Welcome to “Growing,” the newsletter of the Institute for Personal Growth/IPG Counseling. This is the first issue we’ve published in a year and its format is a little different from our first two. Instead of the feature stories and other mental health news we’ve had before, we’ve devoted this entire issue to IPG news, a report on the first results of our research study on female sexuality, and an editorial.

We’ve used the same format for “Growing Diversity,” our newsletter for sexual minorities. If you are interested in the research results we’ve published here in “Growing,” you may want to look at “Growing Diversity” as well, because in that newsletter we’ve published information comparing heterosexual women to lesbians. We hope you enjoy this issue, and look ahead for a return to our normal format for the next issue of “Growing.”

Peace and love,

Margie Nichols, Ph.D., Editor

Some readers who are familiar with IPG Counseling already know that, although we are a general service psychotherapy center and deal with all kinds of problems, we have several subspecialties. One of these is work with sexual minorities, and another is sex therapy. Last year, after IPG Director Dr. Margaret Nichols was asked to write a chapter on lesbian sex for a textbook on female sexuality, we decided to gather some new data on ALL women, not just gay women.

So in January we launched the IPG Internet Female Sexuality Survey and invited women from all over to tell us about their sexual experiences on-line, with anonymity guaranteed. It’s probably not surprising that most of the nearly 1100 women who filled out our survey are more sexual than average – compared to the most up-to-date information available about the sexual habits of American women, our survey women think about sex a lot, have fairly frequent sex with a greater than average number of sex partners, and have more orgasms than the typical American woman.

What have we learned from this data? We’re just beginning to analyze it, but already we’ve found some intriguing data:

• Is having lots of different sexual partners risky?

We’re told to limit our sexual partners because having multiple partners puts us at risk for sex related diseases and medical conditions. But overall, the majority of our survey women, who had an average of 15 different sexual partners (the national average is 2 to 4), were disease free: 59% have never had a sex-related medical problem, and another 16% had problems limited to either vaginitis or an abnormal pap smear. 9% had contracted genital warts through sex, another 9% herpes, and 8% Chlamydia, with a few women contracting more serious diseases like hepatitis or HIV. In general, 75% of our very sexually active women have either never had a sex-related medical condition or have had the same ones common in their less sexually active sisters.

• So are women who like sex ‘free’ of sexual hang-ups and problems?

Not exactly. Despite being very sexually active, our survey women reported having experienced an average of three different kinds of sexual problems overall. The most common problems? Lack of sexual desire, having less desire than your partner, having problems with orgasm, anxiety about sex, trouble lubricating – and having MORE sexual interest than your partner.

• What makes sex fun for our survey women?

80% of the women in our sample who are in relationships have regular orgasms during partner sex (much higher than the national average of 29%) and 44% found their sex life ‘extremely satisfying.’ When we compared the women who have orgasms regularly to those who do not, we learned that women who ‘climax’ have sex more often (not a surprise) –but they also spend more time on sex and engage in a wider variety of sex acts. In other words, they take their time making love and do lots of things other than intercourse.

• What turns these women on?

Our survey women get turned on by many things: of course kissing, touching, oral sex and intercourse – but they also experiment with anal sex, spanking, bondage, and sex toys. And they get turned on by bisexual fantasies, too: 58% of the self-identified heterosexual women in our survey are attracted to women, even though only a third have ever experimented sexually with women.

If you’d like to learn more about our survey women, read the article in this issue called More About the IPG Internet Survey and check out “Growing Diversity” to see how lesbians and heterosexual women compare to each other. Now that we have internet data from women, we are eager to see what their male counterparts are like. So watch for the January 2005 launching of the IPG Internet Survey of Male Sexuality.

Click here for more about our survey...

IPG NEWS

In spite of a year full of problems for many of the IPG staff and their families, we’ve managed to expand in many ways.

First, we’ve hired new staff with fresh ideas in all three offices. The Jersey City now boasts eight therapists and accounts for a fifth of all our new clients. Freehold has an additional therapist, and the Highland Park office has acquired three more counselors as well.

