Coping with a Dry Spell

Contributed by Shawn Conner, Lavalife

So there I was, standing in the audience at a Dandy Warhols concert, when Will leaned in. "Man," he sighed, "this girl I'm seeing is totally wild. She's got me talking dirty. And it's a real turn-on. Have you ever been with someone who liked to talk dirty?"

Well yes, Will. But actually, that was a while ago, and lately I haven't been getting any, never mind the kind accompanied by a few choice nouns and descriptive phrases.

The next day, another friend called up. We'd had plans to go to a movie but she'd just started dating a new guy. "I'm too tired," she begged off. "I had a date with Greg last night and I didn't get very much sleep." Gotcha.

Unless one is very lucky, very skilled or very unfussy, there comes a time when even the best of us goes through a period of sexual inactivity. The "dry spell" is one of the most feared phrases in the single person's lexicon -- along with "high-school reunion" and "baby shower" -- and is also often accompanied by the feeling everyone in the world is hooking up but you.

As those of us who have difficulty jumping from one relationship to another know, it can be a time of stress, fear and uncomfortable moments at the X-rated DVD rental outlet. So we asked a few friends (names changed to protect the frustrated) and a couple of sex therapists what a dry spell means to them, and how best to cope.

"It's like Michel de Montaigne says: 'There's nothing greater than being self-sufficient,'" says Chris H., a teacher/musician in his early forties who apparently copes by reading 19th century French essayists. "And I really think, especially if you have an artistic bent, if you're with someone you're not compatible with just for the sex, there's a little voice in the back of your mind saying, 'I could be working on my writing or working on a song or watching pornography and getting more turned on.'"

Dry spells can be a time to focus on other things, he suggests, like work, career or that Claymation film idea you've had since dropping out of art school. "I would say in theory it gives you a little bit more fortitude and a little more perspective," says Chris, a feast-or-famine type of guy. "In reality it just means you jerk off more."

Even thinking of a dry spell as such can be detrimental, says Elizabeth K., 35, a philosophy prof and all-around opinionated gal. "If you're thinking of it as a dry spell, it's a distraction, and you've problem-atized it," says Elizabeth, whose longest period of enforced celibacy was the year she spent away from her boyfriend while studying overseas. "If you're single and happy it's not a problem. The whole idea presupposes people need to be humping all the time, and so it becomes a deprived state."

Dry spells can occur for any number of reasons -- comparing everyone to your ex, signaling desperation, meeting only French-speaking people. Kate R., also 35, suffered a year-long drought when she moved to Montreal from Vancouver for a job. "I talked about sex a lot," she recalls. "It starts to consume your thoughts. Ideally, I'd rather be focusing on work. It became such a big part of my life."

It's still a much-discussed topic. "My girlfriend was just saying the other day how badly she wanted to have sex, that she wanted her thighs to hurt the next day and to get it so hard her head bangs against the headboard. We can get pretty nasty about it. But when it comes down to it, neither one of us is going to go into a bar and say 'Hey, you and me, let's go.'"

The jury's out on whether it's better to think about sex or try to banish all thoughts of the hokey-pokey. "It's different for different people," says Dr. Bianca Rucker, a Vancouver-based sex and relationships therapist. "Some might benefit from talking and thinking about it, while others might want it off their radar completely."

Unfortunately, neither Dr. Rucker nor Dr. Faizal Sahukhan, a therapist who specializes in problems in ethnic and cross-cultural relationships, has many practical suggestions when it came to coping with the lack of life's great stress reliever. "Yeah, it's a bummer," they basically said.

Focusing on one's social life or on creative projects or even doing yoga could help. "In yoga, you're basically funneling your energy from the genital area towards the total body experience," says Dr. Sahukhan. "It's like, if you're a goalie in ice hockey and you're wearing this chest protector. It's not that thick, but when the puck hits you it absorbs so the pressure in that one isolated part is distributed throughout the whole area. That's what yoga does with sexual energy."

And both therapists also thought a period of sexual inactivity was a good time for self-reflection and personal growth -- or figuring out why you're not in that ideal relationship or why you keep dating the wrong kind of person or why you repel the people you're trying to attract. Talk to a therapist, read a couple of self-help books, look for the patterns that have led you to the state where the highlight of your week is The L Word or Red Shoe Diaries.

And if that doesn't work, chin up and look at the bright side: at least you're not married. Now, there's a dry spell we wouldn't wish on anyone.