“Marriage is one of the chief causes of divorce.”
The information in this piece was originally contained in a Newsletter I wrote in 1999. I believe that it is every bit as relevant today as it was then.
There are certain hazards or pitfalls that are specific to intimate relationships. If we are unaware of them, we fall into them, to our peril. If our life experiences have conditioned us to defend ourselves against the vulnerability involved in love, trust, affection, closeness and need, we develop defenses.
Someone, I no longer recall whom, believed that all intimate relationships follow a set path. I don’t think it is that simple, but the following is provided merely as information:
STAGES OF AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP (a living process)
1. Infatuation / idealization
2. Cooling down period
3. Disappointment
4. Moving toward a more realistic relationship
5. Becoming a parent (productivity)
6. Pursuing a career (productivity)
7. Redefining relationships and goals while parenting
8. Empty nest (reintegration)
Many problems arise simply because men and women are different. Beyond the obvious physical differences, men and women tend to see their greatest need in a different way. If we were to assemble all of the men and all of the women in North America into two groups and ask them to determine what their greatest need is, and to define it in one word, it would be typical for the (composite) female response to be “Security”, and the typical (composite) male response would be “Freedom”. These responses seem to be natural – maybe generated by genetics, or biology – or, they may have originated with our knuckle-dragging ancestors from a time when they lived in caves and huts. The role of the female was to look after the residence (the cave) and protect the children, while the male was responsible for providing food and general protection against outsiders. These were exciting times, because some of the food man was hunting also saw him as food. And, for the women, childbirth was the most dangerous game in town, with the death rate being extremely high.
Today, we do our hunting in the aisles of Super Markets. How safe… and boring! And childbearing is no longer considered to be high-risk. So, we do things to create excitement. Things like bungee jumping, skydiving, 120 miles per hour skidoos, racing cars, hunting bears with bow and arrow (without rifle back-up), deep-sea diving, snow and water skiing, hockey, football… and so on, and on. Interestingly, all of those things were invented by men. Many women do those things, but men invented them! Why? Ask the people who do those things (mostly men) and they will tell you, eventually, that there is excitement and a sense of freedom in them – sometimes only momentarily, but the hunt goes on. Ask the people who don’t do those things (mostly women) and they will tell you, eventually, that those things provoke a sense of fear – a lack of security.
To see it another way, picture, if you will, a man and a woman sitting at a table, and $20,000 ($50,000 with inflation) falls from the ceiling and lands on the table between them. It would not be unusual for the woman to consider using the money to upgrade the home, to use it for the kids, or to put it away in a “rainy day” fund. Nor would it be unusual for the man to consider buying a new boat, a 4×4 truck, or a trip. Same $20,000, two different perspectives. The $20,000 does not care how it is used! It would also not be unusual for an argument to break out over who is right and who is wrong. Yet, it is not about right and wrong, or good and bad. It is about values and beliefs. It is about instinct. It is about trying to meet our different needs in different ways.
An important step in untangling potential trouble spots in our intimate relationships is to identify the hidden expectations each of us brings to it. We expect things of intimates that we don’t expect of anyone else. The understanding we expect of our partner and the expectations we assume our partner has of us are very specific to love relationships. In large measure they constitute the hazards of intimacy. All of these expectations rest on hidden assumptions that often don’t emerge into our awareness until we find ourselves angry, upset, or disappointed. We may not realize that we expect something until we don’t get it – and suddenly feel as if the rug has been pulled out from under us. Only when we experience a totally surprising feeling of betrayal do we realize that what we expected is not what our partner expected or is even capable of responding to.
Let that sink in…
Sometimes, what we expect is not what our partner expected… or is even capable of responding to.
It is important to note that what brings us together is often the same thing that drives us apart. An example of that would be when one person, somewhat insecure and unaccustomed to free-spending, is attracted to another because that person is “easy-come-easy-go”, carefree and unconcerned about spending money. At some point, that “easy” attitude may be the cause of conflict. The insecure person may come to resent what they may see as irresponsible and impulsive behaviours which threaten their security. Or, a person who is initially seen as “quiet” may in time be seen as uninteresting and non-communicative. Fun loving people may later be perceived as immature. Responsible, trustworthy people may later be perceived as dull and boring. Concerned people may later be perceived as meddlesome or worriers.
What can be done?
There has been a conclusion that all psychotherapy is really psycho-education. The difference is whether it’s consciously administered and done in a way consistent with learning theory. Therapy is simply education after a problem develops. Having concluded that it was more efficient to use couples to help each other resolve their own difficulties we created our Intimate Communications course. Its starting point is empathy, or compassion-training, learning to see things from a partner’s perspective. Not in an effort to agree or disagree – merely to see. Empathy is what people are really seeking in marriage, and that expectation represents a major break with the past. People are looking for someone to be emotionally supportive, an emotional friend, a helpmate, a soulmate. While the principles of Intimate Communicating can benefit all couples, distressed couples often make the greatest gains.
While we often foster identification and shared meaning between partners, we can work
with their differences. Take fighting as a given and promote better, and egalitarian, fighting between partners as they air their gripes and concerns. Its operating premise is that you can’t just say anything you want any way you want any time you want. There are ground rules for handling conflict in ways that protect a marriage from the ravages of poorly handled emotion. Couples learn how to express themselves in an honest way that helps the other preserve self-image without invoking defensiveness. You need to present your pain, pain the other has caused, in the context of your love so that he or she will be willing to make changes. To convey one’s feelings to the other is transformative to both.
See the marriage as common ground on which both partners have equal standing and play as a team. Whether it’s household income or the tasks of home, relationship, or life-at-large, which may be divvied up differently at different times, depending on interests and opportunities – both partners should feel that they are contributing to a common pot in which they have an equal stake.
They have to look upon themselves as collaborators. Unfortunately, we know more about how to do complementary relationships, based on differences, than how to create symmetrical relationships. It usually involves a lot more negotiation. And negotiation is hard work – a lot harder than staying resentful.
One of many ironies of modern relationship life is that negotiation works only when there is some semblance of equality between the two partners. But it is much harder to negotiate as equals.
One of the clearest decisions must be about sharing money, deciding what is joint. Commonly, when a man is the high earner, what’s his becomes theirs. His resources are shared by the two of them. But then, when she becomes the high earner of the couple, what’s hers remains hers and she doles out the money as he is forced to become dependent.
Finding and emphasizing common ground can, by itself, help the money issue move into the background, though it will come up and bite a couple periodically. A couple needs ground where they have common values and issues of power are not central. They may value children. They may like sex together – the pleasures of which they can recover once they stop fighting. If you don’t face the issues it all comes out sideways in nagging or being critical or in saying, “I told you so.” Conflict is inevitable; you need to learn to handle it and not lose sight that your partner is the most important person in your life.
Most couples who are unhappy feel disappointed, if not outright betrayed, because what they expected to find in the relationship either hasn’t happened or stopped happening.
