Personal Blogs

24^th November 2011 saw the third meeting of the Northern Existential Group (NEG). This month our reading was a paper called 'A Road Less Travelled' by M. Guy Thompson. Based on the author's own relationship with R.D. Laing, the paper wove together biography of the famous 'anti-psychiatrist' with an account of his understanding of the concept of 'authenticity'. What did authenticity mean to Laing, and how well did he embody it within his own life?

This paper was a perfect one for the NEG as our discussions tend to focus on the personal and pragmatic issues of the concepts under consideration. Are these existential ideas something that we want to strive for in our own lives and, if so, how might we go about that?

Here we will briefly introduce R. D. Laing for those who are unfamiliar with him. We will outline the concept of authenticity as it is presented in M. Guy Thompson's paper, and then give a flavour of the NEG discussion on the topic.

R. D. Laing

R. D. Laing (1927-1989) grew up in Glasgow. He studied medicine there and became a psychiatrist in the British army. Later he trained and worked at the Tavistock clinic alongside the likes of Bowlby and Winnicott. Laing formed the Philadelphia Association in 1965 and set up a psychiatric community project at Kingsley Hall and later other locations. At PA houses patients with diagnoses of psychosis lived together in communities with therapists and other patients, and there was minimal use of the restraints or drug treatments which were commonplace in mental health systems.

Although Laing did not embrace the term 'anti-psychiatrist', his views about mental illness were – and continue to be – radically challenging to conventional views. Influenced by existential philosophy he questioned the idea of mental illnesses which could be diagnosed according to symptoms (although his opinion on whether there were real mental illnesses or not altered over time). Instead he saw the feelings and behaviours of people with 'mental illness' as expressions of their lived experience and valid attempts to communicate their distress.

Instead of locating mental illness in biology, he saw it as a response to, often contradictory, messages within the family and wider society. Indeed, at times he suggested that 'madness' may be a saner response than 'sanity' to the impossible double binds in which people are placed when their experiences are not allowed to be articulated. These ideas are covered in Laing's famous book The Divided Self.

Authenticity

Laing's ideas about authenticity are explicitly related to his theories of mental illness because he suggests that people erect false versions of themselves in order to conform to society, and that this is why they frequently become confused about who they are. For this reason, part of the ethos of Kingsley Hall, and the other Philadelphia Association houses, was to communicate without falsity. People were encourage to speak in all conversations as honestly and openly as they would in a therapy session, with no small talk. Laing's own style was frequently confrontational in attempt to break through falsity in communication.

Thompson distinguishes Laing's version of authenticity from the kind of 'pop' authenticity of US talk-shows and self-help books. This latter form of authenticity is rooted in the humanistic view that there is some core inner self that we can get in touch with, often through our feelings rather than our thoughts, and that this authentic self will be a nicer, more loving, person. Such an idea is based on both a dualistic splitting of emotions and thoughts, an optimistic vision of what human beings are 'naturally' like, and a theory of selfhood that is problematic from an existential perspective.

Laing's authenticity was based more on Nietzsche and Heideggers' versions of authenticity which did not link authenticity and ethics and which dispute the idea of any core self beneath what we construct. This existential form of authenticity involves a courageous facing of the inevitable anxieties of life. This includes going against societal norms when they conflict with this. Heidegger's position was that humans were inauthentic the majority of the time (seeking approval, validation, recognition and so on). We get our sense of identity and – along with it – inauthenticity from the crowd we (seek to) belong to, but it is possible sometimes to transcend this. This is not about getting at any genuine self (because the self is always constructed) but rather being aware of our general inauthenticity and acting in a way that does not attempt to fit in or to court favour.

Laing's authenticity, however, was intrinsically related to ethics because he saw human suffering as resulting from inauthenticity (particularly the double-binds it places people in). Therefore authenticity was a superior way of relating which involved loving another person without 'trespassing' on them or doing them violence by using them for our own narcissistic ends. This requires both the courage to open up to another person, and the awareness to see when you are in danger of trespassing (for example, by demanding that they conform in some way rather than being authentic themselves). This is the awareness that Laing saw as frequently absent in the mental health profession: those who think they are being helpful deny the thoughtless way in which they treat the vulnerable people they are caring for, and the demands they place on them to act in inauthentic ways.

