Enhancing your sex life and marriage Archives

Jumpstart Your Sex For The Week. We all have stressful days during our work week. As a Marriage Counselor I get questions like, “I commute and work long hours and when I come home for the day all I want to do is get into my house clothes, eat dinner, grab a glass of wine and veg in front of the t.v. I don’t have any energy for much else especially sex. What can I do to get myself in the mood?” This wife isn’t intentionally committing relationship suicide, but without professional intervention or Couples Counseling, they could be on a downhill spiral where coming back could present a challenge.

When you come home for the day do you go straight for the mail? Give your husband a quick hello kiss then attend to the pets or kids? Are you still on your cell phone answering just one more message? We live in such a goal-oriented society where making money and getting ahead in our career is top priority. We forget how to play and have fun. There is no balance in our work life and play life. If couples put in the same effort into their sex life as they do in their work life they could experience that energy they had at the beginning of their relationship.

Eroticism at home requires active engagement and willful intent. It doesn’t just happen. It requires you carve out and create your own space where a sense of intrigue and curiosity can emerge. Sex Therapist and Author Ester Perel offers some tips to jumpstart your sex for the week:

1. Build anticipation throughout the day
Committed sex is premeditated. Anticipation and imagination are the precursors and can be as enchanting as the act itself. For example, imagine you have tickets to go hear a favorite band. Throughout the day, you’ll be savoring the thought of the songs they may play, what you’ll wear, the memories that you will share, of other times you saw this band, etc. Unconsciously, you’re setting expectations and building anticipation for a wonderful night, and you feel energized and alive. It is the same sexually speaking.

• Let your partner know that tonight, you want to create a digital free zone in the home and all devices are cut off at 9:30pm.
• Send a suggestive text or email to your partner.
• Buy wine, lube or flowers on your lunch break: whatever invites love-making in your unique dynamic.

2. Create and maintain a relaxing ritual at the end of the day
No matter whether you commute, or work from home, you must mark the end of your work day by entering a soothing ritual of your choice. It can be an indulgent, playful, or a guilty pleasure. Shift your context by sending a message to your brain: it’s time to start relaxing. If you spend most of your day sitting down, try incorporating any movement into your ritual. If you’re on your feet, try reading or listening to music. Go for a walk. Take a shower. Read a magazine. Whatever works for you.

3. Connect with your partner when you get home
Are you the person who comes into the house and looks at the mail first, or checks the pets, or the plants, or the windows? If so, remember this: People first. It’s important to give your relationship your focused attention. Make it a habit to kiss your partner when you get home. It doesn’t need to be blatantly sexual. It’s the focused attention that invites the erotic. Even a loving gaze sets the right tone.

4. Change the mood and ambiance
Create the space in which you transition from your roles as parents/business partners/friends, into your roles as lovers. Shift from focusing on your responsibility for others to self care. Again, no pressure, even if there is no sex, you’ll enjoy being physical and sensual together. Here are some simple ideas to set the stage:
• Put on your pre-set love making tracks
• Take a short walk
• Open a bottle of wine
• Draw a bath
• Light candles
• Read out loud to each other (not about the election)

These are not immediate turn ons, but they help you switch mindset, mood, and sensibility. The point is to create an erotic space where pleasure exists for its own sake, where “pleasure is the measure” and where sex can take place without pressure. By successfully managing the transition from work to home, you can create space to enter a playful erotic zone.

For more information about how to enhance your sex life please contact me at (858) 735-1139.

Enhancing Your Relationship. To become acquainted with oneself can be a terrible shock. Emotionally committed relationships bring excitement and passion into our lives, especially when they are new. Over time, however, we come across roadblocks based on personal issues that can distance us from our partners. When we first enter into a committed relationship, we may think that we have found the answer to life’s problems, that we have a partner to share in daily turmoil, that we will never be alone again, that it will be smooth sailing from here on out. If we base relationships on these assumptions, however, we may be sorely disappointed when our partners fail to live up to these expectations. There is a strong probability that if we look to another person to provide fulfillment, we will begin to focus on the failings of that person as the cause of our own disappointment. This pattern is the reason for a great deal of discord in committed relationships.

Many people who come in for couples counseling hope that the therapy will change their partner because they are convinced that the partner is the source of the problem.

Over time many relationships enter a stage where the partners feel distant from each other. The initial passion, sexual freedom, intimacy, and feelings of connectedness with the partner fade. Either person may begin to feel that, although they love their partner, they are no longer “in love,” feeling like roommates. At the same time, both partners may feel that they have lost themselves in the relationship. They have given so much to the relationship in terms of their time, their energies, and their emotions that they have lost what made them feel unique as individuals. They have abandoned old friendships, hobbies, and activities that brought interest and excitement to their own lives in order to devote time and energy to the relationship. When a feeling of distance comes to define the relationship, resentment toward the partner may emerge.

How does a relationship, which may have once shown such promise, end up in a place where the two partners feel distant and may not even like each other very much (even though they feel that love is still there)? The answer lies within. Two people who come together in an emotional commitment carry with them a legacy of their own fears, anxieties, and unresolved problems. It is sometimes uncomfortable for us to come to terms with our own baggage. It is, in fact, so troublesome that we are unable to look within ourselves. When that happens, we tend to attribute the problem to our partners, a process called projection. Rather than accepting the fact that our partners are just being themselves and probably have the best of intentions, we define the source of our own anxiety as lying within the other person. When we feel uncomfortable about something our partners say or do, we may not realize that our discomfort may derive from a source that we have not examined within ourselves like our own control issues, our jealousy, our insecurity, or our fear of dependence or independence.

Our partners may simply be triggering our own unresolved difficulties. The clue is to search within our own lives to see why we have difficulty with these issues. And this is no small task. To become acquainted with oneself is indeed a terrible shock.

For more information on the topic please contact me at (858) 735-1139.