We hand our partner an invisible ledger, displacing onto a current partner the blame for past hurts from past partners. We hope our partner will prove they are not the person who hurt us, while we expect them to make up for past hurts, hurts that enter our awareness only when we feel frightened or disappointed.
We have to get people out of the mindset that not knowing how to do (intimate) relationships is an admission of weakness or failure, that there’s something wrong with them. People don’t feel bad about going to a ski instructor, or taking lessons to drive a car, or tuning up a car. Why should learning how to operate a relationship be any different? People are poorly trained for marriage today – to recognize all the stages of matrimony: romance, casual irritation, (he doesn’t put the toilet seat down; she stays on the phone too long), then total disillusionment. This is when many couples decide to bail out. They don’t realize that they can still work their way back to romance. They can learn how to forgive, how to get over it – and how to fight.
CONFLICT
It’s not the conflict, it’s how you handle conflict that separates successful and unsuccessful marriages. Disagreement and fighting aren’t predictors of divorce, but stonewalling, avoidance, defensiveness, contempt and the silent treatment are.
Repair attempts are crucial. They can be clumsy or funny, even sarcastic, but a willingness to make up after a fight is central to every happy marriage.
All couples have about 10 issues they’ll never resolve. If you switch partners, you’ll still have unresolvable issues. (More than 90 percent of all arguments between couples are over money, time, kids, sex and jealousy and in-laws and friends.) Learn how to live with and accommodate your differences.
Intimate Communicating is divided into four sections:
I Communication
II The Self
III Sensual & Sexual Pleasuring
IV Clarifying Expectations
I. Communication
Partners can become defensive and stop listening to each other. Little issues get blown out of proportion and bigger issues never get discussed.
Effective Intimate Communication starts with the self; self-awareness, self-caring, self-honesty, knowing what one wants and valuing it enough to speak up for it clearly. Lots of pathology grows out of not knowing oneself. Caring is listening to yourself, owning what you’ve done and haven’t done. Then listening to your partner do the same.
A relationship map prompts partners to systematically review the different “zones” of inner information, thoughts, feelings, wants, actions, sensory data that influence any problem they may confront. By moving through each zone on the map and addressing each other with information appropriate to the zone they are in, couples learn the fundamentals of talking effectively. By getting their wants and feelings out in the open couples can solve their problems. It’s simple but powerful. Couples can make dramatic change in the way they relate. The learning isn’t just intellectual; it’s kinesthetic. And if there’s one thing couples need to do, it’s learn these techniques through every portal to the brain, so they can have recourse to them at times of stress, like when they are discussing hot-button issues, when the natural impulse is to attack or run away.
The map also helps couples create a common operating system. Most of all, it helps a person manage himself / herself, and, pointedly, not the other. They allow individuals to stay engaged in a situation, connected with themselves and their insides and their spouse and their spouse’s insides.
Words DO Mean Something
One of the problems encountered in interpersonal communicating is that you and I place our own meaning on certain words, in defiance of the dictionary meaning. Our meaning comes from our experiences with our authority figures. A couple examples follow:
Love – some people learn that love is abandonment, pain, sex, etc. If you were to meet and love one of these people, you had better understand what the word “love” means to them so that you can clarify what you mean when you use the word “love”. By the way, a dictionary definition is: a deep feeling of fondness and friendship and devotion.
Ignorant – merely means lacking knowledge; when we do not yet know something. Many people see it as being interchangeable with “stupid”. Do not call one of these people ignorant!
Another complication is our propensity (inclination) to see things as being either right or wrong, or good or bad. Imagine the problem if two religiously devout people, one a Catholic, and one a Muslim, decided to determine, once and for all, who is right and who is wrong. If these two people locked themselves into a room, it is likely that they would never leave… because, each would have been taught from a very young age, and by an authority figure, that their religious beliefs are the only correct religious beliefs. Their religious beliefs are a huge part of their Values and Beliefs System – the system that regulates our thinking and perceptions. Substitute any other strongly-held beliefs and you have a similar scenario – politics, law and order, race and class issues, etc.
As for good and bad, who gets to determine that? Our experiences will ultimately establish our views of good and bad but, initially, our views were never really ours; our initial views are given to us by our authority figures. We are what we are taught to be. And, we will only change if our personal experience(s) prove our initial belief(s) to be wrong, because experiential learning is extremely powerful.
Let that sink in…
Our initial beliefs are those we learn from others and we will only change those beliefs if our experience(s) prove otherwise.
A few other words that should be clarified are:
FEAR (dread / alarm) The disagreeable feeling that comes over one when danger or harm threatens. Wanting to escape from danger, pain or evil.
Guilt being blameworthy. A feeling of having done wrong but doing it anyway. (A poor way to administer)
Conscience a sense of moral right and wrong with respect to one’s own conduct or intentions. A feeling that one ought to do what is “right”. Moral means good in character or conduct; understanding right and wrong; virtuous.
Disease condition in which an organ, system, or part does not function properly. A disorder or dysfunction. Medical definition is: progressive, incurable, and fatal if left untreated. This is why alcoholism is defined as a disease.
Rules for Intimate Communication
Speaker-Listener Technique
Rules for the Speaker:
1. Speak for yourself. Don’t mind-read.
2. Keep statements brief. Don’t go on and on.
3. Stop to let the Listener paraphrase.
Rules for the Listener:
1. Paraphrase what you hear.
2. Focus on the speaker’s message. Don’t rebut.
Rules for Both:
1. The Speaker has the floor.
2. Speaker keeps the floor while Listener paraphrases.
3. Share the floor.
The technique is deceptively simple. The speaker speaks, usually stating a complaint, without placing blame. “It really makes me angry when you don’t call and dinner is waiting on the table.” The listener doesn’t rebut or justify himself, just demonstrates he heard by repeating his partner’s remarks. To be heard is a powerful tool by itself, the core to all intimate relationships. You don’t even need to solve the problem. In fact, it is critical to not resolve things, just to be heard by your partner. People want understanding from each other, not resolution. Couples are really arguing over things from the past. Once couples clear the air, things get resolved by means of acceptance. During the private sessions couples work on issues they haven’t been able to resolve on their own.
If couples don’t have good skills for handling problems the negative overwhelms the positive in their relationship. Over time, couples don’t make time for positive experiences, and they tend not to protect such experiences from conflict. It’s important to keep the negative out of positive time together. It is believed that, with some protection, the positive parts of a relationship will flourish.
Handling conflict in a manageable way also fosters a couples’ commitment to work at marriage. It increases couples’ confidence in working out their problems. For premarital couples, it prevents erosion of the positive. The trick is being heard by one’s partner; it’s just damned difficult. We all have a variety of filters that distort unpleasant messages from our partner, our level of emotional arousal, our expectations, fears, cultural beliefs, beliefs acquired in our family of origin, differences in style and pace, need for self-protection. What’s more, we’re usually busy preparing our rebuttal. Sometimes, what he or she thinks is a perfectly neutral statement might land like a bomb on the other person.
