“How often can I ask for a blowjob before I am just being an asshole?”

A client wants his female partner to perform oral sex more often. He has asked her many times over the course of their relationship and she has said that she really doesn’t like to do it. She finds it dirty (and not in a good way). It is a big turn off for her. He isn’t willing to leave the relationship over it but it really bothers him. And no, she doesn’t want to go to couples therapy. He asks the therapist, “How often can I ask for a blowjob before I am just being an asshole?”

Quick: What is your answer?

How did you formulate your answer?

How might it be different if the topic wasn’t sex? Or if instead of oral sex he wanted her to kiss him? Or to have anal sex?

How might your answer be different if the genders were different?

Does it make a difference if they have been together for six weeks, six months or six years?

When does advocating for something that is important to us turn into badgering or coercion? This question comes up in lots of parts of the life or a couple but it can be particularly provocative in the context of sex because power, gender and shame are so close to the surface. We also as a culture have a sense that the potential harm to a person and/or a relationship of being coerced about sex is greater than being coerced about other things. As therapists, we often encourage clients to assert their needs and wants, particularly in the context of romantic relationships. And of we think of ourselves as sex-positive therapists, we encourage people to do that in regards to sex. We also encourage people to set limits. The yin to the yang of the first question is “How bad does it have to be before I say, ‘Stop?’”

We can tell clients to ‘tune into their feelings’ but often people have conflicting feelings about another’s sexual requests/demands; I’m scared I’ll feel dirty later, I want to be accommodating of my partner, I want to be sexually adventurous, I resent that they are asking for what they want, I worry that my own hang-ups may be getting in the way of our shared fun etc. If our clients’ feelings were clear they would either say “stop” or “go.”

When clients are unclear about where assertiveness becomes coercion, or where accommodation becomes capitulation, therapists may apply a “I know it when I see it” approach, explicitly or implicitly applying their own standards (if you are tempted to tell a client “What your partner is doing is inappropriate” ask yourself if that might be a way of saying that you don’t like it). Or they may resort to tautologies; ‘well-differentiated people are assertive but poorly differentiated people are coercive.’

I think it is a misapprehension that there is a clear, bright line between these things. We can all agree on cases at one end or another but there is a lot of room for the therapists’s own subjective, value-laden ideas to come in in the middle. I find it one of the areas where I most struggle with how much or how little to bring my own values into therapy, because these questions “Am I just being an asshole?” and “How bad does it have to be?” are values questions.