Description
046: The Impact of Male-Female Differences on Sexual Health, Intimate Relationships, and Sexual Interventions
Cliff Penner, Ph.D.
Penners & Associates
200 East Del Mar Blvd., Ste. 126
Pasadena, CA 91105
Joyce Penner, M.N., R.N.
Penners & Associates
200 East Del Mar Blvd., Ste. 126
Pasadena, CA 91105
Douglas Rosenau, Ed.D.
Sexual Wholeness, Inc.
1325 Satellite Blvd., Ste. 1502
Suwanee, GA 30024
Summary
Being comfortably self-aware and accepting and embracing male and female differences can enhance satisfaction in any intimate relationship. This workshop will explore how gender differences impact three important areas: healthy individual sexuality, romantic relationships before marriage, and the sexual relationship in marriage. Men’s and women’s healthy three-dimensional sexuality (physical responses, thoughts/beliefs, and emotions) can enrich their sense of self as a sexual person, improve healthy opposite-sex friendships, and contribute to a mutually fulfilling sexual relationship in marriage. However, so much can get in the way of healthy sexuality, healthy gender interactions, and healthy sexual adjustment in marriage: body image, cultural and religious stereotypes, lack of helpful education, and trauma. This workshop will develop the importance of embracing and enhancing masculine or feminine attributes in all relationships. It will also focus on gaining a wholesome understanding of, and coaching clients in, making their gender differences work for them rather than trying to get the opposite sex spouse to be more like him or herself. Husbands and wives often engage in a very ineffective dance/pattern in their lovemaking that, with the appropriate help, can quite easily be changed. Participants will be given helpful psychoeducation and interventions for coaching clients in creating healthy gender interactions as both friends and lovers.
Learning Objectives
Participants will:
• Identify attitudes and expectations of men and women toward their own and each other’s sexuality that enhance, and hinder, sexual health and intimate relationships
• Diagnose healthy and intimate opposite-sex interactions in both friendships and marriage and define gender-related roles and responsibilities in intimate relationships within therapy sessions with licensed mental health professionals and psychologists
• Assess unique role-related issues that interfere with sexual health and intimate relationships in friendships and marriage
• Demonstrate interventions that help clients achieve a healthy enjoyment of male and female differences in their intimate relationships