Five basic skills for conflict discussions:
1. use softened start-up. Present your complaints without criticism. Criticism involves a global attack on the partner, or blaming, and only incites defensiveness.
2. accept influence. Positively take in your partner’s attempts to make a request of you. In a good marriage, both men and women freely give and receive influence from each other. Since women are already good at accepting influence from men, the role of the husband becomes critical in predicting whether a marriage will survive. To the degree that men can accept influence from their wives, marriages succeed.
3. repair, or put the brakes on conflict. This means doing anything you can to halt or reverse negativity. Use a repair checklist, which includes statements like “I’m feeling sad,” and “let’s start all over again.” Even “Will you shut up and listen” is usually a repair attempt.
4. make use of physiologic soothing. Because men get more physiologically aroused in conflict, a factor that often prompts withdrawal, which is deadly for a relationship, they can stay engaged in problem-solving only if they or their partners take specific steps to calm them down. One of the best ways of doing this is to declare a time out during a heated discussion, and reconvene after at least 20 minutes of thinking about something else, or nothing at all.
5. de-escalate discord. In good marriages, couples actively de-escalate the conflict by injecting humor or planting a kiss on the partner’s cheek. This is the only behavior we can’t program. It just happens when couples have a positive perspective.
To improve communication couples need to practice simple skills. Share things you appreciate about your partner. Express your wishes, hopes and dreams. Update your spouse about changes in plans and circumstances. Clear up little mysteries before they become suspicious. And when you have complaints, don’t just criticize – describe what bothers you and suggest how you’d like it done.
II. The Self
Marriage partners typically do not express their needs. Over time, they learn not to ask for what they want, while they wish their partner understood what they want. Frustration builds, then they go into attack mode in order to “ask” their partner for what they want. Only that guarantees they won’t get it. Hostilities worsen and partners withdraw. The trick is how to ask for what you want in a non-threatening way likely to lead to cooperation. It creates a positive cycle that keeps love alive and growing.
Couples look for feelings and motives that haven’t been expressed by a partner. To do it, you have to gain some knowledge of the other’s belief(s). It’s a process of identification, not of emphasizing the differences between people – to imagine themselves as the other person. It is important that people realize they always have a choice in interactions as to what they do. Most people react reflexively. We need to slow down the process of responding, see the choice, and take control of the relationship.
A paradox? Well, let’s investigate a phenomenon that was seen to be a paradox.
Until about 1965, the people of Roseto, a small town in the eastern part of Pennsylvania, seemed all but immune to heart diseases. They smoked as much as the folks in nearby Bangor. They ate similar food, and they relied on the same doctors and hospitals. Yet their death rate from heart attacks was significantly lower. Why? Roseto’s most striking distinction was its tight-knit social life. Founded in 1882 by immigrants from southern Italy, it was full of three-generation households with strong commitments to church and family. But when those traditions eroded in the 1960s, so did Roseto’s health. By the mid ‘70s, the residents were as mobile and anonymous as other North Americans – and just as prone to heart disease. The “Roseto effect” had vanished.
Was social change the culprit? There are now many reasons to think so. As Dr. Dean Ornish argues in his book, “Love & Survival: The Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy”, the quality of our relationships can have profound effects on our health. Mounting evidence suggests that people without close, durable ties to family and friends are at high risk for everything from cancer and heart disease to ulcers and infections. “Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well,” Ornish declares. “I am not aware of any other factor in medicine – not diet, not smoking, not exercise – that has a greater impact.” A growing number of specialists are now striving to tap the healing power of companionship. Unfortunately, the forces that transformed Roseto are still changing the world.
For the most part, anyone blaming loneliness for physical illness is either laughed at or ridiculed.
But as scientists studied different populations, isolation kept emerging as a risk factor. In one study that inspired many others, California researchers followed 4,700 residents of Alameda County for 10 years, starting in 1965. At the outset, the participants checked off their key sources of companionship and estimated the time they devoted to each. Over the course of the study, the people who reported the least social contact died at nearly three times the rate of those reporting the most. The source of companionship didn’t much matter – a person without a romantic partner might get ample support from other sources – but time spent with others was critical.
Let that sink in…
Those people who reported the least social contact died at nearly three times the rate of those reporting the most social contact.
Over the past 50 years, researchers have studied men, women, soldiers and students from countries all over the world. And the same pattern keeps emerging. Women who say they feel isolated go on to die of breast and ovarian cancer at several times the expected rate. College students who report “strained and cold” relationships with their parents suffer extraordinary rates of hypertension and heart disease decades later. Heart-attack survivors who happen to live by themselves die at twice the rate of those who live with others. Studies have even found that women with smaller social networks give birth to smaller babies.
What’s going on here? How could something as mushy as “social support” affect the growth of a tumor or the function of a coronary artery? For starters, it helps regulate our behavior.
People with commitments to honor are less likely to abuse themselves.
They drink less, eat better and avoid needless risks. Companionship also lets us share feelings that would otherwise fester. According to James Pennebaker, an American social psychologist and professor of psychology, whose research focuses on the relationship between health and social behaviour, once said: “If you don’t talk out your traumas, you’re screwed.” Pennebaker has shown that when people regularly talk or even write about things that are upsetting them, their immune systems perk up and they require less medical care.
Besides changing our behavior, companionships can modulate our physiological responses to stress. When study volunteers are ordered to count down by 17s from a number in the thousands, and to hurry up about it, most experience significant increases in heart rate and blood pressure. In a 1990 study, University of Pittsburgh psychologist Thomas Kamarck asked 39 college-age women to try that drill twice – once alone, and once accompanied by a friend. Both tests affected the women’s cardiovascular systems.
But having a companion on hand reduced the impact by half.
When you consider what chronic stress can do to us, the long-term benefits of friendship are not hard to fathom. The stress hormones (adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol) switch the entire body into emergency mode. Anything not involved in fighting or fleeing – digestion, immune function, bone production, sexual function – goes on hold. That’s exactly what you want if you’re a zebra sprinting out of harm’s way. Three minutes, no big deal.
But if every day is an emergency, you pay a price.
People who lack social support tend to stew in stress hormones all the time, not just when they’re counting down by 17s. And studies confirm the health effects. When researchers at Carnegie Mellon University exposed volunteers to a cold virus, the most isolated got sick four times the rate of those with the most social ties.
Is there a lesson for doctors in this? Dr. Dean Ornish certainly thinks so. Though he’s best known for his dietary edicts, emotional support has always been central to his program.
He believes that by helping people express their feelings and attend to their relationships, he can change the chemistry that feeds their illness.
Because his regimen includes so many elements, it’s impossible to know whether his support sessions really affect people’s health, but other clinicians have found that togetherness can help keep people alive. In one seminal study, Dr. David Spiegel of Stanford followed 86 advanced breast-cancer patients, 50 of whom joined small support groups as part of their treatment.