Second, we’ve recognized the importance of ‘evidence-based medicine’…specialized treatment protocols with proven effectiveness…as it affects the field of psychotherapy. So we’re getting the technical skills we need to stay on the cutting edge of our profession:

• These days, IPG gets more and more requests for sex therapy, not only from couples whose primary problems are sexual, but also from couples who come in for help with communication or general areas of conflict – and then realize that their sex life could use an overhaul, as well. So we’ve sponsored two IPG staff members in a year-long postgraduate training course in sex therapy, to add to the numbers of our therapists qualified to do this work.
• Just as many couples realize, once in relationship counseling, that they have sexual issues as well as general problems – other couples with sexual problems find they cannot work out their sexual differences without first fixing the more basic conflicts. Because it is such a complex form of therapy, our entire staff is in the midst of an intensive series of training seminars with Bruce Wood, C.S.W., an internationally-known Certified Imago Therapy Trainer, author, and master relationship therapist.
• In general, there are few psychotherapy techniques that research has proven more effective than others – in most studies, the personality and ‘match’ between therapist and client has been the most important factor in predicting treatment success. An exception is cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT, in the treatment of mood disorders. IPG therapists have always used CBT to help with depression, as the ‘first-line’ treatment for depression is the combination of medication and CBT. But now there is substantial evidence that CBT is even more important in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Anyone who has seen the movie As Good As It Gets knows that people who have OCD, or related conditions like body dysmorphic disorder, suffer a tormented existence of anxiety and ritualistic or avoidant behavior, which they are compelled to repeat over and over. Even the best medications for OCD are not completely successful. However, an extremely structured form of CBT, designed specifically to work with obsessive-compulsive disorder, gives great relief. Staff members in both the Highland Park and Jersey City offices are being trained to offer this specialized service.
• Another treatment technique that is generating promising research results is the use of Eye Movement Desensitization Reprogramming (EMDR) to help relieve people who have suffered traumatic events, including those who have a child or adult history of abuse and violence. Because it is a largely nonverbal psychotherapy technique, it is effective for people who are not helped by ‘talk therapy’ alone. By the Fall of 2005, a half-dozen IPG staff will be certified EMDR practitioners.
• Lastly, our skills have grown in an area we wouldn’t have chosen ourselves. This past year many IPG staff members have suffered deaths in their families. Through the healing of our own personal wounds we have learned first-hand the skills and subtleties of grief counseling, and we are more prepared than in the past to truly understand and help those who suffer through the pains of bereavement.

FREE ASSOCIATIONS: Editorial Comments

"HELL IN THE HALLWAYS":   Last year at this time, in this newsletter space, I wrote about gratitude. It seems ironic, now. Three months later, in March of 2004, my nine-year old daughter Jesse was suddenly and unexpectedly diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, was operated on, suffered one complication after another while in a semi-conscious state for ten weeks – and then finally died a horrific, although mercifully physically painless, death on June 2, 2004, four days before her tenth birthday. Her funeral, in fact, WAS her tenth birthday.

A year ago this time if you had asked if I could survive the death of either of my children I would have said no, definitely not. It was my worst nightmare: having one child die, the other one live, and me being forced to stay alive for the remaining kid but not having the personal resources to do it.

And yet, here I am, six months and more after my precious child is gone. Not only still here—I’m also healing.

For the first three months I woke up every morning crying with an intense wish to die so I could join Jesse. Because of circumstances, including the fact that for the last few years I’ve been single and my son Cory has been in college, Jesse and I spent a great deal of time with each other. And I was relaxed enough in parenting a second child to not worry that she still chose to sleep in my bed with me at night…..I figured some time before she went away to college she’d learn to sleep in her own room. So, Jesse was the first thing I saw when I woke every morning and the last I saw before I fell asleep at night. When she died I felt that limbs and guts had been ripped from my body and I marveled that I didn’t bleed to death.