From Thompson's summary it seems that Laing's authenticity includes the following elements:

• Honestly owning up to our inauthenticity

• Acting without regard for what others will think of us (rather than being a 'phoney' and adhering to social niceties)

• Having the courage to stick to our principles rather than being hypocritical

• Being brave enough to open up, authentically, to others

• Being aware enough not to trespass on others, doing violence to them by denying their authenticity

Discussion

The rest of Thompson's paper – and much of our discussion – focused on whether Laing, himself, embodied the form of authenticity that he espoused. This is part of a wider question of whether such thinkers need to 'walk the walk as well as talk the talk' in order to be convincing, or for us to take up their ideas. We could see both positions on this. On the one hand, when the personal is political as it so clearly is in Laing's work perhaps his personal behaviour should be under scrutiny. On the other hand, all thinkers are likely to have feet of clay and we can question whether it is acceptable to use this to pathologise them and to dismiss their ideas, as has been done with Laing, Neitzsche and Heidegger.

Thompson points out that Laing's writing became increasingly pretentious and inaccessible over time, that he courted fame despite this surely being a form of inauthenticity, and that his behaviour became bullying and cruel in ways that alienated most of those he was close to. Again, this latter seems far from Laing's ideals of open-hearted communication and not trespassing on others, although it could be argued that he was deliberately trying to confront people with their own inauthenticity.

A classic example of this was in his exchange with the American humanistic therapist, Carl Rogers. Thompson tells the tale of the night before the organised debate between Rogers and Laing. Laing and his group invited Rogers and his group round to his home and then out to a restaurant. Laing told Rogers that his 'California nice-guy' act would make an authentic exchange impossible. Laing proceeded to get drunk and to shout out (about Rogers) 'he's not a man, he's a perrrrson!' (a sarcastic reference to Roger's book On Becoming a Person). Later he spat in the drink of one of Rogers' colleagues.

The NEG group spent much time considering Laing's idea that anger is the Royal Road to authenticity. Is niceness always inauthentic? Is it always authentic to strip away artificial niceness however much trespassing is required to do so? We found ourselves questioning why the so-called 'negative emotions' would be considered more authentic than the 'positive' ones. Is this another problematic dualism? Also, we noted the contradictions between two aspect of Laing's authenticity (in order to be authentic in this way one has to trespass on others, demanding that they be authentic according to his definition).

We wondered if Laing would have the same impact if he had not acted the 'trickster' in these ways: punching holes through inauthenticity. Then again, might he potentially have had more impact if he could have expressed his ideas in a way that was more palatable to people. Related to all of this there is the question of whether one person can ever really judge the authenticity of another.

In response to this latter, we reached the conclusion that we certainly can't judge the authenticity of another (there can be no objective measure of authenticity), but that equally that we cannot really trust our subjective sense of whether we are being authentic or not because we are likely to be a poor judge of whether or not we are in a form of 'false consciousness' (believing we are being authentic when actually we are simply saying or doing what is expected of us). There is also the question of whether it is always authentic to go against the norms and conventions around us. We considered Sartre's example of wearing a moustache when everyone else was doing so: Would it be authentic to sport such a moustache nowadays (as long as we weren't doing it for 'movember' – the charitable event where people grow moustaches for the month of November)? Even in going against convention are we still in relation to this and potentially even reinforcing it?

As often in our discussions we related Laing's ideas to gender. We considered how somebody with Laing's ideas and behaviours might have been treated if they were a woman, and this led us to consider whether it was possible for women to be seen as authentic in the same way that men could be, given the way that men are regarded as 'normal' humanity (according to Sartre, de Beuavoir and others), and the potentially harsher sanctions (internal and external) against women behaving authentically.

Another question we explored was whether authenticity may only be possible when all ways of being were open to us. For example, some of us felt that kind of anger that Laing displayed simply wasn't an option in our behavioural repertoire. Did that condemn us to 'inauthentic niceness'? We decided that there would always be limits and constraints on what was possible, but that authenticity was possible so long as there was some degree of choice over how we acted.

In the group there was a sense that it was valuable to hold both a Laingian and a Rogerian way of being. The question which we kept returning to was 'how far do you go?': How much do you flout convention and how much do you police yourself? These are important, and emotionally loaded, questions. 'Too far' in one direction can leave us alienated and alienating, 'too far' in the other and we can loose ourselves completely in the (contradictory) demands of others.

In a way the contradictory nature of Laing's version of authenticity can provide a helpful constant corrective: be honest and courageous, but in open-hearted ways that does not trespass on others. Of course it is impossible to know how our actions will be experienced by others, but if we hold these tensions when engaging with the world perhaps we will occasionally experience moments which at least feel authentic.