Four years later, a third of those receiving the extra social support were still alive.
Every one of the control patients had died.
For those of us who are still healthy, the lesson should be obvious.
It’s clear that reaching out to others can help our bodies thrive.
It’s equally clear that we’re growing more isolated. In 1900, only 5 percent of North American households consisted of one person living alone. The proportion reached 13 percent in 1960, and it stands at more than 25 percent today. In his book, “Bowling Alone” (published in 2005), author Robert Putnam shows that our social connections are withering on other levels as well. In 1976, North Americans attended an average of 12 club meetings a year. The current average is five. Card games, dinner parties and shared family meals have all followed the same arc.
We all have a good excuse – we’re too busy – but we shouldn’t be surprised when it catches up with us.
III. Sensual & Sexual Pleasuring
SENSUAL AND SEXUAL PLEASURING OBJECTIVES
1. To learn the differences between affection, comfort, bonding, sensuality, and sexuality so that sex is not your only avenue to closeness.
2. To satisfy your biological need for that combination of physical closeness and emotional openness we call Bonding, which is known as the heart of intimacy.
3. To be able to communicate openly and honestly about your sexual and sensual needs and to get them met.
Most of us are familiar with the dozens of expressions – printable and otherwise – used to describe the sexual act, yet few realize there are just as many chapters and changes in each woman’s sexual history. A girl might start out regarding intercourse as painful, but as she matures and learns about her own body, she discovers that sex can be pleasurable. If she marries and has children, she might find herself going without sex for weeks and hardly missing it. Yet as she matures, whether she remains single or marries, she might find that lovemaking can get better and better, and that sexual passion can be a kind of poetry. And, when those elements align… well, that is the closest she will ever come to heaven in this life.
A lot of people see sex as something black or white, like flipping a switch. But in truth, sexual identity is incredibly plastic and changeable. Many people go through developmental growth spurts in sex just as in other aspects of life. When they’re young, sex is often merely a release of tension, a discharge of energy. It can also hold an element of conquest for both men and women. But as people mature, sex usually becomes an expression of intimacy – although sometimes it takes years to move to this deeper level.
To many women, losing their virginity, particularly if they are very young, can be a disillusioning rite of passage. It’s not at all unusual for most women to find first-time intercourse disappointing. It takes quite a while for a woman to get to know herself sexually. For a man, who can see and feel his own penis and who’s been experiencing nocturnal emissions from an early age, sexuality comes more naturally. But because a woman’s sex organs are hidden, her sexuality involves far more of a learning experience. For a young woman, too, the ever-present specter of unwanted pregnancy can inhibit her capacity to respond erotically. Psychologically, sex is usually tied, on some level, to procreation. In the twentieth century, we’ve come a long way toward trying to divorce the two events, but we haven’t succeeded in completely reversing nature. For most couples, sex and pregnancy are still deeply connected.
Ironically, though, when a woman permits her passion to complete itself in pregnancy and childbirth, her sex drive, particularly in the first year after the child is born, usually plummets. In a recent study of 250 married, first-time parents, fully half said the strain of caring for a newborn – going without sleep night after night and changing all those diapers – damaged not only their sex lives but their marriages as well.
Two-career couples with children must set aside time every week for lovemaking. People having affairs set up dates to make love all the time, but, ironically husbands and wives often forget to pencil sex into their busy schedules. They should put the answering machine on, lock the bedroom door, do whatever it takes to get that time alone. The best legacy parents can give their children is a healthy example of marital closeness. As time passes and women reach the twilight of their childbearing years, sexual passion often returns with a vengeance. While a man at forty may be well past his prime, a woman in midlife is just beginning hers.
Women have the most orgasms, the most affairs around the age of forty.
Of course, there’s a psychological component as well; by the time a woman gets to that age, she’s freer and more confident of herself.
While married men have always felt free to indulge in extramarital affairs, it is only recently that married women have seized the same liberty.
In the Kinsey reports of 1948 and 1953, only 26 percent of married women had had affairs, compared to 50 percent of married men. But now, some forty years later, studies show that, while the number of unfaithful men remains about the same, a hefty 41 percent of married women are having or have had affairs. Never before in history have so many women been free to express their sexuality. In early agrarian societies, a woman would bear maybe ten children and be pretty well used up by the time she was forty. But today, women are having fewer children and staying sexually active into their sixties and seventies. It is likely that we will continue to see women expressing their sexuality well into old age.
Yet, while the twenty-first century has heralded the flowering of female eros, AIDS is still a threat. Perhaps nothing has done more to change the way both women and men express their sexuality than the fear of this dread disease. To many people, casual sex is now perceived as throbbing with danger. Indeed, many single women are choosing to remain celibate rather than risk exposing themselves to sexually transmitted diseases. While a small percentage of women do fantasize about having sex with a stranger (which explains the appeal of a book like The Bridges of Madison County, in which an Iowa farm wife sleeps with a roving photographer the day after she meets him), most women find the reality of casual sex remarkably unfulfilling. But once a woman becomes intimate with a man, she gets increasingly comfortable with her own body and feels freer to express her fantasies. That’s when the sex gets better and better.
Still, while most women search for that one man to love and have great sex with, they won’t necessarily stay with him until parted by death. Both men and women tend to be serial monogamists, choosing to remain with the same partner for a few years and then breaking off to find someone else. According to the U.S. Census Bureau 2009 report, the median duration of first marriages that end in divorce is 8 years. An unverified internet report states that 80 percent of divorced men and 75 percent of divorced women remarry within three to four years. Even if those figures are inflated, there is a problem of some magnitude and the amount of restless coupling and re-coupling would seem to indicate that long, sexually fulfilling unions are about as rare as comets in a night sky. Yet there are a surprising number of men and women who, even as they evolve sexually, manage to keep both the erotic and home fires burning.
Sexual fantasies
It’s remarkable how few people share their sexual fantasies. It’s a shame, because sexual
fantasy life can be very imaginative and creative – a great outlet for all kinds of emotions that don’t get expressed in everyday life. In the end, as we play out the scenes of our daily comedies and tragedies, growing – whether we’re ready or not – from children into grandparents, sex itself may be our most creative act, our starring, signature role. Sex is the one performance in our lives in which we are most free – free to speak or be silent, to play virgin, vamp, or hunk, to will ourselves into a secret place in which time and death stand still… to believe that we will go on forever.
Love ebbs and flows depending on how you treat each other. Learn new ways to interact, and the feeling can come flowing back. Remember, marital satisfaction drops with the birth of a baby. It’s normal. Hang in there. Sex ebbs and flows, too. Enjoy the flows. Welcome change.
The marriage vow is a promise to stay married, not to stay the same.
