Sexless marriage is a complaint I get often from clients. While sometimes, in case of disease or injury, a complete sexual experience is impossible in marriage, it is always best to have whatever sexual experience is available to the couple. Marriage without sex is wide-open to temptation. Don't kid yourselves that you can be best friends & your marriage will last. Ultimately, temptation will arise, either from a partner's co-worker, another member of the church choir (this happens a lot) or a neighbor. The drive to have sex is powerful, & it will be satisfied, way or another.
Relationships continue to create in stages, even after the honeymoon is over. Most of us are familiar only with the early stages: meeting, dating, courtship and dedication. Some have experienced moving in, marriage and the honeymoon phase, where everything is brand new and amazing. This is what the romantic songs and films are all about, and it's become what people call "being in love." Extending the honeymoon phase indefinitely is what people fantasize about as "happily ever after." However, when the all-absorbing process of planning a wedding and honeymoon is over and the couple comes home to chores, work, money issues, etc., post-honeymoon shock can set in. Actual life is not as romantic as the courtship, wedding and honeymoon, but the actual work of developing a great marriage begins now.
Love and sex are like the roots that feed the tree. To keep that vital energy going, and the sap rising, you need to provide something new and fascinating. Seduction can be as simple as causing your partner to ask what you have been doing that has you so energized and interested. When you are enthusiastic, you are seductive -- it is the most stunning they can be.
In the development of intimacy, love matures and becomes reality-based. It is the part where the magic fades, and both of you start to relax and show your innermost, less-perfect selves. You are beginning to get to know each other, warts and all. You may feel vulnerable and awkward with each other. In this stage, you may argue, struggle for power, become irritable and unreasonable. The fear that your lover won't like this more realistic view of you arises. As a result, both partners require, and have trouble providing, lots of reassurance and usually lots of personal space. Lots of relationships don't make it through this stage, because if the lovers don't understand or expect this modify, it can feel like something is terribly wrong.
Because lots of people have not had lasting relationships of their own, they have no experience or models of the later stages: the development of intimacy and settled partnership phases.
Finally, if the relationship survives, the couple develops a style of intimacy that works for them. A couple who have made it this far feels more secure, more settled. Now the settled partnership issues come up: how to keep love alive over a long period of time; how not to take each other for granted; how to set goals beyond being together; and how to handle changes.
However, it takes several years to accomplish the full benefits of these later stages. Unless you have been through a long-term relationship before, it is hard to understand the difficulties encountered in the development of intimacy stage and the settled partnership phase. It is simple to be discouraged and quit. People often do much better in their second or third long-term relationships because their early experience taught them what to anticipate, and gave them a chance to acquire the necessary long-term skills. Because they lack schooling and experience, our early unsuccessful relationships often serve as practice for later successful ones.
Settled partnership is the stage where the pleasures of lasting love are realized. At this point, successful couples know they are loved as they are. They have become specialists in living life together. When all goes well, the couple has a feeling of security, intimacy and partnership that is truly satisfying and rewarding. When issues arise, they have the wisdom and experience to keep their dedication alive through cooperation and mutual understanding.
Here are four simple steps to create a successful marriage:
1. Talk often & honestly to each other about your frustrations, about sex, about anger, about disappointment, about your appreciation of each other, about the meaning of life, about everything.
2. Strive to work together to solve anything that comes up -- be a team, a partnership. Don't get stuck on who is right or wrong. Focus on what will solve the issue.
3. Keep your connection going through communication, sex, affection, understanding & concern for each other.
4. Have a sense of humor; give the benefit of the doubt, care about each other.
When your relationship lasts for some time, your lovemaking will change. As you get closer, passion no longer grows automatically out of the excitement of the new & unknown.
Rather than allowing your energy to subside, you can permit your lovemaking to modify and grow, deepening as your partnership does. Couples who create a"sexual repertoire which includes a variety of sexual habits, attitudes and options document feeling more satisfaction and freedom to express their love with variety that they never get bored. These suggestions will help you generate a variety of experiences together.
Quickies: These are ways you have sex when you don't have time for a full, leisurely romantic evening: of you giving oral sex before you leave for work, petting to climax in the automobile at a drive-in film, using vibrators to have orgasms without lots of foreplay late at night, taking a nap and having a "quickie" before dashing off to a party.
Sneaky Sex: This has the added excitement of "forbidden fruit" -- having silent sex behind locked doors while the kids are watching TV, sneaking lovemaking in your childhood bedroom while visiting your parents, visiting your partner at work and having quickie sex on the couch in a locked office.
Romantic Sex: This is the full-blown variety: candlelight, dinner, calm speaking, dressing up, perhaps a lovely hotel room, or a romantic dinner for when you have time alone at home. lovely for anniversaries, Valentine's Day, or anytime your relationship needs a boost.
New Couple Sex: Recreate a scene from your dating days, as closely as feasible -- the time you met at church and could not wait to get home and have sex, the flowers you used to bring home as a surprise, or saying all the foolish, wildly in-love things you said then.
Making-up Sex: After you have had an argument or a struggle, and forgiven each other, lovemaking can be additional tender and memorable.
Comforting Sex: When of you is mournful or stressed, the other is caring and soothing, doing all of your favourite things to comfort and relax you.
Relaxing Sex: This is the kind to do on a weekend morning, when you have no obligations, and can laze around, have breakfast in bed, and have sex for as long as you want; no pressure, no hurry and no demands on each other.
Reassuring Sex This is affection and intimacy intended to reassure a partner who is temporarily insecure, or designed to reaffirm your mutual love and dedication to each other. It is often accompanied by lots of verbal declarations of affection and explaining again why you are so important to each other.
Fantasy Sex: Act out all the foolish, prohibited or thrilling fantasies -- nurse and patient, little kids "playing house", master or dominatrix and slave, stripper and customer, extraterrestrial alien and abductee, famous film star and adoring fan, your favourite characters from a soap opera, novel or film, or anything else you can imagine. This is a lovely time for costumes, masks, sexual toys, leather outfits, or whatever enhancements you enjoy.
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