Sex in the Cycle: Integrating Sexual Attachment into Couples Therapy

Click here to register.

Dates: Thursday, April 15th and Friday, April 16th, 2027. 9:00 am - 4:30 pm

Location: Wyndham Bloomington - Mall of America: 1901 Killebrew Dr, Bloomington, MN 55425

Watch this space for a link to book a hotel room at the venue if you are coming in from out of town.

Our Trainer, Laurie Watson, PhD, LMFT, is an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and Supervisor and an ICEEFT Certified Emotionally Focused Therapist and Supervisor-in-Training. She has spent over 30 years working exclusively with couples, specializing in the integration of emotional and sexual attachment.

Dr. Watson is the author of Brave Love; Great Sex - Harnessing Attachment Theory for Passionate Relationships (Penguin, 2026) and Wanting Sex Again - How To Rekindle Desire and Heal a Sexless Marriage  (Penguin 2012) and a widely read Psychology Today blogger. She is also the co-host of the Brave Love; Great Sex podcast, where she brings candid, fun and clinically grounded conversations about intimacy and desire to a global audience of 15M.

As an international speaker and trainer, she teaches therapists how to work effectively with sexuality inside the couple’s cycle, helping clinicians move beyond avoidance and into confident, attachment-based interventions. Her work emphasizes that sexual and emotional connection are inseparable forces in long-term love, and that therapists must be equipped to address both.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Good news: if you’re a couples therapist, you’re a sex therapist.

Therapists have been taught that working with sexuality is a specialty, but it’s not. It can’t be. Why? The research shows that sexual attachment is as essential to a couple’s bond as emotional attachment. Unfortunately, most couple therapists get very little training in how to work with sexual attachment.

This training closes that gap.

Drawing from decades of clinical experience and teaching by Laurie Watson—and her work through the book and podcast Brave Love; Great Sex—this course equips therapists to confidently and directly address sexuality as an essential part of the couple bond.

At the heart of this model is a powerful organizing framework: romantic relationships are shaped by three behavioral systems —emotional, sexual, and caregiving. When the sexual cycle goes unaddressed, couples often experience confusion, rejection, and escalating insecurity. If therapists only track their emotional cycle, we will miss a critical driver of connection, vitality, and meaning in the relationship. Sexual disconnection can erode the sense of being loved—or even being in love. Research suggests that a significant proportion of distress and divorce is tied to unresolved sexual difficulties. Sex is not just body parts and physiology - it’s a force for attachment.

With didactic lectures, videos and experiential learning, this training with help therapists:

  • Confidently initiate conversations about sex rather than waiting for couples to bring it up

  • Identify and track the sexual pursue–withdraw cycle alongside the emotional cycle

  • Understand how sexual patterns are rooted in attachment needs and fears

  • Apply Stage One and Stage Two EFT interventions to sexual dynamics

  • Reframe sexual dysfunction as a relational process rather than an individual deficit

  • Help couples move from pressure and avoidance to curiosity, responsiveness, and erotic connection

  • Work with both emotional and sexual vulnerability as parallel change processes

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Participants will be able to:

  1. Identify the key assumptions of attachment theory as it applies to adult romantic relationship.

  2. Describe three qualities of secure sexual attachment.

  3. Explain three issues to ascertain in an early sexual assessment.

  4. Name one area of possible blocks to the therapist's own comfort and flexibility in processing sexual content during a couple’s sexual assessment.

  5. Use specificity in the couple’s sexual encounter description to assemble, deepen, distill, and share their emotional experience.

  6. Identify three factors that influence whether a person becomes a sexual pursuer or withdrawer.

  7. Describe one hypoactive and one hyperactive strategy used in the negative sexual cycle.

  8. Identify typical blocks for the sexual withdrawer and pursuer around sexual issues in Stage 1 of EFT.

  9. Name the typical sexual response sequence in male and female bodied people.

  10. Name an important therapeutic intervention for a queer client regarding their likely sexual developmental process.

  11. Differentiate the key Stage 2 EFT interventions around sexual attachment to create a more secure bond.

  12. Explain how sexual dysfunction is maintained within the relational “between” space of the couple.

Early Bird Prices: (good through December 1st, 2026)
$295 for interns/students
$345 for pre-licensed
$395 for fully licensed
$20 discount for MNCEFT members- Members! Make sure to pick the appropriate “level” from the drop down menu on the bottom of the registration page to ensure you are getting your discount!

GROUP DISCOUNTS! We are offering $50 off per person for groups of 5-9 and $100 for 10+ people. Email amanda@amandapikala.com to get the discount code your participants will use when registering.

EFT Trainers are invited to attend at no cost. Please email anne@evolvetherapymn.com to receive a discount code.


Regular Prices: (Starting December 2nd, 2026)
$345 for interns/students
$395 for pre-licensed
$445 for fully licensed
$20 discount for MNCEFT members- Members! Make sure to pick the appropriate “level” from the drop down menu on the bottom of the registration page to ensure you are getting your discount!

Registration closes at 10 pm on Saturday, April 10th, 2027.

Continuing Education Credits: We will apply for 12 CEUs by the MN Board of MFT including 1 Cultural CEU and 1 Ethics CEU. Check with your board to see if you can transfer CEUs if you have a different credential.

Diversity: We aim to cultivate a climate of inclusion, an environment where all can feel safe, valued, cared for, and given an opportunity to form meaningful connections with each other.  In all facets of our work we strive to embody what we hope to see in the world – a just, loving humanity and community in which people are free to be themselves fully – where people can embrace their most basic universal human attachment needs without fear of persecution or marginalization as a result of religion, race, ethnic or national origin, sexual/affectional orientation and preferences, gender expression, family structure, age, class, mental health, physical character or disability.  These values are inherent in the attachment science and humanistic approach to intervention that all our work is based on.

Cancellation Policy: If you need to cancel. please email Amanda Pikala at amanda@amandapikala.com. If you cancel by April 1st, 2027 you will receive a full refund, minus a 5% administrative fee. If you cancel on or after April 2nd, 2027, no refund will be issued.

Click here to register.