Sex is an incredible way to enhance the connection between two people but what happens when sex becomes boring or even mundane? Sex turns up the magic between two people and allows them to connect on an entirely different level. That magic dwindles over time and becomes less a spark of magic and more a flickering flame of a candle that is struggling to stay lit. Both of us want sex but clearly; it is about physical release and rarely about boosting our relationship.
Do you find yourself (both genders) preferring masturbation to sex? This is very common for several reasons but often times it is the path of least resistance to get your needs met. Rejected sexual advances can be a source of disappointment and resentment. Sexual dysfunction can be a very challenging source of frustration and discouragement. Taking matters into your own hands can allow you get the job done quickly while greatly reducing the chances of failure.
While neither of you entered into the relationship purely for sex, neither of you entered the relationship for a sexless relationship although man relationships go that direction. A quick visit to Reddit’s /r/deadbedrooms will give you a glimpse into the bedrooms of others who have dried up. Learning from the mistakes of others is a wonderful way to learn what you can do to prevent rejection and frustration from euthanizing your bedroom activities.
Communication and connection cannot exist in the relationship when one partner’s needs are not being met. If he is talking about his hobbies, plans, or problems it is near impossible to show genuine empathy when your partner is not meeting your needs. Your mind can twist reality to make you believe that your partner is deliberately holding out on you; which does nothing but compound the feelings of resentment.
It should be acknowledged that sex is a need, not a want. We need food, water, sleep and sex. We are wired that way and by the terms of most relationships you are your partner’s sole sexual supply. If you are his/her sexual supply then you are also the source of a deficit in that supply. That last sentence will raise some eyebrows and I want to make it clear that nobody owes anyone sex. In nearly every case, sexual obligation is the biggest possible turn-off. If you want your bedroom to go the way of the dodo, make your partner feel like he or she owes you sex. You will be the first to experience a sexual void like you’ve never experienced.
Deficiency in any part of your life can be a self perpetuation cycle which will turn every mountain into a molehill. Consider a couple with communication challenges. She may not want to communicate openly with him. He may feel uncomfortable communicating with her. As time goes on, the snubs of communication grow more and more significant until communication is exhausting and hardly worth the effort. Sexual dysfunction can be a self perpetuating cycle just like communication. If one partner feels like sex is a point of contention, the other will feel it in due time.
So how do you break the cycle and fix it before it becomes a problem? It is quite simple to say but not nearly as easy to do. Overcommunicate and give more of yourself. This does not, let me repeat, does not mean that you need to have sex when you are not feeling it. What it does mean is giving to fill the deficiency. Does your relationship have a communication deficiency? Communicate more! Talk to her in a way that you feel comfortable communicating. Does your relationship have a sexual deficiency? Be intimate with her a way that you feel comfortable feeling intimate. Intimacy and physical attention can take many forms but nearly all of them build (or rebuild) the physical connection.
He is the one with the problem, why do I have to extend the olive branch? Be very clear, if you are both in a relationship and one of you has unmet needs then you both have a problem that won’t get better without effort from both of you.
I don’t feel comfortable being physically vulnerable with her/him because I have walls of resentment up due to unmet needs or unreasonable expectations. Guess what, nobody wants to be vulnerable when they don’t feel comfortable. If you had someone who made fun of you every time you told her something that made you feel vulnerable, how likely would you be to allow yourself to communicate intimately with that person?
You may have noticed that I throw pronouns around throughout this blog and absolutely nothing said up until this point is intended to be gender specific. We are much more similar than most of us believe. Our needs are nearly identical with ever so slight variations based upon our gender roles. Traditionally, women need a stronger emotional connection to be sexually open with their partner. Men need a stronger physical connection to be emotionally open with their partner. The paradox of our gender roles is: our needs are clearly at odds with each other. The yin-yang nature of this paradox implies that a man making an effort to be emotionally and conversationally vulnerable will make the woman feel more comfortable being sexually vulnerable. The inverse of the yin-yang is that a woman being more physically vulnerable will make the man feel more comfortable being emotionally vulnerable.
Why do women require a deeper emotional connection to be sexual? Prior to the very recent advent of birth control, sex meant the possibility of pregnancy and nine months of vulnerability to prey followed by the birth of a very feeble child which required protection. Human babies are one of the most helpless offspring on the planet. A horse is walking two hours of being born and running within 24 hours. Human babies take nine months to a year before they can walk and much longer before they can run. Running from prey allows us to be less vulnerable to prey. By extension, this means horses are far less vulnerable to prey within a day than humans are within a year. Thousands of years of evolution reinforce the requirement of a deep pair-bonded connection to give her confidence that her mate will be around to help ensure survival of the mother and offspring.
We are talking thousands of years of evolution that a magical little pill birth control pill threw on its end just a few years ago. The ability for women to enjoy their sexuality is an incredibly recent development with not even a generation of humans since the invention of birth control. In the few short years, we are already seeing female sexual freedom change our society. Hookup culture and tinder are the direct result of birth control and a significantly lessened likelihood of the burden of parental obligation. Verbal communication and physical communication are both necessary for true intimacy and both partners need to do their absolute best to ensure that they are meeting their partner’s needs. Not sure what your partner’s needs are? Have frequent conversations about sexual needs and rate your relationship in terms of satisfaction of your physical, communication and intimacy.
Love this! Like everything else in the world, problems begin, then continue to exist and grow deeper because of … wait for it … lack of communication.
