So Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Sex

Truth be told, Ian Kerner is a major reason that I’m a sex therapist. I read his books She Comes First and He Comes Next in college and knew that sex therapy was the route I would take. In this book, he looks at breaking down our sexual scripts into steps—embarkment, cultivating arousal, deepening arousal, plateau/orgasm, after care and erotic charges. So often when clients come into sex therapy, I ask them this very question—tell me about the last time you had sex. Usually they’ll answer with something like, “well we started kissing and then we had sex.”

The point of exploring the sexual script is to determine where you can connect more deeply with your sexual partners so that you can have better sex. In sex therapy, we ask the details of the latest sexual encounter like: Who initiated? How did you get undressed? What kinds of things did you say? Where were you? When did you decide to have sex? Sometimes clients are uncomfortable verbalizing the answers to these questions especially in front of their partners, but it’s incredibly important. Getting the answers to these questions gives us a sense of the sexual script in the relationship and a jumping off point to developing an individualized treatment plan.