I love my husband but our sex life is boring. What can we do?

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.