Questions to Consider

• Do you agree with the components of authenticity that Laing identified?

• Is inauthenticity implicated in human suffering?

• Is anger the royal road to authenticity? Can we be nice and authentic?

• If we are being authentic is it our task to point out the inauthenticity around us, and in others' behaviours?

• Is authenticity equally open to everyone?

• How can we know if we, or others, are being authentic?

• Is authentic something to aspire to?

• Does authenticity lie in our actions or in the reasons behind them?

• How far do you go?

Find Our More

You can download M. Guy Thompson's paper here.

The international R. D. Laing institute is here.

The Philadelphia Association is here and has plenty of downloadable pdfs on existential topics.

The BBC documentary, The Trap, covers R. D. Laing's ideas in some depth, as does the documentary Just Another Sinner.

The website of the Northern Existential Group is coming soon!

Mindfulness: A strategy for social engagement?

People who read my blogs and other writing will know that one of the things I'm heavily into is mindfulness. This is, broadly speaking, the practice of cultivating awareness, often through meditation where you gently focus on your breath going in and out, or on the sounds around you, or on your bodily sensations as you walk very slowly back and forth.

My excitement about mindfulness may seem a bit peculiar to those who know that the other areas which I'm passionately engaged in are all very social: issues around relationship structures, discrimination of marginalised groups in society, and power and conflict. Mindfulness seems such an internal, individual thing, how can it possibly be relevant to these matters. As somebody asked in an Open University seminar on the topic: 'where is the social?'

Such questions were the motivation behind a weekend workshop/retreat which I attended earlier this month. Steven Stanley and I put together the weekend with a group of colleagues to address the question of social mindfulness. The weekend consisted of a combination of periods of meditation and other mindful-type practices (such as Qigong), together with presentations and discussions linking mindfulness to various social issues including sustainability, interpersonal and intergroup conflict, prejudice and discrimination, mental health and communication.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the weekend was the way in which the kinds of challenges we were discussing were so live within the group itself. Perhaps - particularly as a relationship therapist - I should have expected that these psychosocial issues would come up in the process of our interactions as well as in the content of them. But I really didn't anticipate it, and I found it tough indeed to notice how much my thoughts, when meditating, kept returning to niggles about my exchanges with other people, and how many of our group discussions themselves became conflictual or manifested some of the very power dynamics which we were trying so hard to address.

Mindfulness retreats, in my experience, are often humbling experiences in this way: in the silence and stillness we are forced to confront the kinds of petty judging and competitiveness that we fall into a lot of the time, and it is not a comfortable experience. At times I found it frustrating. Perhaps on some level I wanted us to prove to everyone how socially beneficial mindfulness could be by having some wonderfully experience of perfect connection, simply because we were all being so mindful! But perhaps what really happened was a lot more useful because it reminded us that what we really were was just a group of human beings, with all the messiness that entails. The inevitable tensions, scratchiness, miscommunications and disengagements – if we are courageous enough to face them – provide a perfect arena for thinking about how all our mindful ideas and practices could usefully be brought to bear on other social situations.

In my next two blogs I want to focus on two tensions, which emerged for me, from the weekend, which I think are key to this question of how mindfulness ways of understanding the world, and living our lives, might be useful in terms of wider social issues. The first is about whether we focus inwards on ourselves or outwards on the world around us. The second is about a tension between kindness and honesty. In both cases, of course, these are not mutually exclusive things, and perhaps the important shift is from an either/or way of seeing them (either I can focus inwards or outwards, either I can be kind or I can be honest) to a both/and way of embracing each 'side', or perhaps bringing them into dialogue with each other, or seeing what it is like to oscillate between them like a pendulum rather than prioritising one 'side' over the other.

Focus inwards / focus outwards

Perhaps the most interesting discussion of the weekend, for me, was one about internal or external focus.

Some of us found ourselves arguing for the social benefits of very internal mindfulness practices because – if we do not look into ourselves in this way – we may well find ourselves intervening with others in ways that are harmful to them. One way in which we are all social is that our exchanges and interactions over the years (with close friends, wider groups and society at large), leave us with painful feelings, fears about ourselves, and uncomfortable habits. For example, we may have grown up in a family where it was expected that everyone be tough, or we may have been bullied at school for being a misfit, or we may have taken on board a wider societal habit of judging people by their appearances. If we are not aware of these things we may find ourselves just acting on them when we interact with others (e.g. trying to be the tough guy all the time). Or we might try to suppress them and keep them hidden, but find that they blurt out, or that we project them onto other people (e.g. using an appearance word like 'fat' as an insult without meaning to, or viewing somebody else as a misfit because we're trying not to be one ourselves).

