Why I Hate Sensate Focus

From a sex therapist

Sensate focus is an experiential process used by sex therapists to help couples who struggle with sex.

And I hate it.

My clients have often hated it, too.

The way I learned sensate focus was this:

Partners are asked to begin with clothed, non-sexual touch. One person touches the other, and the receiver of the touch is just supposed to notice what comes up. There is no goal attached to the touch. They are not supposed to focus on pleasure (since that reinforces a goal). They take turns doing this. After some time, they move to the next stage, where they are unclothed but the touch remains non-sexual. Then the touch becomes more about touching of “sexual” body parts. And eventually it moves to intercourse.

I think it is meant to desensitize people to their triggers. It is meant to help them detach from a goal (“non demand touch”). It is meant to take the pressure off. It is meant to move them along to where sex can feel good.

But there are so many problems with this model.

First, it is heteronormative (at least in some applications). The goal is to get to intercourse. So not only does that not even apply to some couples due to gender, it also ignores the large number of couples who can’t (or don’t want to) have intercourse due to sexual dysfunction or age or whatever other reason.

Second, it isn’t focused on pleasure. Now I get the directive to not set up a goal of sexual arousal (or orgasm), but the whole point of touch is that it be pleasing! If you’re just tolerating notice or “noticing,” you’re missing the chance to experience this touch as pleasing (or to be providing touch that is pleasing and wanted). The chance to reconnect touch with pleasure. With couples who are struggling with sex, at least one of them has often been approaching it as a task or an obligation or something to do for their partner (if they aren’t avoiding it entirely). Finding pleasure for yourself in touch is an important part of having a reason to be sexual, to accessing desire.

Third, the person doing the touching is coming up with things, and the other is just supposed to pay attention (and maybe speak up if it’s a real problem). Yikes! I believe we are each responsible for our own pleasure, and we have to provide our partner with the information to be pleasing to us. It is the receiver of the touch who should be directing this, so they are getting (only) what they want! I can’t tell you how many people with trauma (or a history of going along for others) have hated this exercise because it just reinforces what’s already happened: things are done to them that they don’t necessarily want, and they are supposed to go along with it. This is totally backwards, and I’ve seen it cause more harm.

And lastly, despite the stated intention to get away from a goal, the linear/step-wise nature of the exercise is totally goal-oriented. It is building toward more sexual touch (and sex). This ladder of levels reinforces what one is supposed to work toward: sex. I see sex (and touch) as a circle or a playground – it all matters, it all has value, it all counts. Sex is about pleasure and connection, not who is doing what with what body part.

It took me all of one time to abandon the sensate focus model and create my own approach (based on something I learned from Elizabeth Rae Larson who’d learned from Betty Martin) that corrects for all these faults. I think that any activity we use to help couples reconnect sexually needs to: be based in pleasure and actual desire, value all forms of touch and pleasure, apply to all couples regardless of gender, age, function, etc, and break the cycles that got them stuck in the first place.

If you want to know more, I have a whole podcast about the Giver-Receiver exercise that I created.