DROP THE NEEDLE!
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When we collapse in bed at night and immediately fall silent, it’s hard not to mourn the way things used to be. We never believed we’d reach the stage in life when “not tonight, honey” sounds hopeful, in that it doesn’t rule out the whole month. But here we are.
We’re not the only ones struggling with how to get more. An infamous 2003 Newsweek cover story announced that 15 to 20 per cent of couples have sex no more than 10 times a year, which meets the popular definition of a sexless marriage. A New York Times article last year pointed out that Google searches for “sexless marriage” were three and a half times more common than those for “unhappy marriage.” And in Chatelaine’s own recent survey of 1,000 Canadian women between the ages of 35 and 45, 31 per cent said they have sex less than once a month.
My husband and I teeter dangerously close to the sexless marriage threshold, pushed there by the demands of our jobs and our family, our constant exhaustion and perpetual lack of time — to sleep, to exercise, to take care of ourselves. Our unambitious “sex schedule” is the only thing that keeps us from going over the edge. More than once, we’ve gotten stuck in the thorny chickenand- egg admission that we’re both tired of not getting enough sex, but also too tired to do anything about it. Sex is the thing we ignore because, unlike so many other demands on our lives, we can. But the truth is, there’s a wedge between us that’s never been there before.
It’s a common problem heard by Caroline Pukall, a psychology professor at Queen’s University, both at her sex-therapy clinic in Kingston, Ont., and in the halls, where some colleagues have quietly broached the topic.
“The first thing we have to do is validate how people are feeling,” she says. “You keep waiting for something to change. But guess what: You have to force the change.”
And if you don’t, and your relationship becomes more platonic, “it’s easy for your partner to say the dreaded words, ‘ I love you, but I’m not in love with you,’ ” says Andrew G. Marshall, British marital therapist and author of Have the Sex You Want. “And if you don’t solve, ‘I love you, but I’m not in love with you,’ that can quickly become, ‘Actually, I love somebody else.’ ”
I get that; hence all the scheduling and alarm-setting and antacid-scented attempts. But none of it has resulted in having great sex, which doesn’t exactly leave either of us hotly anticipating our next encounter.
Part of the problem, Pukall says, is that people tend to focus solely on the act itself. Just do it, the thinking goes, and you’ll want to do it again. What gets lost is the fact that desire needs to be cultivated.
“People think desire will be spontaneous and completely natural. It’s not,” she says. These days, we expect our needs to be met immediately, the way Siri jumps right on our questions and an UberEats lunch is just a tap away.
“We almost expect our bodily responses to be instantaneous. And it’s really unfair,” Pukall says. “Most people work from a place of sexual neutrality. We’re not turned on all the time, and you can’t expect (to be) just be- cause you’re having a date night.”
So if you’ve scheduled a night to have sex, she says, send some steamy text messages to your partner a few times throughout the day. Flirt a bit through dinner. “Keep that momentum going,” she says. “Hold on to those really good feelings and look forward to it.”
Looking forward to it is one thing, but when sex is infrequent, the stakes are high. The pressure to have it be good can be insurmountable. If it’s not good for both people, despite best intentions, that disappointment is going to last.
“And if your partner is having a great time and you’re not, that’s damaging to your partner as well,” Pukall says. “If he or she realizes that you’re not feeling pleasure, it’s like a sledgehammer to the knee.”
So now I have to worry about pulling a sexual Tonya Harding? How can good sex between two committed people be so hard to figure out? Says Pukall, “The more pressure we put on ourselves, the worse it is.”
Maybe that’s the key. There are plenty of areas in our lives where we forgive ourselves for failing to reach a certain bar. For instance, instead of cleaning thebathroom, I pee with my eyes closed. I make loud declarations about embracing my grey when I don’t have time to touch up my roots. My husband andI used to experience huge amounts of stress over figuring out dinner after a 10-hour workday, and then we agreed not to sweat it: Sometimes it’s homecooked, sometimes it’s takeout, and sometimes it’s cheese and crackers.
Maybe we need to agree that we won’t sweat the cheese-andcrackers sex, either. Maybe that will allow us to reap the benefits of just being together. Acknowledging that the goal at this stage should bemaintaining sex — rather than expecting to excel at it — could liberate us from the feeling that we’re failing.
Research on sexual motivation and outcomes by Amy Muise, a social psychologist who studies sexuality and relationships at the University of Toronto Mississauga, supports this idea. She says people feel anxiety not just over how much sex they’ re having, but also about whether it’s being performed in a certain (read: acrobatic and multi-orgasmic) way.
“It’s important to maintain a sexual connection, but you should have realistic expectations,” she says.
Muise’s research shows that when people engage in sex to avoid a negative outcome — for example, making sure it hasn’t been too long between business times — the result is less positive. “But when people reframe the idea to focus on positive outcomes, such as ‘I really want to feel closer to my partner,’ that leads to positive sexual experiences and feeling better about the relationship.”
In other words, just do it — but not because you think you should. Notbecause you’ve found nine minutes after the kids have gone to bed andy our phones have fallen silent, and before exhaustion has completely robbed you of the will to move. Do it because it’s a chance to spend time with your partner, an opportunity for a rare, intimate (and non-transactional) interaction. Maybe you’ll climax, maybe you won’t. Go into it knowing that it’s the showing up that counts. While we’re not huge fans of the term anti-aging, let’s face it: everyone wants to look fresh-faced and well-rested. And every year, a slew of new products promise to make us look at least 10 years younger.
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