The extreme 'internal' position might be that putting our 'stuff' onto other people like this is so inevitable that the best thing we can do is to focus inwardly a lot, and just endeavour not to cause harm in these ways. Trying to intervene with others is just too dangerous and will likely involve us imposing ourselves, or our society, onto them in ways that are deeply problematic because we can't ever know enough about their situation.

Perhaps the opposite view to this is to see the social benefits only of external practices where we do actually go out into the world and intervene. This view might look at internal practices, such as meditation, and ask what good they are doing. In a world where there is so much suffering, meditation, therapy and the like seem like incredibly privileged activities, only available to a few who have the necessary time and resources. They can also appear like a kind of self-indulgent naval-gazing which encourage us to focus inwards on self-improvement or on beating ourselves up, instead of outwards on activities which might actually diminish suffering or help other people. Wouldn't it be better if all the time, energy and resources spent on such internal-focused practices was put into activism or directed towards those with greater needs?

The extreme 'external' position might be to focus entirely on intervention: to get out into the world and find out what the most pressing issues are (the threat to the environment perhaps, or poverty, or war), to develop our skills and knowledge in these areas, and to do something which might be of help. External mindfulness practices might take the form of encouraging people into mindful dialogue to resolve conflict (for example, by teaching listening practices), or they might be ways of increasing sustainability through encouraging awareness of 'conditioned arising' (e.g. where the pair of jeans we see in the supermarket came from, and what the impact is of buying them).

The well known mindfulness teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, was presented with just this challenge of inner or outer focus. In the 1970s a monk asked him what the best response was to the crisis of refugees in Vietnam after the war: should the monks stay in their monastery and meditate, or should they get out there and try to feed and house the refugees. Thich Nhat Hanh responded that they should do both, and his book The Miracle of Mindfulness was written as a fuller response to this social issue. This is why the book focuses on bringing mindfulness into all our daily activities, rather than it just being something that we do sitting on a cushion.

Steven Batchelor, in Buddhism Without Beliefs, also emphasises a kind of oscillation between retreat and engagement. He says that our practice cannot be abstracted from the way in which we interact with the world, which needs to be with integrity, but perhaps we cannot know what the ethical way to act is if we do not take time to tune into ourselves and to consider others with empathy. However, we can never reach a certainty of the impact our actions will have, so we have to act, to be open to learning from our mistakes, to notice when our habits kick in when we are acting on self-interest, and then to act again, attempting to avoid this.

'At times we may concentrate on the specifics of material existence: creating a livelihood that is in accord with our deepest values and aspirations. At times we may retreat: disentangling ourselves from social and psychological pressures in order to reconsider our life in a quiet and supportive setting. At times we may engage with the world: responding empathetically and creatively to the anguish of others' (Batchelor, 1997, p.42).

Perhaps it is useful, also, to be aware of the risk of meditation – and other more 'inner' focused practices – to become a mode of self-monitoring, done with the aim of self-improvement, which takes us away from engagement with others, as well as of the risk that externally focused activities may be done in a way that hurts others if we do not attempt to be aware of what we bring to those situations in terms of our personal hopes and fears.

My next blog will focus on another tension from the weekend – that around kindness and honesty. I'll also conclude with a summary of social mindfulness and some places to read more.

Multiple (perspectives on) Orgasms

During the last few days I have been attending the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS) conference up in Glasgow. Right before that, on June 11^th, we had the conference of the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists (COSRT), which is the key British organisation for this group of practitioners.

I organise the programme for the COSRT events and, to make it go with a bang, this year we decided to focus on the orgasm! On Saturday we spent the day learning about the science and art of orgasms, and on Monday we brought our various perspectives to the attendees of WAS in a very well-attended symposium on the subject. Here I want to give a flavour of just some of the ideas that were presented over the course of the two events.

Orgasm science

During the COSRT conference we were very fortunate to hear from three of the major international researchers in this area: Roy Levin from the UK and Beverly Whipple and Barry Komisaruk from the US. We learnt that many of the same underlying physiological processes are involved in orgasms regardless of the sex of the person involved: for example, increased blood flow to the genitals, activation of the dopamine system, and the involvement of the hormone oxytocin. Indeed, research has found that experts cannot tell the difference between descriptions of orgasms given by people of different sexes. Vaginal muscles, like those of penises, contract during orgasm, and many also ejaculate a specific fluid as well (sometimes called 'squirting'). However, there is no evidence that vaginal and uterine contractions are involved the transport of sperm for fertilisation (a common myth).

