Latest news with #psychosexualtherapy
Daily Mail
18-06-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Revealed: The X-rated sex practice older women are choosing to boost lacklustre love lives - as 70 per cent say they're starved of intimacy
Most coupled-up women over 50 are unsatisfied in the bedroom and some are resorting to extreme methods to compensate, a survey has suggested. The poll found that 69 per cent of older women aren't happy with their sex lives, with one in 20 women so starved of intimacy they have considered paying for sex. An additional 11 per cent debate having an affair to boost their love life. The poll suggested that male difficulties with erectile dysfunction could be driving these bedroom busts. Of the men surveyed in the poll, almost half (44 per cent), admitted they avoid sex with their partner because of erection problems. However stress was another common reason for dodging intimacy, as well as back pain. Just under one in five men said they had previously faked an illness to get out of love making. Lorraine Grover, a psychosexual therapist, said the results were sadly unsurprising. 'These findings highlight how intimacy can quietly fade in long-term relationships as couples reach midlife and beyond,' she said. 'Many assume desire naturally declines with age, but emotional closeness and sexual satisfaction remain crucial for a healthy relationship well into later life. 'When those disappear, it can leave partners feeling isolated and, sometimes, desperate.' However, she added that for men suffering from erectile dysfunction—sometimes called 'ED'—there are a range of potential solutions. 'It's common for men in particular to feel deeply troubled by declining sexual function but too embarrassed to discuss it, even with their partner,' he said. 'Many still see ED as a personal failure rather than a treatable medical condition, which puts relationships at risk. Starting the conversation is the first step to finding help.' Professor David Ralph, a consultant urologist at University College London Hospitals, said fortunately there are now a range of effective treatments. 'There are more treatment options than ever for managing ED—not just oral medications but also medical devices which offer a more permanent fix and according to clinical data, helping 85 percent of men within a month,' he said. While problems maintain an erection can be due to mental health issues, it can also be a potential sign of serious, and potentially deadly, health problems. These include issues like high blood pressure or high cholesterol, diabetes as well hormone imbalances and mental health issues like depression and anxiety. Impotency is thought to effect about half of men over 40. While most cases are isolated and nothing to worry about, repeated or sustained episodes of erectile dysfunction should be checked out by a GP. The new poll, of 2,000 people over 50 in committed relationships by impotency tech company Vertica Labs, also revealed it wasn't just women facing an unsatisfactory sex life. Almost half of married men surveyed, 46 per cent, also described the intimacy acts in their relationships as either 'non-existent' or 'under par'. While dissatisfaction in the bedroom can put a relationship in peril numerous studies suggest a lack of sex and intimacy can also be bad for your health. Regular sex and intimacy have been linked to several health benefits, including improving the condition of your heart, reducing stress and even boosting mental health. The new research follows a separate poll of 2,000 adults by the Royal College of Occupational Therapists which found men and women typically have sex 46 times a year—once every eight days. But some have far less frequent amorous activity, with a tenth reported having sex less than once a year. Earlier this month, researchers at the University of Manchester, also revealed women who have sex at least once a week are the happiest in their relationships. Their study showed that 85 per cent of women who had sex once a week described themselves as 'sexually satisfied'. Separate research, published last year, also suggested its not just the over 50s with a lust for life. A survey found 53 per cent of over 75s wanted to remain sexually active as they aged.
