SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS

SEX starts with a kiss and ends with a headache!

Relationships are funny old things, we spend our lives when we don’t have one craving for one, then there is a honeymoon period when we are head over heels in love, moving on to warm contentment, then perhaps slow destruction , and moaning about it. Then sometimes starting the whole process again (and again, and again!!)

What we are doing when we want a relationship, is wanting to have someone to love us unconditionally as our parents hopefully did. The feeling of wanting to be safe, loved, cared for and cherished never leaves us, however old we are.

The difference between us and babies is that as adults we have learned to give back. A baby can only take, it is their survival that is dependant on such an attitude.

Once our children are old enough we start to teach them to give, as hopefully we have learnt to do. So that if we teach them right, when it comes to Christmas and Birthdays we get given thoughtful presents. If we don’t get taught this or hand it on to our children then we miss out on the joy of giving.

Who as an adult hasn’t got huge pleasure from seeing their children open their presents on Christmas morning. It was worth the wait in the toy supermarket just to get that specially requested present. Their excitement and delight is worth it.

Equally children start to learn the pleasure in not just taking but in giving back. Don’t know who enjoyed the present I was given a while back by my sons of tickets to see a long loved band, them or me. They were delighted to give me something, I was so evidently thrilled with.

But this isn’t just about presents, this is about learning to give of ourselves emotionally and to receive. To have relationships with others.

So here we are ready and trained to give, and be given back to, as we all want relationships that are equal and both partners are committed to, even if we don’t always get them!

It starts for most people in adolescence, when we develop our first crushes, the thrill of seeing the object of our desire, and the terrible/wonderfulness of if they notice us. The sheer agony of those first people we fancy, whomever they are. The endless discussion with our mates as to what every word or glance might mean. Does it mean they fancy us, what if they asked us out, do they fancy our mate more, and on and on. Driving ourselves and our friends round the bend. Just as well that they are probably doing the same with us, if we had time to listen to them! when our love interest is so much more interesting than theirs!

Eventually we do get to the stage of not being totally embarrassed every time our hearts desire goes by. We apparently start to mature, that is of course a complete lie as anyone who’s gone back to the dating game after a long time in a serious relationship will tell you, the feelings haven’t changed from adolescence when we fancy someone however old we are! We still get the pounding hearts, the endless thinking the excitement of each contact with our hearts desire.

We get asked out or do the asking, depending when we are young on which sex we are. The boys get landed generally with the task of asking, and the girls do the accepting or not. This may change with age and there is nothing wrong with the woman taking the initiative here.

Now obviously I don’t want to seen here as being prejudiced to anyone outside of a heterosexual relationship, there are two things going on for me here. The first is that I have never had a gay relationship and I do not want to insult anyone by making assumptions about how that feels. This may be considered thoughtless of me, my assumptions not the lack of gay relationship! Secondly I have to generalise, otherwise the book would take forever to get through as I talk about every single permutation. So I hope you can forgive me for just sticking to stereotypes right now.

Now that’s out of the way I’ll continue!

We may go out with one person , we may go out with many, there is no right number here, it’s just how it is. We may become sexually active quite young or late, we may have a few or several sexual partners. There is absolutely no golden rule here on what each of us should do. The only rule, and it’s an important one, is that we should do what feels right to us at the moment of doing.

This ‘moment’ of course changes as we get older and more experienced of life. And we equally must learn not to be judgemental of ourselves when we look back at our behaviour and find it wanting. Because it simply won’t do to get hooked into ‘what if/if only’ behaviour. As the old saying goes …. If I knew then what I know now. Hindsight is a glorious gift that we use to beat ourselves up good and proper!

There we are then in our relationships, we are of an age when sex is seen as appropriate by both parties, we are in love/lust/ infatuated, however you want to describe it. We simply can not get enough of one another we only have eyes for each other we are oblivious of the rest of the world. We don’t care if we kiss in public places or more, it simply doesn’t enter our heads that there is any other people on the planet! This is true of any person of any age and any sexual persuasion ( That is such a grim word that.. ) So if two people are in love you are just as likely to see 15 year olds, 59 year olds, gay couples, anyone who is lost in the world of their love.