Given that the genitals begin in the same form in everyone – only being sexually differentiated later in foetal development – there are more similarities than we often realise. For example, the clitoris is not simply the 'button' that most people think it is, but rather a structure of much larger size stretching back through the body, meaning that some people with clitorises experience pleasure or orgasms from internal stimulation, for example of the 'G-spot' at the front of the vaginal wall. However, it is important to remember that 70% require external stimulation of the clitoris glans (the button) in order to orgasm, so orgasms from penetration alone are actually quite rare. Similar to the G-spot, the stimulation of the prostrate through the rectum can produce/enhance orgasm for many people.

Orgasm art

When I organised the programme for the conference and symposium I wondered whether there might be conflict or tension between the perspectives of the scientists who were speaking, and those of the therapists and others who were talking from a more practical, or even creative, point of view. Actually, nothing could have been further from the truth. There were so many resonances between the different talks. For example, we heard from Roy Levin that sounds made during orgasm occur at the same time as contractions and are an important part of the process. Then tantric teacher Barbara Carrellas echoed the importance of sound, and the involvement of deeper and higher notes in different orgasmic experiences.

Similarly, Alex Iantaffi and myself spoke about the fact that it is important not to see orgasms as the goal of sex. Psychosexual therapists find that clients who put too much focus on orgasms and/or erections or penetration often experience problems and don't enjoy sex as much. Beverly Whipple said exactly the same thing in her talk, emphasising that it is better for sex to be pleasure-directed, rather than goal-directed. There are many things that might be involved in sex (fingers, tongues, fantasies, imagery, kisses, self-touching, other-touching, holding, caressing, talking, various kinds of penetration, and various kinds of sensations – sometimes including orgasm), but not all of these are necessary each time or for every person.

We also heard from several speakers that genitals need not always be involved in orgasms at all. Barbara Carrellas introduced us to tantra-style energy orgasms which involve breathing in a circular motion up and down the body and squeezing the pelvic muscles during this process. Again, this is not done with the goal of orgasm, but can result in orgasmic experiences which build and build and which are indistinguishable from other kinds of orgasms when the brain activation is recorded in an fMRI scanner.

Speakers Michelle Donaldson and Sue Lennon spoke about the potential for widening out our understandings of orgasms, and the parts of our bodies and minds which are involved in them, for people with spinal injuries and various cancers. They may have less, or no, genital sensation, following injuries or surgeries, but they can still experience orgasms if they develop these wider understandings and experiences. Psychosexual therapist, Tricia Barnes, spoke at the WAS symposium about the importance of taking a biopsychosocial approach to orgasms, which incorporates the whole body, the perceptions and thoughts people have, and the wider sociocultural world they inhabit which may have positive or negative notions about sex and orgasms.

Question marks around the current treatment of orgasms

During the COSRT conference we screened the recent documentary Orgasm Inc which follows the race, in the US, to find a medical treatment for women who have difficulty experiencing orgasm (along similar lines to the popular treatments which exist for 'erectile dysfunction'). The documentary cautions against a purely medical approach for all the reasons that we have already mentioned:

• The focus on attaining orgasms is goal-directed rather than pleasure-directed, and may therefore be counter productive in encouraging focus on a particular 'end point' rather than people being present to the whole experience of sex, whatever it involves.

• Orgasms are biopsychosocial experiences, and medical treatments alone may stop us from considering the psychological and social processes involved. For example, many women feel they should have sex even when they don't want to in order to maintain their relationship, and there are many negative social messages about sex for women who have 'too much', or 'too little', sex.

• Most people with clitorises need external stimulation in order to experience orgasm, and many of those seeking medical treatment are still under the popular misconception that it is 'normal' to experience orgasm from penetration alone.

• There are whole body, emotional, and imaginative techniques which can open up orgasmic experiences which would be well worth trying before taking a medical treatment with potential side-effects which have not been researched long-term yet. Certainly a good starting point would be exploring what turns you on and communicating about that with sexual partner/s.

