Source: Piotr Marcinski / shutterstock.com
Sex! Human sexual behavior is the ultimate charged topic, more often the subject of conversation and research now than in the past, and the apparent source of many an unhappy or doomed relationship. The University of Indiana National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (2010) found that 61% of singles reported that they did not have sex within the last year, compared with 18% of married couples.
Sounds like married couples have it made, sex-wise, right? Not so fast. According to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, author of New York Times piece “Searching for Sex,” who analyzed Google search data, the top searches about marriage and relationships are “sexless marriage”, averaging over 21,000 searches per month, and for “sexless relationship”, averaging over 3,500 searches per month. For marriage, “sexless” beats “unhappy” and “loveless”—and add in nearly another 3,000 searches for “sex starved” and “no sex”. For relationship, the only search term that had more hits per month (at over 5,500) was “abusive relationship”. And according to the University of Indiana study, 25% of married couples report having sex 2-3 times per week—leaving 75% of married couples having sex once per week or less. According to a 2015 survey by Abby Rodman, there are several factors couples report, including having had children and the passage of time dampening desire. Most survey respondents noted loss of interest on the part of wives, rather than husbands, related to stress and fatigue. Most respondents (75%) reported that they are not happy in a “sexless” marriage—though 25% reported they were okay with how things were.
Having noted the above, it’s worth highlighting that the underlying issues contributing to a loss of sexual activity and vitality in long-term relationships is under-researched and poorly understood. It isn’t enough to simply cite the need for novelty and increasing familiarity over time, and though stress and fatigue are clearly important external factors that can (and should) be modified, there is more to the sex story than meets the eye. In some cases, people with sexual difficulties require professional diagnosis and treatment, which when properly addressed saves many a relationship. Sexual issues are still surrounded by uncomfortable feelings and avoidance in general, aside from any relationship issues that connect with sexuality.
We would like to focus in on how sexual behavior may be affected in irrelationship. Remember, the core feature of irrelationship is avoidance of awareness of anxiety associated with intimacy. By intimacy, we mean all forms of intimacy—emotional, psycho-spiritual, mental, and physical—including sexual and non-sexual intimacy. Sexuality is a crucial aspect of deeper overarching intimacy for many couples.
What does sex represent for each person? Does having regular sex serve as a way to become more connected and mutual, as a genuine loving and fun experience, or does sex serve as a way for the couple to pretend things are fine by providing superficial proof that the relationship is healthy. When does sex foster compassionate empathy between partners, and does sex get used for people to see each other as non-human objects? Does conflict about sex become an ongoing theme for arguments that don’t have to, but often do, lead nowhere fast?
Like mutually-satisfying relationships, irrelationship requires participation from all involved parties. In the case of sex, irrelationship requires living out the need to maintain distance from one another in order to minimize anxiety about intimacy. Furthermore, the erotic aspect of this distancing can take several forms:
Touching and explicit sexual behavior is altogether missing as in the “sexless” relationship;
Sex occurs out of a sense of obligation, duty, or anxiety about the consequences of withholding, becoming mechanical and unenjoyable, or worse (“bad sex”);
Sex becomes a performance, even an expression of competition, hostility and contempt;
People, often but not always the female partner in heterosexual relationships, have sex when they don’t want to, creating serious problems later related to the quasi-consensual component to the shared decision.*
Sex of this sort often serves as a way to hide the fact that there are serious problems in the relationship. When the sex stops, for whatever reasons, everything that has been festering below the surface, often for years, suddenly comes out into the light.
If couples are looking to re-kindle or re-vitalize their sex life together, the story of Emily and Malik is instructive:
"I don’t exactly know how I got myself to do it,” Emily broke in, “but when you started to fade away in the bedroom, I was so totally crazy about you by that time that I couldn’t just let it happen the way I’d always done in the past. I knew I was repeating my old ‘non-committal’ act. But this time I spoke up before you reached the exit. I still can’t believe I got myself to do it. In the past I’d always just let my boyfriend call the shots: when he’d start letting me know he was having second thoughts or whatever, I just went along.
"Yeah, I know exactly,” Malik agreed. “I was playing it safe by doing what I had always done. But I’d never been called on it before. What a double-whammy it was to get busted by somebody I knew deep down that I was crazy about.” Malik laughed and continued, “You’ve been a real game-changer. Thank God!”
By learning to communicate safely and effectively using the 40-20-40 approach, Malik and Emily learned how to create a space in which they could honestly and openly share their feelings about themselves, each other, and their relationship. Without realizing it was happening, that’s exactly how they started building the intimacy that had made them so apprehensive. But the impact of quality communication isn’t confined to the bedroom: once effective, compassionate communication becomes a habit and couples become able to discuss formerly anxiety-provoking issues without fear that exposing their feelings will spell the end of their relationship.
Malik continued, “For some reason, this time I was able to allow myself to be confronted about still wanting to be with you and being scared of it at the same time. I’d been holding on to this half-baked idea that if I came out and told you how crazy I was about you, you’d be on the next train out of town.”
"Yeah, I see that now,” Emily replied. “And my solution to that was a pre-emptive strike: I started withholding because I thought that, any day, I was gonna get a pink slip. Well, now that we’ve worked that out, it’s been a huge relief to realize that, no matter what kind of problems either or both of us have, we’ve got a way through it that takes the pressure off one of us having to figure out how to fix it. The bonus is that being able to share the everyday stuff that way makes the bedroom even better.”
Malik laughed. “Yeah. To think I was hell-bent on making sure the best thing that ever happened to me couldn’t get me!”
* Non-consensual sex in any relationship is rape. Individuals involved in relationships involving rape and related abusive behaviors should seek professional assistance immediately.
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