Maybe you’re not getting enough physical intimacy, maybe you’re enjoying yourself but you’re open to the idea of some extra spark, or maybe you’re trying to figure out if your partner slipped a celibacy contract into your relationship when you weren’t looking.
And maybe none of that applies to you. But if it does, let’s talk.
In a relationship, sex isn’t just physical technique or visual stimulation. Sure, that plays a role.
But intimacy, trust, and love fuel the fires of desire once the initial lust phase is over — they add spark, increase frequency, and stop the never-ending rejection some couples deal with.
In future posts, we’ll talk more about intimacy, trust, and love, but today let’s talk about how emotions and thoughts affect your sex life. (And later in this email, I’ll give you an idea you can start using right away.)
Almost everyone has had the experience of planning for a little romp later in the day only to have a disagreement or even an inconsiderate comment totally kill the mood.
Depending on how intense the mishap was, it might be hard to be in the same room – let alone the same bed.
While it’s easy to understand how something like that puts a damper on things, it’s not as easy to see that we all have what this guy named Gary Chapman calls a love tank.
When your partner does something that makes you feel loved, the tank fills — think of it as a love deposit. When your partner doesn’t make deposits or makes withdrawals, the tank empties.
If your tank is full, you feel loved, appreciated, and willing to give to your partner. If you both have full love tanks, that’s when some serious magic happens!
But no one wants to experience the kinds of things that happen when one or both tanks are empty.
People start feeling that they aren’t loved, appreciated, or trusted no matter what they do. And when that happens, intimacy levels drop or disappear completely.
Let’s look at a possible scenario.
During a session, a husband tells me, “I’m earning a good living, mowing the yard, making dinner, doing the laundry, letting her sleep late on Saturday while I get up with the kids even though I’m tired too, and it’s like she doesn’t even notice. How can I make deposits in my wife’s account when nothing I do counts?”
It’s likely that all of those things don’t count because doing things for her isn’t what makes her feel loved. For her, she needs to hear the words ‘I love you’ and the reasons she’s appreciated and important in his life.
Just like the long talks and compliments she gives him don’t fill his tank because what really makes him feel loved is her touch.
What makes each of us feel loved is different. Just because the example I gave used a man wanting touch and a woman wanting to hear the words, that doesn’t mean that it’s that way for every man and woman.
For both sexes, it might be things done, physical touch, quality time, words said, or even gifts.
Regardless of the one or two styles of expression that fit you and your partner best, you have certain things that make you feel loved – even if you don’t realize it consciously.
And for almost everyone, feeling deeply loved by a partner translates to attraction. And that attraction becomes lust. And that lust makes for sex, better sex, and great sex.
So here’s something you can do right away that can add some sizzle between the sheets.
- Share this post with your partner and ask how full (on a 0-10 scale) his or her love tank is. If it isn’t at least a 7, ask what you can do to make some deposits.
- Then make the deposits and see what it does for your sex life.
That’s right. I said ask what you can do.
We’re about Mindful Change around here, but no one should have to be a mind reader. So it’s okay for both of you to be responsible for asking for what you want so that you feel loved and you can give your partner what he or she wants.
If you don’t know what makes you feel loved, contact me at heather@mindfulchange.com or call me at 613.601.1083, and we’ll set up a 30-minute discovery session to help you figure it out.
There are people who’ll read this post, show it to their partners, and then sit back and wait. But relationships don’t work like that. They’re team projects. And next week we’ll explore a common team issue.
It doesn’t matter if your team is your partner, your coworkers, your employees, or your kids. Understanding the information in next week’s post will help you have a better team.
Until then, enjoy this week’s quote:
“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how
to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It
dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
~Anaïs NinLove
Looking forward to next week!