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DIMINISHED AFTERGLOW: I don’t glow after sex, I just sort of smolder. I think it’s the origin of the word “burnout.” I feel spent.

HUSBAND

Absence of afterglow was reported in 907 of the husbands. They could not understand the idea of feeling invigorated after sex, instead feeling that sex had exhausted their energy supply, at least temporarily.

I feel a sense of relief, or completion, but I sure wouldn’t say a “glow.” It’s like a job well done. It’s getting off.

WIFE

Five hundred fifty-one women reported the lack of or diminished afterglow. More often than the men, they knew about afterglow, might have felt it following some of their sexual experiences, including masturbation, but reported a connection between partner and the afterglow phenomenon. It is difficult to glow alone after being sexual with someone.

DIMINISHED CONTEMPLATION: I just tune out after it’s over. I don’t feel like moving, thinking, talking, or doing anything but sleeping. I drift away.

HUSBAND

Four hundred fifty-three men reported the absence of or no understanding of reflection or contemplation following the sexual experience. The “energy release” model of early sexual research probably conditions many men to feel that an athletic event has ended when sex is over. It was new for most of the men to ask themselves about satisfaction, to reflect on the sexual experience rather than to forget it.

I’ve learned to tune out after sex. I used to laugh sometimes, cry other times, or sometimes get real philosophical. It was like I was on a drug after sex, like it was with some good pot. Now I don’t have the time or the interest. I just turn over and go to sleep.

WIFE

One hundred twenty women reported this problem, and the majority of the wives in the sample reported that the reflective phase of the sexual system diminished with length of marriage. Our culture’s linear view of time, the start/stop orientation we bring to sex, does not help us reflect. We tend to be prospective in our sexuality; foreplay is much more popular than after- or replay. Hot-running life-styles allow little time for looking back or prolonging experiences through reflection. We barely have time to enjoy the moment once, and seldom twice or thrice.

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We have never really talked. When I ask her for more attention, more feeling, she takes it as a criticism orputdown. We just can’t talk it over, work it out. She has no idea how I really feel inside.

Husband

Do you feel clearly understood in your marriage, sometimes even well beyond what you say or do? Do you feel “well sensed ” and listened to beyond words (attention)? Or do you seem to have to expend a great deal of energy just to get your feelings stated, and even then feel misunderstood (disattention)? This atten-tion/disattention issue is another example where it seems that attention must be much “better” than disattention. The purpose of taking this test is to learn a new view of the marital system that allows for constructive disattention, some relief from the vigilant state required for constant attention. It’s the strong relationship that can tolerate misreadings and occasional low empathy because it is counterbalanced with corrective reading and sensing of one another’s feelings. If you score this test by placing each item on a circle instead of a line, you see how systems theory works. Too much attention, for example, throws the circle off balance; it turns awkwardly and may steer off course. The same is true for too much disattention.

One of the husbands managed to learn this new scoring system by equating it to breathing. You need to inhale good fresh air, but you have to make time to exhale also. This “flowing” concept is at the heart of a systems view of intimacy.

Attention in this case does not just refer to talking and listening. Psychotherapy, marital therapy, and so-called sexual therapy focuses primarily on words, on talking, thinking, listening, and physically touching and being touched. Super marital sex adds “supersensory” communication. I am not referring to “extrasensory” perception, because sensing is not an “extra.” We all have

it, but we must learn to develop it. Supersensory marital communication can be practiced, enhanced, and strengthened. We can go beyond talk-and-touch therapy, and work toward our own forms of “marital telepathy.”

Physicists know that communication takes place on levels beyond the see and touch world. Physicist Fritjof Capra writes, “Throughout history, it has been recognized that the human mind is capable of two kinds of knowledge … the rational and the intuitive.” This part of the marital sexual system test refers to the intuitive dimension of marital interaction, a dimension too long ignored by professional therapists and health-care workers. All healing depends as much or more on intuitive communication and awareness than it does on the rules of rational, verbal communication.

Our example couple scored high toward the disattention end of the axis. Not only was the husband unaware of his wife’s pain, but she, too, failed to sense his difficulties. The husband stated, “I leave the table because I just don’t know what to do. If I try to help, I think she thinks I don’t think she is doing a good job, sort of letting us all down.” The wife responded, “He just does not give a damn. He’s just lazy and self-involved. He never gives one thought to how I might feel.”

When I presented a part of this report at a recent professional meeting for therapists, one of my colleagues stood up and said, “I tell my couples that the only way anyone is ever going to know how you feel is if you tell them. You must share your feelings and listen for the feelings of your spouse. Now you come along and tell us that there is some sort of ‘supersensory communication’ in marriage. There just is no such thing. We have to talk, listen, and do. This is a ridiculous idea . . . sensing. That’s when couples get in trouble, trying to sense instead of trying to communicate.”

I responded by saying, “You are making an important point, but if you will let me continue, I think I can document my ideas with case examples.”

The therapist answered, “Never mind. I can just tell what you are going to be saying, and I don’t want to hear it.”

The audience laughed at the obvious contradiction, referring to his “sense” of what I was going to do as a means of denying that sensing goes on all the time.

Again, some “rest” from constant attention is necessary in any system. Watching and listening or being watched and listened to all of the time can be as disruptive to the marital system as no attention at all.

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