“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”
—Tom Robbins
“Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.”
—Proverbs 5:19 (KJV)
Passion comes easily in the early days of a marriage. Almost every word, glance, and touch vibrates with lust. It’s nature’s way of drawing us together. But after the first captivating rush of desire, what’s the place of sex in a relationship? Besides pulling us in, can sex also help to keep us together, to build a lasting relationship? Emphatically, yes. In fact, good sex is a potent bonding experience. The passion of infatuation is just the hors d’oeuvre. Loving sex in a long-term relationship is the entrée.
But we don’t typically think of sex in this way. We’ve been conditioned by our culture and a myriad of relationship gurus to regard passion as more of a passing sensation, less as a durable force. We are told that the sexual fires that burned so brightly at the start of love inevitably burn down, just as our relationships, once filled with excitement, inexorably turn into prosaic friendships.
Moreover, we’ve been taught to see sex as an end in itself. Slaking desire, preferably with a big orgasm, is the goal. We emphasize the mechanics of sex, the positions, techniques, and toys that can heighten our physical bliss. Sex is all about immediate physical satisfaction, we are told. All this buzz in our culture often crowds out the Christian message—that sex is sacred and an inherent part of the bond between husband and wife. It is meant for mutual satisfaction and to celebrate this unique bond; the Song of Solomon is a beautiful example of this kind of celebration.
Here again we see the parallel between bonding science and spiritual wisdom. In fact, this science tells us that secure bonding and fully satisfying sexuality go hand in hand; they cue off and enhance each other. Emotional connection creates great sex, and great sex creates deeper emotional connection. When partners are emotionally accessible, responsive, and engaged, sex becomes intimate play, a safe adventure. Secure partners feel free and confident to surrender to sensation in each other’s arms, explore and fulfill their sexual needs, and share their deepest joys, longings, and vulnerabilities. Then, lovemaking is truly making love.
Just how important is satisfying sex in sustaining a love relationship? Good sex, it turns out, is integral though not paramount to happy relationships. Sex educators Barry and Emily McCarthy of American University in Washington, D.C., have surveyed the research in this area. Contented spouses, they conclude, attribute only 15 to 20 percent of their happiness to a pleasing sex life, but unhappy mates ascribe 50 to 70 percent of their distress to sexual problems. Satisfied partners see sex as just one of many sources of pleasure and intimacy, while despondent partners home in on sex and often view it as the chief source of trouble.
Why is sex such a huge issue for dissatisfied partners? Because typically it’s the first thing affected when a relationship falters. It’s not the true problem, though. Think of sexual distress as the relationship version of the “canary in the mine.” What’s really happening is that a couple is losing connection; the partners don’t feel emotionally safe with each other. That in turn leads to slackening desire and less satisfying sex, which leads to less sex and more hurt feelings, which leads to still looser emotional connection, and around it goes. In shorthand: no safe bond, no sex; no sex, no bond.
It’s easy to understand. As Harry Harlow noted in his book Learning to Love, humans are set apart from other animals by affectionate face-to-face sex during which “the most vulnerable surfaces of the body are openly exposed in compromising positions.” We simply are not wired to be wary or afraid and turned on at the same time.
The safety of our emotional connection defines our relationship in bed as well as out. Depending on how comfortable we are with closeness and how safe we feel about needing our loved one, we will have different goals in bed. I call these three kinds of sex Sealed-Off Sex, Solace Sex, and Synchrony Sex.
In Sealed-Off Sex, the goal is to reduce sexual tension, achieve orgasm, and feel good about our sexual prowess. It happens with those who have never learned to trust and don’t want to open up, or who are feeling unsafe with their partners. The focus is on sensation and performance. The bond with the other person is secondary. This kind of impersonal sex is toxic in a love relationship. The partner feels used and objectified rather than valued as a person.