But I spent a lot of time alone and time reading and time in the sun and time back in my own personal therapy, when I wasn’t wailing or shrieking my grief, rage, despair and hopelessness to the heavens. And I started to see clients again and found that listening to others’ problems, even small ones, gave me a sense of balance and order in the world that I’d lost when Jesse died. My son and I revived a custom we’d had when he was little: we started watching movies at home together. Cory got me through- we got each other through this - and gave me a reason to try to live. As to the rest of what’s gotten me this far – I like to think all the years of psychotherapy, meditation, yoga, and spiritual training have paid off. But then again, I’m aware of a primitive life-force inside me that wants to live, for no reason except life itself.

My spiritual beliefs went through a dark night of the soul. Before Jesse died, my spirituality had a strong New Age influence, a whimsical aspect. I’m not feeling much whimsy these days. I’ve surfaced with what is basically a stripped-down, no-frills version of my former religious beliefs. Don’t be telling me that ‘everything happens for a reason,’ or that ‘there are no coincidences,’ or I’ll deck you.

In the end, what has buoyed me, corny as it sounds, is love. The love of my son, of my friends, of my co-workers at IPG, of clients and former clients. But equally as important – MY love – the love I give to others. Because for me, there is not much else worth living for. My values have not so much changed through this experience as they have become purified and stronger. NOTHING matters to me anymore but love, kindness, caring for one another, nurturing each other, healing ourselves and everyone and everything we touch. I will never stop crying for my baby Jesse, never stop longing to touch her sweet skin and smell her little girl smell.

But I also can’t stop loving just because I’ve been hurt so deeply. I might as well be dead myself if I do that. I made a decision to adopt two sisters who have been in an orphanage in Guatemala, Jesse’s birth country. They will be home next summer. IPG staff and clients, in an effort spearheaded by Debbie Williamson, friend and Assistant Director of IPG, are working with me to raise money and goods for their orphanage so that we can improve the lives of all 67 children who live there. The only way I can make sense of my daughter’s death is to make it mean something. Jesse was a gentle, loving, generous child who protected those weaker than herself. Not a bad example for all of us to follow.

As my shrink said the other day: “When one door closes, another opens…..but it’s hell in the hallways.”

p.s. If you want to know more about Jesse’s life and my journey towards survival, read my blog. If you know anyone who has lost a child, they might be interested as well; it's been a great relief to me to know others who have suffered through this, often called the worst loss. www.Livejournal.com/users/mychildsdeath

INTRODUCTION: WHO WE SURVEYED – WOMEN WHO LIKE SEX

This past January we launched a survey of female sexuality: we invited women online from all over the country and the globe to give us information anonymously about their sexual histories, their feelings, and their experiences. Originally, the idea was to find out about lesbian sexuality and compare lesbians to heterosexual women. But our vision quickly expanded beyond an interest in sexual identity: we realized we wanted to find out about ALL female sexuality, whether the women who filled out our survey were self-identified as straight, gay, bi, or something totally different.

By November 2004 nearly 1100 women had answered our survey. By research standards, this is huge; a great deal of research is published using samples of under 100 people. While two professional papers have been produced that mention this data, this is our first attempt to disseminate the results to the general public.

When you do survey research on the Internet, you never know what kind of people are going to answer your questions. Well, the women who answered our survey are a pretty special group. They are highly educated - 90% had at least some college- and mostly from the U.S. – under 100 of our 1074 final surveys came from women outside the states.

But that’s not what makes them unusual. This is a group of women who have lots of sex and tend to live on the sexual fringe. How do we know this? We compared our group to the group of women interviewed in the National Health and Social Life Survey, a study done in the 90’s of about 3,400 people carefully chosen to represent a cross-section of the American population. The NHSLS study is considered the ‘gold standard’ – the best research we have on the current sexual practices of people in the U.S.- and NHSLS information can be said to represent the ‘average American woman.’

