Miami · Culture and intimacy · 6 min read

Machismo, Marianismo and the Bedroom

The sexual scripts many South Florida couples inherited, why they rarely get discussed out loud, and how they show up in therapy.

Written and clinically reviewed by Vanessa Cushing, LPC, NCC, MS — AASECT-Certified Sex Therapist, licensed in Virginia, DC, Maryland & Florida.

A note on what this is not

What follows describes patterns clients bring into the room. It is not a description of a nationality, a religion, or anyone's family. Plenty of Cuban, Colombian, Venezuelan, Brazilian, Haitian and Caribbean couples in Miami have none of this, and plenty of couples with no connection to any of those communities have all of it. The reason to write it down is that when it is present, it usually goes unnamed for years.

The scripts that show up most

• A man should always want sex, always be ready, and should not need help with either. Under this rule, an erectile difficulty is not a health issue — it is evidence about who he is.
• A woman should be desirable but not desiring. Wanting sex enthusiastically risks one judgement; not wanting it risks another. Both are available at once.
• Sex is a duty owed inside a marriage, which quietly removes the possibility of it being wanted.
• You do not discuss sex — not with your mother, not with a doctor, and not, in practice, with your partner.
• A problem in the bedroom is a private failure to be absorbed rather than a thing to be solved.
• Religious messaging that framed sex as dangerous before marriage and then expected it to become joyful and uncomplicated the day after.

Why they survive

These rules are rarely stated, which is exactly what protects them. Nobody sat you down and explained that a man may not ask for help with an erection; it was communicated by what the men around you never mentioned. Unspoken rules cannot be argued with, because there is nothing on the table to argue about.

They also tend to be reinforced by love. A grandmother's advice, a mother's endurance, a father's silence — these are not experienced as constraints but as loyalty. Which is why the goal is never to reject where you come from. It is to work out which parts of it you actually want to keep.

What changes when they are named

Something specific happens the first time a couple says one of these rules out loud in front of each other. The wife who assumed her husband's withdrawal meant he had stopped wanting her hears that he has been avoiding sex because he was afraid of failing at it. The husband who assumed his wife's reluctance was rejection hears that she has never once been asked what she likes and would not know how to answer.

Very often both people have been protecting each other from the same conversation for years. Naming the rule does not resolve it, but it moves the problem from being between the two of you to being in front of the two of you — and that is a completely different thing to work on.

In therapy

Practically, this means the sexual history we take covers where your ideas about sex came from, not only what is happening now: what was said at home, what was said at church, what happened when you asked a question as a teenager, what your first experiences taught you to expect. Then the work separates the inherited rules from the ones you would choose today, and builds the sexual relationship on the second set.

A Spanish-speaking clinician can be requested when you book, and it is worth saying if the conversation would be easier in the language the rules were originally taught in.

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading

• Sex Therapy in Miami — The main Miami page — who we work with, how sessions run, and how to start.
• Sex Therapy vs Couples Therapy
• Couples therapy