An Interview with Therapist Sari Cooper
Licensed psychotherapist, Sari Cooper, LCSW, CST is both supervisor and director of the Center for Love and Sex in New York City. An AASECT certified sex therapist, Sari has been in practice for over 25 years and is an expert on relationships, sexuality, and sex education and has been featured regularly across various national media channels as well as in print.
Jennifer Ghahari: Hey, thanks for joining us today. I'm Dr. Jennifer Ghahari, research director at Seattle Anxiety Specialists. I'd like to welcome with us licensed psychotherapist, Sari Cooper. She is an AASECT certified sex therapist and both supervisor and director of the Center for Love and Sex in New York City. Sari has been in practice for over 25 years and is a highly sought after expert on relationships, sexuality, and sex education in the media. She's also the founder of Sex Esteem, LLC, a company providing coaching, talks to adults, parents, and organizations to empower folks to get more embodied and informed.
Before we get started, can you please let our listeners know a little bit more about yourself and what made you interested in specializing in relationship issues?
Sari Cooper: Well, I came out from the performing arts world. I was a modern dancer. That's what brought me to New York City. I danced professionally after graduating from the Julliard school. So I was very much an embodied person in my first career. And then I started reading family therapy books and watching some family systems videos by some of pioneers. And I just thought as a second career, this was something I could bring a lot of my own talents to, both from an embodied sense and also reading nonverbal communication. So I fell in love with couples and family therapy, and in order to attend the Ackerman Institute, which is one of the oldest family therapy institutes in the country, I had to go and get a master's degree in social work.
And then that was sort of the beginning of this long sort of journey. And then once I started doing a lot of couples therapy, I realized that I didn't have what I really needed in terms of education around sexuality and sex therapy, because there are some biological, medical, predetermined kind of conditions that affect sexuality, not just the psychological ones and social ones.
Jennifer Ghahari: Great. You've written an article this year, titled “Seven Critical Talks to Have Before Your Wedding Day”. And the pandemic has clearly put a hold on many people's plans over the past few years. In your article, you mentioned that 2022 is supposed to have a 15% increase in weddings this year compared to 2021. Since we're in the height of wedding season right now, can you explain the “Seven Critical Talks” that couples should have?
Sari Cooper: I will. I actually printed that so had it in front of me. After years of working with couples, I see all those sort of holes in their agreements or nonverbal agreements or implicit versus explicit agreements. And I really felt like, to help people before they get going on their marital and marriage journeys, they should have these really important talks. So the first one is about creating boundaries with your family of origin. And a lot of people find this tension and anxiety early on when they're planning their weddings, because that's when these two families actually get to meet each other in person, but also the loyalties and rituals and sort of things that you would take for granted actually become challenges for this new couple. And I always say to couples, you are creating a new family. Even if you don't have children yet or ever, you are a family and you have to each be an Emissary to your families of origin in order to figure out for yourselves what your new family entity is going to do in terms of your values, in terms of your priorities.
And so a lot of times, couples/partners feel tons of pressure from their families of origin. It shows up like full force around wedding plans. So this is a great time to start discussing with each other, how do we feel about this? And then going back and saying to our families of origin, "Here's what we decided to do. It may be different from what your expectations are, but this is kind of, we've agreed that this is the way we would like to do it.”
The other one that is I've always found somewhat surprising is the discussion around having children. A lot of partners go forward into marriage with an unclear vision in terms of the priority and value of whether or not they're going to have children. And that's really critical because if you have one partner who definitely has always wanted to have children, there's been research done about people who are early-deciders about having children and late-deciders and the other partners saying, "Well, I'm not sure I have to decide later." I mean, this is a really important sort of distinguishing line and boundary. And so I always encourage people to talk about what that would look like, whether it's biological children, whether it's adopting… all of these issues, I think, are really important and yes, people do change their minds later. Maybe you have two partners who agree they don't want to bring children in the world for a variety of reasons. A lot of young people are saying climate change is a reason and they may change their mind later on. But I think that it's important to talk about it right now, before you go down the aisle.
