What part of this dilemma should a counselor point out is Yelena’s responsibility to acknowledge and address?
The sexual disconnect between James and Yelena is essentially a consequence of an absence in open and honest communication between them about sex, particularly in expressing their specific needs in relation to sex, which is referred to in psychological literature as ‘sexual self-disclosure’ (Tang, Bensman, & Hatfield, 2013; Litzinger & Gordon, 2005) or ‘dyadic sexual communication’ (Pazmany, et al., 2014). Yelena had been enduring an unsatisfactory sex with her husband for more than two decades because she decided not to communicate her needs on the mistaken notion that doing so is being unfeminine. Yelena felt the dilemma between her need for ...
