Contents
“Emotional intimacy guarantees good sex”, “female attraction depends on hormones” — our sex life is full of myths that can prevent you from finding mutual understanding with your loved one. Here are four common misconceptions that are best broken.
Myth 1. Emotional intimacy guarantees good sex.
«We’ve been told for a long time that soul mates are everything,» says Katherine Hall, author of Awakening Sexuality: How to Reclaim Desire. “However, many couples achieve complete spiritual fusion, and their sex life is fading away.”
Emotional intimacy gives the feeling that the partner is our truest friend, but at the same time does not fuel sexual interest. Passion and sex love novelty — we become completely predictable for each other.
“There are two parts to love,” says psychotherapist Philip Breno. — Narcissistic, when we, as in a mirror, see ourselves in a partner first of all, and more objective, when we are interested in a real person who lives next to us. If the first outweighs too much, we begin to consider the partner as our second “I”. For sex to be pleasurable, it must happen to a person in whom there is some kind of mystery for us.
For one, the most important way to show love is bodily contact, for another, a heart-to-heart talk or time together
Catherine Hall urges not to consider your half as the only kindred soul with which you can only share all thoughts and moods. “The desire to retire with your loved one on your small desert island can play against us,” the expert warns. “Many are afraid to move away emotionally from each other for a while, seeing this as the first step towards alienation. However, it is the fresh air in the relationship, the time that you spend apart, that excites desire, gives a feeling of novelty in sex.
In addition, over time, the so-called Madonna-Whore complex begins to wake up in a man, when the image of a beloved and sexually desired formerly beloved (Whore) is transformed into an exalted, ethereal figure close to the image of the mother (Madonna). Attraction to it is blocked by socio-cultural prohibitions.
“You can avoid this only by destroying the familiar script of intimate life and trying new things,” says Catherine Hall. “Sometimes it’s enough to remember how your romantic relationship began.”
Myth 2. If you do not want sex, you can express your love in a different way.
It is customary to think that if one of the partners constantly refuses sex, then the other should be sympathetic to his desire and remain faithful. «It’s dishonest, unrealistic, and often leads to infidelity,» says Michelle Weiner Davis, author of Sexless Marriage: Reclaiming the Libido. — When people get married, they are ready to negotiate and compromise on many issues — where to live, whether to have children, who builds a career. It never occurs to anyone to discuss how the issue will be resolved if one of the partners suddenly decides to reduce or completely stop sexual contacts.
We all have a different «language of love». For one, the most important way to show love is bodily contact, for another, a heart-to-heart talk or just time spent together.
“If you enter into a relationship with someone whose love language is touch, you will not be able to express your feelings to your partner in any other way than through them,” the expert says. “If partners are attuned to each other, they organically adopt this language, even if it does not look like their own.”
Myth 3. Female attraction is directly dependent on hormonal levels.
“A decrease in sexual desire in women is often associated with hormonal levels and is corrected with medications, in particular based on testosterone,” says Juan Remos, professor at the Age Management Institute.
However, female libido is complex and is associated with many areas of human life: mental and physical health, the state of the cardiovascular system, stress levels and, of course, satisfaction from relationships with a partner. Rarely, this problem is purely physiological in nature and requires medical treatment.
Trying to deal with emotions and accumulated questions often helps to improve your sex life.
“For the vast majority, the desire for sex depends on how harmonious a woman’s relationship is with herself, with her partner, whether she is happy in marriage,” says Remos.
Sexologist Rosemary Bayson describes the peaks of female sexual activity in long-term unions as follows: “A woman’s spontaneous desire for sex, as a rule, is experienced at the beginning of a relationship and at certain periods of the menstrual cycle, but over the years the desire declines. It is then that sensual stimuli become necessary: a certain kind of caresses and touches from a partner, their own female fantasies. This does not mean that a woman becomes sexually cold — it just changes the script of her sexuality.
Myth 4. Solve emotional problems — and sex will improve.
Joyless sex and emotional problems in a couple — misunderstanding, lack of communication, aggression towards each other — are inextricably linked. Trying to deal with emotions and accumulated questions to each other first often really helps to improve your sex life. However, in many couples it would be right to do just the opposite.
“If people still fail to understand each other and experience the sense of unity that they still strive for, I suggest that the couple approach the issue from the opposite side,” says Juan Remos. “Start with touch, hugs, the physical side of the relationship.”
This can unexpectedly “open up” our emotionality and help to better feel a loved one, to realize that he is dear to us, which means that we can accept possible discrepancies and come to a compromise.”