One of the other things is it takes a village. And I've seen so many couples through the pandemic who have been so isolated from family and are going it alone and raising children and working. And I really think that whether or not you have ties with your sort of blood family, you need to create a chosen family around you to help in terms of supporting your marriage, in terms of supporting your family once you have, if you have children. I just think it's hard to expect everything from one person.
Jennifer Ghahari: Right. And so are you referring to maybe bringing in friends or maybe spiritual leaders? Is that what you're referring to?
Sari Cooper: Yeah, I think that we all have different parts of us and our partners can be there and compliment a lot of different angles of who we are, but not all. And so whether it's a spiritual or religious leader, whether it's just friends, whether it's people you decide to do monthly brunches with that really speak to some parts of you that maybe your partner doesn't get, I think it's important. Otherwise, one can feel like the marriage itself gets too weighed down with the expectations.
Jennifer Ghahari: Okay, great.
Sari Cooper: Yeah. Another one is infidelity and fidelity, which so I see a lot of couples after some sort of infidelity has been discovered. And I think that a lot of times, there's while someone might say, "Well, that's clearly infidelity if someone had penetrative sex." There are so many other sexual behaviors that one partner may consider being cheating or unfaithful that the other partner doesn't. They never discuss it.
Jennifer Ghahari: Can you give some examples what those may be?
Sari Cooper: Yeah. So people have come in saying, "Well, my partner said that he used pornography before we got married, but that he would stop using once we got married and that partner didn't stop using pornography or watching it" or sexually explicit media, as we call it. Or someone might go to a strip club. And they don't consider that being unfaithful because they're not actually physically encountering anybody. They're not having kisses or even touching anybody, but their partner may consider that cheating or against their values. So those are things, there are so many more nuanced things, whether it's flirting, whether it's an emotional relationship that you have with someone, either in person or online, that you're kind of sharing very intimate details, not only about yourself, but maybe about your marriage and your partner. And it's sort of... The partner feels like it's taking away from the intimacy you're sharing with them. And so that's where this terminology of emotional cheating came into being.
Jennifer Ghahari: And I would imagine too, with the prevalence of social media and just the ways that you can interact with people, maybe this type of perceived infidelity is rising too. Correct?
Sari Cooper: Right. So there are so many ways you can have a whole sexting relationship with someone, never even meet them in person. And yet, it's quite sexual and erotic in nature, and you're doing it with someone outside your supposedly monogamous agreement with your partner. So, yeah. Definitely.
Jennifer Ghahari: Great. Okay.
Sari Cooper: Another one was telling your partner, you appreciate them. I think one of the most longstanding complaints that people have with one another after sort of the first two years of being in love and having that kind of what we call limerence period, is that we take people for granted and we don't say thank you for even doing small things or paying them compliments. Just did a lot of research around couples and over many, many decades now came up with this ratio of a five to one ratio, meaning five compliments or five positive statements to each sort of request for change.
Jennifer Ghahari: Oh. Seems pretty fair.
Sari Cooper: Most people don't have a hard time doing that five.
Jennifer Ghahari: Right. Yeah.
Sari Cooper: And then the other one is to discuss religious and spiritual beliefs. I think a lot of studies have shown that those people who say they practice some sort of religion has been decreasing and people attending places of worship, research and census and surveys have shown us that people are going less and less often to institutions, but they may define themselves as spiritual.
Jennifer Ghahari: Right.
Sari Cooper: And so I think going forward, it's important to sort of distinguish for yourself, what you're feeling in terms of religion or spirituality. And it may require some sort of compromise on how you're going to honor that spirituality, honor your community. If you come from a more religiously attuned community or family, ahead of time and not sort of say, oh, we'll figure it out as we go along. Because a lot of people can get into a lot of battles around that.
Jennifer Ghahari: Oh wow. And I think we covered all seven, correct?
Sari Cooper: I think I did.
Jennifer Ghahari: Okay, awesome. In terms of when people should talk about these things, I would imagine it shouldn't be the week before they actually get married. Right? Is there an approximate time that is really ideal to kind of hash all of these things out?
Sari Cooper: I think depending on how serious it is, I would say for some things like children, where you're going to live, religious practice, things like that… I would say, 10 months ahead.
Jennifer Ghahari: Wow. Okay.
