As we touch back in with our recurring topic of "Healthy Sexuality and the Combat Veteran," it's interesting to read the always thought-provoking Arthur Egendorf, a Vietnam veteran and Ph.D. psychologist, with extensive personal experience with the veterans' "rap groups" of the 1970s on this topic as well. Here's what he has to say, echoing the problem we've been learning combat veterans often have with one of the key basics of sexuality, "intimacy" between the partners. Writes Egendorf:
"Almost every veteran I’ve seen in therapy has wanted help with intimate relationships. In his own way, each of these men has been deeply committed to individual survival and to the ethos of the lone adventurer who has to make it on his own. For such people, giving themselves to a relationship clashes with their long-standing refusal to let anyone get close enough to pose a threat."
Additionally, he writes:
"Virtually all troubled
couples view sexual problems as part of their difficulty. One of them will say that they ought to be
having more sex. From a healing
perspective, what they’re missing is fulfillment, and they make it harder to
achieve by thinking that more orgasm will provide it. They don’t see that when sex is ecstatic it
is never just the orgasm that does it.
The ecstasy comes with giving oneself in a shared embrace. Although you can have orgasms alone or with
any human being (some manage very well with animals), people seldom bother to
do it with just anyone unless they can’t be with someone they deeply love.
It’s easier to have sex with a stranger than with a long-time partner who’s
hard to get along with. This is the excuse many people use to sleep
around. But as long as they use the
excuse, they don’t discover the ecstasy of relating is enhanced when one gives
oneself where it’s no longer easy."
-- Source: Healing from the War: Trauma and Transformation after Vietnam, by Arthur Egendorf.