As her spouse, Kyle, listens, Marie tells me, “I am a blow-up Barbie for him. Our sex is so empty. It takes me to the end of alone.” “I guess it can be like that,” Kyle agrees. “But we used to be closer in bed. Since all the fighting started, I have given up on us. I stop feeling, and sex becomes mechanical. Then I see you as ‘the woman.’ It’s safer that way. At least I know how to do sex. Closeness is harder. If I see you as ‘Marie’ and think of all our problems, I just get upset. So, I focus on the sex thing. It makes me feel better, at least for a moment or so.”
Kyle shuts down emotionally because he doesn’t know how to do “closeness.” But others, especially if they’ve felt betrayed by past lovers, stay emotionally aloof by habit or by choice. They prefer sex in which arousal and orgasm are ends in themselves. They are more likely to have sexual encounters that are short, often lasting no longer than a night. And they hold back from any actions that could invite emotional engagement, such as reciprocal touching and kissing, according to research by psychologist Jeff Simpson of the University of Minnesota and his colleagues. Indeed, the porn star Ron Jeremy advocates partner swapping to alleviate sexual boredom, but his rule is “absolutely no cuddling.” Emotional connection, the door to real eroticism, is kept shut. However, without doubt, the poster boy for performance-oriented sex is James Bond. In five decades, he’s run through a host of women who are virtually always potential enemies and not to be trusted. Only once has he been in love, simultaneously emotionally and sexually involved. (Bond marries the woman and, conveniently, she is killed off on their wedding day.)
Sealed-Off Sex seems to be practiced mostly by men. This may be due to the hormone testosterone, which fires up sexual drive, or it may be pure cultural conditioning. Men are taught early on that displaying too much emotion is wimpy. Not knowing where to draw the line, they often avoid emotion altogether. Sealed-Off Sex might also be the result of men’s sexual wiring. Who was it who said, “Men are like microwaves, but women are slow cookers”? A man can move through arousal to orgasm in seconds with minimal communication. A woman takes longer to become aroused, and it is harder for her to stay focused on simple sensation. She needs her partner to coordinate movements and responses with her. She needs communication and connection for good sex.
For both men and women, emotional disengagement closes off the richer dimension of sexuality. Young people who stay emotionally distant have more sexual partners, but they don’t enjoy sex as much as those who are comfortable getting close to others, finds Omri Gillath, a psychologist at the University of Kansas. In this kind of sex, there is excitement, but the passion is short-lived. The experience is one-dimensional, impersonal, and so continual novelty, in the form of new partners or new techniques, is necessary if the turn-on is to continue. More and more sensation is the name of the game.
For some Christian partners, impersonal sex may be especially seductive since it has the allure of the forbidden. And so pornography is a problem in many Christian communities. As a Catholic priest is reported to have said, the trouble with pornography is not what it shows but what it leaves out. It leaves out human connection. Ironically, the evidence is that a steady diet of porn often shuts the door on arousal and passion with one’s real-life lover. As I suggest in my book Love Sense, true passion occurs when the longing for connection comes together with emotional attunement and erotic play. This kind of passion can be reignited again and again as a couple experiences moments of renewed and deeper connection over time.
Solace Sex occurs when we are seeking reassurance that we are valued and desired; the sex act is just a tagalong. The goal is to alleviate our attachment fears. There is more emotional involvement than in Sealed-Off Sex, but the main emotion directing the sexual dance is anxiety. Gillath’s research demonstrates that the more anxious we are about depending on others, the more we tend to prefer cuddling and affection to intercourse. Mandy tells me, “Sex with Frank is okay. But to be truthful, it’s the cuddling I really want. And the reassurance. It’s like sex is a test, and if he desires me, then I feel safe. Of course, if he ever isn’t horny, then I take it real personally and get scared.” When sex is an antianxiety pill, it cannot be truly erotic.