Sari Cooper: Or a year. I mean, I've had people come to me three to four months before their wedding vows, with really serious discordant issues that they're trying to solve right before they get married, including trauma, where one partner has had background of trauma and may not have even revealed it to their partner.
Jennifer Ghahari: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. So it definitely sounds like maybe even aiming for a year or longer, to have all these important discussions because when you're getting married, it's stressful enough. You don't need to have all of these other issues on top of it. And just start out the gate running strong.
Sari Cooper: Yeah, exactly. Well, you think about it. A lot of people get engaged and leave a year at least to plan their nuptials. Well, why not give a year to really iron out some of these differences. So you know you're going in fully cognizant and fully confident that you're on the same page. Even if you've compromised, it's still you're on the same page.
Jennifer Ghahari: That's great. Thank you. And it seems one positive thing that's maybe come from the pandemic is that are people are reevaluating their lives and what matters to them. In your article, you mentioned that couples feel less pressure to participate in religious or conventional wedding traditions, that really aren't meaningful to them. Can you discuss that a bit? What types of shifts are you seeing?
Sari Cooper: I've seen people who elope, who say, "I feel strongly about this person. I don't need a huge party. I don't have to wait for COVID to sort of recede. I just want to move on with my life and take the next step." So that's one thing I've seen. Another I've seen is not having a religious leader or clergy person conduct the ceremony itself, who gets sort of certified by online as a life minister. I don't know what they're called. Because they find it actually more personal, someone who's known them, someone who maybe had even introduced them. Yeah. Other sort of rituals where you think that a parent will escort their kid down the aisle, their adult child, I should say. They walk by themselves because they feel they've come a long way. They're an independent adult. They're not being “given away”. I mean, there's that sort of feminist slant to it. They're not being “given”, they're walking into a relationship they've chosen. It's sort of like of their own agency. So things like that are... You don't see as often in the movies. These are new ways of coupling.
Jennifer Ghahari: That's great. It's really nice to hear that people are making it what they want to be and truly encompassing themselves in the relationship as part of this ceremony. It's great.
Sari Cooper: Yeah.
Jennifer Ghahari: Getting back to, unfortunately, infidelity, we had touched upon before, you've written an article about that as well this year. And you mentioned that 25% of committed monogamous couples experience some degree of infidelity at some point in their relationship. What are the typical causes of infidelity? And is there any way that people can lessen the likelihood of it happening to them in their relationship?
Sari Cooper: I think that going back to what I was saying, I think talking about potential things that are going to tempt you, what embodied experiences might make you feel abandoned, anxious, resentful, that might lead you or tempt you and so you should discuss on just how you are going to protect your monogamous agreement. And one of the other things I didn't mention before, which is really important in terms of critical talks is erotic interests.
Jennifer Ghahari: Oh, okay.
Sari Cooper: So frequently, partners go into marriage without necessarily sharing all of the things that they're sexually into. And they end up in our offices because they feel very ashamed about them. They feel scared of losing their partner if they came forward and said, "I'm really into X behavior. I'm really a kinky person and I know you're much more vanilla. How are we going to negotiate that?" And it's due to shame, right? Most people, when we do our sexual histories with them, their parents didn't talk to them about sex. They didn't talk about, give them really good books or resources to learn the real facts. And so many young people now are being brought up, seeing these sexually explicit entertainment videos and thinking that's real sex. That's entertainment for some people, not for everybody, but it's not what really goes on between two partners who are more open and loving and interested in pleasuring one another.
So I think that forging those, consistently, not just at the beginning, but having ongoing conversations where you check in with each other quarterly and say, "How are we doing? Have you been happy with the kind of sexual engagement we've had? Is there something that you've been interested in exploring that we haven't? What would that entail?" But very neutrally because what happens sometimes is sometimes one partner will float some sort of idea. Maybe they saw it in a movie and then they see their partner's reaction and tone of disgust, shuts down that conversation right away. And so one of the things, we tell our partners is if we're going to open up this conversation, here are the rules of the road. You can't be critical of what you're hearing. You can't make someone feel more ashamed than they might already feel about something that a lot of... It's a huge diversity of interest out there in terms of erotic and sexual interest.
