Feeling a little blah about having sex with your partner lately? In long-term relationships, that’s not uncommon. In fact, it’s the number one problem couples struggle with when they arrive at my practice. Typically, the flame hasn’t gone out, but if you don’t know what’s smothering it, you can get stuck in a cycle of low arousal. Below are five tips to get you both back on track.
Get Some Air
As you spend years together, your perspective on your partner changes. It becomes all too easy to take them for granted or to find their quirks more annoying than charming. Shockingly, too much time together can be a real libido killer. It can leave you without the space to remember how interesting, mysterious, and sexy your partner is.
Sometimes, taking time apart is the answer. Other times, focusing on yourself can be helpful. Maybe you need to spend less time in your family role. The administration of running a household together can make you feel disconnected or, occasionally, too connected, like roommates. If you are constantly acting as a parent, chef, maid, repair person, or other family worker, you may start to feel less sexy. Spending time apart gives you the opportunity to take your partner for granted less, have them appreciate your presence more, and remember the individuality that made you so irresistible to each other in the beginning.
Put Old Issues to Bed, Permanently
Unresolved fights are also a common libido killer. If you feel like your fights are unproductive, your partner isn’t listening, or isn’t doing their fair share, you may have come to a verbal resolution. But if you haven’t seen change happen, you may still harbor resentment. Talking it out helps, but actionable change is better yet.
Your body will shut sexual desire down if you don’t feel safe, and having unresolved conflict signals to your nervous system that you’re not with someone you can trust. It puts a wall up that you can’t ignore, however much you wish to override it. If you decide to force yourself to have sex anyway, your body learns not to trust your judgment. Solving issues rather than brushing them under the rug is essential for a lasting sexual connection. Sex doesn’t follow the rules of everyday life. Your mind may run the show while you’re at work, but since sex is a body-oriented experience, your body is in charge. Don’t try to shout it down; listen to it instead.
Prioritize Equality
Next, examine the equality in your bedroom. Do you focus on each other’s pleasure equally? Do you know beyond a shadow of a doubt what your partner likes? Sometimes, women feel pressure to fake orgasms to preserve their partner’s feelings. But this sets the relationship up for conflict. When people don’t speak up or prioritize their pleasure, sex feels like an obligation. It’s something they do only for the sake of the relationship or to keep the peace. If you feel like you’re enduring sex rather than craving it, that is the sign it’s time to prioritize your pleasure. That feeling arises when you’ve given too much of yourself and received little in return.
Flip the script and focus on your pleasure for a while. Set aside a time, maybe a month or two, where your pleasure is the whole point. If your partner isn’t on board for a sexual reset but still expects you to have sex with them when they are in the mood, talk about the pleasure disparity together. A partner who doesn’t care as much about your gratification as they care about their own may be dismantling your sexual pleasure.
Novelty, Novelty, Novelty
Learning a new skill together can help, too. It doesn’t have to be a sexual skill, either, but having a new experience with your partner can break you out of a mindset of routine. Still, learning a new trick or two for the bedroom certainly won’t hurt. Consider attending a workshop together, going to a sex-positive store, or working with a sex therapist. A new sex toy, setting, fantasy, or position can jumpstart your creativity and help you incorporate novelty regularly. It’s a starting point, not the destination.
If you want to learn more, you can’t miss my video on eleven reasons your sex life has stalled:
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