Solace Sex can help keep a relationship stable for a while, but it can also feed into raw spots and negative cycles. When anything goes wrong in the mutual desire department, there is instant hurt and negativity. If this kind of sex is the norm in a relationship, partners can get caught in obsessively trying to perform to please or in being so demanding that it turns off sexual desire. When physical intimacy becomes all about tamping down attachment fears, it can drive lovers apart.
So Cory tells his wife, Amanda, “Well, what is wrong with lots of lovemaking? I bet lots of people make love every morning and every night. And lots of women have two or three orgasms each time.” Amanda looks at me, and our faces register instant exhaustion and dismay. Cory sees this and turns away. He looks sad and defeated. “Yes, well. It’s not really about the sex in the end, is it?” he says. “The only time I am really sure you love me, the only time I feel really safe with you, is when I have you in my arms or when we are making love and I am really turning you on and you are responding to me with your body. Then I know you love me and want me. When I think about it, I know that these demands for sex are too much. The more I push you into it, the less you like it. Truth is, I am so obsessed with losing you. Since our breakup last year, I am just scared all the time, so making love is like my security blanket.” Amanda moves her chair closer and puts her arms around him. Cory rests in her arms for a little while and then says, in a voice full of wonder, “Hey, you’re holding me! You don’t think less of me, saying that?” Amanda kisses him on the cheek. When Cory realizes that he can reach out for intimate touch and the comfort of being held, Cory and Amanda’s relationship changes for the better and so does their sex life.
Solace Sex often happens when partners are battling Demon Dialogues, and regular safe, comforting touch—the most basic bonding connection—is missing. “Sex used to be a place we could really come together,” laments Alec, whose ten-year marriage to Nan is falling apart. “But now she never wants to make love. I just feel rejected all the time. Sometimes I get enraged. Every time I think of how she doesn’t seem to care about making love with me, it hurts. She says I am too pushy, and she sleeps in the spare room. In fact, never mind sex, we don’t even touch each other anymore.”
When partners tell me that they cannot be considerate of and watch out for each other with everyday acts of caring, I worry. When they tell me that they are not making love, I am concerned. But when they tell me that they do not touch, I know they are really in trouble.
The approximately eighteen square feet of skin we carry as adults is the largest sense organ we have. Tender caressing and stroking of our skin and the emotions these actions evoke are, for most of us, the royal route into love relationships. Touch brings together two fundamental drives, sex and our need to be held and recognized by a special other. As the late anthropologist Ashley Montagu noted in his book Touching, skin-to-skin contact is the language of sex and the language of attachment. Touch arouses, and it also soothes and comforts.
We have a vital need from our earliest moments to the end of our days for touch, observes Tiffany Field, a developmental psychologist at the University of Massachusetts, who argues that North Americans are among the world’s least tactile people and suffer from “touch hunger.” In children, a lack of touch, of holding and caressing, seems to slow the growth of the brain and the development of emotional intelligence, that is, the ability to organize emotions.
Males may be particularly vulnerable to touch hunger. Field points out that right from birth, boys are held for shorter periods and caressed less often than are girls. As adults, men seem to be less responsive to tender touch than are women, but in the men I see, they crave it just as much as do the women. Men do not ask to be held, either because of cultural conditioning (real men don’t hug) or lack of skill (they don’t know how to ask). I think of this whenever my female clients complain that men are obsessed with sex. I would be, too, I say, if sex were the only place apart from the football field where I ever got touched or held.
“I just want Marjorie to reach for me and touch me,” Terry maintains. “I want to know she wants me to come close. I want to feel desired, wanted. And not just in a sexual way. It is more than that.” “No, you just want bang-bang and an orgasm,” Marjorie disagrees. “Maybe that is all I have known how to ask for,” he retorts. We cannot funnel all of our attachment needs for physical and emotional connection into the bedroom. When we try, our sex life disintegrates under the weight of those needs.
