introduction: Dr. Stephen Davidson
00:00:27
Speaker
Today, I am talking to Dr. Stephen Davidson, the sexual integrity coach about sexual integrity. We are going to be talking about adult issues. So if you're listening in a public place, please use headphones.
00:00:41
Speaker
Thank you. Dr. Davidson, based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. If you plan to visit Florida or any other part of the United States or anywhere really, do as I would do and make your travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where you can access trade prices on flights, hotels, holidays and all sorts of other travel-related purchases.
00:01:03
Speaker
You'll find a link in the description.
Purpose of the Podcast
00:01:05
Speaker
Now that I've paid the rent, it is time to make this episode of Fit For My Age. That will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:16
Speaker
Very importantly, on Fit For My Age, we don't tell you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Hello Stephen. Hi Michael.
Stephen's Career Transition
00:01:26
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Please could we start by you explaining a little bit about your career today and how you became a sexual integrity coach?
00:01:33
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I'm a certified sex therapist with a PhD in clinical sexology. I'm also a licensed clinical social worker. For over 30 years, I've helped individuals and couples achieve greater emotional intimacy and sexual fulfillment.
00:01:53
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And my career did not begin as a sex therapist or sex coach. I began as a psychotherapist working in psychiatric hospitals and mental health centers, helping people deal with anxiety, depression, trauma, addictions.
00:02:10
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But the subject of sex kept coming up over and over. And I realized that I was not as prepared as I needed to be to have conversations with my patients about this subject.
00:02:25
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So I returned to education. I became certified as a sex therapist, later got a PhD in sexology. And the sexual integrity coach is my registered trademark because i do a lot of educational presentations. and talking with people in a capacity that is more about coaching and education than is just specifically treating a mental illness or treating a diagnosable sexual disorder.
00:02:58
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How long have you been a sexual integrity coach? For about 20 years. Are you seeing an increase in demand and increased awareness of sexual integrity coaching? No, I'm not. And there are not many people who I identify as sexual integrity coaches.
00:03:17
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So there are several people who identify as clinical sexologist or sex therapist. And both of those titles would apply to me as well. I'm credentialed in a way that I could use both of those titles.
00:03:31
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But I specifically use coaching because it allows me to do more educational presentations, to talk about my book more, and to work with people in a capacity that is not as limited as my license as a psychotherapist.
00:03:50
Speaker
You mentioned the book that you've written about this. What is the title of the book, please?
Stephen's Book and Concepts of Honesty
00:03:55
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Sexual Integrity, Finding the Courage to Be Yourself. Tell me more about the book. Well, let's start by talking about integrity. Okay. When we have integrity, we are honest We're transparent in our relationships with others.
00:04:11
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We are walking our talk. Our actions are consistent with our words. We're genuine. We're authentic. We are asserting ourselves confidently because we believe we're worthy of having what we want in our relationships with others.
00:04:28
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And thereby, people trust us more, they feel safe in our presence. And the opposite of integrity is hypocrisy.
00:04:39
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where maybe we say one thing, but we do something that's different. We might hide behind a metaphorical mask or a facade because we are afraid to be honest with people about who we are, what we believe, what we think.
00:04:57
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And in our intimate relationships, when our truth gets discovered, Our partners feel deceived. They feel betrayed. And trust is destroyed because we have not been open and honest, transparent with them throughout the relationship.
00:05:16
Speaker
The courage to be yourself is almost about coming out as something that isn't the heteronormal sexual relationship or sexual interest. Is that part of sexual integrity or is sexual integrity much more about the relationship? Because one of the first things that you said was about emotional intimacy and that almost is is when you talk about the sexual integrity, and I'm thinking about emotional intimacy as well. There's ah there's a strong connection, I think, there, isn't there?
00:05:49
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There is a strong connection for most people, because most people want to be partnered in intimate relationships, even if they don't want to be married.
00:06:00
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they They do want to have a partner. They like having a consistent person in their life. Intimacy is ah an aspect of this because we fear being honest with people about who we are as sexual beings because we are afraid we'll lose the intimacy.
00:06:19
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And actually, it's just the opposite is true. I think we need to be honest from the very beginning about the closets that we have lived in. and often when we use that phrase, we think about sexual orientation. But there are many closets that people live in sexually.
00:06:39
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Instead of hiding their truth, I really coach my clients to lean into the truth to get more comfortable with who they are and to be more willing to talk to their partners about that.
