How is it that three or four decades after the sexual revolution we find couples having less sex than ever before? The we’re struggling so much with desire is we’re grappling with the fundamental meaning of the word and its functions. It's not about the stigma that comes with statistics and performance, i.e.: How often it happens and how long it lasts. It’s about the meaning rather than the act.
The nature of erotic desire in committed relationships was for most of history primarily for the purpose of procreation and about a woman’s marital duty, not anchored or rooted in the concept of “desire” which owns the wanting. This placed an individualistic culture in which there was an "I" who deserves to want, and who was entitled to have their wants met.
Couples often say, "We love each other very much; but we have no sex." They’re not particularly missing the closeness, as they’re often very connected. They’re Intimate couples whose lives are either devoid of eroticism or of sex altogether. Good intimacy doesn't always beget sexuality. We’re feeling incarcerated by marriages that are void of intense strong desire and lust. We’re existing in our relationships for reasons other than wanting each other? Its familiar, comfortable, and safe. We cherish each other, sometimes for the kids’, others just have nowhere else to go or feel they belong in this bond. None of this is bad, nonetheless, we’re still building the external incarceration.
Lust and Desire must be the primary reason that we go into marriage and stay married without losing the passion. The transition in marriage from lust to love can escort through slow migration to incarceration.
This defeatist approach to marriage shouldn’t be embraced and must be argued against. It’s time to grasp the erotic mind and bolster the institution of marriage.
The solution has nothing to do with sex itself but learning how to navigate through your emotions. Couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term are not couples who constantly can't keep their hands off each other. They're the couples who know how to co-create a context that allows both brains access to pleasure.
'Primary Process Emotions’.
Developed by Jaak Panskepp
Lust
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Desire, yearning and a hunger |
Seeking |
Seeking, Curiosity and Exploration provides a doorway to the lust space in our minds.
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Playfulness |
Creativity is above going outside of the boundaries and not being linear. Being expansive and connecting dots that are not obvious to connect and creating a whole new reality with it. Erotic imagination plays along very similar lines.
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Fear |
Anxiousness, stress, overwhelm.
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When animals have sex, it is nature, a primary urge. It is instinct and procreative. Humans have an erotic life. We transform and socialise sexuality through our imagination with the central agent of the erotic act, our creativity. We have the ability to renew, anticipate and imagine ourselves in bliss without even touching. Envisioning the act without enacting it is human because we have the luxury of an imagination.
Eroticism maintains aliveness, vibrancy, vitality, life source and energy, and makes us feel tuned in, if we can get there. Then there are the more reluctant feelings of anxiousness, stress, overwhelm, that place us in the fear space. These are as far away from our lust space in our brain as we can get.
How are we supposed to want sex when we’re so frustrated with our partners. They’re not on board with us about all these other issues in our relationship? How am I supposed to want sex with this person?
You aren’t supposed to want sex in that situation or condition. It’s not easy to get from the mental space you are in, in terms of the primary process of emotions (in the above diagram), all the way to anything in the vicinity of a sensual or stimulating space in your brain.
So, the key is to get out of these loathing spaces, and closer or adjacent to lust. reconnecting the quality of the renewal of playfulness, aliveness, curiosity, mystery and transcendence. That is eroticism. This is the erotic intelligence that must be focussed on to develop as a couple. Couples are not seeking more sex in their lives; they just want quality and better sex and there are no stereotypes when it comes to which gender wants it more.
Spontaneity is a normal healthy way to experience sexual desire, however there is also responsive desire where instead of the lightning bolt, it emerges in response to pleasure, as opposed to spontaneous desire which is the anticipation of pleasure.
It's not about statistics and performance, instead more of a radiant state, a moment of interlude, which is a very different conception of sexuality. It’s not just something you do, but more of a space you enter, a place you go, inside yourself with your spouse.
Couples Therapy helps you explore these ideas with a spouse, creating a safe space to talk. These conversations whilst awkward and fragmentally painful can be extremely rewarding.
Park whatever frustrations you might be having for now and create a context for dialogue about sex that feels safe and harmless. This kind of conversation is not about criticism. Its about finding out what’s amiss. Talk about your experience and how you’re going to make this work for you as a couple.
Remember you and your spouse belong together in a sexual way, so it’s vital that you are interested in exploring ways that can deepen this connection. Find out what works for you first and then for your spouse, in a way that's going to feel good not critical.
Beverley Frazier
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