The best recipe for good sex is a secure relationship where a couple can connect through A.R.E. conversations and tender touch. Even sex therapists concur that the essential building block of a healthy sexual relationship is “non-demand pleasuring.” For this reason, I often suggest to couples that they abstain from making love for a few weeks. With intercourse temporarily forbidden, neither partner gets anxious or disappointed, and they can both concentrate instead on exploring all the sensations of touching. Getting used to asking for tender touch deepens a couple’s bond, and knowing each other’s bodies more intimately, what moves and pleases each other, becomes a precious part of a couple’s “only for you, only with you” connection.
Synchrony Sex is when emotional openness and responsiveness, tender touch, and erotic exploration all come together. This is the way sex is supposed to be. This is the sex that fulfills, satisfies, and connects. When partners have a secure emotional connection, physical intimacy can retain all of its initial ardor and creativity and then some. Lovers can be tender and playful one moment, fiery and erotic another. They can focus on achieving orgasms in one interlude and in the next on gently journeying to the place poet Leonard Cohen calls “a thousand kisses deep.”
I used the word synchrony first in Conversation 4 to describe partners’ emotional harmony. I expand it here to include physical harmony as well. Psychiatrist Dan Stern of Cornell Medical School also uses the word when he observes that secure lovers are attuned to each other, sensing each other’s inner state and intention and responding to each other’s shifting states of arousal, in the same way that an empathic mother is attuned to her baby. The infant opens his eyes and squeals with delight; the mother coos back, pitching her voice to his excited squeal. The lover turns his head and sighs; the beloved smiles and strokes his flank following the rhythm of the sigh. This synchrony gives a “tacit sense of deep rapport” and is the essence of connection—emotional, physical, and sexual. Emotional safety shapes physical synchrony, and physical synchrony shapes emotional safety.
Responsiveness outside the bedroom carries on into it. Connected partners can reveal their sexual vulnerabilities and desires without fear of being rejected. We are all afraid that we are somehow not “enough” in bed. “Look at me,” says Carrie. “I’m just a mess of freckles. Do you ever see a model with freckles all over her? I hate them. And when I think about it, I just want to put the lights out.” Her husband, Andy, smiles. “Now that would be a shame,” he says softly. “I like your freckles. They’re part of you. I want to be with you. I don’t want a model woman. I like polka dots, they turn me on. Just like you say you think bald men like me are the sexiest. You do think that, right?” Carrie smiles and agrees.
Secure, loving partners can relax, let go, and immerse themselves in the pleasure of lovemaking. They can talk openly, without getting embarrassed or offended, about what turns them off or on. Psychologists Deborah Davis of the University of Nevada and Cindy Hazan of Cornell University find in their studies that securely attached partners can more openly express their needs and preferences and are more willing to experiment sexually with their lovers. In the movies, lovers never have to talk about what to do in bed. It just happens. But trying to make love without feeling safe enough to really talk is like bringing a 747 in to land without a guidebook or help from the control tower.
Secure partners can soothe and comfort each other and pull together to overcome unavoidable problems that are never shown in the movies but are part of everybody’s everyday sex. Frank, who now sometimes has erectile difficulties, which he shamefacedly describes as “Charlie deciding to take a nap,” is recounting a recent lovemaking “date” with his wife that had all the earmarks of a disaster. “Sylvie said something about my weight at the beginning and I got ready to pout,” says Frank, “but then she realized what had happened and hugged me back to feeling okay. Then at a crucial moment, our eighteen-year-old came home early and Charlie went for, well, I’d have to say a snooze on me. Sylvie reminded me of the book we had read that said that in a forty-minute lovemaking session many men lose their erection for a moment or two, but that if they don’t panic, it comes back. We found a way to laugh about it all and stay close.” Sylvie is now giggling uncontrollably. “Finally,” Frank continues, “when everything was back on track, I got a bit rambunctious and knocked the candle over. So then the curtain started to smoke!” He cracks a huge grin at his wife and quips, “Hot date, eh, sugar?” Picking up the story, Sylvie recounts how they decided to give up on making love and make hot chocolate instead. “But then”—she giggles again—“Frank said something sexy and we made love after all.” She throws her arms up and tilts her head to one side in a Marilyn Monroe–like pose.
