A Discussion of Christopher Clulow's “How was it for You?”: Is Sex Always Too Much?

Christopher Clulow has done a wonderful job of highlighting some of the many technical dilemmas and poorly understood areas we face when contending with sexual difficulties in a couple. His paper suggests that a split between safety and desire is at the base of some difficulties. In my discussion I am going to highlight some ways one might extend these ideas, as well as alternative ways of thinking that may shed light on the topic. Clulow also deftly illustrates some of the technical challenges we face when treating a couple functioning in the psychic equivalence position.

From Freud's (1925/1955) unanswered question — What does a woman want? — we have moved as couples therapists to asking, perhaps with the same puzzled frustration, What do people want? Do they want, Clulow asks, closeness, safety, reliability, and comfort? Or do they want danger, unpredictability, and excitement?

Are these mutually incompatible? Clulow implicitly reminds us of the essential notion that a couple which locates the lack of desire in one partner is often unconsciously fending off something as a couple. As we all so commonly experience clinically, in such couples rebirth of desire in the dormant partner often leads to loss of desire in the desiring but frustrated partner. Obviously, more is going on here than just difficulties with desire.

Desire and sexuality are unruly, capricious, resistant to conscious control, and always threaten to undermine our ideal views of ourselves and our partners. As individual and couples therapists, looking at excitement and desire plunges us into the worlds of unconscious fantasy, transgression, surprise, and enigma.

Clulow begins by using attachment theory to address the struggles with accessing desire in intimate relationships. He suggests a dichotomy between attachment behavior and sexual desire. Attachment behavior, since it is motivated by the fear of loss of the object, strives either to remain in contact or to defend against awareness of the impossibi