So here are some comparisons :

• Most of the IPG survey women are gay or bisexual, compared to only about 5-10% of the NHSLS women.
• Between 19% and 42% of the IPG respondents identify with the ‘kink’ community (people who practice S/M, dominant-submissive, or other kinds of less common sexual behaviors). Bisexual women are the ‘kinkiest’ and lesbians the least involved. They didn’t even ask this question in the NHSLS study!
• Similarly, the NHSLS folks didn’t ask this, but many of our respondents consider themselves ‘polyamorous,’ e.g. practicing multiple open sexual relationships at the same time. A whopping 58% of our bisexual women are ‘poly,’ with 18% of the lesbians and 22% of the heterosexual women in this group.

The IPG survey women aren’t just unusual in their sexual lifestyles, either. They are also MUCH more sexually active than the average American woman:

• More than half our survey women have had over ten lifetime sexual partners, and an average of 15; the average American woman has had no more than four lifetime partners
• In the last year, half of IPG survey women had sex at least once a week; 33% of NHSLS women had sex that often.
• 65% of the IPG survey respondents think about sex at least once a day; the average American woman thinks about sex from a few times a month to a few times a week.
• 57% of IPG survey respondents masturbate at least once a week; only 8% of the NHSLS women masturbate that much.

Obviously our sample, though large, isn’t at all representative of the average U.S. woman. Our women are women who like sex, with lots of experience and sex on their minds. Given that, what can we learn from them? In this issue of Growing, we to focus on the overall sample and on heterosexual women. In the December issue of Growing Diversity we discuss lesbians, and we’ll look at bisexual women and members of other sexual minorities in future reports.

First, let’s look at the problems these women have:

STI’S, SEXUAL PROBLEMS

In the 1970’s the United States seemed to have an unusually liberal attitude towards sexuality. But with the advent of sexually transmitted infections that can be fatal or intractable – like HIV and Hepatitis C – and the proliferation of many other STI’s, our society seemed to get more repressive. The common wisdom is that multiple sexual partners mean multiple chances for infection. Is this true? If it is, we should find lots of STI’s in this population of highly sexually active women.

The answer to this is yes….. and no. In our sample, the total number of male lifetime partners a woman has is highly correlated with the number of STI’s she has ever had. But when we include all women, lesbians and bisexual women as well as heterosexual women – the number of lifetime FEMALE partners has no relationship to sexual diseases. In short – men transmit infection to women well, women don’t transmit much to other women. On the other hand, even these very active women are mostly infection-free: 59% never had an sex-related medical condition, and another 16% had only abnormal pap smears or vaginitis. 9% had genital warts, 9% herpes, and 8% Chlamydia. Out of 1071 women surveyed, a total of two had contracted HIV, 16 hepatitis, and 3 syphilis (keep in mind HIV and hepatitis are transmittable through non-sexual methods as well). Our survey women do not seem to be ‘paying’ for their sexual adventurousness with high rates of sexually acquired infection.

A large number reported having incurred sexual problems along the way, however, even those currently happy in their sex lives. And the number one sexual problem reported by heterosexual women? Having less desire than your male partner (46% had experienced this at one time or another), even in this group of women who are highly sexually active. Other problems reported as ‘ever’ experienced by at least 30% of our heterosexual women were: lack of sexual interest, problems having orgasms, anxiety during sex, trouble lubricating – and having MORE desire than your partner.

Now that we’ve touched on their problems – let’s talk about the ‘up’ side:

WHAT DO WOMEN WHO LIKE SEX LIKE TO DO IN BED WITH A MAN?

A LOOK AT THE HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN IN THE SAMPLE

The IPG study women aren’t just unusually sexually active: they also have a good time. 80% of the heterosexual women in our sample always or almost always have orgasms, as compared to 29% of average American women, and 44% of those in relationships find the sex “extremely satisfying.” So let’s see what these women actually DO during their sexual encounters. Nearly all our heterosexual women had experienced deep kissing, non-genital and genital touching, vaginal intercourse, and digital-genital play. But in addition:

• 94% have both given and received oral sex from male partners; the comparable figures for ‘average’ American women are 68% and 73%
• 62% have experienced anal sex, as opposed to 20% of the average female population
• these women have done lots of other things in bed, too: 64% have used sex toys with male partners, 50% have been spanked or given a spanking, and 43% have participated in bondage. When asked to describe ‘typical’ encounters, the IPG survey heterosexual woman has a repertoire that includes an average of seven behaviors, ranging from genital touch (95% say this is ‘typical’) to giving oral sex (69% say it’s typical) to using sex toys (30% ‘typical’) to anal sex (13% say it is typical).
• They spend more time on sex than the average American woman: 7% of our women say sex lasts 15 minutes or less, compared to 16% of the NHSLS women.