In our symposium at the WAS conference, Alex Iantaffi and I concluded that the constant focus on what is 'normal' in sex, and on diagnosing people with 'disorders' or 'sexual dysfunctions', is unhelpful. Instead it would be useful to recognise that orgasms mean different things to different people at different times. An orgasm can be experienced as all of the following things and more:

...a mechanical release, a demonstration of one’s masculine or feminine sexuality, a relief of stress, a loss of control, allowing someone to see you at your most vulnerable, a display of intimacy, the height of physical pleasure, a transcendent spiritual experience, a performance demonstrating prowess, a giving of power to another, an exerting of power over another, a form of creative self-expression, a humorous display of our rather-ridiculous humanity, an unleashing of something wild and animalistic, a deeply embodied experience, an escape from bodily sensations and pain, and/or a moment of complete alive-ness or freedom...

So orgasms can be positive experiences, they can be relatively mundane, or they can be negative. Not everyone sees them as an important part of their experience, and many may prefer other kinds of stimulation, or to stay in the realm of fantasy, or to focus on other aspects of life. Instead of worrying so much about having certain kinds of experiences (like orgasms), we could simply be with our sexuality as it is at the time, allowing it to be all that it is, and to ebb and flow over the course of our days, weeks, and lives. Instead of trying to force ourselves to fit what we perceive as 'normal', perhaps we could put that energy into letting go of our preconceptions about sex and discovering our sexualities anew.

Find Out More

• The website for Orgasm Inc is here.

• You can find the accessible book on orgasms which Beverly Whipple and Barry Komisaruk co-authored with Sara Nasserzadeh, and Dr. Carlos Beyer-Flores here.

• Barbara Carrellas's Urban Tantra website is here.

• The COSRT website is here, and their journal, Sexual and Relationship Therapy, is here.

• The Scarleteen website contains useful information about exploring and communicating sexual turn-ons.

Happily Ever After?

The London Natural History Museum has been putting on a series of events in connection with its Sexual Nature exhibition. On Friday I spoke at the last of these events which aimed to explore what makes a successful relationship, along with anthropologist Volker Sommer.

The first half of the event focused on the kinds of relationships that take place amongst animals other than humans, and across different historical periods and the various human cultures around the world today. It is interesting that, when trying to answer these kinds of questions, we often try to determine what is 'natural' (by looking to other animals) or what is 'normal' (by looking across time and culture). We often assume that what is natural or normal must be what is good. But that in itself is worth questioning. Behaviours like taking antibiotics or being kind to animals could be seen as 'unnatural', and high levels of self-sacrifice for others or the ability to sing beautifully are 'abnormal'.

With that note of caution in mind, when we do look across animal species or human societies what we actually find is diversity. The Sexual Nature exhibition itself demonstrates the huge variety of relationship forms which exist amongst animals: from species of bird where many different females mate with the male whose displays are most visually attractive, to the male seahorses who give birth to their young, to the bonobo chimpanzees who use sex as a social activity to develop and reinforce bonds with other male and female chimps. Volker talked about the various forms of polygyny, polyandry, and polygynandry that have existed across the world at various times (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy), often relating to the physical environment that people find themselves in. For example, there are societies where women marry a man's brothers as well as the man himself, where men have sexual relationships with other men early in life before marrying a woman, where men have more than one wife who take on different roles in relation to work and domestic labour, and where the norm is for people to have 'trial marriages' - with someone of the same, or other, gender - by cohabiting for a while before making any legal commitment.

Diversity is also the case when we look at UK society today. The UK is one of the 10-20% of cultures worldwide which are held to be monogamous. However, as I mentioned at the event, statistics on infidelity in marriage of up to 50-60% suggest that we could say that non-monogamy is actually more usual, but that it usually takes the form of secret affairs, rather than the recognised forms of polygamy that exist elsewhere. There are also many forms of open monogamy which are commonly practised, from the 'new monogamy' where couples are – to some extent – open to emotional and sexual commitments with people other than their partners, to forms of swinging and open relationships, to polyamory where people form multiple romantic and sexual relationships. It is more useful to view relationships today as on a continuum of sexual monogamy (from one sexual partner to many) and a continuum of emotional monogamy (from one close intimate person to many). Individuals are negotiating their own relationship rules around monogamy, for example whether they decide whether to remain close to ex-partners, or whether online sexual contact is acceptable.

Returning to the question of what makes a successful relationship, it is clear that the answer to this is 'different things for different people at different times'. We live at an uncertain time where old rules of relating don't necessarily apply to the patchwork families and serial relationships that many people are experiencing. However, we remain in a situation where some relationship forms are considered far more acceptable than others, and afforded much more social approval, recognition and protection.

