Can you keep erotic love in a long-term relationship? How do you reconcile love, life and the pursuit of passion? Sex in a long term relationship is a contradictory business. It’s a bit of a balancing act, given our cultural penchant for togetherness and total candor! Hard to maintain the ‘mystique’ living so closely in a long-term relationship …
Erotic silence
‘Women don’t fantasize the same way men do,’ they said. Along came 50 Shades and blew that old chestnut out of the water! The male ability to switch off and compartmentalize various aspects of life offers a way to keep a vibrant erotic life in a long-term relationship. The imagination is a playground that fuels the longevity of satisfactory lust. For too long women were barred from exploring beyond the forbidden frontiers where modesty is corrupted and imbalances of power are luxuriously played out with excitement.
Lots of anxiety, shame, guilt and taboos about erotic fantasy underpinned miserable marriages in Ireland. Shutting down the imagination lead to predictable, mind-numbing sex. Anxiety, fear of rejection, shame, guilt and taboos about erotic fantasy undermined its’ rightful place as a creative force of nature. Good Roman Catholics don’t think such impure thoughts. If they did … world order would surely collapse!
Sexual fantasies don’t reflect real life because they are pretence. You get to write, direct and star in your own movie. From there comes the sharing and mutual explorations. Getting on the same erotic wavelength takes away so much guesswork and fumbling, repressions and dissatisfaction and constantly hones your unique sexuality.
Some would caution on the sharing … does total exposure diminish or enhance eroticism? Should you share every fantasy? I don’t believe you can. Fear not – here’s always a part of your inner workings that remain inviolate even in the closest relationship.
Sex in Captivity
Navigating a relationship beyond coupledom requires openness. Are we lovers, best friends, providers? Friends, family, exes where do they fit it in? How do we spend time together? How much time is allowed apart?
What about opposite-sex friends, flirting, sexting, strippers, porn, affairs? What is your tolerance of infidelity? Sometimes there’s a much higher tolerance of divorce to satisfy honor rather than repairing a basically good relationship. Waterford glass is deemed more precious after it has been repaired. Are affairs always indicators of deep flaws in a relationship? I don’t believe so. Affairs happen for loads of reasons. Danger, risk, passion, novelty. By virtue of short exposures to the idealized new partner they’re contained, away from the real world, far from the daily grind of domesticity. There’s an intensity, a brief perfection … and usually a cascade of hormones fueling it, until it runs it’s course. It is possible for a union to weather them, but the risks and fallout are huge.
Pleasure, for it’s own sake is viewed as childish and shallow in adults. Pure enjoyment is considered immature. Loss of control seen in a negative light as we enter the real life of adulthood.
I believe that eroticism is an imaginative act and you can’t measure it, you don’t need to measure it. Pleasure must be the only goal, for it to work. It involves love, intimacy, power, surrender, control, passion and excitement. It changes gender casting. Too often in therapy I hear about the mechanics of sex … erections and orgasms that measure performance, far from an indulgent sensuality which doesn’t do such scorekeeping. It is mindful pleasuring and being pleasured.
Secret of Intimacy
Intimacy is not a constant in a long term relationship.…it waxes and wanes over time. A partnership has peaks and dips. Could it be that the secret of sex in captivity is to develop an ability to have a series of highly charged affairs with the same person time after time?