00:06:53
Speaker
Talk to their partners about it, but it also sounds as if people need to talk to themselves about their sexual intimacy or sexual integrity as well. Yes. I see some people individually because they have had multiple failed relationships or maybe they have expectations of themselves in relationships.
00:07:15
Speaker
and they haven't been able to achieve their expectations. I do a lot of sex education with people because sometimes their expectations are not realistic.
00:07:25
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Sometimes people discover in the individual therapy that they don't really want a long-term consistent relationship. They enjoy their sexuality in a way that they want to be more adventurous. They want to have a variety of sexual experiences, but they have felt tremendous shame about that They have tried to deny that for themselves and they have tried to hide it from partners. And after they have multiple experiences of it being discovered,
00:07:57
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Now they're working on trying to come out of whatever closet they've been living in I suppose that you have people with different expectations of what a relationship is going to be like.
00:08:10
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If you're not honest with yourself and honest with your partner about your expectations of that relationship, you're almost doomed to failure, aren't you?
Communication and Sexual Intimacy
00:08:20
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Yes. And so the couples that I work with are frequently couples who came into the relationship with different expectations.
00:08:30
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They never talked about sex early in the relationship. There was an assumption that it's not really that important. If we love each other, the rest of it will work itself out.
00:08:41
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And I haven't found that to be true. I really think couples need to be talking about sex from very early in the relationship. and be talking about it frequently throughout the relationship. Because if there is an expectation for monogamy in a long-term relationship, if you're going to be only sexually active with one person only, you need to be able to talk to that person about the subject.
00:09:09
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I suppose what you're saying then is that people can actually have a sexual relationship with someone, but never actually be talking about that sexual relationship with them. Yes, and that might be hard for you to believe, but I see that over and over again.
00:09:25
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And with some couples, there is a lot of resistance to talking about it. It's a bit like, know, you go to a dinner party and the subjects you should never discuss, money, politics, religion, and sex.
00:09:38
Speaker
Whether people follow those rules is is up to them entirely. But although we don't talk about it with people who are outside the relationship, it's the number of times that you always assume that everyone must be talking about it with the person that they are. having a sexual relationship with. They must be having some sort of conversation about it at some point, but that doesn't happen as often as it should, or it doesn't have a negative impact. So what you're saying, I suppose, is that unless you actually talk about it, you don't actually know whether you're doing something that your partner really wants you to do. Right, and people can be resistant to talking about sex. So when i work with couples, I see them together in the first session because i I want to see how they interact with each other. I want to hear their individual interpretations of what the problem is as they identify it. I want to know if they have the same description of the problem, if they have the same understanding of it.
00:10:43
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And then in the second and third session, i split them up and I interview them individually. And this is where the secrets began to come out. This is where I began to discover why they're having some of the problems that they are having in their relationships.
00:11:01
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There are things that were never said from the very beginning. There were assumptions that were made. There were expectations that didn't get fulfilled.
00:11:11
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They entered the relationship loving each other, enjoying each other's company, having fun together. having some similar goals and values, but with this assumption that sex just naturally works out when you love the other person. And that's not true.
00:11:30
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So I try to create an environment that's very safe and conducive for people to begin to explore the subject and talk about this taboo subject in a way that they've never talked about it with their spouse or partner previously.
00:11:48
Speaker
To hear you describe it as a taboo subject, and yet none of us would be here if you nobody was doing it. if if we yeah it's yeah It's a fundamental part of life, but we don't actually discuss it. It's not what nice people talk about. Right. And so i do a lot of education early on. I recommend books to people about anatomy, physiology, because sexuality is it's a physiological experience, it's a psychological experience, and it's also ah relational experience.
00:12:25
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And people don't understand that all of those things combine together. They are in an interplay to create who we are as sexual beings and our sexual identity, which is not just about gender or sexual orientation.
00:12:42
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It's also about who we want to be in relationship to the other person. And sometimes that gets expressed more in the bedroom in ways that are different from how it might get expressed in the living room or any other room in the house. What you're saying brought to mind that film Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the film of the Tennessee Williams play where the mother is in the bedroom with Elizabeth Taylor and she's asking Elizabeth Taylor about the problems in her marriage with Paul Newman and she goes over to the bed and slams her hand down on the bed and sort of says if there's problems in a marriage this is where they are in the nineteen fifties when that film was made that would have been a very dramatic thing for anyone to say on stage you' and even more dramatic to say it in a film challenging all sorts of social standards etc
00:13:37
Speaker
But what you're describing is exactly that. There will be problems that will be manifested outside of the bedroom, but actually the root cause of those problems is in the bedroom. And treating the symptoms that you observe in the living room or the dining room or wherever will not solve the problem until people have had that conversation, that bedroom conversation. Yes. The best place to have the bedroom conversation Not in the bedroom when you are about to engage in some kind of sexual experience together.
