Orgasm Or More?

By so many accounts, sex appears to stop or become infrequent in the majority of long-term couples. Yet it’s not a biological issue – as you might already have guessed, this is an emotional or psychological issue.

Video – sexual boredom – how to avoid it

To continue enjoying good sex in a long term relationship, you have to understand that sex is a process which starts in the mind (or the brain) and travels down to the genitals, not the other way round.

In other words, this is about your relationship on the emotional level.  You see, when you’re too attuned to your partner’s needs, somebody is going left out of the equation: yourself.

You want to have a good relationship that satisfies both partners on every level. You want sexual desire to burn brightly between you. Well, this is about learning to keep the balance between being selfish and being focused on your partner.

About learning, if you prefer, how to stay connected and separate at the same time.

The Power Of The Brain

What this means is that you need to be separate enough to allow yourself to surrender to your own pleasure. At the same time you don’t worry too much about whether or not your partner is getting the pleasure he or she needs.

A lot of men are “programmed” to think that it’s a man’s job to please a woman sexually. And of course, many men do derive great pleasure and satisfaction from pleasing a woman. There’s no doubt that bringing woman to orgasm can boost a man’s ego and self-confidence enormously. But this approach to sex can lead to sexual boredom, which can lead to the death of sex.

Intimacy

Intimacy is often touted as the key to a successful relationship. In fact you need separateness, a polarity of male and female, to come together in the energetic discharge of great sex.

When a couple are too intimate with each other,  libido and sexual attraction may falter. This occurs with high levels of security, giving and receiving caretaking. One sign is feeling understood at such a deep level that you begin to wonder if your partner knows you better than you do,

No one has written about this better than David Schnarch . He emphasizes the need for individuation – not merging – in any relationship to maintain good sex.

You can know how to please a woman even when you maintain separateness and individuality. When, in other words, you avoid merging with your partner. 

Making Passion Burn Brightly

Some things help even if you don’t know about the psychology of sexual desire.  One of them is to actually program sex into your diaries so this is a time reserved for you.

And that’s a great approach, even if you don’t initially feel aroused or horny enough to want sex. You soon will when you get your clothes off and you’re cuddling in bed!

And when you do this, you’ll find your relationship improves. You’ll find you’re both more pleased with the quality of your emotional life inside and outside the bedroom.

Don’t simply assume that you can live without sex because “it’s not that important anymore”.

If you try living a life like that, you may feel very unfulfilled, and women in particular are probably going to feel unhappy and displeased.

Furthermore, when you are not having sex, you’re not bonding in your relationship, so it is, at least to some degree, at risk.

What will help you, more than anything else, to want to be physical with your particular partner?

Have you been doing the same thing over and over again since the day you met? Is that contributing to sexual boredom, perhaps even boredom with each other in some way?

According to a report in the Journal of sex and marital therapy around half of men and women are unhappy with the frequency of sex in their relationship.

It’s not a simple matter. There are many reasons why sex dies in a  long-term relationship: low sexual motivation, decreased sex drive, low libido, lack of desire, affection, love, emotional separation or merging, and so on. All these things affect both your desire for sex and your ability to have satisfying sex.

Scientific research shows that trying to stimulate sex between you and your partner  by adopting new and different, perhaps quite extreme, sexual practices, may makes things worse. In fact, by pursuing more intense arousal, you may both end up more dissatisfied and unhappy than you were before.

This seems to be something to do with biochemistry of the brains of the two partners working in different ways, or rather, working to different sexual-demand-and-desire schedules.

Among the factors controlling this are the male androgen receptors which become less sensitive to testosterone after ejaculation and can take up to a week to recover.

Other chemicals, hormones in the opioid family, are released during copulation and hang around in the bloodstream for a while, probably leading to a decline in sexual responsiveness.

There might also be a drop in dopamine, which is a chemical in the brain essential for sense of well-being.

All these things happen at different rates in male and female brains, so there’s a real potential for sexual mismatch or discomfort or “disharmony”.

End result – it’s easier to avoid sex altogether.

Brain Chemistry Is Everything

We know that there’s a change in brain chemistry after orgasm, and it causes a decrease in responsivity to sexual stimuli. This is “sexual habituation”.

The brain being so complex, often one partner in a couple will need more stimulation than the other before they feel the same desire, the same pleasurable response. This makes it very possible that one or other partner in a couple will start to find new sexual partners more appealing than their existing one.

Although around 13% –  of couples are immune to the phenomenon of sexual habituation, the rest are not.

Maybe these couples simply have a genetic compatibility which leaves them immune from the variability of hormones and chemicals in their brains after sex – we simply don’t know.

Long term relationships

But feeling sexually indifferent to a mate in long-term relationship is probably a side-effect of how the brain works.

As well as the hormonal stuff, the brain is registering the subtle stimulation that contributes to sexual desire such as affection, love and companionship.

Maybe that’s why we crave intense stimulation of some kind – a new partner or intense pornography on the Internet.

Basically, being able to continue pleasing your partner is about being in sexual sync with your partner.

A man who wants sex when his partner is not ready for it (“No, I’ve got a headache!”) might think he’s being rebuffed, and conclude that his partner doesn’t care about his needs.

She might feel that the only thing that is important to her man is getting sex (“We haven’t had it for weeks and I have my needs!”)

Neither of these dynamics is likely to lead to harmony, and it’s certainly not going to allow a man to please his woman, or indeed let a woman to please her man .

So what’s the answer?

One common end point of this conflictual situation is to deal with the incompatibility by avoiding sex altogether.

Men can reduce their urge by using porn, whereas women may not feel the urge at all because they don’t feel they are loved or appreciated in the way that would make them want sex.

Another outcome some couples adopt is to try and negotiate their way around their sexual difficulties and differences. For example, one couple I know spent two months each week in separate bedrooms.

But let’s face it, if you think that pleasing your partner requires moving out of the bedroom for half the time, then there’s is probably a little bit more work to be done on your basic strategy for recovering sexual compatibility.

One approach is to use techniques such as Tantra and Karezza which promote anejaculation (no ejaculation). This way you may discover a totally new approach to pleasing a woman!

Such practices are pleasing to both partners, and generate intimacy. However you don’t have the neurochemical “come-down” afterwards. This is one powerful cause of sexual avoidance (or “boredom”). It’s an incompatibility of sexual needs.