Jennifer Ghahari: It sounds like communication is really key across all of these different venues that you're talking about, in order to have a good relationship.
Sari Cooper: Yeah. And I would add noncritical communication.
Jennifer Ghahari: Good point. Yeah. Great. And if people can just communicate upfront and be noncritical ahead of time, then it would save them the headache and the heartache and having to go to therapy to discuss things.
Sari Cooper: Exactly. Yeah. And I also think the other thing that goes on sometimes in infidelity, I've seen is there's this real life shifting event. So sometimes people have said to me, "My best friend died from cancer." And in that moment I thought, I have to go get what I need, because I've been suffering and throwing myself into withholding and hiding for so long. I'm going to go out now and get what I want because I've been so repressed and so resentful.
Jennifer Ghahari: Oh, okay.
Sari Cooper: And life is short. Look it, my friend just died. Or a parent passing on or parents splitting up. They're life-changing events that... And COVID-19, by the way, where people were actually faced with potential sickness and sometimes death. So they started questioning, it's an existential crisis. It wasn't just a pandemic, about “What do I really want in life and what have I sort of been missing out on and not giving myself permission to ask for?”
Jennifer Ghahari: Great. So if infidelity does occur and as you said, there could be so many different perceptions of what's infidelity. When should a person generally try to make it work? When should they stay or when should they...
Sari Cooper: It's an excellent question. And actually one of my associate therapists runs a women's coaching group for women whose partners had broken their sexual boundaries and it's called “Reclaiming Oneself After Partner Infidelity”. And we did a whole interview with each other, a discussion about a lot of myths. And one of these myths is, well, if your partner has cheated, it's over. And if you stay with that person, you're a loser. I'm being kind of hyperbolic here, but there is this sort of cultural belief that if you stay with someone who has crossed those boundaries, then you yourself should be embarrassed for yourself. So a lot of people feel really like they can't... And they can't tell people because they're afraid that if they decide to stay, they'll be judged forever more. They might lose their friendships. So I think first of all, start with: a lot of couples stay together after a sexual boundary has been breached. Why? Because there's enough there that they want to preserve. Maybe there are children involved and also, they want to feel intimate again.
Jennifer Ghahari: Wow. Okay.
Sari Cooper: For many of them, they breached the boundary because they weren't getting something from someone else.
Jennifer Ghahari: Oh wow. Okay.
Sari Cooper: Or they were working out something internally that may have been more related to their history than with their partner that they had never actually addressed before, including trauma and sexual trauma. So I think that we always ask people, "Are you ready to create a new marriage with new discussion points you didn't have before? How are you going to repair the trust?" And I would say that if you have one partner who is in kind of denial or isn't feeling much remorse about their behavior, I think that might be a telltale flag that the work that is needed, because there's a lot of work involved, to repair the marriage. It might not happen because you need two very committed partners. You can be committed and ambivalent, but committed to do the work and not continually making excuses for themselves. And the other part of it that we see is sometimes, the infidelity has to do with one person's hypersexual or out of control sexual behavior.
So their repeated casual sexual hookups that have been going on for years and the person feels out of control from their experience. And they may even have other addictive patterns that may be a lot of times, sometimes maybe people stop drinking alcohol and binging and then they increase these sexual behaviors. So that's actually the other group that I run virtually is a coaching group for men who have out of control sexual behavior who want to create new sexual health plans for themselves and need that support to sort of fortify their sexual health plans, based on their values and their priorities. Yeah. So I think that there are so many different avenues that people go down. I always say, having some group to support you as you're going through this very tumultuous and heart-wrenching experience is just helpful scaffolding to figure out kind of where you're going down the road and what you eventually want for yourself.
Jennifer Ghahari: Yeah. Wow. So regarding people who have out of control sexual behavior, how does that impact their partners, if they're in a relationship? Like you said, they may choose to cheat or to seek things elsewhere. Are there any other impacts that could happen on the relationship?
Sari Cooper: Right. Well, first of all, the broken trust. It's sort of the ground we walk on and what most people come in feeling is like a bomb went off and the ground upon which they're standing is totally shocked. So, that's a huge impact, but sexual health includes STIs. And many times I find people aren't asking the question of, "Well, did you use a condom?"