00:14:15
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and One of the things that we talk about in sex education is that sexuality happens from the neck up and we focus more on genitals, but that's not really where sex happens. Sex is more of a brain activity. Our arousal response occurs in the brain. Desire occurs in the brain.
00:14:38
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Our sexual identity occurs maybe orientation, maybe our gender identity, or just how we see ourselves in relationships to other people. All of that originates in the brain.
00:14:50
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So we over-focus on the the body. Sometimes we miss some of the most important aspects of human sexuality because we're not having those discussions about the things that we cannot see. And that is the thoughts that and emotions that are occurring in the brain.
00:15:10
Speaker
The biggest sexual organ is between your ears, nowhere else. Right. it The book is full of scenarios, studies of different people, individuals and couples, and some of the sexual challenges that they were facing and how they were able to move through those challenges, the decisions that they made, the conclusions that they came to that allowed them to get to a deeper level of honesty, to become courageous with being themself.
00:15:45
Speaker
In everything in life, we are happiest if we feel like we can just relax and be who we are. If we are faking it, if we are trying to perform, if we are trying to accommodate someone else's expectations, we're not as happy and we're not as comfortable And some of the sexual dysfunctions that we see, like anorgasmia, erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, those are the result of performance anxiety, sexual performance anxiety, where people are trying to accommodate someone else's expectations, and they're not being true to themselves, and subsequently not true to their partner.
00:16:28
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What sort of role does people's use of pornography have in the problems that then you're talking about in terms of sexual integrity? Well, that can vary. I'm not against pornography.
00:16:42
Speaker
Pornography is very accessible. Sadly, here in the in the United States, we do not teach sex education in school systems in a way that is comprehensive and informative.
00:17:00
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We also don't teach it in medical schools or nursing schools or schools of psychology. It's why when I became a psychotherapist and I started working with people who were talking about sexual issues, I didn't know what to do.
00:17:15
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But I already had a license to diagnose and treat sexual disorders, even though I'd never been required to take a single course in human sexuality.
Impact of Pornography on Expectations
00:17:25
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Education is such a vital part of being able to just have access to the facts so that you understand more what expectations are realistic.
00:17:38
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What I suppose you're meaning there is that pornography can create unrealistic expectations. It can create unrealistic expectations, but it can also answer questions that people can't get answered anywhere else.
00:17:51
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That is true. This may sound odd to you, but sometimes people need a visual reference. They need to see something to comprehend it. And pornography does provide that. It's not how I would prefer to do it.
00:18:06
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I would prefer that people be able to read books or that they see education videos that are presented in a sex education course with a facilitator who is instructing students and answering questions. Because we don't have access to that here in the U.S., pornography fills in those gaps.
00:18:27
Speaker
It does become problematic when people depend on it for their sexual gratification and they don't learn how to actually be in a sexual relationship with another live person.
00:18:41
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The other source of information as well for lots of people, I think, is comedy. Comedians telling jokes about sexual behaviors or about health general health matters can be one of the sources of information for people as well.
00:18:55
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Perhaps we take all these things too seriously. If we had more a smile about things, then they become more accessible. Yes, and I love comedy. And sometimes sex is incredibly funny.
00:19:08
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Sometimes when my patients are talking about things that they are dealing with individually or in their relationships. They will laugh. I will laugh because they're aspects of all human behavior that are really funny.
00:19:22
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And so I don't mind comedians making fun of sex because I understand why they're doing it. One way that it can be problematic is that sometimes the comedians are also operating on assumptions.
00:19:35
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Their jokes are just reinforcing myth. It's reinforcing those unrealistic expectations. Yes. For me, as a sex therapist, to watch movies or sitcoms where sex is being talked about And I'm very clear that the writers have not researched the subject in the way they needed to to research it to write about it accurately. So in movies, in plays, in literature, there are opportunities to educate people with fact. But sometimes the literature, the movie, the play, it just reinforces a myth
00:20:18
Speaker
that continues to foster these unrealistic expectations of ourself and our partners. Is there any particular age group that you see more people from? Or are these issues, challenges, things that affect people right across the adult age range? I see adults in their 20s all the way up to in their 80s. There are people in their 80s who still want and expect to have regular, healthy sexual interaction with a partner.