When asked for my prescription for a 'successful' relationship I suggested that, on an individual relationship level, they would involve people respecting each others' values, communicating openly about these (rather than assuming that they are shared), and being open to the inevitable shifts and changes that will occur in relationships over time. On a societal level it is important to recognise the variety of relationships that people are actually experiencing, rather than trying to squeeze everyone into one-size-fits-all models of relationships or family.

Find out more:

The Sexual Nature exhibition is open till October 2011

You can read the tweets from the 'Happily Ever After?' event by searching twitter for the #sexualnature hashtag.

There is more about monogamy elsewhere on my blog

The Royal We

Also posted over on Society Matters

With the royal wedding fast approaching it is interesting to consider what advice could be given to Kate and William, or any other young couple marrying in the UK in 2011. If we bring together psychological, sociological and philosophical work on relationships, as well as the experiences of relationship therapists, what are the key things that we could offer to people on the point of tying the knot?

Relationships Today

Perhaps the first thing to say is that, whilst Kate and Williams' situation is rather an extreme one, it also illustrates very well some wider patterns that are present in relationships today. Many commentators have linked their wedding to the recession, and certainly marriage is often found to be an almost 'recession proof' industry. When things are bad economically, people still want to get hitched.

Also, the desire to wed remains despite our knowledge of the high chances of the marriage ending at some point. In terms of UK statistics, one in ten marriages will not last five years, and somewhere between a third and a half will eventually end in divorce (more exact statistics are difficult due to yearly fluctuations). Of course, there is probably even more pressure on in the case of the royal wedding, due to the high rates of separation in William's family (three out of four of the Queen's children having been divorced).

So what does it mean that people, Kate and William included, are choosing to marry despite all of this? Perhaps it speaks to a great deal of hope that is being placed on romantic love, to the extent that some have suggested that it is almost a new religion in its own right. At a time when work is precarious, and when many people do not have strong religious beliefs, relationships are often the place that they turn to seek out validation, meaning and belonging. This is quite a change from past times when relationships generally served more practical purposes to do with finance, work and the raising of children. As historian, Stephanie Coontz, puts it: 'people have always loved a love story. But for most of the past our ancestors did not try to live in one'. These days we do try to live in a love story, seeking out The One and hoping for a happily-ever-after despite all the evidence against this being the most likely outcome.

The pressure is on relationships to fulfil us in every way throughout our – increasingly long – lives. However, we also know that relationships are a point of great potential struggle and pain. Living up close alongside somebody for many, many years may be one of the most difficult things that any of us do. Indeed, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson argue that romantic relationships are the most dangerous places to be because they are where we are forced to confront ourselves and to learn about how we are capable of behaving. It might be possible to keep up a shiny, happy veneer with our work colleagues, our neighbours, and even our families once we are no longer living with them, but our partner gets to see us when we are at our most tired, stressed and ill.

This is something that is well captured in the Christian wedding vows. It really will be for better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health, and at the worse, poorer and sicker times we all (us and our loved ones) have the capacity for cruelty, coldness and cowardice. There will be times when we find ourselves frustrated, angry and bored with the love of our life and scared about what that may mean, as well as times when we see the loving gaze slip off their own faces to be replaced by something else. Such times can be terrifying if we have invested in this relationship the idea that it is a constant validation that we are okay and secure. It can be even harder if what we were expecting was some kind of constant perfection and happiness.

This may sound depressing and defeatist: an argument for not marrying at all, but it is not. Even if we didn't get married, or form romantic partnerships, we would still get intimate and connected to people, and these struggles would still arise. What I am arguing against are the industries that continue to sell us dangerous myths of perfect people and eternal happiness: the ever-smiling billboard, television and movie couples, and the self-help books and magazines that promise to reveal the secrets of 'successful' relationships which will lead to impossibly happy-ever-afters. This is what so many publishers, advertisers and film-makers sell, because they know that people want to hear it. But our constant saturation in these messages is the very thing that is leading to so much pain and struggle and heartache. And the image of the perfect love may well result in us leaving a relationship too quickly assuming that there must be something wrong with it, or staying in a tough relationship too long because we don't want to admit to 'failure'.

Perhaps instead of loading all these expectations and pressures onto Kate and William, and every other marrying couple, we could offer something different: a recognition that relationships will be tough at times and that there aren't any simple tricks to constant happiness. As Beck and Beck-Gernsheim have pointed out, along with wanting a great deal from relationships, relationships themselves have changed so much in the last few decades that we can feel lost and uncertain. Old rules, for example about rigid gender roles in relationships, no longer apply, but there are no new rules out there for us to follow either. As they put it: 'love is becoming a blank that lovers must fill in themselves'.

