Couples struggling with an unsatisfying sex life may blissfully remember the days when they seems to effortlessly fall into bed and enjoy one another sexually. You may also want to recall along with that image how much simpler your life was back then. You didn’t have bills, debts, mortgage, children and sick or aging parents or your own health issues. So your sex life was probably easier because life was easier.
When things start going wrong people desperately want to figure out how to get back some of that zing. Sometimes they look to to past for what worked, but that probably won’t work today because as a couple are not the same. A lot of people start focusing on techniques and gimmicks to improve a flagging sex life or forcing what once worked and trying it again.
However, if you don’t really understand what is going wrong with your sex life, toys and gimmicks may not work in the long term. Often sex problems are reflecting bigger issues in the relationship that have nothing to do with sex. They usually have more to do with the fact that in one or several areas of the couple’s relationship they are unable to resolve differences of wants, opinions or perspective. Sometimes that unresolved issue is about sex and other times it is about parenting, money, vacation, household duties or something totally unrelated to sex but gets played out in the bedroom. Other times people have a very outdated model of sexuality in an older adult body of 30, 40, 50, 60 years old. Most people’s sex education and information is based on a teenager’s body and hormones and life pressures.
Why would nonsexual issues about money, or parenting create sex problems you ask? Well intimate relationship sex requires that a couple have been able to successfully manage their conflict out of the bedroom so that they feel good about each other in the bedroom.
If couples are not able to effectively resolve differences of opinion, wants, needs or priorities they often resort to high conflict strategies such as blaming, complaining, criticism, nagging, threatening and the most pervasive one: GUILT. If couples are using any or all of these to solve conflict, you can imagine that they will not feel good around each other during the conflict and often after the conflict.
Even if couples manage to move pass the conflict but it isn’t resolved, resentment, anger and hurt linger and this doesn’t automatically get switched off when we jump into the sack with each other. Over time this pattern of conflict becomes very toxic to the relationship and most often shows up in the couple’s sex life.
So when people are not thinking good thoughts about their relationship or their partner they are not likely to want to have sex with someone who they don’t feel good about or around. The mind is not at peace with the partner or relationship and the mind is the one that gets in the way of good sex or any sex.
The mind is the most important sex organ. If the mind is too preoccupied with hurt, anger or resentment it won’t have space to consider desire, passion or love making with their partner. The body will start to reflect the mind’s unhappiness in men losing their erections or women not able to lubricate and ultimately just full out loosing interesting. Some people will choose to use porn or masturbation to meet their sexual needs because they are to angry, hurt and disconnected mentally from their partner.
Sex organs are not complicated organs. The penis or the vagina is not a complicated organ. The Kidney or the heart is a complicated organ. Instead the most important sex organ in the body is the brain or the mind, a very important sex organ that is critical for intimate interpersonal sex. Good will, contentment with your partner, cooperation, compatibility, respect and the ability to get along are prerequisites for sex within a relationship. So if you are not having sex, you may want to ask yourself if you relationship is in a good place. Are you and your partner effective at resolving conflict in other areas of your relationship? Is there a long stand disagreement or unresolved conflict still occupying your relationship that neither of you know how to fix? If so this may be the real culprit for your lack of sex and no sex gimmicks or sex toys with fix this problem.
When couples come in for sex therapy, often the therapy focuses on helping couples to work out their differences outside of the bedroom in order to make the experience in the bedroom better. You can think of lack of sex as SYMPTOM that something else in your relationship isn’t working.
If you do not define your problem correctly your solutions won’t work. If you define your sex problem as your husband’s fault because he can’t maintain or get an erection and there is no medical explanation for it, sending him off for treatment will probably just make your sex life worse not better.
Sex problems seem easy to fix, which is why people want it to be about the penis or vagina. Relationship problems are more complex to figure out and resolve. Effective therapy can help you fix the problem, not just the symptom. Call to learn how we can help you at 9030 7239 or email us.