Because of course being in love is reasonably akin to being completely mad, bonkers, barking, out of our tree or whatever. As we simply are so preoccupied with our love that we think about them almost constantly, and if anyone interrupts our reverie, we’ve hardly time to listen to them before we go back into our delightful daydream about ‘our love‘. Work, home, mates, whatever takes a back seat in our minds as we focus on the wonderfulness of the person we love.

If we are having sex with that person, then we will not be able to have enough sex, the need to be constantly intimate with one another is huge ( no pun intended) We cannot imagine a time when this might be different, surely this passion will go on for ever…
We need to be in endless contact with our love, and we live in an age of such fast changing communication, that we text, email, phone endlessly, and other thing that we are sure will never stop.

But of course it does.

After approximately seven months the first flush is starting to come to an end, not that anything outwardly may change as yet, but what does start to happen is either a growing emotional intimacy or a break up as one of this relationship is fearful of the changing intimacy.

We are beginning to know are new partners at a greater depth, we’ve done our histories, exchanged details about how wonderful each is, possibly given each other pet names, and we still have the need to talk endlessly, but what are we going to talk about if we don’t start dealing with what inside us? We are certainly not ready to talk about world affairs for any length of time, when we have each other to know and explore.

So we begin to work below the surface at what makes us tick, the emotional stuff, the inner us. As we all have a candy coat exterior and it’s only as we start to trust in a relationship that we feel safe enough to allow our inner soft centre to be known. That part of us that is scared that if our love finds that actually we are needy or jealous or insecure or anything less than perfect they may not love us anymore.

Of course they will be many relationships in our life time, that fail at this point, as the other person is not ready for that level of intimacy. Which can feel very painful to deal with if one of us has invested feelings of love in that relationship and it fails at this point. But although this may hurt and possibly hurt for some time, and I don’t want to minimise it’s impact on our feelings these short term relationships are in the big picture easier to come to terms with , before the person can move on and start the search again for Mr or Ms Right.

What I want to look more at is the relationship that survives this first hurdle, and the people in the relationship move on to start to know each other and dare I say it understand each other better. The growing emotional dependence on each other, the partner takes on the role of best friend as well as lover. And although sex may still be very important and frequent, there is a growing knowledge of what pleases each of us, and what turns us on, where our erogenous zones are.

Of course that doesn’t mean that these haven’t been discovered before, but in the initial stages of a sexual relationship we bring our entire sexual experience to this new one, so we will know what to do, but will not know exactly how to please our partner, what really works to make sex so special between us. This knowledge is learnt over time. And in a good relationship it is a totally mutual thing, in that we need to give and be giving to for both parties to feel satisfied, cherished , loved and adored.

This giving and taking is not simply related to sex, it’s related to our care of each other, our ability to share with each other. Our mutual respect and understanding of each others wants and needs.
If these are provided a relationship flourishes, and if not starts to flounder. As, if there is inequality there is no balance between people, and this can start to be resented, initially unconsciously but slowly coming into our conscious minds.

If we accept the premise of personal responsibility here, then love is no different. When we fall in love we are quite likely to hold the other person accountable for our love. In that we make the assumption that is their loving us that makes us feel good. Well to an extent that is true, but more pertinently it is our feelings inside us that are what counts.

Whomever I love may or may not love me back, if they do that is fantastic we can go ahead and get on with our relationship. But if they don’t and I still have the feelings of love, whose feelings are those? They are mine, I cannot make anyone feel something they don’t, however much I might want them to! It is my daydreaming. They are my feelings when I get close to my love. You only have to look at unrequited love, or even stalking to understand the responsibility of feelings.

No-one ever wants to be stalked, but the stalker believes erroneously that the object of their desire loves them back however ludicrous that thought might be. And so pursues that person.

