sex not so important?

[Dominic]

Okay, coming from me this may seem a little strange...

but I really don't think sex is that important to a long-term relationship. It is important, don't get me wrong - you need to be sexually attracted to one another (at least some of the time!) to avoid falling into the "we're just friends who sleep in the same bed" routine - I just don't think it's really the end-all-be-all that our culture and society has made it out to be.

Movies, TV, music - all pretty much throw it in our faces everyday how we're supposed to be having more sex, better sex, and with people much better looking than we are ourselves! Is this really what life is about?

I know that when I'm in the beginning stages of a relationship, sex is very important. You go at it like bunnies, right? All the time, on top of the fridge, doing all sorts of kinky things together.

But I feel this is really just nature's way of forging a personal bond between two people - assuming they go on to form a LTR. Once you've been together for two, three years...the sex doesn't necessarily get "worse," it just gets comfortable. Other things become more important: companionship, security, commitment, laughter - sharing a life together.

Sure, mind-blowing sex is great and all - but is it REALLY that critical to a successful, long term relationship?

For those of you in otherwise successful long-term relationships - say, over three years long - can you have both? For how long? Do you wish you and your Significant Other had more sex, better sex?

Do you think you're missing something or are you happy?

[Blarg]

I think a point that Tom Leykis makes -- bear with me -- is important here. Sex is not love, but sex is crucial for intimacy. Which is absolutely core to a relationship.

I believe you can love each other very much, but you'll start to drift apart in certain ways, without physical intimacy.

My mother still remembers, with heartbreak, how her mother recoiled when my mom, as a child, put her hand on top of my grandmother's hand. My grandmother was not "touchy feely." But she was that way so much that she acted repulsed toward her own child. Which of course hit her kid with a traumatic impact that she still recalls as a key component of what their relationship was all about.

Did my grandmother really love my mother less than she should have, or not at all? No. But physical intimacy is a big part of love. Every touch, really, serves as a kind of confession, even if a kiss can sometimes be a lie. But touch, warmth, surrender and openness, intimate and deeply felt presence are all part of sex. You really get a lot from another without necessarily seeming like you're going to all that trouble, because so much happens at once, and so much sharing can be involved.

Take away that sex, and that sharing of intimacy goes too. It's not really replaceable, even by all the rest of what love has to offer. Physical intimacy is one of the things that makes love so humbling and natural, and makes it feel so real, honest, and of this earth. It brings us back to ourselves and that other person we've chosen, and who has chosen us. That reconnection provides an opportunity, even if the sex itself is fairly desultory, to really bond with each other, and show our acceptance, caring, and love of each other, once again. It's an emotional and spiritual shorthand and conduit both, and I think that even if we accept that price, we will always pay a price for failing to meet in intimacy with our partners.

[Dominic]

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Sex is not love, but sex is crucial for intimacy. Which is absolutely core to a relationship.


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this is spot on, I think. And the rest of your post was great, too. You said it much better than I could have.

[J.Brown]

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Sex is not love, but sex is crucial for intimacy. Which is absolutely core to a relationship.


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this is spot on, I think. And the rest of your post was great, too. You said it much better than I could have.

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i agree and i agree.

sex is as important as it is to each individual in the relationship. that is the organic part. don't you think? i can't tell you how important is or anyone else and they can't decide for me. i think its importance ebbs and flows a bit too through the years. (i have been with the same girl for a decade or so, married for almost 6 years of it)

generally the importance drifts a bit, from all consuming to a very important part, but not the focal point of the relationship.

that being said it IS essential that both parties are satisfied in this aspect or the drifting apart in one form or another definetly seems to begin, usually from the male side because, well, we know the answer to that.

sex is a very easy way to have fun and stay close in a relationship and good sex almost never means problems for anyone. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

nice points by both though. J.

[diebitter]

No, the frequency is not important as your LTR gets in its stride, but you still need it now and again. And IMO, it gets a lot better with a partner you get to know.

That's why sex-with-an-ex is often a whole lot better than a one-night stand or whatever, you already know and trust each other, and know what each other likes etc.


It also depends somewhat on what else you have. When you have kids, it gets pushed to the bottom of the heap in terms of time, cos there's so much to do, and so little free time (and so little time to relax into it too).



However, I'm not sure the whole 'less sex the longer your together thing' is true of everyone. In my experience, everyone is so different when it comes to the weird and wonderful world of sex, there are no absolutes.

[BPA234]

Sex in a long term relationship is relatively unimportant, unless you aren't having it or what you are having is bad.

For me, the real killer is boredom. I think the expression is show me a beautiful woman, and I'll show you a guy who's tired of fecking her. You can extrapolate that out to a more severe consequence with the average haus frau. Admittedly, most women have it much worse than most men.

[Blarg]

I read an article in The Atlantic Monthly a couple days ago, and this thread brought it to mind again.

It's about women's sexuality often being pretty low, and that being perfectly normal -- maybe even good. (For whom?) The author, Sandra Tsing-Loh, writes an article that does a take on a book called I'd Rather Eat Chocolate, in which a woman describes her low sex drive, despite her having a sexy, attentive husband and going through the motions.

