What is Normal Sexuality in Marriage?
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 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