IV. Clarifying Expectations
Five Questions for Contracting and Clarifying Expectations:
1. What Do I Want That I Am Not Getting?
2. What Am I Getting That I Don’t Want?
3. What Am I Giving That I Don’t Want to Give?
4. What Would I like to Be Able to Give You If Things Were Better Between Us?
5. What Am I Getting That I Do Want (in this relationship?)
There are certain hazards or pitfalls that are specific to intimate relationships. If we are unaware of them, we fall into them, to our peril. If our life experiences have conditioned us to defend ourselves against the vulnerability involved in love, trust, affection, closeness and need, we develop defenses.
An important step in untangling potential trouble spots in our relationship is to identify the hidden expectations each of us brings to it. We expect things of intimates that we don’t expect of anyone else. The understanding we expect of our partner and the expectations we assume our partner has of us are very specific to love relationships. In large measure they constitute the hazards of intimacy. All of these expectations rest on hidden assumptions that often don’t emerge into our awareness until we find ourselves angry, upset, or disappointed. We may not realize that we expect something until we don’t get it – and suddenly feel as if the rug has been pulled out from under us. Only when we experience a totally surprising feeling of betrayal do we realize that what we expected is not what our partner expected… or is even capable of responding to.
Do any of these sound familiar?
“If you were what you should be, I would be happy, successful, popular, attractive, virile, potent, sexy. I’m not. It’s your fault.”
“If I were what I should be, you would be happy. I would be able to solve/fix everything. Since I can’t, your unhappiness makes me feel inadequate, guilty, angry at you. So, I distance from you.”
“If we don’t agree, one of us must be wrong. If it is me, that means I am bad, stupid, ignorant or inadequate. So it can’t be me. I must prove that it is you so I won’t feel like a failure.”
“If I tell you how I feel, you interrupt, correct, give advice, judge or dismiss my feelings. I feel betrayed, angry, frustrated. I won’t tell you my feelings. So, I distance from you.”
About Love Knots and Double Binds
Love Knots are those hidden beliefs or assumptions that ruin relationships, while Double Binds set us up in no-win situations.
How have love knots and double binds impacted your life and relationships? If you’re not sure, ask yourself if you’ve ever found yourself thinking:
• If you really loved me you would know what I want
• If you really loved me you would always want me with you
• If you really loved me you would agree with me.
Love Knots and Double Binds create those everyday frustrations that cause arguments and confusion, lead to endless misunderstandings, and sabotage joy in relationships.
The source of a relationship’s trouble often involves love knots or those hidden expectations and assumptions or beliefs that we bring to intimate relationships.
Many of the most dangerous relationship traps are:
• The invisible contract, overlooking each other’s terms for intimacy
• The revolving ledger: unknowingly expecting each other to make up for past hurts
• The negative infinity loop: triggering each other’s “emotional allergies”.
Marriage Survival Kit
What couples need to focus on is repair attempts. Everybody messes up. The four horsemen of the marital apocalypse that are identified as criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling, are predictors of divorce. Everybody does them to some degree. But some couples repair it successfully.
What makes repair attempts work is not how couples fight but what goes on in the everyday non-conflict situations. These situations give partners a positive perspective, so when they get a blast of negativity from their spouse, they ignore the negativity and take in only the information in the statement. In short, the mindless, mundane moments of marriage are the makers of romance. In those little moments, a lot is going on in smart marriages. Couples are making Love Maps, knowing one another and updating the information regularly. If you know, say, who your husband’s best friend was when he was eight years old, what events are coming up in his life, or what his current worries are, you get to move forward in your relationship.
A fondness and admiration system is active, particularly in the husband. The guys are thinking about the stuff they love and admire in their partners even when they’re not together. If you open up their skull, these guys are allocating a lot more brain cells for the marriage and the world of their partner than are guys who wind up divorced.
There’s a balance of “turning towards” versus “turning away,” which builds up the “emotional bank account” of the relationship. Partners simply connect in tiny, unremarkable, emotionally neutral moments.
These otherwise unremarkable moments add up to put a couple in “positive sentiment override,” which in turn determines their disposition in problems-solving discussions and the success of repair attempts. So when one partner says something with irritability, the other sees it as neutral. Couples are urged, especially men, to see that the irritability or anger behind a complaint is really just a form of italics. And by positively responding to irritability, a spouse keeps the partner’s complaint from escalating into criticism.
WHEN YOUR PARTNER CHEATS
Virtually anyone can have an affair. Sex and love are in many ways incompatible. Exhilarating, lustful sex demands novelty, newness, mystery. Love, on the other hand, requires comfort, trust, dependability and the bond that comes with familiarity and shared history. So, it’s natural that over time, the initial sexual heat of any relationship cools. And if an overwhelming chemistry with somebody else ambushes someone, an affair can happen. Of course, the cheater has a choice whether or not to respond to that chemistry. And you have the right to be extremely angry if he or she does. In fact, fury and grief are a healthy first reaction. When they first find out, many wronged partners scream, yell, and swear. For hours. However, this is not the moment to make a decision about the future. Cooling down before doing anything drastic is smart. Getting through the rage stage allows one to take stock and decide where to go from there.
Most married people who haven’t (knowingly) been cheated on are adamant that they’d dump their partner in a flash. However, their response in reality is more complicated than they could ever imagine. And a surprising number not only survive their mate’s infidelity, but emerge with a stronger relationship than ever.
Do you really want to know the gory details? If you’ve just discovered your mate is, or has been, cheating, you may be consumed with questions:
• How long has it been going on?
• Where and how do they have sex?
• What does he/she look like (meaning, is the “other” better looking than me?).
Before you actually ask those questions, take a deep breath and ask yourself:
• How much do I really want to know?
• What am I going to do with this information, other than feel bad?
Getting the gory details may be the biggest mistake you can make if you want your marriage to survive. On the other hand, there are a lot of things you need to know, and your mate’s willingness to provide answers is a critical indicator of whether you’ll be able to rebuild trust. Decide which details are important. These will probably be around the lying and betrayal, such as; when were you lying to me? If you can start to believe him/her now, you can begin trusting again.
Some Questions For You
1. What do you want to do? (If there was a deep love, a deep respect, there may be a benefit to working things through)
2. What was your relationship like, pre-infidelity? (Infidelity is not always because of trouble at home – some cheaters are simply swept away by sexual magnetism)
3. His / her feelings? (If he/she doesn’t want to stay with you, or is ambivalent, there won’t be much you can do)
4. What was the nature of the infidelity? Was it a one-romance fling? Or is he/she a chronic philanderer? (Some people seem to suffer a type of compulsive disorder)
5. Do you have children? Many parents do not want to end the marriage without considering the trauma to the kids. However, constantly warring parents can be equally – or more –devastating.
Whether or not your relationship can survive your mate’s infidelity depends a lot on him/her. Although the outcome of infidelity is never predictable, if the following conditions aren’t met, there is not much hope.