These kinds of stories thrill me. They demonstrate that we can still have spontaneous, passionate, and joyful sexual encounters and make startling discoveries about our partners decades into a relationship. They show that we can connect and reconnect, fall in love again and again, and that eroticism is essentially play and the ability to “let go” and surrender to sensation. For both of these, we need emotional safety.
In a secure relationship, excitement comes not from trying to resurrect the novel moments of infatuated passion, but from the risk involved in staying open in the moment-to-moment, here-and-now experience of physical and emotional connection. With this openness comes the sense that lovemaking with your partner is always a new adventure. “Practice and emotional presence make perfect” is the best guide for erotic and satisfying sex, I tell couples, not seeking endless novelty to combat “boredom.” No wonder a recent survey on sex in America by Edward Laumann of the University of Chicago shows that married partners who have spent years together and built up emotional security have more frequent and more satisfying sex than unmarried folks.
When experts suggest that only fresh relationships flying the flags of conquest and infatuation can offer exciting sex, I think of an older, long-married couple I know and how they dance the Argentine tango. They are completely present to and engaged with each other. Their moves are achingly deliberate, totally playful, and stunningly erotic. They are so attuned and responsive to each other that even though the dance is fluid, improvised in the moment, they never miss a step or a turn. They move as one, with grace and flair.
The most common sexual problems reported in North America are low sexual desire in women and premature ejaculation or lax erections in men. This does not surprise me. Most distressed couples are caught in Demon Dialogues. Women typically feel alone and disconnected. They either push for Solace Sex or shut down sexually. Men become insecure. They move into Sealed-Off Sex or experience sexual difficulties. Most often when a couple can create secure connection, their sex life improves automatically or through their concerted effort. The shared pleasure and intimacy of renewed sex, as well as the flood of oxytocin at orgasm, in turn enhance their relationship.
Once she is feeling more secure, Ellen is finally able to confide in Henry that she cannot orgasm with him. For years, she has been faking it. Henry is not offended or threatened by this. He is comforting and supportive. He also hits the library and reassures Ellen with the information that roughly 70 percent of women cannot orgasm from intercourse alone. Together they come up with three erotic strategies for the “Orgasms for Ellen” project.
Let’s take a close look at how connection and bonding entwine in one relationship. Passion is not a constant. Desire naturally waxes and wanes, with events, with the seasons, with health, with a thousand reasons. These fluctuations, however, hit a nerve in most of us and, unless we can talk about them openly, can easily spark or heighten relationship problems. Many partners can tolerate infrequent intercourse, but they cannot tolerate feeling that their partners do not desire them. Dealing with such feelings is a challenge most partners have to face, even relatively secure ones. And so too for Laura and Bill.
They’ve come to see me soon after Laura has recovered from a depression triggered by losing her job. Her doctor, who knows that a healthy relationship is the best protection against relapse, picked up that she had some issues with her husband and sent them to me for a marital “checkup.” Laura lays out her concerns. “We love each other very much,” she says. “But, well, Bill was always horny. He was always touching me. And I liked that. If I didn’t want to make love, I could say ‘No’ and he’d accept it. We’d still cuddle and play and feel close. But now, in the last few years, he just doesn’t come on to me. When we do make love, it’s great, but if I don’t initiate it, it doesn’t happen. This hurts so much. We have been together for about twenty years. Is it that I am older now and not sexy enough for him? I am finding that I just go to bed later, when he is asleep. To avoid all that. But we are getting pretty distant here.” Bill responds, “I just don’t have the same drive I used to. These days work also completely drains me—you know that. But I like making love, and you are one sexy lady. I don’t see the problem here. Well, except that you are feeling bad, of course.”