Jennifer Ghahari: Oh wow.
Sari Cooper: What precautions did you take? What risks did you take? Did you get yourself tested in between these behaviors? And so part of being a certified sex therapist is also kind of being a sex educator with a hat on at times to explore and inform people of the precautions they need to take for themselves. So, go get tested. And sometimes partners feel like so devastated by an STI they got because of their partner's infidelity that they just withdraw sexually for a very long time because their whole, not only emotionally and psychologically they've been impacted and the trauma of that, but their body has also been impact impacted. There have been also situations in which the partner who has the compulsive behavior has impregnated somebody else.
Jennifer Ghahari: Yeah. So it's a full gamut of things that could happen.
Sari Cooper: Yeah.
Jennifer Ghahari: Wow. Your practice, you mentioned that you see both heterosexual and LGBTQ relationships. Are there any differences between these two types of relationships? Love is love. Do people in both cohorts endure the same types of struggles or are there actually differences that you find?
Sari Cooper: I would say they all have the same sort of struggles, but I would add this, that many gay male couples have already negotiated and had the conversations around what infidelity is. And some of them are more open in terms of bringing a third party in. Now, not to say that with consensually non-monogamous or ethically non-monogamous couples, there isn't room for cheating or infidelity. There is. But I find that because their culture kind of supports that possibility and has for longer, than in the heterosexual community, I think those conversations and those rules around that behavior, for instance, we will only play together with a third partner. We're not going to do that individually or you do your thing, I'll do mine, but we won't have anyone in our home that we share with one another. So all those things I think are a little bit different, I would say.
Jennifer Ghahari: Again, it sounds like communication is key with everything.
Sari Cooper: Yeah, definitely.
Jennifer Ghahari: So here's the million dollar question. Based on your research and experience working with couples, what's the best resource pieces of advice that you can give people to help them have the most fulfilling, lasting, happy relationship with their partner?
Sari Cooper: I would say two main things.
Jennifer Ghahari: Great.
Sari Cooper: The first is know yourself. Really give your sign yourself the time to understand all the parts of you, even the dark parts of you that you may not like and do it in an embodied way because a lot of times, some of the parts of ourselves that we're not as in touch with are in our bodies.
So get to know yourself and then communicate with partner because then they're knowing all sides of you, the light sides and the ones that you might find a little bit darker and they know and you know what each of you is sort of set up for going forward. You're always going to have some arguments. I always say that couples have themes of their arguments that keep kind of having variations. It's sort of like choreography, there's the theme and the variation and it keeps coming back. Know it going forward. Then you can start to work on strategies on when we get into that rough place, how are we going to get out?
Jennifer Ghahari: Was there another one or that was the combination, correct?
Sari Cooper: It's the combination. It's knowing yourself and then knowing how to communicate and that's kind of, not kind of, that's why I created this term “sex esteem” because if you know yourself and you feel like you can be compassionate and give yourself grace around your interests and then be able to talk to your partner about it, you're in a much better situation going forward.
Jennifer Ghahari: That's fantastic.
Sari Cooper: Yeah.
Jennifer Ghahari: Thank you. As someone specializing in relationship issues, do you have any other advice or parting words that you'd like to share with our listeners?
Sari Cooper: I would just say, do your research. Really give yourself, I mean I created Sex Esteem, my sex esteem program as an adult sex ed and relationship ed for adults. Because I think we, as adults, did not as children did not get as much education and so go out there. Some great resources out there about what real sex should look like or be like, or feel like, learn how to ask questions instead of making commands. Be curious about your partner and yourself because we're growing. We need to keep growing. We're just growing people, organisms.
Jennifer Ghahari: Wow. That's fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. For our listeners, we're going to link up in our transcription with a lot of Sari's websites/on different parts of her website. So feel free to check that out and thank you again, Sari, and we wish you all the best.
Sari Cooper: Thank you so much, Jennifer. This is great.
Please note: The views expressed by the interviewee are for educational and informational purposes only, are not meant to diagnose or treat any condition, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Seattle Anxiety Specialists, PLLC.
Editor: Jennifer (Ghahari) Smith, Ph.D.