SBS Australia
07-06-2025
- General
- SBS Australia
Hailey is a sex therapist. Her family still doesn't know what she does for work
Nationally, there are only a handful of sex and relationship therapists who offer counselling in Chinese dialects. Source: SBS News / Karin Zhou-Zheng For a long time, Hailey Lin's job has been a mystery to her extended family. Whenever her mother, who lives in Hong Kong, is asked about Lin by relatives and friends, she tells them she's a social worker "doing psychotherapy things" in Australia. But in fact, the Hong Kong-born 33-year-old does more than just psychotherapy: she works as a clinical psychosexual therapist in Sydney, where she helps people explore sex and relationships. Lin says despite her mother's reluctance to disclose her occupation, she is supportive of it. "She can be open-minded, but also she can be very conservative because it is not the norm in Asian culture [to talk] about sex or intimacy," Lin tells SBS Podcast Chinese-ish . Ronald Hoang has had a similar experience. Growing up in a Vietnamese-Chinese Australian household, Hoang watched his cousins become doctors, lawyers and pharmacists — professions his parents enthusiastically endorsed. But he decided to take a different pathway, specialising as a relationship and family therapist, which involves helping couples navigate love, intimacy and family systems. Even after years of practice, Hoang says his mother still feels confused about his work. "I'm pretty sure she still doesn't know what I do. The way she describes it is that I work with 'crazy people'," the 36-year-old says. But she's accepting … I think she understands it a bit better nowadays. Despite mixed reactions from their parents, Hoang and Lin are determined to change the prevailing narratives and taboos around sex and relationships within the Chinese Australian community — and part of a small number of therapists with Chinese backgrounds who offer specialised counselling on the topic. According to 2021 Census data, there are 4,026 psychotherapists — a category that includes psychosexual therapists — in Australia. Only 80 of them speak Mandarin, Cantonese or other Chinese dialects at home. Of that cohort, 42 were born in China, Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan, making the pool of sex and relationship therapists with Chinese cultural and linguistic knowledge very small. Because of this, Lin and Hoang say they find their services particularly popular among Asian clients, who feel they have a cultural shorthand. Hoang says he noticed the influx of Asian Australian clients when he started his private practice. "I do get a lot more Asian clients who specifically come to me because they feel — and they even directly say this to me — that I would 'get them' a bit better," Hoang says. "So they do open up, and they do come [to the counselling sessions] because they feel I can relate to their culture." Lin says for some of her clients, talking about sex and intimacy can feel like speaking a foreign language. "Talking about sex [and using that] vocabulary, it can be like an alien or foreign language when you speak about your genital parts or even your intimacy," she says. She also notices that many of her Asian Australian clients are unfamiliar with how therapy works. Sometimes she says they expect her to act more like a GP who can prescribe them medication or expect an immediate result after the therapy. In Hoang's practice, traditional values around family loyalty are a recurring topic in his conversations with Chinese clients. "[I think] because a lot of us are migrants and come from various places that there is intergenerational trauma that's probably a little bit more frequent than other different kinds of backgrounds," he says. While some Australians may hold the impression that Chinese people tend to be conservative when it comes to intimacy, Lin says it's not the case. "There's a misconception that only Asian or Chinese people find [conversations about sex] challenging," she says. The fact is, even for Western people, they still find it challenging too, because it's against the mainstream culture. But for Chinese Australians, there are some cultural barriers that make it harder for them to have candid discussions about sex. Lin says the lack of comprehensive sex education in schools in many Asian countries is one of the key factors. "They just talk about biological stuff, but they don't tell you how to give consent to help your first sexual experience, or they don't talk about pleasure," she says. Even in cases where conversation is encouraged by parents or educators, Lin says many still focus on abstinence, saying things like, "'don't do this', 'don't fall in pregnancy', 'protect yourself', 'use a condom'". "But sex is something we need to learn, we need to build up; a skill we need to practice," she says. Hoang says shame is a key barrier that many Chinese people encounter when talking about sex. Shame is a weapon that's often used in Asian culture. "Shame is a feeling that we get when we're kind of telling ourselves that we are a bad person," Hoang says. "And the following action [typical for] shame is to hide, to withdraw, because you are such a bad person that you don't want other people to be around you and see you for the 'badness' that you are." As two of the very few sex and relationship psychotherapists with Chinese heritage who offer services in Australia, Lin and Hoang know they bear an extra responsibility in helping to educate their community about sex. Hoang says besides stigma and stereotypes, there is also a prevailing myth that sex should "always be good", especially with a committed partner, which can cause anxiety among some clients. Instead, he encourages them to think about "seasons" when it comes to sex. Hoang explains: "There are times when it's summer and it's hot and heavy, and there are other times when it's winter and cold, and then there are other times when it's spring or autumn when it's kind of lukewarm." Above all, he stresses communication is the key to having a positive sex life and relationships. "If you want more sex, just talk about it openly. It doesn't have to be something serious," he says. Lin agrees, saying it's natural for intimate relationships to ebb and flow and advocates for the 'good-enough sex model' — a psychological concept based on balancing positive experiences of intimacy with realistic expectations. "You will have frustration in your sex life, in your intimacy, but always it remains 'good enough sex'. "Sometimes we allow ourselves to have below-average sex, but sometimes also bring some novelty into our sex life, because this is human nature — we all like new stuff." With additional reporting by Bertin Huynh and Dennis Fang Lifestyle Sexual consent Sydney Share this with family and friends
