I had the good fortune to attend a workshop recently entitled “Sexuality, Intimacy and Aging.” I did so mainly as a way of collecting CEUs (continuing education units) for my upcoming counseling license renewal process. (Licensed counselors in the state of New Mexico are required to acquire 40 CEUs during each two-year renewal period.) Even though I was primarily in search of CEUs, I did come away from this workshop with several interesting insights. I’d like to mention one in particular because, in my opinion, it can be directly related back to John Bowlby’s work in the area of attachment theory and attachment functioning.
Dr. Barry McCarthy of the Washington Psychological Center put on the workshop, which was hosted by Health Ed. Dr. McCarthy told us that he takes an “integrationist approach” when working with couples who are experiencing sexuality problems arising from the normal aging process. Dr. McCarthy’s mention of an integrationist approach piqued my interest because John Bowlby could also be described as an integrationist as well. Professionally Bowlby pulled from such diverse areas and disciplines as ethology or animal studies, cognitive science, learning theory, systems theory, biology, psychology, and the list goes on. Theoretically Bowlby was concerned with how an organism (which would include us human organisms) balances and integrates the motivations that arise from behavioral systems that often have conflicting needs and, as a result, make conflicting demands. Drawing from his studies in the area of animal studies, Bowlby recognized that many higher order organisms (such as primates) often have to balance and integrate the motivations arising from such behavioral systems as the attachment behavioral system, the caregiving behavioral system, and the sexuality behavioral system. Bowlby did not view sexuality as a separate domain but, instead, saw it as a part of a larger overall behavioral system that includes attachment and caregiving. Bowlby theorized that the behavioral integration challenges he saw expressed in the world of ethology also confront us humans. In my opinion, Dr. McCarthy provides us with an example of the above taken from the realm of human sexuality.
Dr. McCarthy told us that intimacy within a relationship is centrally about such things as warmth, closeness, safety, calmness, and predictability (e.g., the known). Attachment types will often talk about primary attachment figures as “safe havens” or “home bases.” A mother typically acts as a home base or safe haven for her child. When a child seeks out and returns to a home base, she or he is seeking out and wishing to secure such things as, you guessed it, warmth, closeness, safety, and predictability—in short, intimacy. But Dr. McCarthy throws a wrench into the works.
Rather unexpectedly Dr. McCarthy announced, “Intimacy kills eroticism.” Whoa … wasn’t expecting that one. But wait, that fits with Bowlby’s theory. Let me see if I can explain. Dr. McCarthy told us that eroticism is centrally about such things as risk taking, vitality, excitement, creativity, and unpredictability (e.g., the unknown). Dr. McCarthy matter-of-factly told us, “Couples should have intimacy but not at the expense of eroticism; and they should have eroticism but not at the expense of intimacy.” What Dr. McCarthy essentially told us is that couples need to balance and integrate the often conflicting demands arising from our need for intimacy and for eroticism. In other words, intimacy has a “closing off” aspect to it while eroticism has an “opening up” aspect to it. Too much closing off and eroticism suffers. Too much opening up and intimacy suffers. According to Dr. McCarthy, the natural aging process can throw this balance out of whack. As a simple example, as we age, our ability to engage in risk taking behavior—jumping out of an airplane or traveling to remote parts of the world—begins to wane. Interestingly Dr. McCarthy told us that couples are increasingly turning to the world of cybersex to counteract the effects of aging. I’ll leave Dr. McCarthy’s talk at this point.
All this to say that a child’s first experiences of moving away from and returning to a home base or safe haven will also be his or her first experience of balancing and integrating the need for intimacy (e.g., the known) and the need for eroticism (e.g., the unknown)—a balancing act that is with us for life, even as we enter our senior years. An interesting study would be to look at attachment patterns and whether they could be used to say something about sexuality patterns during the twilight years. Please leave a comment if you know of such studies.
