How does your sex life rate? In a study of married couples, 31% had sex 2-3 times a week, 24% just once a week, and 23% 2-3 times a month. It is surprising to me that in a Psychology Today survey of 52,000 people, “39% of men who responded admitted to occasional or regular lack of interest in sex and that 30% believed sex was a burden, more like work than play.” Of course, we can’t live simply according to norms, but these statistics might prod us to perk up our love lives.
If you notice something the matter with your sexual drive or interest, consider doing a self-assessment. Your sexual urges can be affected by a number of factors: preconceived notions about sex, expectations you have of your partners, your sexual education and past sexual experiences, your comfort in sexual situations, any performance anxiety or other sexual problem you may have.
You need to be able to literally take a good look at your body and your sexual organs and feel okay about them. You would benefit from knowing how to stimulate yourself sexually to know what is pleasurable to you. You need not transgress any religious boundaries, but you need to discover how your sexual response operates so that you can communicate to your partner what you like. You can also keep a diary of what arouses you sexually; this will develop more awareness of your sexuality.
You can also spend some time just having fantasies. Research has shown that having fantasies is quite a normal activity. You can have fantasies and never carry them out even if they involve persons other than your partner or include activities you would never do in real life. What’s good about fantasies is that you can be private with them, are not judged by anyone, and have no standard of performance to conform to.
Once you are knowledgeable about your own sexual interests, you need to work these out with your partner. A good exercise recommended by Drs. Knopf and Seiler is to write down sexual activities in these three categories: “Do now and enjoy”, “Don’t do now and would like to try”, “don’t do now and don’t want to try”. This will give yourself and your partner good ideas of what brings pleasure, and you can use these lists when you have different levels of sexual desire and need to compromise to satisfy each other.
Another good exercise is the “Basic Conditions Exercise” in which you and your partner write those basic conditions to have enjoyable love-making. Here are the areas: time, place, sound, lighting, feelings, privacy, initiation, and other miscellaneous.
The above recommendations can do a lot to improve your love life, but again remember that underlying most sexual problems is a relationship problem.
Acknowledgment goes to Dr. Jennifer Knopf and Dr. Michael Seiler for their book Inhibited Sexual Desire which was reviewed for this article.