Julia and I both have multiple career aspirations and fantasies.
Professional musician (me).
Journalist (Julia).
Travel agent. Or the 21st century version of this, travel blogger (me).
Speech pathologist (Julia)
Writer and researcher (both of us).
Recently, Julia’s been exploring an up and coming profession: Intimacy coordinators.
Emily Hilton explains the role of intimacy coordinators in her article “Let’s Talk About Simulated Sex” in a 2020 article on The Hollywood Reporter:
“As defined by SAG-AFTRA, an intimacy coordinator is “an advocate, a liaison between actors and production … in regard to nudity and simulated sex.”
Most of their work is done during the shoot, choreographing intimate action, monitoring closed sets and working with costume on modesty garments and prosthetics. But coordinators are also involved in preproduction with filmmakers, planning the types of touching and exposure that will be permitted and managing nudity riders and actor concerns.”
This is insanely important work, especially for defining processes for safety and consent for actors in a business (film production) that has an abysmal track record for protecting its employees.
However, the title of the profession hits upon a growing challenge in the field of relationship science:
What is intimacy?
After all, intimacy coordinators are really choreographers of sexuality. They’re professional kinksters, walking actors through a step-by-step process of physical and genital touch and verbal dialogue in a specific setting, and establishing processes for the participants of the sexual experience to talk about their emotional experiences and needs before, during, and after the sexual experience.
(This is coming from someone who also has a professional name that misrepresents what I actually do: Marriage and family therapy. I work with all relationships, not just marriages. And the distinguishing feature of our profession is not that we work with families; it’s that we’re trained in systems theory, as opposed to personality theory, the medical model, cognitive behavioral therapy, or any of the dozens of other psychological perspectives.)
I’ve experienced many conversations with couples where the term “intimacy” is used as a euphemism for sex; a passive way to talk about the diverse purposes, desires, and outcomes for a sexual experience.
Interestingly, in American circles, referring to sex as “sex” requires way more intimacy and vulnerability than referring to sex as “intimacy”. If I wrote that sentence on any of Meta’s products (I see you Instagram), I would risk my profile getting banned because Meta has trained its algorithms to function like a hyper-anxious, overreactive adult and hush my mention of the word sex.
And to be fair, all sexuality involves intimacy.
However, not all intimacy is sexual.
Harry Reis, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, and Phillip Shaver, professor of psychology at Cal-Davis, developed the Interpersonal Process Model of Intimacy in 1988, which suggests that intimacy evolves through two simultaneous processes:
- The mutual disclosure of personal information, thoughts, and feelings.
- The perception of partner responsiveness as understanding, caring, and validating.
And that’s especially important to remember given the population that Julia and I most commonly work with: Folks who are leaving Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal (EMPish) spaces.
Sex is a unique organizing principle in EMPish communities. Churches and nonprofits have spent billions of dollars discouraging and shaming teens and unmarried young adults from having sex, which EMPish communities exclusively define as penis-in-vagina intercourse, while simultaneously fetishizing sex. Sexuality becomes an obligation in EMPish spaces, and while some couples thrive with that expectation, many couples wilt under the pressure to have sex, especially through the lens of performed gender roles, where men are expected to be sexually ravenous, and women are expected to be asexual.
Julia and I are researching the impact of the deconstruction process, or the intentional exodus from a religious community, on long-term relationships. From our initial professional work, we’ve observed that sexuality gets impacted one of two ways during this impactful transition:
- The freedom from religious pressure results in an increase of sexual desire, though often not in the marital context, where sex is still perceived as an obligation. We primarily expect to see this through an increase of infidelity, attempts at opening up relationships, and the exploration of queerness and desire for same-sex sexuality.
- The freedom from religious pressure results in a significant decrease of sexual desire, while one or both couple members grieve and potentially cut themselves off from the pressure of sex altogether.
Until we do this research, we’re forced to rely on analogous family processes to explore how major life transitions impact sex and sexuality. Your financial support can help us be able to do this research:
For instance, Natalie Rosen, professor of psychology at Dalhousie University in (the highly underrated) Halifax, Nova Scotia, and colleagues asked 171 women to describe how the role of sexuality shifted during the first year postpartum. In their article “Sexual Intimacy in First-Time Mothers”, published in a 2020 issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior, they observed that greater responsiveness from partners in the sexual relationship was the primary predictor of increases in sexual and relationship satisfaction. Interestingly, the sexual disclosure of the new mother did not impact sexual or relationship satisfaction. They write:
“Expressing sexual changes or concerns to a partner seems to be less important for future satisfaction relative to feeling understood and cared for by one’s partner in the context of the sexual relationship, when moms may be feeling insecure and vulnerable.”
In this week’s episode of Sexvangelicals, we asked Tia Levings about feedback she would give couples who are in the middle of the deconstruction process.