This is one of those times when being able to have an A.R.E. conversation really matters. The question is, can Laura stay with her hurt and reach out to Bill, and can he hear her protest and respond? “Like you were saying,” Laura tells me, “when we fight we can get caught in a kind of ‘I push and Bill goes moody’ thing, but we can talk and make up. And I think we have a good marriage. But it’s hard for us to talk about sex. We have tried, and it gets a little better for a while, but then it is the same as before.” Since they had already been able to look at negative spirals in their relationship and create more responsiveness between them, I suggest that we talk in the same kind of way about their sex life.
I ask what their sexual expectations are. Bill says he would like to make love every two weeks or so. Laura says she’d prefer every ten days. We all laugh. The problem suddenly seems to have shrunk. But then we focus a little more. Bill says that the only problem he sees is that Laura seems to be irritable and a little distant. “If I ask her to come and cuddle at night, she often doesn’t come, and I miss that,” he offers. “In fact, if I think about it, I miss it a lot.” Laura starts to tear up. “I just don’t want to cuddle and then get into that place where I start to think you might show some interest in lovemaking and be disappointed. And I guess I have been too scared to even talk about that. You just ask me if I am sexually frustrated and then when I say, ‘Not really,’ the conversation ends.” I see Laura’s anticipatory anxiety and her move into avoidance to protect herself. We agree that this inability to talk about the changes in their sexual life is beginning to come between and hurt them.
I ask them to expand on their hurt. Laura struggles for a while and then is able to distill what is so painful for her. “Some of it is a fear that you don’t see me as a woman anymore. I am just the wife. More wrinkles and a little pudgier than before. It’s scary that I am maybe not sexy anymore, not desirable to you. You hug me like I hug a friend. You don’t seem to pay me that kind of keen attention anymore. It used to make me feel so good. And so close.”
Bill is really listening, and he helps his wife out by asking, “Is that the heart of it? You feel rejected, that I don’t think you’re sexy anymore?” Laura sighs and weeps and nods her head. “Well, then when we do make love, I feel tense somehow. I do feel desired. For a moment. I know you are overworked and very tired, but I get that you can take sex or leave it. It’s not important. Sometimes I think that if I don’t come on to you, then that part of our life will just fade out. And you will let it go. I get mad now, thinking that. So I say to myself, ‘Fine, I won’t start it. He can just get lost.’ But then I have this hurt.” She touches her heart. Bill reaches out and takes her hand.
I ask her, “Is that it, Laura? Hurt is usually about sadness and anger and fear. You feel that sex with you is not that important to Bill. Is that it? Is there more?” She nods, then continues. “If I don’t go and reach out to you and suggest making love, I am stuck with all these feelings. If I do…” Her voice trails off, and she purses her lips tight. “This is so hard to say. It shouldn’t be so hard. We have a good marriage, and I am a strong person. But it is terrifying for me to come on to you. It’s like diving off a cliff. I never had to do that before. And when you smile sweetly and say that you are tired and turn to sleep, I just die inside. I pretend that it is no big deal, but it really costs me to ask you.” Bill murmurs, “I never knew that.”
“What do all these feelings tell you about what you need from Bill?” I ask Laura. She tells him, “I guess I need your reassurance that you really value our lovemaking. That you are still invested in it. That you still desire me. I need us to maybe put times aside that I can count on, so that being with me that way comes first sometimes. I need you to show me—the way you used to—that you are still my man.” Bill responds eagerly. In a rush, he tells her that he has been so burned-out that he is “sleepwalking” most of the time. That he loves her and thinks of her with desire during his day. “But I never understood that suggesting lovemaking was so hard for you. I am so sorry,” he says. “I worry that if I come on to you and then am too tired, my erection won’t work so well, so I back off unless I’m sure.” They both begin to laugh and recount a few times when this happened and they simply ended up holding each other with a little erotic touching and lots of feelings of closeness.
