Gail Saltz - The Ripple Effect: How Better Sex Can Lead to a Better Life

I am a therapist. Over the years I have seen several hundred women in my practice in New York City. As the psychiatrist on the Today show, I have had many others write to me with their concerns. Some women are depressed because they are dangerously in debt. Maybe their husbands arent working, and they cant make ends meet with just one salary. In other cases, women make more money than their boyfriends or husbands and are afraid of upsetting the balance of power in their relationships. Some women come to me because their children are having trouble at school and they blame themselves. Some have found themselves taking care of an aging parent and reliving old resentments. Some are afraid of failing in their careers; still others are afraid of succeeding. Often a woman starts by describing a small voice in her head, a nagging feeling that something isnt right, that something is missing. With the women I see in my practice, we talk. We go back and forth, discussing not only whats on their minds that day but also what hopes, fears, or regrets they may have held on to for years. Eventually, when we get to the root of the problem, almost always its sex.

Aristotle said, Know yourself. I agree, but when I think about how to advise women patientsand 9 out of 10 patients of mine during the course of my 15 years of practice have been womenI add one key word: Know your sexual self.

Women have far more to feel great about than most of us realize. As a woman, you carry within yourself the source of life. It is a well of power that you are born with, and women who understand that powerwho understand themselves sex-uallylive life more fully, no matter their occupations or their marital or parental status. Weve all seen the sort of woman who can walk into a room and pow! Everybody feels a pull toward her, a great gravitational tug. She has a presence. She might not be supermodel beautiful or have an hourglass figure. She hasnt necessarily spent more time at the gym than any other woman in the room, or had breast implants or Botox. What she has is something special that radiates from within. Shes confident. Shes dynamic. Shes comfortable in her skin. You can see it in how she holds herself and how she behaves. You look at her, and you think, Shes got it going on.

My goal is to help you become that kind of woman.

In this book Im going to introduce you to a new approach to your sexuality, one that will help you connect or reconnect with your sexual self. I wont be counseling you to lift a leg here or shift a hip there. Self-help shelves in bookstores are already overburdened with claims that you can improve your sex life by inserting tab A into slot B while holding button C. That approach might help you feel good physically during sex, but it doesnt get at your deeper sexual self. Seeing sex only in physical terms is an old-fashioned and ineffective approach that is based on a fundamental misunderstanding, like treating tuberculosis with breathing exercises, which we did before we knew that tuberculosis is caused by bacteria. We know better now.

We should know better ways to approach our sexuality, too. I believe weve been going about it the wrong way. Weve been working from the outside in, hoping that a physical change will make a lasting difference in how women experience sex emotionally, even though experience has told us again and again that it wont. Instead, in this book, were going to be working from the inside out. By changing how you experience sex mentally and emotionally, were going to make a lasting difference not only in how you experience sex physically but also in how you experience life itself. The key to this new approach wont be what you do in bed. Itll be how you feel about what you do in bed and how you feel about your sexual self. But the real change will be in how you feel about you.

The key to this new approach to sexuality will be to ask yourself: What do you actually think about when you think about sex?

Maybe you know the saying: The most powerful sexual organ is the one between your ears. I couldnt agree more. How you see yourself sexually reflects how you think, feel, and behave in almost every other aspect of your life. Why? Because sex is the rest of your life in miniature. During sex, youre literally naked to the world, even if the world is only one other person (or even if its just yourself). When youre that exposed, every aspect of who you think you are stands out in stark relief. Whether you like yourself, accept your flaws, forgive yourself easily, feel strong, or can find contentment in the moment will all determine how you experience what happens in the bedroom (or wherever you happen to be when the mood strikes). How you see yourself in life determines how you see yourself in bed, and vice versa.

How you see yourself sexually doesnt just reflect the rest of your life; it affects it profoundly. It determines how you think, feel, and behave in almost every other arena, public or private. As Louann Brizendine says in her book The FemaleBrain, the clitoris really is the brain below the waist. Your sexuality isnt just the key to finding out who you are; its the key to figuring out who you can become. Improve how you see yourself sexually, and you will have not only better sex but also a better life.

If theres a Eureka! realization Id want you to have as the result of reading this book, its the same one that Ive seen my patients experience again and again: The secret to sexual satisfaction is confidence, and the secret to confidence is sexual satisfaction. It might seem like a chicken-and-egg situation, but in this case we know which comes first. Its your sexuality.

Can you achieve a life-changing boost to your confidence without exploring your sexuality? I hear this question all the time from my women patients. I also hear, Not that! Ill fix anything else. But please, not my sex life! Men are different.

Its not just that their genitals are out there in the open; so are their attitudes toward sex. Men will talk to me about sex in the first session, but for women, sex is more internal, both physically and emotionally. In my experience, women dont mind working on their relationships with family, friends, and colleagues. They readily admit that they cant express their emotions to a parent, or that they need to speak out more at work, but when it comes to sex, their defenses are as high as the Himalayas. Ive seen women who have waited months before letting slip the little fact that they havent had sex for years. Patients will talk about feeling depressed or anxious. Theyll blame their problems on the boss, the husband, the kids. Theyll blame themselves. All of these complaints might be real and all the finger-pointing might be valid, but peel away the layers and at the core lies this confession: Fulfilling sex, or even any sex at all, isnt part of their lives, whether by choice, design, or neglect.

Exercising, making time for friends, and eating rightwomen who wouldnt dream of neglecting these aspects of their physical and emotional health will nonetheless see a fulfilling sex life as dispensable. They think sex is for the young, the thin, the single woman with great clothes and lots of time to spend at the gym. In a society absolutely obsessed with sex, youth, and perfect bodies, many women have allowed themselves to sit on the sidelines. A fulfilling sex life is not dispensable. It is an essential way of nurturing your body and spirit.

Your sexuality is as much in the head as it is in the heart or the vagina, and thats the female power you need to tapthe one in that powerful sex organ between your ears. Sure, you might be able to show confidence on the outside, and maybe you can even make headway on the other problem areas in your lifeyour guilt over your childs struggles at school, your anger at the arrogant colleague at workbut your confidence will be false and the solutions temporary. Whether youre not having sex at all or having it all the time but not finding it fulfilling or anywhere in between, the bottom line is the same: If you dont address the most vital part of yourselfyour actual life forceyoure living what amounts to half a life.