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SEXUAL AVOIDANCE: AVOIDING MORE THAN SEX ITSELF

Whether phobic or not, people who are prone to avoid sex develop anticipatory anxiety. Simply thinking about the situation they wish to avoid stirs up the same fears and even creates the same physical symptoms as the situation itself. As a result, these individuals begin to avoid any activity that might lead up to the anxiety-provoking sexual situation.

Although he is not phobic and actually enjoys making love with Barbara when he is in the mood, Dan hates the arguments and recriminations that he knows are sure to follow his refusal to make love. Dan says he goes through every evening "waiting for the ax to fall." Anticipating Barbara's next attempt to seduce him, his anxiety increases with each minute that passes. "I keep an eye on her," Dan says, and as soon as he can tell that Barbara is about to make a move, "I pick up the telephone and call my business partner or go into my den and shut the door or suddenly remember something I left at the office or need to pick up at the store."

Like claustrophobics who will climb twenty flights of stairs to avoid riding in an elevator, or people with agoraphobia who restructure their entire lives to avoid the panic attacks they fear will occur if they leave their "safety zone," people with sexual aversions can become obsessed with avoiding sex and/or situations that might lead to sex. For instance, another one of our patients who suffered from ISD and sexual avoidance kept track of the days she and her husband did not have sex so that she could anticipate the next time he would want to. "When that day rolled around, I immediately panicked," she said. "I spent hours trying to figure out how I would get out of it this time. I'd work myself up to the point that I made myself physically ill."

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Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction