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Our heart still loves … but the body is not always ready for this. Stress, fatigue, other temptations… Each of us has to invent our own sexuality, not looking back at “norms” and clichés. The main thing is to show the other that we continue to desire him deeply and strongly. To what extent do you succeed? Answer the questions of the sexologist Alain Eril.
5 questions for yourself
1. What symbolic role does my partner play in my sexual history?
2. When do I say “more”? When is “enough”?
3. Does my partner still have sexual desire for me?
4. Where else, besides sex, do I use the energy of my libido?
5. Is he/she present in my sexual fantasies?
What do the answers say?
1. Each of us is the hero or heroine of our life story. We carry our own myths in which there are wizards, dragons and archetypal characters (father, mother, handsome prince, sage). Our mythology is made up of both our personal history in general and the history of our intimate life. When analyzing your sexuality, it is important to find out what role our partner has played and is playing in it. This helps to clarify our intimate biography and see its connection with the symbolic dimension of life.
2. During the time that you are together, in your intimate relationship there have been wonderful, unforgettable moments, and those in which there is little good. There are situations to which you want to respond with an unconditional “yes”, others, on the contrary, cause rejection. In more prosaic terms, there are gestures, positions, and behaviors in sex that you like, and there are those that you do not accept. Once you figure out what you want to keep doing and what to avoid, you can make sex an area of shared and unifying pleasure that allows you to grow together.
Read more:
- Sex therapy
3. The meeting of two people who ultimately decide to connect affects our erotic nature. We choose to partner with another because he evokes exciting emotions in us that trigger our desire. But, as we know, habit, everyday life, the appearance of children, financial and professional problems – all this leads to the fact that we lose sight of the erotic dimension of life. If we think about whether we are still able to arouse sexual desire in a partner, we can pay more attention to his seduction – and the ability to seduce is necessary for a relationship to continue.
Book on the topic
Ulrich Klement
“Good sex despite love”
This is not a sex guide. The most virtuoso technique pales in front of “I don’t want to.” Where there is no desire, it is useless to discuss ways to satisfy it. Therefore, Professor Clement, founder of the Institute for Sexual Therapy in Heidelberg (Germany), decided to write about something else – about the nature of desire.
4. Libido is the life force within each of us. It manifests itself both in intimate terms and in other areas – in work, hobbies … To think about your sexuality means to look at yourself as a being endowed with desire (“Do I allow myself to have fun with a partner and with other people?”, What do I think about masturbation?). These questions and their answers are necessary for an honest and accurate analysis that will allow you to better understand how your libido manifests itself in marital and other relationships.
5. Erotic fantasies awaken desire. It makes sense to ask ourselves how our fantasies have changed, whether they have remained the same as before, and most importantly, what fantasies we can project now and in the future onto our partner.
5 questions for two
1. Were we able to talk about our sexuality with affection?
2. What place do we place on sex in our lives? How has his role changed in our couple? What changes would we like to see in the future?
3. What highlights of our sexual history do we remember?
How do we use this experience?
4. What is the type of our sexuality?
5. What do we still have to explore?
What do the answers say?
1. Talking about sexuality is not easy. Therefore, in figuring out whether our couple succeeded in having such a dialogue, we ask a key question that will not only help us draw some conclusions, but also reveal what we have failed to say to each other. In addition, it is important to understand whether our communication on sexual topics was sufficiently gentle, accepting, understanding and benevolent in relation to the requests and difficulties of the other. We will get a chance to stop making our partner feel guilty and come to an honest and calm dialogue.
2. Many couples stop considering sex as a way to communicate. Their manifestations of sexuality are reduced to rare moments of intimacy, and sensuality fades into the background. Talking about sex, redefining its place in relationships and in the deep dialogue of partners means returning to it the role of inspiring and stimulating. To do this, it is important to frankly discuss the meaning of sexuality in the lives of two and understand how it could develop.
3. As in a dialogue with oneself, together it is desirable to remember the sexual history of the couple. A story about memorable moments of intimacy, about funny episodes, failures, misunderstandings… To immerse yourself in these memories together, to share them with each other means to relive the moments of the past again with pleasure or, having moved to a safe distance, to feel what was important and to determine what and as you would like to do in bed and beyond.
4. Each couple has its own type of sexuality. Of course, we are all mixed types. But still, it is worth understanding what form of sexuality prevails in you. This work will give you the opportunity to get to know each other better, and therefore play with images, models and clichés … Here are some possible ways to classify sexuality. But you are free to come up with other, your own criteria.
Mechanical sex: more forced by circumstances than desired. The sexual impulse arises from the obligation to make love regularly, and not from the desire itself, which makes one seek intimate intercourse with another person.
Passionate sex: the key word is “passion”, the emphasis is on the complete merger and simultaneous orgasm of partners. This is a glow, an inseparable eye-to-eye gaze, and “misses” are unacceptable here.
Animal sex: it obeys only attraction! The other is perceived as an object that is adjusted to the requirements of sexual desire or sexual need. The sexual act is very intense and vivid, but short: screaming, release, perspiration.
Sublime sex: intimacy is conceived as a ritual, as a way of communion with the shrine. Partners breathe in unison, look at each other, speak more about the fact that they are on the same wavelength or vibrate in tune, and not about orgasm. They take their time and wait as long as it takes to feel desire only when there is nobility and sublimity in it …
But back to questions. Are we satisfied with the type of sexuality that is inherent in our couple? In which, as yet unexplored, direction would we like to move?
5. Sexual life consists of many territories, and each of them is limitless. When you step on the “terra incognita” of pleasure, new doors will certainly open before you! Lovers are the ones who invent ways of communication and intimacy every time. Studying each other’s bodies again and again means bringing surprise, surprise, surprises into sexual life. Asking the question of what white spots still remain in sexual relations, partners embark on a new adventure, create their own project, expand the space of their sexuality. In a word, together they discover new lands.
“Erotic fantasies enrich our relationships”
Kirill, 39 years old, married for six years to Inna, 44 years old
“Unlike Inna, I doubted whether we should even answer the questionnaire. I thought: this might still make sense when the relationship ends and you sum up the results, or you have reached a dead end and are looking for a way out. Neither of these apply to us. In addition, I was afraid that by subjecting our closeness to “accounting”, we could destroy something very subtle, magical in it. For example, we both recognized that our sexuality is both “animal” and “sublime” – and that was enough for me: a more detailed analysis of such things, as it seemed to me, is simply stupid. Yet later, despite my doubts, I realized that thinking about the proposed questions (first alone, and then together) helps us really understand what role desire plays in the life of our couple, what place sex plays. I saw an important thing: our erotic fantasies fueled not only our intimacy, but our relationship in general. When we asked ourselves how we see our sexual communication in the future, it became clear that it is important for us to continue to maintain emotions, intensity of attraction, avoid banality and routine. And this requires attention (and even a lot!), mutual understanding, indulgence towards a partner, and even towards oneself. As a result, we discovered how similar our erotic fantasies are and at the same time how our differences fuel desire. It probably makes sense to save this test to answer the same questions in a few years!”
Recorded by Nadezhda Vasilevskaya