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 eight of the online course 9 Weeks to Better Sex.
This exercise asks you to reflect privately on how you and your partner deal with sexual problems in your relationship. 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.
Questions:
- We develop our coping skills over our lifetime. Take some time to think about the role models you’ve had in terms of dealing with conflict. How did they deal with relationship problems? What messages did you get growing up about the best way to deal with difficulties in a relationship? How many of those lessons do you think you follow today?
- Sexual problems in any relationship have to be the responsibility of everyone in the relationship. If you’ve identified a problem you want to deal with, take some time to think about everyone’s role in the problem. If you feel “it isn’t you,” challenge yourself to answer the question: What role do I have in keeping the problem going? If you think the problem is all you, consider how your partner may be keeping the problem alive.
- Communicating about sexual problems is incredibly hard, and it’s very easy for couples to get into blaming each other. If you’ve got a problem in mind, try to write out how your feeling about it only using “I” statements and not assuming or talking about how your partner is feeling or what he or she is trying to do.
- If you have sexual issues you’d like to be able to talk to your partner about but haven't done so as of yet, take some time to think about why you’re hesitating to bring them up. How do you anticipate they would react to you raising the issue? What do you think you would need to feel safe in raising the issue?
