Secret to good sex?

Steve and Cathy Brody are psychotherapists who specialise in counselling couples. However, when it comes to sexual dysfunction and its treatment, the Brodys’ best success story is their own. The best weapon in their personal therapeutic arsenal is the same advice they give others.

If you want a better sex life, they say, find the courage to share your sexual secrets - to talk about what you want and don't want, sexually speaking.

"When sex hasn't worked for us," says Cathy, a marriage and family therapist, "we talk about it afterwards. Because it's not the orgasm that's the goal, it's the intimacy. One thing couples can actually do when they're lying there is talk about it and say, 'We can try this instead.'"

Many people find it hard to talk about sex. Medical and behavioural scientists have said this for years, based on their clinical experience. A recent survey of 200 people conducted by an institute of sexology strongly suggests they're right.

Nearly nine in 10 men in relationships with women reported serious problems articulating their needs and desires. Of the women respondents in heterosexual relationships, half reported some difficulties articulating their needs and desires when talking to their partners about sex. The findings cut across all age categories, from teens to seniors.

In sharp contrast, most men and women in same-sex relationships said it was easy to discuss sex. The institute's survey, conducted on its website, included questions that probed the frequency with which people told their partners what they wanted sexually and asked them to identify the reasons when they felt they could not. Seven of 10 gay men said sex was easy to talk about, and two in three lesbian women said the same, making the gay and lesbian respondents dramatically less reluctant to communicate sexual desires than the straight respondents.

Survey imitates life

While critics and the survey takers alike say the study, because of online data gathering, is not scientific, the findings do reflect what therapists hear in their practice. "I see couples married 20 or 30 years and they're still having problems, says psychologist Linda Carter. "People have told me they've never talked about how they wanted sex, where they wanted it and when they wanted it."

The good news? Shortcomings can be remedied and the lines of communication opened, experts say, if both partners are willing to work on it, change some bad habits and talk, talk, talk. First, it's vital to understand why it is so difficult to talk about sex in the first place.

What's the problem?

The Brodys make it clear that learning to talk intelligently about sex is not impossible.

However, deep down, most people are in conflict, at least a little. "There's an idea in this society that a lot of people are engaging in sex freely, without inhibition - it's the Playboy philosophy," says the institute's director, psychologist Barnaby Barratt, a professor of family medicine, psychiatry and human sexuality. "In fact, everyone has conflicts. Though many of us try, strenuously, to make it appear that we don't, we do."

On one hand, he says, everything in our culture is greatly sexualised. On the other, we feel profoundly guilty and ashamed about sex and think that talking about it in detail is despicable in personal relationships.