Julie Sibert thinks married sex has the potential to be a lot more just an orgasm.
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Few experiences compare to an orgasm, right?
For something that is relatively brief, there is a lot going on in those moments. What makes an orgasm phenomenal isn’t just the physical sensations, even though those physical aspects are… well… pretty amazing.
If we don’t also have a fair amount of love, commitment, trust and transparency in the mix, sexual pleasure offers little relevance beyond those fleeting physical sensations.
With marriage, we have skin in the game, so to speak. We have a history—a knowing of one another that is absent in casual hook-ups and “friends-with-benefits” encounters.
Where better to experience phenomenal sex than with the person to whom you have pledged your life?
Sadly, married sex is too often fodder for sitcom comedy, where it is portrayed as something that rarely happens—or happens only after the pleas from a stereotyped buffoon of a husband to his less-than-enthralled wife.
It is unfortunate that such depictions persist. Contrary to the clichéd scenes that play out on the screen, sex within marriage offers a husband and wife countless possibilities for mutually-enjoyable sexual pleasure and passion.
I happen to be a wife who loves sex, so I’m an enthusiastic advocate for a husband and wife pouring themselves into that tender and sensual place in their marriage.
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Do you know what sexual pleasure means to your spouse?
It’s an odd question. I know. Not exactly dinner party conversation, right?
Ahhh, but exploring the richness of that question may take you places you never imagined in your marriage. Good places. Naked places.
And not just physical nakedness—although, as I have already said, that kind of nakedness is remarkable. What about emotional nakedness? There’s much to be said for transparency and vulnerability that makes marriage not only an exclusive sexual playground, but also a safe haven.
I remember once when someone tried to break into our house, and after the chaos and shock wore off that evening, I wanted nothing more than to make love to my husband.
Or the time when I cried when we made love, not out of despair but out of an overwhelming sense of reassurance during a challenging time in our life.
What does sexual pleasure mean to your spouse?
If sex has been a struggle in your marriage, strive to heal that pain and division. If sex is a source of indescribable oneness for you and your spouse, continue to seek ways to strengthen that bond.
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Here are 4 ways to find out what sex means to your spouse:
1. Carve out time to be alone with each other—in bed and out of bed.
Strengthening your friendship while clothed inevitably attracts you to one another when the clothes come off.
2. Explore each other’s bodies.
Don’t let foreplay, touch and anticipation become a lost art in your sexual relationship. Sexual encounters become routine only when we lose our sense of curiosity and discovery.
3. Seek and receive feedback with compassion and love.
Help each other learn what you each find sexually pleasurable. Too often, husbands and wives rely on assumption and intuition, but those can be lousy compasses in bed. A better approach is a loving loop of feedback that is specific and timely. “I like it when you caress my inner thigh with your fingernails” is a good example.
4. Recognize that sex is rarely just about sex.
The benefits of sex show up well beyond the bed sheets. When we sexually give ourselves to the person we married, we are better equipped to do life outside of those moments. We have a keener sense of being partners through the chaos and joys that are inherent with full and busy lives.
What does sexual pleasure mean to your spouse?
You may never know until you dig into that question.
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Image: kiwanja/Flickr
Great ideal. Lucky you. I wish I knew what to do. I discovered last May that after 33 years of marriage I was in a Mixed Orientation Marriage without knowing it. My wife came out to me and to herself as lesbian. So for my spouse, sex with me means nothing at all. She has no desire for me. And that’s seriously hard to live with and find a way around. There’s a fair amount on the Web, fora and books, for straight wives of gay men. There’s next to nothing for the (few?) straight men who try to stick… Read more »
Great. It would be useful to many of us if you used words that were more open to relationships & marriages of all kinds — “husband & wife” doesn’t apply to everyone, & makes it a bit harder to read & get the useful stuff said.
Thanks for your comment, AS. We work hard to use language that is open and accessible to readers regardless of gender or sexual orientation. In fact, we have an editorial policy to that effect that we published back on January 16, 2014 under the title “Call for Submissions: Marriages From Outside the Gender Mainstream”. Here’s the url: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/call-for-submissions-marriages-from-outside-the-gendered-mainstream-bmartin/ In this article, the author was quite conscientious of her language and she accomplishes this in several ways. She uses the term spouse rather than wife, for example. Near the beginning of the article the author, a woman married to a man,… Read more »
Great article!
insightful article. Work on the friendship you share with your spouse outside of the bedroom. Then, as indicated in the article, the mutual, shared attraction increases when the clothes come off.
The sex really becomes lovemaking when it is integrated into, and becomes part of, the total relationship. It is worth stressing, work on strengthening and improving the relationship outside of the bedroom.
I think that’s a really great way of putting it Larry B!
Thanks to the author for writing this article.
And thank you for putting it that way, Larry B.
What also might be worth mentioning, but that so many people don’t seem to recognize, is that the phenomenon in point #4 most often works in reverse too. If you start to sexually shun your partner, it will most likely affect your relationship in a host of other ways as well.