Love is what we feel for others and if we are in the right place at the right time then we can get together with another person who is experiencing the same magic as we are.

Men and women, have different ways of feeling their self worth, for men it’s through sex and for women it’s through hugs and cuddles.

If a man is getting sex then he feels valued and cared for, and is more likely to be able to provide what the woman wants. If a woman gets to feel cherished through the softer hugs and kisses then she is more likely to provide sex for her partner and so the circle remains whole, going round and round.

If for some reason the circle gets broken, and the biggest event that does this is in the woman giving birth. Suddenly she no longer has time or desire for sex in the way she did pre children. The man hasn’t changed, and can find this a very difficult time, which can lead him to feel resentful and left out of the new love affair his partner is having with a baby. Which as already discussed is the maternal instinct reacting with the baby to protect and nurture the baby to allow development of that child.

What can start to happen at this point is the man asks for sex,is refused, on grounds of tiredness or exhaustion, the woman feels that the man is selfish and demanding, and not aware of how difficult life is with a small baby. The man, for his part sees that he is going out to work all day and coming home to his partner who’s done nothing all day except look after the baby and how difficult can that be!

I think I’ll just leave that last statement to allow women to scream…….

The man hasn’t lost his sex drive, the woman has and is more than likely also going through a stage of self hate with her body, as everything is not as it was before pregnancy. And unless the woman has access to a personal trainer chances are that her once pert breasts have gone south somewhat, her flat stomach is now flabbier, she may have allsorts of feelings related to her genitalia, especially if the skin tore in delivery and she has been stitched afterwards.

She may no longer feel attractive to herself, never mind her partner. She’s tired and exhausted with broken sleep, and possibly boredom, as however much we love our children they are not great conversationalists when they are tiny, and unless a woman has a social network she can feel very isolated. She simply cannot handle the pressure of her partner wanting to have sex. And is the time when she’s most likely to have a headache than want to go anywhere near her partner.

He in turn can feel resentful as he doesn’t understand what it feels like to look after this baby 24/7. Not that he doesn’t love his child, but unless he spends considerable time alone with the baby he will have no idea of the level of work required to care for a child in these early days.

So a pattern develops of neither partner getting their needs met, cause the only person getting their needs met round here is the baby. The woman is probably longing to feel cherished and cared for. But not necessarily as pre baby, but in getting time off. been given a hug, asked how she is feeling and what the man can do to help.
The man, at this stage really has to understand that for a while at least the baby comes first, but rather than resent that as a block on his sex life, he would be better placed to see his place in the survival stakes and know that his role is to care for the mother of the baby, to give her the emotional support that she needs to care for the aforementioned baby. It is suggested that a couple who spend more time kissing and cuddling than having sex are more likely to stay together.

When put like this it does sound a bit of a horror story, as these parents look after this invading object that has taken over their lives in a way that neither of them expected. But if the ladder of care is understood the relationship between the couple has a much better chance of survival than if the man is demanding his needs be met, without knowing what stress he is putting his partner through, when she has enough on her plate right now and hasn’t the energy to have sex as well. And so just ends up feeling uncared for and angry with the man at his selfishness.

Eventually if the woman values her relationship with the man, she will have to attend to her ambivalent feelings about sex and know that if her relationship is to survive then sex has to be part of agenda to help make it work.

This means that if the man has being able to resist the need to be demanding of sex in the early stages of the child’s life and has given his partner plenty of non demanding physical contact then the route back to a sex life will be easier, than if resentment in both partners is present.

Of course there are many reasons why the circle that a couple have in the start of their relationship gets broken, apart from the invasion of children. Work issues, death outside of the couple but affecting one of them, as in the death of a parent. If a relationship is strong enough then although the circle may be battered for a bit, fundamentally it stays intact and the couple can come through the stresses of life together.

