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Further
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Potty Training Your Baby From Age 3 Weeks
A new mom will quickly learn when baby is telling her that he is tired or hungry. Baby will also tell you when he is about to soil his diaper - or 'eliminate' in the jargon. The signs are usually a grunting and moving into a certain position. My...
Are Public Schools Anti-Parent?
Some public schools try to turn children against their parents with scary classroom stories or lessons about child abuse. Public school authorities have increasingly decided that they are children’s first line of defense against child abuse. This...
Three Important House Selling Tips
There are hundreds of good house selling tips that can help you when the time comes to put that sign in the yard. Some are more important than others though. Here are three of the most important points.
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Moving On to Much Better Things After Leaving an Abusive Relationship
Leaving an abusive relationship is difficult, but being alone can feel worse. All your happily married friends are still happily married, and here you are suddenly single. It’s a huge adjustment. Even though you’ve triumphed by getting out of a...
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What is Normal Sexuality in Marriage?
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Written By:
Maggie Vlazny, MSW
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What Is Normal Sexuality in Marriage?
Everyone wonders about this. Do our friends "do it" more often than we do? Does anyone else have this problem in which one partner has high desire, and the other one has little to none? We must be really weird. Everyone wants sex, don't they?
The answer is no. Not really. More than 40 million Americans feel stuck in low-sex or no sex marriages. Research studies tell us that 1 in 3 women and 1 in 7 men reported little to no sexual desire. Sometime in a marriage more than 50% of couples experience one or both partners with little to no sexual desire.
Desire problems are the most frequent complaint of couples entering sex therapy. They are also often the unspoken complaint of couples entering relationship therapy.
In our sex saturated culture, this particular difficulty has a stigma, doesn't it? It's ok to admit to having a drug problem or mood disorder. But a sexual problem? No way! We're all supposed to be sexual superstars in our intimate relationships, aren't we?
Actually, sexual anxieties, inhibitions, and problems are the norm. We're afraid of not doing it "right", like in movies and books. "Right" would be intercourse, with both parties craving each other all the time and having simultaneous orgasms every time they're intimate.
Wrong! Healthy sexuality means giving and receiving touching that is pleasurable. It is not goal oriented, but process oriented. (The journey, not the destination.) It allows both partners to enjoy - continued below ...
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continued ...
pleasure. It varies. Sometimes one or both has an orgasm. Sometimes not. And that's ok. What's not ok is not caring about yours or your partner's needs.
There are many possible reasons for a discrepancy in desire between partners. The first is biological. As I mentioned in the statistics above, more than twice as many women than men have problems with sexual desire. This is because after the infatuation phase of the relationship, when hormones are running rampant, things settle down to natural biological rhythms. And biologically speaking, whoever has the most testosterone has the most desire.
Hmmm…. I wonder which gender that is!
Other reasons relevant to both genders are performance anxiety, emotional pain in the relationship, coerced intimacy, sex used as a bartering tool, lack of time, lack of energy, and fear of intimacy to name a few. These can be helped with an understanding therapist.
What you should do: first get complete medical exams to rule out any type of disease or medication causing the problem.
What you can do: see a relationship expert or sex therapist who can help you experience the pleasure and joy of intimate connection. You deserve no less.
Maggie Vlazny, MSW, LCSW copyright 2005 www.therapyct.com
About the Author
Maggie is an Imago Relationship Therapist and RCI Singles Coach. Services offered by phone, online, or in person at her Fairfield County, CT office. For more information please seee www.therapyct.com or contact maggie@therapyct.com
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| _Additional Resources ... |
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Christmas memories are never dependent on the amount of money spent or the popularity of the toy. Memories are made up of amount of heart invested and given. This year, let your children invest their time and hearts in making Christmas memories...
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