Creating a better sex life requires not only sexual action but sexual reflection. Use the ideas and questions below to guide you in reflecting on lesson seven of the online course 9 Weeks to Better Sex.
This exercise asks you to reflect privately on your experience of your own sex drive and how you experience your partner’s sex drive. As you think about the questions below, don’t worry about whether or not you’re going to share this with your partner. If you can each complete the exercise and then share your answers that would be great, but it’s not necessary for the exercise to be valuable.
There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. They are meant to start you thinking only, not to evaluate your thoughts or feelings.
One of the problems I have with the term “sex drive” is that it evokes something hard wired, maybe genetic, certainly something that can’t be adapted or changed. There may be some truth to this (although there’s no actual proof), but even so, it’s both reasonable and possible to expect that partners will compromise and negotiate when their sex drives differ.
When one partner says to the other “that’s just the way I am,” it sounds like they are unwilling to compromise or even talk about it. If you’re working on having better sex, shutting your partner down is not going to get you there. But it’s easy to get defensive when talking about sex drive differences. One way to deal with this is to be ready to talk honestly about your feelings and why you get defensive when you do.
Questions:
- What does it mean to you when your partner wants less sex than you do? How do you understand his or her sex drive? Do you think he or she would want more sex if you were different or someone else?
- More basically, what does sex mean to you? Do you see it as a way for you and your partner to show that you love each other? Do you see it as a gift you’re exchanging? Is it a way to escape other pressures or problems? Make a list of the things that sex means to you.
- It’s easy to get into roles where one of you “always” wants more sex than the other -- one partner is the “sex maniac” and the other is the “prude.” But in real life, these black and white stereotypes don't apply, and there are almost always exceptions to the rules. Try and think of one or two times in your relationship when you switched roles. If you usually want more sex than your partner, think of a time when you didn’t. If he or she usually wants less, think of a time when the opposite was true.
