This issue comes up very often during the couple’s counselling: sex. Usually there is a dissatisfaction on one side, but sometimes on both re: the frequency, quality, withholding sex as a punishment, lack of sex all together, infidelity. Clients often come with different problems (difficulties with communication being the biggest one); slowly, with time and more trust the real complain comes up: dissatisfaction with the sex life.
In my view having a satisfied and regular sex in a long term relationship requires courage and commitment. Courage, because being intimate with someone in the long run calls for openness and honesty. It’s so much easier to be honest about your own needs and who you are in a one-night stand or a short encounter. Quite often you don’t have to see the sex partner anymore, you can easily go on with your own business without worrying about being judged or misunderstood.
Things look quite different, however, if you wake up near the same person over and over again and have to take responsibility for what you said or did the previous night.
You can fake it, of course, or pretend to be somebody else but, again, it works much better in a short term situation than in a long lasting relationship. Sooner or later your faking wears off or becomes obvious and you are in trouble. Usually this is the moment when the problems start: partners start avoiding sex out of fear of being discovered. They would rather risk not having sex than showing vulnerability in the intimate moment. They often say that they are afraid of “losing oneself” in a relationship, or of their openness and honesty being used against them at some point later on.
So often I hear from the clients: “we had such a wonderful sex life at the beginning of the relationship, and then things started to change”.
Have you ever heard the phrase “love is blind”? I would change it to “being in love is blind”. At the beginning of a relationship, when you are “in love”, everything is different. Even the problems feel fantastic. We see what we want to see. The shortcomings are cute. At the beginning, that is. The absentminded partner may be adorable and funny for a while. Not so much, however, when he forgets to pick you up from work for the second time in one week.
She may seem fiery and attractive in her jealousy attacks in the first few months of a relationship, but quite annoying and controlling a couple of years later.
When we are “in love” we sense the “red flags” everywhere, but we ignore them. We want to believe that this time everything will be different, wonderful, unique. We believe in the incredible power of love; our love. “It doesn’t matter that my partner drinks, is loud, forgets, cheats… (fill in the blanks), our love will change them!”, “they won’t do it with me, because our love is special!”.
After the first enchantment the reality sets in, however. We start seeing the real person, not the imaginary picture of them. This is when the problems start. And when the real relationship starts too. We have to be brave enough to take the responsibility for who we are, and to see our partner for who they are.
Well, let me reframe it: we don’t have to. But if we don’t, there is a price to pay. We grow distant, cold, indifferent, We stop having sex and start having a “communication problem”.
Communication is not a problem. Not being open and real is a problem.
Think about it the next time when you are upset and choose not to “rock the boat”; when you hurt and decide “not to make a fuss”. Every time you do it, you add another brick in the wall between you two. The wall that gets thicker and thicker with years until you ask “what happened to us?”. “Where are we now?”
By Eva Sadowski Photo by Any Where Man / Pexels
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