Essentially everything you wrote here Emma are the very things that my wife and I wanted to head off at the pass when we discussed, and ultimately decided to adopt the lifestyle we have now. When we first got together, we were madly in love with each other and everything was awesome. That continued up to and including marriage and throughout our 22 years of wedded bliss.
12 years ago or so, we made a conscious effort that our love and passion was something important enough for us to ensure never waned to the point of unhappiness for either of us. But how? 10 years into a marriage is prime time for things to begin to go south. Familiarity breeds contempt, right? Romance, passion, sex and general happiness is always at risk of being compromised when a couple’s life is nothing more than drudging through life.
We both enjoyed an often kinky and adventurous sex life while dating and in marriage, even after kids arrived on the scene. Even so, there always remains the risk of things getting stale and lacking the newness that you often talk about. One day, Ms. K. and I were talking about of that day and all was well. She made an off-handed comment wondering whether or not our lives and our marriage would be normal in the sense that once the kids were grown, and left the nest, would we still enjoy being together … alone with each other. Would we be the kind of couple that could only ever enjoy going on vacation if we with another couple that could provide cover for what might otherwise be a lack of interest in being alone together? Would we discover that we had unintentionally drifted apart because of the hectic nature of raising kids and living in the modern world?
You may have heard me say it before but I absolutely adore and worship my beautiful wife. The non-descript nature of her innocent, off-handed question got me thinking that if we weren’t careful, we could find ourselves having subtly drifted apart without knowing or wanting too. I became determined not to let that happen. I researched things, gathered “facts” that I felt would support my opinions and desire to prevent such a thing from happening to us by proposing what we now know is a Wife Led Marriage. I knew that communication AND comprehension was going to be required for such a thing to even be considered, let alone put into place. I knew from the beginning that if she couldn’t naturally how a WLM could and would benefit her in our marriage, then it ran the risk of merely being thought of as just a kink that I was hopeful she would participate in with me. In other words, this was something that SHE, on her own, all by herself, needed to feel was something that would enhance our lives together and that it wasn’t just a sneaky way for me to get her to be my kink peddler.
We’ve all heard the term “be careful what you wish for”, and it was on that basis that I did a ton of soul-searching to determine if a true, loving Wife Led, Dominant/submissive relationship was something that could achieve deeper happiness and bliss for both of us. Essentially that meant for me … would her joy and pleasure in her life be a true source of joy and pleasure in mine. Sexually and otherwise. I was convinced that it would be and gathered the courage to, well, communicate with her my desire to offer my submission to her in our marriage, and in all aspects of our life together, and all that comes with that. Sexually and otherwise.
At the time there were a few wonderful resources that would articulate very well, the benefits and aspects of things like orgasm control, abstention from masturbation, power exchange, and the like. Essentially the things that are discussed and promoted by Emma in this wonderful community we are all members of. Emma wasn’t here then. Yoga Girl was she was wonderful. But she fell of the face of the earth. We’ve since come across a few others in the lifestyle that I have come to admire and respect, including of course or host, Emma, who has picked up the ball that was dropped by Yoga Girl years ago. The one thing the best resources all have in common? The emphasis placed on REAL, GENUINE and COMPLETE COMMUNICATION, and the differentiation between fantasy (wank fodder) and reality.
I’m happy and proud to say that Ms K. and I have never been closer, never stronger together as a couple and never more passionate and deeply in love than we ever have been. Knock on wood!
Thank you Emma for the years of guidance as a resource and for all you do. And thank you for this wonderful post.
Doing more routine things together provides more opportunity to improve communication and skills. Food shop together, cook and clean together, just take turns holding each other on the sofa and talk about your day. Hug when you can’t finds words. Hug when you are mad or happy. Listen for understanding. Don’t try to judge, or fix, just listen. Yes, it applies to both genders. It’s not an improvement program, it is way of living.
It is all in what your current emotional state is. Masturbating while in a relationship is like eating boxed macaroni and cheese for dinner. Something you do when you have lost the zest for life or are depressed. It fulfills your basic need in the simplest way. If you are in a better place in your mind, you will have a playful view on life. You achieve this by experiencing and going through the difficulties of life as they come and not burry it, run away from it, of use addictive behaviors to avoid it.
My wife and I talked and joked for a number of years but we both knew that we wanted to fulfill a fantasy of sharing her for her to set our sex life on fire. We shared this fantasy. At least in the back of our heads we did. She refused to try it. She knew that she was capable of detaching sex and love but also knew that she would enjoy it and it would be hard to go back. After two years of talking and conversation we tried this one time fantasy and we stayed together but her lover who is also married is now a part of our lives. With my full knowledge and his wife’s full knowledge they have sex one or two times in a month. Once she was comfortable with the situation, she wanted it again. And again. I enjoy it and I know she loves me but she does it for the passion and the chemistry that she feels when she is with him. This is a way to deal with the natural decline of female sex drive but not for the faint of heart. It is ultimately her choice so don’t pressure her. To me, I knew that she was sexually unfulfilled and seeing her light with sexual desire makes me feel like I satisfy her as husband even if it isn’t directly satisfying. She also teases me about it and to see her sexually playful makes me very happy.
In my experience all wives want to be fucked like a whore but they fear being treated like one afterwards. This makes it a much safer prospect for her to get that sort of fucking from a trusted third party rather than her husband. It is safer to let loose sexually with a bull.
I have sex with different man. It’s so good for me and my relationship with my husband. He have only oral sex with me.