Conditions
1. The cheater must totally end the affair. This might take a bit of time. Not only are they ending a relationship; the exciting, romanticized bubble inhabited by the “other” can be tough to burst.
2. The cheater must apologize. And be genuinely remorseful!
3. The cheater must allow time to talk. Sometimes, when the affair has been ended and apologies are made, the cheater doesn’t want to discuss it anymore. The spouse, of course, desperately needs to talk. At this point many couples find a counsellor useful in helping them sort through their feelings and start to rebuild their relationship.
4. The cheater must commit to rebuilding trust, and their life, with you. But, if the cheater has work to do, so do you. First, don’t deny your anger – find a way to vent. Second, don’t be passive. If you want your marriage to continue, determine what you can do. Finally, you need to put the affair behind you, learn to love again and move on.
The healing couple need to remember how they got to know each other and what first attracted them. They need to devote energy to having sex and being affectionate. Above all, they need to spend time together. In fact, the bonding that comes with forgiveness, healing and re-establishment of trust can make a marriage unquestionably stronger and better than before.
BUILDING REMARRIAGE ON A FIRM FOUNDATION
Today, some 40 percent of all marriages are remarriages. It’s no secret that the chances of success are even grimmer than with first-time marriages. Sociologists, the media and even Cinderella won’t let us forget all the difficulties.
But some researchers are pushing a novel idea: They want re-married couples and blended families to look at their strengths, which may include their differences. There are many challenges common to re-married couples – especially when children are involved. But realistic expectations and a willingness to be flexible can make it work. Couples should work first on establishing a solid marriage. They need to remember the key to a strong healthy stepfamily is a strong healthy remarriage. It’s as true in remarriage as it is in first marriage.
Of course, there are additional challenges for re-marrieds.
There might be unresolved issues with a former spouse or a continuation of a problem that occurred in the first marriage, such as poor communication skills. It can be a problem if a couple denies conflict between them because they’re afraid of another failed marriage. And then there are the in-laws, old and new.
If children are involved, the challenges multiply and the time to deal with the issues diminishes.
Set aside time
Some tips for developing a solid re-marriage:
1. Take time to work out any personal problem you have with your spouse.
2. Try to arrive at mutual decisions about discipline, household rules and finances.
3. Nourish the marriage by planning private time together.
One of the strengths of re-married couples is that many are more willing to work on their marriage the second time around. People bring a greater level of maturity, a greater awareness of what can cause problems, to second marriages, and they are much more open to seeking help.
Divorce leaves scars
The issues are bigger if the first marriage ended in divorce rather than death because there are wounds and scars and sometimes a real level of distrust based on whatever else has gone wrong in the marriage. But no matter how the second marriage or stepfamily comes together, the ability to develop a unique family style is critical.
The first thing people need to do is stop comparing first and second families who grew up with a stepfather. They are apples and oranges. Some re-married families struggle because of a lack of established guidelines. They don’t know how to relate to each other or what is expected; all they know is they are not like their first family.
Establish programs
The five strengths of step families are caring, communication, pride, unity, community and family ties.
Communication can be a strength because most second families have to do a lot more negotiating than first families as they blend traditions, bedrooms and vacations, a process that traditionally takes two to five years. Kids and partners can hone their problem-solving skills. The ability to negotiate and create win-win situations can make a difference for them in the workplace and in the community.
Conversely, there are workplace skills that can be used in the family. If the issue is what to do with four sets of grandparents over the holidays, the family can brainstorm by writing down everyone’s ideas at a family council and weighing them without judgment or laughter until an alternative is found. (“Let’s go to the mountains Christmas Eve and not visit anyone!”)
You have to be willing to evolve traditions and to be flexible.
Boundaries can be a huge issue with blended families. Use baby steps with kids and step kids. You shouldn’t expect step kids to obey or recognize authority right away from a stepparent. It has to be eased in over time. It may never happen that a step-parent or stepsibling will be hugged and kissed or loved on the same level as a biological relative, but there can be mutual affection and respect.
One man said he and his brothers shared many hobbies with their stepfather, who showed his caring in non-demonstrative ways, including by coming to hear his teenage rock band play. “He was always complimentary,” he said, “even though I know it was awful.”
Dialogue Guide
The Dialogue Guide is particularly useful in order to avoid:
* MISUNDERSTANDINGS
* MISPERCEPTIONS
* ASSUMPTIONS
Used with good will, you will begin to resolve misunderstandings. Here’s how to use the Dialogue Guide:
Partner A. Use the guide to talk about one behavior.
Partner B. Use Shared Meaning after each 2-3 “I-stems”
Partner B. After Partner A completes the guide, offer one change you are willing to make to help Partner A resolve this complaint. At conclusion, each gives the other an appreciation for confiding and for listening.
Then reverse the roles.
Caring behaviors
Caring behaviors are the little things that make your friends and family feel better and cared about. They are not monumental things. In happy relationships there are lots of caring behaviors occurring on a steady basis. Many people tend to give others what they want for themselves. What you are getting that is not exactly what you want may be exactly what your friends or family want from you. Take the time to find out.
How would you complete the following sentence?
* I feel cared about when_______________________________________
What about during special circumstances, such as when you are sick, tired, worried, afraid or unhappy. What makes you feel cared about in these situations.
* When I am sick, I feel cared about when others_______________________
* When I am tired, I feel cared about when others_______________________
* When I am worried, I feel cared about when others____________________
* When I am afraid, I feel cared about when others______________________
* When I am unhappy, I feel cared about when others____________________
Suggestions:
1. Create a list and write down ten specific behaviors that your partner does or could do that make you feel cared about, special, important.
2. Post the list where it can be seen each day.
3. Ask your partner to do the same on their own list.
4. Do at least three caring behaviors from your partner’s list each day.
5. Review both lists each night.
6. On your list put the date in the box beside each behavior your partner did that day and thank your partner for the caring you received.
7. With your partners’ list, note if there were positive behaviors you did that your partner didn’t notice or mark, and, if so, gently call attention to them.
HIS AND HER SEX DRIVES
Are we ever in sync? Typically, women under age 35 want love, while men, under 35, want sex. Over age 35, men often become more loving, and women often look for action. Do our needs ever coincide?
It never seems to fail. Even when a woman and a man are in bed together, they seem to have their own agendas. We’ve long heard that men are motivated by the physical and women by the emotional. Men supposedly “play” at love to get sex, and women “play” at sex to get love. But our many thousands of clients are helping us to shed new light on the old stereotypes. Women’s and men’s sexual feelings seem to change at various ages and stages of life. Those under age 35 seem to conform to the classic stereotype, while those over 35 seem to defy the old stereotypes.
Most women under age 35 said closeness or intimacy was their usual motive for engaging in sex. Women over age 35, and under age 60, are evenly split between physical pleasure and love as their motive for having sex. Until age60, men seem to be evenly split between physical pleasure and love as the number one motive for having sex.