00:20:53
Speaker
There are these different developmental stages of life where we have different expectations. In our 20s, we don't have much experience with sex. And so it's new and we are exploring and we're discovering that hopefully by the time you move into your 50s, your 60s, you have a pretty good understanding of what you like and what you don't like. And sometimes it is at that age in life that people make major changes because they recognize the relationship I'm in is not sexually fulfilling.
00:21:29
Speaker
Maybe it never was, and they no longer have hope that it can be. And so They want to be able to have some sexual adventure at this phase of their life. As we say in psychotherapy, you always meet the client where they are. You start where they are and you try to help them move in the direction that they want to go.
Gender Differences in Sexuality
00:21:50
Speaker
Do you find that men and women have different views of what sexual integrity is? Absolutely, because men and women are very different sexual creatures. And I'm not just talking about anatomy.
00:22:02
Speaker
I'm also talking about the way we think about sexuality, the way we relate sexually to other people, and even how we're different biologically.
00:22:13
Speaker
An example of that is that women produce about one egg a month. from puberty until menopause, but men produce sperm from puberty until death.
00:22:26
Speaker
And so biologically, men can still father children long after their wives are no longer able to conceive. This is a biological difference between men and women.
00:22:38
Speaker
Women are more likely to see sex as an expression of love, but men can very easily separate love from sex and see them as two distinctly different concepts.
00:22:53
Speaker
Women tend to be the gatekeepers of sex because sex is more risky and more consequential for women than it is for men. And men tend to be greater risk takers around sex.
00:23:08
Speaker
And so it's usually the female, if we're talking about a heterosexual relationship, it's usually the female who sets the parameters. The male tries to learn how to interact with her within the parameters that she has established.
00:23:25
Speaker
So the woman is in control. i suppose that can then limit that ability to have that conversation. If you're not coming together as equals, then it limits your ability to have that emotional intimacy. Yes. And, you know, couples, these differences that I've just talked about, these are things that couples don't know about each other. Yes. Women think that men should see sex and love as synonymous with Men think that women should be able to comprehend that sex and love are two different things.
00:23:57
Speaker
Men often wish that their wives were a little more sexually adventurous. And some of the things that he enjoys sexually are things that she might interpret to be degrading to her or disrespectful of her.
00:24:13
Speaker
These are some of the discussions that I have with couples when they get in the office so that they begin to understand their individual interpretations, and how they started from a very different point of reference when they entered the relationship.
00:24:30
Speaker
And of course, those different points of reference will determine how people define integrity and sexual integrity. Right. And some people misunderstand the term and integrity. They think it means to be moralistic or self-righteous or to deny yourself sexual gratification.
00:24:51
Speaker
What I try to help them understand is that integrity means integrated, that we're not splitting ourself off into different parts. We are being completely ourself, open, honest, transparent, vulnerable in the relationship with our partner so that they fully know who we are.
00:25:13
Speaker
If they can't know who we are, then the relationship really can't be intimate. Yeah, but it all starts with having that conversation. Absolutely. You've got to have the emotional intimacy before the physical intimacy, and the physical intimacy is going to be better if you've had that conversation. Yes, but that's not often the way it happens. So people are often sexual with each other before they start having conversations.
00:25:40
Speaker
on a really deep level. I don't know that it matters which one happens first. I think it they both need to happen. yeah You can spend a year talking to each other about what you like and what you don't like sexually.
00:25:54
Speaker
But until you've actually been sexually with another person, you can't really know how it's going to work out. And there are other things that maybe you didn't even think to talk about. But now that you've had sex with that person, you realize, oh, we need to be talking about this.
00:26:12
Speaker
Lots of communication should happen then. Yes, communication.
Connecting with Stephen Online
00:26:16
Speaker
yeah If someone is listening to this and thinking, I'd like to reach out to Stephen Davidson, where is the best place to find you? My website, I think, is probably the best place, which is sexualintegritycoach.com.
00:26:30
Speaker
We'll put a link to your website in the description. but But today, Stephen, thank you very much. It's been very interesting having this conversation with you, and I do appreciate it. Thank you very much. You're very welcome, and I'm grateful for the opportunity.
00:26:43
Speaker
Brilliant. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysseedah. And in this episode of Fit for My Age, I have been having a conversation with Dr. Stephen Davidson, a sexual integrity coach.
00:26:57
Speaker
There is a link in the description, which will take you to more information about both of us. If you're listening to Fit for My Age on your smartphone, you may like to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data. So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering.
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Episode Conclusion
00:28:34
Speaker
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of Fit for My Age, thank you for listening and goodbye.