Learn how to introduce the topic of sex early and effortlessly in your couples work and expand the therapeutic conversation to encompass eroticism, fantasy, and unexpressed desires. Discover how to:

• Create evocative conversations that help partners reconnect with their sexual selves and enhance their shared sense of erotic adventure
• Shift the emphasis from sex as a thing to do to a place that serves as a source of creativity, renewal and personal growth
• Integrate simple techniques about giving and receiving pleasure that can rekindle erotic excitement in long-term relationships
• Identify and address erotic blocks—internal and relational—that are the results of conflicts between relational needs for predictability and safety vs. needs for freedom and individual fulfillment

Esther Perel is New York Times bestselling author of The State of Affairs and Mating in Captivity. Her TED talks have nearly 20 million views. She hosts the Audible podcast Where Should We Begin? and leads the online clinical training platform “Sessions with Esther Perel.”

Explore how Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) can lead to not only greater connection but enhanced lovemaking by helping partners become more emotionally accessible to each other. You’ll discover how to:

• Turn down the emotional threat in a relationship so partners can reach for each other emotionally and physically
• Help clients transform painful moments of disconnection to starting points for restoring intimacy, emotional and sexual, in their relationship
• Coach partners in creating bonding moments that increase empathy, and open them to being fully available to each other
• Strengthen secure attachment between partners so they feel free to take more risks in exploring their sexuality with each other

Susan Johnson is one of the originators of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), is the director of the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute and the author of Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love.

A sexual desire gap—where one partner has a higher need for sex than the other—is the number one sexual complaint clients bring to therapy. Learn a practical, brief approach about how to bridge that gap and explore:

• How to recognize signs of the desire gap and address the issue directly and early in therapy
• A method for helping the high-desire spouse share feelings of hurt and rejection while guiding the low-desire spouse to empathically listen to the deeper needs of his or her partner
• Ways to introduce couples to the Five Love Languages to help them step outside their personal comfort zones for giving and receiving affection and validation
• How to bypass longstanding problems with low desire by adopting the action-oriented Nike philosophy—Just Do It

Michele Weiner-Davis is the director of the Divorce Busting Center in Colorado and author of several bestselling books, including The Sex-Starved Marriage and Divorce Busting.

Get a new perspective on the uses and misuses of porn. Also, discover new ways to address issues of shame, secrecy, and betrayal with couples in conflict about one partner’s porn use. The session covers:

• The difference between porn “addiction” and the habits of high-libido porn users
• How to address the shame and secrecy that's the most common problem with couples and porn
• How porn can play a role in helping couples in long-term relationships expand and heighten their shared erotic life

Ian Kerner is a licensed psychotherapist and nationally recognized sexuality counselor who specializes in sex therapy and couples therapy. He's a New York Times best-selling author of multiple books, including She Comes First.

This highly practical session offers concrete guidance on how to bring new insight to each partner's individual sexual history and interventions for helping couples expand their sexual repertoire. It covers:

• The importance of educating couples about willingness—not desire—as the necessary first step in a satisfying sexual relationship
• How to use sexual history-taking to help clients understand their current sexual issues in the wider context of their ongoing sexual narrative
• The process for helping a couple create a shared erotic "menu" that can bring more variety, acceptance, and playfulness to their sexual exploration
• How the technique of mindful sensate focus can free partners to explore new pathways to more embodied pleasure with each other

Suzanne Iasenza is a psychologist and sex therapist. She's a faculty member at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and the Postgraduate Program in Couples and Family Therapy of Adelphi University’s Derner Institute.

Get up to speed on the latest—often surprising—social trends in sexual activity and explore the significance of these emerging patterns for your clients. The session covers:

• What research is showing about the impact of alternatives to traditional rituals of dating and mating—including online dating, sexting, and hooking up—on what people are looking for in a relationship today
• How to see the latest forms of sexual experimentation as pathways to committed relationships shaped by caution, time and energy constraints, and fear of divorce
• How the latest findings in brain science can illuminate the interplay among the three components of love—sex drive, romance, and deep attachment
• The many cultural factors shaping new patterns of sexual behavior, including the divorce revolution, changing attitudes toward work and career, and the new financial pressures many young people face today

Helen Fisher is a professor at Rutgers University and the author of the acclaimed Anatomy of Love and Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love.

The Crisis of Trust in Today’s Couples—a 1-Hour Video Session. Join two of couples therapy’s leading researchers and practitioners in exploring how the latest research evidence can guide us in both understanding shifting relationship patterns and designing effective couples interventions. You’ll also learn how to understand such varied phenomena as the hook-up culture, polyamory, the dynamics of infidelity and the changing attitudes of millennial couples to divorce and commitment.

The Monogamy Continuum— a 1-Hour Video Session. Learn guidelines for helping couples understand, define, and negotiate the personal boundaries of fidelity and betrayal. You’ll also explore how to help your clients negotiate clear rules for porn, use of social media, and nonsexual but intimate relationships (i.e., "emotional affairs"). Plus, you’ll gain an understanding of the issues that can arise when working with nontraditional couples, such as those in open and polyamorous relationships.

The New Rules of Love and Commitment. Couples therapist Esther Perel has been recognized as one of the world's most original and insightful thinkers about couples, sexuality, and the peculiar paradoxes besetting modern marriage in the Western world. In this Symposium keynote address, Perel talks about the complicated and contradictory needs that are shaping marriage and commitment today.

Get additional insight and hear expert answers to common questions related to sex and couples therapy.