Hormones, of course, play a role in sexual feelings – men and women are on very different hormonal timetables, which affect their sexual desire and responsiveness. Many other factors are at work as well: personality, emotional makeup, religion, family structure, physical health and the variety of experiences and events that are part of life. In spite of all the individual differences, it seems that men and women follow certain common patterns in their sexual feelings at various ages and stages in life.
• Emotional intimacy is most women’s main motive for sex.
• Physical pleasure is men’s prime motive for sex.
This can be a tricky decade for intimate relationships. Women and men are still developing emotionally, intellectually and sexually, with major differences in their feelings and expectations. It seems that most women this age are primarily seeking emotional intimacy, while most men are primarily interested in physical pleasure.
The old stereotypes say that men tend to be at their peak of sexual desire and responsiveness in their early 20’s, and that women tend to reach their peak in their mid- to late 30’s. It seems, however, that sexual desire in women and men is closely related to the amount of male hormone testosterone they produce. Although science tells us that women produce far less testosterone than men, it apparently plays an important role in enhancing sexual desire. The hormone estrogen, which women produce in greater abundance than testosterone, does not influence libido but can increase sexual receptivity by priming rapid vaginal lubrication and other changes prior to sexual intercourse.
Men’s testosterone generally reaches its highest level between the ages of 18 and 22, often fluctuates throughout their 20’s and early 30’s, remains stable for a number of years, then begins a gradual decline. Men in their early 20’s may become aroused just thinking about sex and aroused again only 15 or 20 minutes after orgasm. But the arousal process is more complicated for women. Hormonal levels fluctuate dramatically throughout each monthly cycle. Women reach their highest hormonal production at ovulation and experience a temporary decline right before menstruation – some women develop a stronger sex drive at ovulation than before their period.
But women’s sexual interest depends on much more than hormones – sexual responsiveness and orgasm in a woman are more of a learned response they develop with experience. This is a major reason why many women don’t attain their peak of sexual responsiveness until their late 30’s and early 40’s.
Many women and men in their 20’s have stereotyped and abstract notions about the physically oriented “macho” man and emotionally oriented “feminine” woman because they are so strongly affected by popular culture. They are influenced more by what they have “seen” (various media and authority figures) at this age than by what they have personally experienced. And these stereotypes (beliefs) can carry over into their sex lives.
The differences in attitudes toward sex can create serious problems in a relationship, especially if there isn’t a real commitment. If a woman is looking for her intimacy needs to be met by sex, she may feel emotionally unsatisfied after lovemaking – feeling that her partner doesn’t care about her as a total person and is just using her body. This is one reason why intercourse may not be a very pleasurable experience for some women at this age, other than the secondary pleasure they get from being close to their partner and pleasing him.
Many women in their 20’s have sexual inhibitions, partly because of a double standard that still exists in society. Many women are getting mixed messages about whether it’s acceptable for them to express themselves sexually. As well, it seems that women in their 20’s tend to be more relationship-oriented than men because they are more concerned about such issues as pregnancy – because many men still don’t ask about birth control, or they assume that the woman is on the “pill”. Society still considers birth control to be women’s responsibility. Women’s reputations are also more dependent upon the number of sexual partners they have – and having one partner is still thought preferable to having many. But, in general, for men in this age group, having many different partners is not only considered acceptable, their peers consider it a sign of prestige – admirable, even.
In North America today, the median age for women marrying for the first time is 28, while for men it’s 30. Once we consider the emotional and sexual differences between women and men, it seems very wise that so many are delaying their marriages until the end of their 20’s!
• Women reach their peak level of sexual interest and responsiveness. By the mid- to late 30’s, physical pleasure is their main motive for sex.
• After 35, most men consider love their primary motive for sex.
• Careers and children may inhibit couple’s sexual relations.
By this time, many women and men are establishing careers, and most couples are thinking about – or they have already started – a family, factors that may contribute to stress and affect sexual feelings.
Between the ages of 31 and 35, love motivates fewer men to have sex, and even fewer women are being motivated by physical pleasure. These differences between men and women reach their zenith because most couples have moved past the beginning “romanticized” phase of their relationship and into the day-to-day working phase, when worries about finances, jobs and children can carry over into their sex lives. Fatigue, particularly when couples have children, can also be a factor. It is not unusual for a wife and mother, who also works outside her home, to be too tired to pay attention to her sexual feelings. After all, you can’t expect to go from a day when you’re bombarded with pressures, then flick a switch at night and be sexually responsive. There has to be time for relaxation, when arousal can gradually take place. Men can also experience this condition, but in most homes the woman is still the primary caregiver to any children.
Women and men in their early 30’s may still lack emotional maturity and experience to resolve relationship conflicts, and they may have different ways of dealing with distress. If a woman is upset with her partner, she may stop having sex with him. But if a man is feeling upset, anxious or insecure about the relationship, one of the ways to relieve these feelings and feel closer to his partner is to have sex with her.
But couples, no matter what their age, must learn to air their grievances – and attempt to resolve them – outside the bedroom. By identifying the cause of the conflict and having the courage to talk about their feelings without blaming one another, the couple should be able to resume a healthy sex life. But if they can’t resolve the problem, they should get professional help. To prevent problems from building up, it is essential to express physical or emotional needs clearly. For example, a partner who feels exhausted at the end of the day might say, “I’m too tired to have sex, but I really need a hug and I like feeling close to you.” It is important to avoid an all-or-nothing attitude about sex –the belief that you have to have intercourse in order to make “love”. When one or both partners are exhausted, they should consider the many other gentle, meaningful ways of pleasing one another that don’t involve lengthy or fatiguing lovemaking.
This is particularly important when a couple starts a family. Initially, attempts to conceive can heighten some couple’s sexual passion. Women who have always used birth control may feel an enormous sense of freedom and sexual enhancement once the aspect of pregnancy is a reward and not a punishment. Once the baby arrives, however, a couple may be too tired at the end of the day even to think about sex.
Having children can also shift feelings of intimacy. A woman’s need for emotional and physical closeness may be met by her attachment to the baby – by their cuddling and kissing. She may not only have less energy for sex but also less desire or need for it. To maintain intimacy, couples must set aside time for each other, even if it means getting a sitter and going out on a date. If you are too exhausted at the end of the day for intercourse, you can find ways to help each other relax – for example, take a bath together once the baby is asleep.
During the mid- to late 30’s, other differences often arise as men become more motivated by love and women become more interested in physical pleasure. This doesn’t mean that women love their partners less, but it does mean their reasons for having sex go beyond wanting to please their partner and toward wanting to please themselves. Many women begin hitting their stride: their sense of personal worth grows as they become more settled in their work role and / or their life at home. They begin making more demands for themselves – including sexual satisfaction – and they don’t feel as dependent on the relationship for their sense of self.
When men are in their mid- to late 30’s, testosterone levels generally begin their gradual decline. Although some men no longer feel the intense sexual drive they experienced earlier, they often become more emotionally committed to one partner. They discover the second phase of sex – which has more to do with emotions and communication, whereas the first phase tends to be biological and instinctive.