However there is another big danger time, and that is when the couple have been together a long time, pre supposing they got together in their 20’s had children fairly soon after and are now heading fast up their 40’s.

When we all hit a certain age, which in my experience is somewhere between 37 and 49 years old, people start to question their lives. Is this all there is?

The knowledge that they will never be a rock star, prime minister, own a Ferrari or whatever hits hard. We start to feel dissatisfied with what we have, we want more,
we want to feel more alive than we currently do. There has to be something more, something to make us feel that we are not heading straight for death without some excitement in our lives.

We start to look around for something anything that makes us feel alive again. The two big choice of activity here are either a complete career change or an affair.

So many women hit 40ish and decide that it is their time now, the children are old enough for them to be start developing themselves, which is why University’s are full of women of a certain age retraining for a new profession.

They need this sense of personal fulfilment, being a wife and mother with a little job is no longer enough. They want more, they deserve more, they need more. So they go and get it, and start to feel more confident, are satisfied and happier about who they are.

This can cause terrible difficulties in their relationships though, as their partner may feel very threatened by these changes in their partner. Because they unconsciously are frightened of losing their partner, who obviously won’t love them anymore when they have this new dynamic qualification, that rather than discuss it, they resort to cave men mentality, or resistance to change, to give it another name.

They feel very threatened at the thought of the changes that they fear will happen inside the woman, so rather than talk it through they become argumentative with the woman putting pressure on her to stay the same, not to rock the boat, to carry on as always.

Of course there will be some women who will cave in, but they won’t be happy as a result, and no doubt will end up in therapy looking at why they are feeling so lost. As they have lost themselves for the sake of another human being and that is not healthy.

The better way is for the woman to talk through why she needs to change her life direction. To talk about her lose of self, and why she needs to find personal fulfilment. At the same time reassuring her partner that she needs this change for herself and does not mean that she wants the relationship to end.

So this allows the man to change his expectations alongside the woman’s so that change can be managed with as little threat on either side as possible. If this doesn’t happen and the man gets into cave man mentality then the relationship will be under far more stress. And for more likely to break down.

The other big activity that may take place at this time is the affair. From a stereo typical perspective this is more likely to be the male way of dealing with the lack of magic within himself. Although, as I say that I’m aware that men have to be having those relationships with someone else!

When a couple have been together for a long time they can get complacent about each other, take each other for granted, not have anything to talk about anymore. This will happen if the two people involved don’t bother to work daily on their relationship. Marriage is not just about a day floating round in a posh frock. Marriage is about valuing oneself and the other and wanting to make efforts to make it work together.

In a healthy relationship it starts with two people facing each other and being so close together that you can’t get a cigarette paper between them. In the next stage they are starting to face outwards but still joined at the hip. And as the relationship develops and matures the couple will be walking forward together but facing outwards in the same direction. Walking towards their future but still with little gap between them, so that they can still turn and face each other have share their long known intimacy together.

But when people start to take each for granted they can start to face in a different direction from their partners and the gap between them can grow. Till they feel misunderstood and uncared for in their relationship, and then when they meet someone who seems to understand them, be interested in what they have to say, find them sexually attractive, then it is extremely beguiling. Like having pixie dust thrown in their eyes, they can only focus on this new person and how they feel about them.

And so the sex saga starts again!

However this rather cynical view of relationships isn’t true of all. But is true is that we don’t stand still. If that was the case we’d all still be eating baby food and never have moved on to discover curry! So it is with relationships, they constantly change as we do as individuals, and a healthy partnership is one in which the other is allowed to be as they are, without us having to impose our way as being the only way forward.

If we have a personal self worth and our partner has the same and we learn to communicate with each other, then change can be accommodated as part of the contract we have with each other, rather than threat.

All relationships will go through difficult times, they cannot do anything else, what makes or breaks them is each person involved wanting to stay together and making the effort to keep talking when it gets tough. Be willing to give to the other physically and emotionally to maintain the strength of the relationship through communication on all the levels we are capable of as human beings.