This conversation was all that Bill and Laura needed to move their sex life back into a secure zone of play and connection. But it also acted as a wake-up call. I suggested that they come up with a sensual scenario to follow when intercourse wasn’t in the cards. Bill helped Laura do this, and he began to suggest making love more often. He was also more careful to reassure Laura that when she did suggest sex, he appreciated her taking this risk. He in turn told her explicitly that he needed to know that she wanted him, that he did not want her to avoid closeness or sex with him. He reiterated that he loved and desired her.
Bill and Laura also began to pay more attention to their lovemaking. Every room needs a little cleaning and redecorating from time to time, and that includes the bedroom. They reported that their sex life had improved, and so had their relationship.
As I told Bill and Laura in their last session, sexual technique is just the frill, not the real thrill! They had the best sex manual of all, the ability to create closeness, tune in to each other, and move in emotional synchrony.
Was there a comment or a statement in this chapter that started you thinking about your own sex life? What feeling did it bring up in you? Write it down. What does this feeling, whether it is a body sensation or a clear emotion like anger, tell you about your own sexual life?
In bed with your partner, do you generally feel emotionally safe and connected? What helps you feel this way? When you do not feel this way, how could your partner help you?
What is your usual sexual style—Sealed-Off, Solace, or Synchrony Sex? In any relationship all three will probably occur sometimes. But if you habitually move into Sealed-Off or Solace Sex, then this tells you something about your sense of safety in your relationship.
What are your four most important expectations in bed? Think carefully about your answers. Sometimes they are not what we think of first. Partners have told me that their most important expectation after sex was to be held tenderly and caressed gently, but they’d never expressed that desire to their lovers.
Do you feel that you do enough touching and holding in your relationship in general? A single stroke can express connection, comfort, and desire. When would you like to be touched and held more?
If you wrote out a “Brief Guide for the Lover of _____________” and inserted your name, what would you put in it? Basic directions might include answers to the following: What helps you begin to open up emotionally and physically to sex? What turns you on the most before and during lovemaking? How long do you expect pleasuring or foreplay and intercourse to last? What is your preferred position? Do you enjoy fast or slow lovemaking? What is the most stirring way for your lover to move you into, stimulate you into, deepest engagement in lovemaking? Can you ask for this?
What makes sex most satisfying for you? (This may not be orgasm, or even intercourse.) When do you feel most unsure or uncomfortable during sex? When do you feel closest to your partner?
If you can share the above with your lover, great. If not, maybe you can begin a conversation about how hard it is to share this kind of information.
Can you agree on what percentage of the time you expect sex to be really stellar? Remember that in surveys couples report that at least 15 to 20 percent of sexual encounters are basically failures, at least for one partner. What do you want to be able to do as a couple when sex isn’t working for you physically? What do you do when sex isn’t working for you emotionally? How can your partner help you here? You can even think of yourself as characters in a movie if this helps you talk it through.
Play the Perfect Game. It starts with,
If I were perfect in bed, I could, I would __________________, and then you would feel more __________________.
See if you can share at least four of your responses. Then tell each other one way in which the other is sexually perfect for you in bed and out of bed.
Can you each think of a time in your relationship when sex was really satisfying? Share the story of this event with your lover in as much detail as possible. Tell each other what you have learned from listening to these stories.
Think of all the ways sex can show up in your relationship. Can it be simply fun, a way of getting close, a straight physical release, a comforting way to deal with stress or upset, a route into romance and escape from the world, an erotic adventure, a place of tender connection, a burst of passion? Do you feel safe experiencing all of these with your lover? What might be a risk that you would like to take in bed? Can you tell each other the risk, and explain how the other might respond if things went badly or if things went well?
We used to think that thrilling, erotic sex and a safe, secure relationship were contradictory. Now we know that secure relationships are a supple springboard for the most arousing adventurous encounters. And in turn, keeping your physical relationship open, responsive, and engaged helps keep your emotional connection strong. The next and final conversation further explores how to keep your love vibrantly alive.