Contents
- Parents: How often does a couple abandon their sexuality when they are overwhelmed by the pace of their life?
- Do we necessarily need space and time to have desire?
- When we come home from work, when we start the second day with the children, we go to bed exhausted! So how do we do ?
- Is scheduling sex on the calendar a solution?
- Sometimes desire and pleasure are cut off by the fear of making noise towards children, or when there is one who lands in bed… How to manage these barriers on a daily basis?
- How to find a spontaneous desire?
Parents: How often does a couple abandon their sexuality when they are overwhelmed by the pace of their life?
Laura Beltran : Sure ! One of the first ingredients needed to have sex is to be available – psychologically, and over time. The most frequent argument put forward by couples to explain the absence of sexual intercourse remains fatigue. You have to have energy to have sexuality. Working on sexuality is like working on the quality of life. We are also talking about sexual health, which is a component of our health.
Do we necessarily need space and time to have desire?
LB : Yes. But we have to dissociate two types of desire: spontaneous desire and reactive desire. The “spontaneous” is the one that happens at the start of a relationship. We live in a period of discovery, where everything is done quickly, without needing much. As the relationship sets in, this spontaneous desire turns into reactive desire, that is, it comes in response to a certain number of stimuli. I come home from work, I’m tired, I want to wallow in the sofa, but not necessarily to have sex. On the other hand, if I have an evening that changes the routine a bit, I have a compliment from my companion, we don’t go to bed too late, we laughed together and a hand slipped in the bottom of the kidneys … there, I came to stimulate desire. But for this type of desire, it takes time and availability.
When we come home from work, when we start the second day with the children, we go to bed exhausted! So how do we do ?
LB : We do as we can! There are times when we are less available for sexuality, and we must also accept it. We undergo a social discourse where you have to be available all the time, fit, pretty, ready to make love at any time. It’s wrong ! In the life story of a person and a couple, there are times when sexuality takes an important place, and others not at all, because, for example, we have just had a child. It is important to accept this cyclical aspect of sexuality. Now, we can also be careful to share nice little moments together because, sometimes, caught up in everyday life, we only talk to each other about very concrete things related to the logistics of the home.
Is scheduling sex on the calendar a solution?
LB : We can imagine organizing pleasant moments for two that do not necessarily end in sex. We emerge from moments of availability. We all organize our daily lives, and even when we are too lazy to go to his sports class on Thursday evening, we go there, and that’s what allows us to put things in place and do them. The goal is not to organize times to have sex, but times to be with the other. The better we are together, the more space we leave for sexuality. We therefore plan moments in our diary to recreate the link with the other.
Sometimes desire and pleasure are cut off by the fear of making noise towards children, or when there is one who lands in bed… How to manage these barriers on a daily basis?
LB :There must be certain rules … The parents’ room must have rules. Children must understand that we do not enter like that in the intimate space of the parents. You can install a lock or say, when the children are old enough to understand, that you do not come in until you have knocked and the parents have answered. It is essential to create limits and barriers for sexuality to exist. We can also explain that Thursday evening is “parents night”, that we don’t disturb them and that we go to bed earlier, or that on Sunday morning, we let them sleep a little more… We create private spaces and places for the couple.
How to find a spontaneous desire?
LB :It will not be spontaneous, but reactive, so we will create it, arouse it, stimulate it. It requires 10 ingredients:
1.Energy to want to explore your sexuality.
2.A good atmosphere to want to get together under the sheets: a good dinner, an intimate evening …
3. A good imagination, because the fantasy is the best aphrodisiac.
4. Seduction, feeling sexy and changing the fleece pajamas to be in a game of exchange with the other.
5. Sensuality because the erogenous zones are not focused on the genitals, but spread over the whole body. We wake up the body!
6. Agree on the right time. Some are in the morning, others in the evening, you can cut the pear in half and take a nap.
7. A reassuring atmosphere: we close the bedroom door to create an atmosphere where we are comfortable.
8. Create an intimate context: dim light, a candle …
9. And sometimes let the unforeseen surprise us: the other approaches, we have nothing planned and we let ourselves get carried away.
10. Tenderness, sensuality and eroticism come before sexuality. It is on the first stages that we can put things in place. We must have a broad vision of sexuality and tell ourselves that penetration is not an end. We can have moments in life when we are tender, sensual, erotic, and we stop there.
Interview by Dorothée Saada
* To read : “Women and their gender. To stop hurting, to reconnect with your desire, to feel free ”. By Heidi Beroud-Poyet and Laura Beltran, eds. Payot health