• Women and men tend to become more alike in how they feel about sex – and there is a greater balance between emotional intimacy and physical pleasure.
• Sexual satisfaction increases.
For many couples, the 40’s can be the most gratifying – and sexually satisfying – time of life, as intense concerns with career start to fade, children become more independent, and physical health is generally still good. It’s also a time when women and men find more of a balance between physical pleasure and emotional intimacy.
It seems that most people experience their 40’s mainly as a period of caring rather than crises. About 60% find that sexual satisfaction increases with age. There tends to be a revision of life’s commitments in the 40’s. If a couple has a happy and enduring relationship, it tends to deepen even further. The man and woman have had the opportunity to become more skilled, concerned and interested in their relationship. Some couples, however, find they have grown apart, and if there is going to be a separation or a dissolution of the marriage, it’s apt to occur during these years.
For those who remain committed to one another, the quality of the relationship may improve as the man develops his capacity for intimacy. As his ability to be close and vulnerable grows, he may want gentler lovemaking, with more cuddling and hugging. Meanwhile, a woman who has come into her own and developed the “action” side of herself will focus more on independence in her life and become less inhibited about sex. She may want a more vigorous approach during lovemaking, along with the gentle caresses.
Toward the late 40’s, a woman’s estrogen levels generally begin to decline as her body prepares for menopause. She may find that vaginal lubrication is somewhat diminished and slower in developing. At the same time, a man’s testosterone levels continue to decline, and many men require more direct stimulation during foreplay to experience erection. Still, most couples enjoy regular sexual activity.
• Menopause may provoke an physical and psychological changes affecting women’s sexual feelings, both positively and negatively.
• Men’s ability to become aroused and develop an erection may begin to decrease.
Most women experience a gradual decrease in the amount of estrogen their ovaries produce for some time before menopause, but some go through a sudden precipitous decline that heightens the physical symptoms of menopause. Reduced estrogen levels can cause the vagina to become dryer, thinner and more fragile, and some women experience pain and bleeding during intercourse – surgical jelly can help with lubrication and allow a woman to maintain a normal sex life. And according to some gynecologists, women sometimes benefit from having sex earlier in the day, when they are feeling fresh. Also, those with severe menopausal symptoms may be candidates for estrogen replacement therapy, which can help relieve vaginal dryness.
Menopause may also produce psychological changes. Some women may, for a time, be more irritable, fatigued, sensitive and turned off sex, then become more sexually needy and responsive. This inconsistency of feelings can be upsetting for a couple, and they need to discuss the effects of aging, as well as their fears and anxieties in our youth-oriented society.
Although some women mourn the passing of their fertile years and feel less attractive and less sexually desirable, others enjoy the sense of freedom that comes from not having to worry about pregnancy, and they can become more interested in sex. A woman’s physiological potential for orgasm never diminishes, even after menopause. It seems that some women’s orgasms may be more frequent than earlier in life, since it is a response that one learns over time.
Men in their 50’s generally find their ability to become aroused and develop an erection begins to decrease. This may be due not only to physiological changes, but also to a decreased ability to conjure the sexual images that men so often use to trigger physical arousal – this diminishing of visual fantasies could be one reason why men often need a longer period of sexual foreplay and become dependent on their partner for maintaining an erection. Although impotence may occur more often as a man ages, it is by no means inevitable and often is the result of performance anxiety related to aging changes. It seems that men tend to be less prepared than are women to deal with the changes. Even a transient occurrence of impotence can cause a man to feel a great deal of panic. Men are also unlikely to talk about their problems and to seek help for them. They may simply avoid having sex.
A woman can encourage her partner to communicate by giving him plenty of reassurance, attention, affection and kindness. At the same time, it is important to stabilize other aspects of the relationship – getting involved in enjoyable activities together.
Over the years, many couples tend to do less touching and exploring of the entire body, when they should be doing more. Touching is a basic human need for both men and women that should not be overlooked. Some couples are able to go for weeks without sexual intercourse – without satisfying themselves with touching.
• Women’s orgasms may be more frequent.
• Although men find that ejaculation occurs less often and erections take longer to achieve, the changes can result in more leisurely enjoyment of sex.
A motivated and emotionally flexible couple can remain sexually active until the end of life. It is not unusual for men and women in their 70’s to have sexual intercourse once a week. Sex researchers Masters and Johnson reported that postmenopausal women who have intercourse on an average of once or twice per week have less of a problem producing sufficient lubrication than do women who are less active, and they experience little or no discomfort, because frequent sexual intercourse helps the vagina maintain more elasticity and lubrication.
Women and men in this age group who abstain from sex over a prolonged period – a year or more – may experience some temporary physical difficulty in resuming sexual activity. Women may experience pain and dryness, and men may find that they cannot achieve or sustain an effective erection. But these symptoms can often be alleviated in about two or three months with repeated episodes of unhurried non-demanding foreplay, gradually leading to intercourse.
Even a sexually active man over 60 may find that ejaculation occurs just one of every two or three times he has intercourse. By the time he is 70, the refractory period lengthens – although at age 20 it probably took one or two minutes to achieve an erection again after climaxing, by age 70 it can take one or two days. The positive side to some of these changes is that they can provide an opportunity for the more leisurely enjoyment of sex, with more touching and caressing during foreplay.
With age, sexual response also becomes more susceptible to stress and lifestyle changes. For example, if retirement causes an individual to feel less productive and powerful and to have less self-esteem, it can undermine a normally healthy sex drive. But, if retirement is seen as a productive period, when a couple travels and enjoys leisure time together, it can greatly enhance one’s sex life. A couple with a good relationship and a healthy sex life will have an important buffer against the depression people often feel as they get older – and it can have a positive effect on longevity.
Conclusion
In the long run, it seems that women and men basically want the same things – to feel physically and emotionally close to one another; to love and be loved. If men over their lifetime can learn to relate intimately on a deeper emotional level and become more comfortable with tenderness and vulnerability, and if women can learn to feel less physically inhibited and more powerful, this combination is the fuel that will fire sexuality and intimacy at any age.
Perhaps, the truth for all of us is that nothing external can bring lasting happiness and joy. It’s not the money or being a best-selling author or having the cover of Newsweek that makes life meaningful. It’s the love we give and receive and how we grow in wisdom. This is what we take with us. And that’s what is fun and meaningful to most of us. There is great value in making the commitment to one person – a husband, wife, lover, partner, and teacher. The process of commitment is so liberating.
For many of us, when we were growing up, monogamy had this repressing feel to it. But as we get older we often see the power in commitment. When you commit yourself to one person, you create a sacred, safe place. You become more intimate and vulnerable and life is more fun. And if you aren’t having fun, who wants to live to be older anyhow?
“Two fulfilled individuals make for a better couple.”
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