THE ORGASM FACTOR: WHAT’S RELATED TO ‘COMING?’   What does this mean for women’s sexual satisfaction? Although attaining orgasm isn’t the be-all and end-all of sex – for most of us it’s pretty darn important. In the IPG study, the women who regularly have orgasms are significantly happier with all aspects of their relationships, most of all sexual. And we already know our IPG survey women have more orgasms than most women. But we thought we could learn more by separating the heterosexually-coupled women into two groups - those who had regular orgasms and the 20% who don’t- and seeing what is different between these groups.

They did NOT differ in age, education level, or how long they had been with their male partners. They DID differ on how often they have sex. Those who routinely have orgasms with their partners also have sex more often, but of course we don’t know whether that’s because being orgasmic makes them more sexual – or having more sex makes them more orgasmic.

But they differed in two other important ways: women who are orgasmic spent more time on sex with their partners, and included a greater number of different sexual acts in a typical encounter.

So what do we learn from this? More time spent on sex , more variety in the sexual encounter – less emphasis on penis-in-vagina sex, more on whole-body sensuality, including off-beat or playful experiences or sex toys- that’s what helps these women climax most.

THE FLUIDITY OF SEXUAL ORIENTATION

More common wisdom: sexual orientation is fixed and rigid, you are either straight or gay. Well, many of us now admit the existence of bisexuals –but we may still be underestimating the DEGREE of bisexuality in women, and the difficulty women have pigeon-holing themselves into a narrow category. To begin with, 5% of our women didn’t feel the ‘lesbian’ ‘bisexual’ or ‘heterosexual’ labels fit them at all- they wrote in ‘other’ and gave explanations like ‘do not label’ or ‘queer’ or ‘bi-curious.’

In addition, we asked ALL women about attractions to and sexual experiences with both men and women. The MAJORITY of self-identified lesbians and heterosexuals reported attractions to the ‘wrong’ gender – 65% of lesbians said they were sexually attracted to men, and 58% of heterosexual women are attracted to women. Moreover, many have acted on these feelings: 76% of lesbians have had sex with at least one male partner, and 35% of heterosexual women had sex with another woman.

What does this show? You can’t judge a woman by her label – it often tells you about the gender of her current partner, not necessarily who she has had sex with.

CONCLUSIONS

Our IPG female sexuality survey has drawn a large sample of women who seem to like sex - women who have had lots of sex with lots of different partners, engaged in a wide variety of sexual behaviors, and both think about sex and masturbate quite frequently. Yet even these women report sexual problems, with heterosexual women most often reporting problems having less sexual desire than their male partners.

But these women do tend to find sexual satisfaction – 80% orgasm regularly with their partners as compared to 29% of the average female population of the U.S. And their satisfaction seems to be in part related to sexual adventuruousness – being orgasmic is associated with having a varied sexual repertoire that goes way beyond penis-in-vagina sex – and in part related to taking more time with each sexual encounter. If we take this as a lesson for ourselves – we will focus on quality, not quantity; length of time, not frequency of sexual encounter; and playfulness and inventiveness, not performance.

WHAT’S NEXT?

We’re excited to be launching a male version of our survey early in 2005. We want to know: what are men like, compared to women? Will they show the degree of sexual orientation flexibility women have? Will they be as focused on variety of technique and taking your time with sex? Or will their sexual pattern be totally different? Please look for our survey on-line and, if you are male, take the survey yourself, regardless of your gender, pass on the info to your male friends.