If love is a blank then the thing that is, perhaps, most needed to fill in that blank is communication. The wedding gift that we might give to Kate and William, based on all the relationship therapy and research about relationships, would be communication.

A Wedding Gift: Communication

I'll use the wedding vows that Kate and William will be making to demonstrate both the importance of communication these days, and also the ways in which it might work. We make a lot of explicit, and implicit, promises to each other all the way through relationships, but we often fail to think much about what these promises mean, or to check whether they mean the same thing to both people. Research suggests that young couples actually often disagree quite strongly about the things that they thought they had both signed up to.

Kate and William's vows will be the ones from the Church of England 1662 Book of Common Prayer. This means that they will go something like this:

'I, William Arthur Philip Louis Windsor, take you, Catherine Elizabeth Middleton, to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward; for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish, till death do us part; according to God's holy law. In the presence of God I make this vow.' (and vice versa)

And later: 'With this Ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.'

There are a lot of promises in there. To pick out some key ones, it seems that in marriage people are promising the following:

• To stay together, through whatever happens, till death
• To love each other throughout this time To have, or belong to, each other
• To be sexual throughout the relationship (with my body I thee worship)
• To share their worldly goods (usually understood as living together and sharing money)

In terms of the first promise, it might be useful – giving the statistics on separation – for couples to talk through this commitment. Would they want to stay together in exactly the same way, for example, if they found that they were fighting all the time in ways that hurt themselves and those close to them, or if one or both of them changed such that they found themselves with very different life goals. Some recognition that people and relationships change over time would be helpful here, and perhaps thinking about what they might do when such changes happen. Would the relationship staying in its current form be prioritised over their well-being? The idea that relationships can shift and change might take the pressure off a little as it offers something in between staying together exactly as we are, or completely ending the relationship.

In terms of loving each other throughout, it is worth talking through what love means to each person and how they express it, or like to have it expressed. People often feel very differently about this, for example, with one person liking regular declarations of love and big romantic gestures, whilst the other prefers practical signs that the other person has taken them into consideration (by doing the washing up, for example), or thinks about them during the day (the odd text message).

In terms of having and holding, it is very important to consider to what extent people belong to each other and to what extent they are free. This is at the root of so many big relationship conflicts. For example, one person might make a decision about their career which the other would have expected to be consulted upon, or one might think that they were free to be closer to certain friends than the other is happy with.

There is also often an expectation that marriages will stay sexual throughout, but there tends to be very little communication about what sex means to each person and what they actually enjoy. Research has found that people who have been in relationships for over a decade still haven't told their partners all of their sexual likes and dislikes, and of course these can change over time. It is useful to talk through what people want sex for, which actually differs quite a lot (e.g. from a release, to an affirmation of their attractiveness, to a reassurance about the relationship, to an expression of intimacy, to a sense of a physical need that requires regular fulfilment), and also recognise that this will fluctuate through the relationship too.

Finally, it is well worth communicating about what will be shared and what will be separate. Does sharing worldly goods mean having joint finances, for example, or keeping some separate? Do we expect to spend all our time together, or to have periods of separation? What are the limits on what would be acceptable (e.g. can we go on holiday with other people, or work apart for a while)? And what about space? Are we planning to live together, sleep together? Will there be any separate space? Who will be responsible for keeping shared space clean and tidy (and to what extent)? Or for caring for children, pets or plants? Will we have any things we keep private (e.g. certain activities or information)?

It is likely that with all these kinds of questions and more, there will be some aspects that both people agree on, some where they disagree but are able to reach a compromise which meets each other's requirements as well as possible, and some where they simply can't agree. These last ones occur in every relationship. They are points of tension which are likely to crop up every now and again, but can be a lot easier to cope with if there is awareness of them and respect for difference (rather than each person trying to force the other into their way of thinking). It can be very hard to respect that, while you would like to share everything, the other person really values keeping some things to themselves, or while you like lots of public displays of affection and 'I love you's', the other person prefers more private intimacy. Also, of course, both people will change over time, so it is worth revisiting these promises and seeing whether things have altered and any renegotiation is necessary, rather than 'you've changed' being a fatal accusation.

Hopefully a grounding of mutual commitment to communication, to respect for difference and change, and to understanding and forgiveness for behaviour when things get tough, will be a better basis for the rough and the smooth to come, than the expectation of perfection (in oneself and one's partner) and a fairytale happily-ever-after.