But here's how an article in The Atlantic about the book's author, Joan Sewell, begins:

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Joan Sewell is not in the mood. In fact, she is never—or hardly ever—in the mood. And it’s not that she hasn’t tried.

She slathers her husband, Kip, in chocolate frosting. She whispers naughty nothings in his ear. She lights candles, dons a bustier and fishnets, and massages him with scented oil. Ho-hum. She would still prefer a brownie, a book—anything to sex. And she says most women, unless they’re fooling themselves, consider the deed a chore.

The idea that women’s sex drive can match men’s is politically correct piffle, says Sewell, who is 45. Her memoir, I’d Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido, recounts one frustration after another in a buildup to an anticlimactic conclusion: she’s just not that into sex. Such a pronouncement may not be titillating, but it’s groundbreaking, says Sandra Tsing Loh in the March issue of the Atlantic.

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And here's Sandra Tsing-Loh's ringing endorsement, or the start of it(you need the paper mag or a subscription for the rest -- I'd recommend either one, as this is my favorite magazine and almost always very good):

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Here’s the next wild turn in the female sexual revolution. Goodness! we hear you wondering, half in excitement, half in alarm. Is it some hot new wave of Seattle girl-on-girl action? (Or is that “grrrl-on-grrrl”? Indeed, do we even have grrrls anymore—are they still in bisexual vogue, with their tattoos, piercings, perky magenta pigtails, and combat boots?) Or is the latest sex trend something America’s desperate housewives are doing? One pictures sleek gated communities in Scottsdale, Arizona, where randy Hot Moms—possibly the bored, blonde, ex-model wives of millionaire athletes—are defiantly throwing Chardonnay-soaked house parties involving dildos and Botox, where Botox is actually shot, into the forehead, from a dildo.

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Most interesting is I think this response in the Atlantic's forums:

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I'm an Expert...

...on friendship with benefits. Isn't the Internet a wonderful thing?

Add to your list of reasons to stay together that some women - like me - are dumb enough to have given up careers to stay home and look after kids, and therefore have pathetic pensions to look forward to. I am currently trying to re-start a career in my 50s too, (yet another reason to stay fit) but I will be running to catch up financially until I die. Unless of course, I do the other thing that women are supposed to be so good at - take the money and run. I don't advocate infidelity either, but it sometimes IS the only answer. Just as long as everyone knows that it works both ways. Personally, my spouse won't go near counselling. Why should he - he's quite happy the way things are!

I wonder if The Atlantic are happy that we appear to be turning their reader's forum into an internet dating service? :=)

More thoughts on the 'middle aged women and sex" debate. Physical fitness and mental attitude are both at work here as well as ingrained cultural attitudes. I'm not an American by birth, I'm European, and I often feel on many levels (not just sexual) that I have little in common with American women. Is this at least partly an American problem? I'd be interested to know if - for example - the average Frenchwoman or Swede prefers brownies to sex? And even if she did - I doubt very much that she would be so proud to admit it!

There is a big emphasis here in the USA on LOOKING sexy, but not on actually BEING sexy, and this starts young. It's important to have the perfect manicure and pedicure, perfect skin, to "cure" our wrinkles etc. to look desirable. Why bother if you don't actually want to be desired? I don't get it. When I go to the nail salon I see wall to wall overweight girls and women of all ages (being worked on by beautiful, tiny, slim Vietnamese women of all ages - but that's a different debate) and I wonder why women work so hard on trying to look sexy if the chances are they actually aren't looking for - or even interested in - sex? (If they spent the money on a membership at the gym, it might be more worthwhile!) This whole thing is a complete mystery to me.

I've met women who honestly say they prefer the company of their dogs to men, but they still have facials and Botox so they can look good. Well I'm afraid LOOKING sexy and actually BEING sexy are not the same thing. The shops are full of clothes for girls and young women which are designed to make them look sexy, but at the same time they are still also being told that it's bad behaviour to actually BE sexy, ie to seriously want, actively seek out and enjoy sex. This is a very mixed up society, which hammers into women that they should look desirable at all ages, then says it's fine to have no libido! To call this a mixed message is putting it mildly. No wonder so many people are so mixed up about sex.

Suggest that schools teach really good, effective, sex education, the kind that would teach young people how to actually enjoy mutually good sex and protect themselves, how their bodies work etc, and you will be jumped all over by the right wing who will say it encourages promiscuity.

I actually believe the opposite. I myself was brought up in the 50s and 60s with absolutely no sex education at all, beyond my mother saying "Don't do it until you are married and then you'll do it because you must, whether you want to or not." But I didn't believe my mother. And I think we had a few lessons about rabbit biology at school (no I'm not joking!) Of course there was also this big myth about how it would all magically "come naturally" when I met Mr Right.

It takes a lot of getting over an education like that, but I got over it, mostly by finding a succession of willing boys with whom to experiment until I discovered what I enjoyed. And I'm not advocating that either. (I gave my own kids plenty of sex education and they held onto their virginity much longer than I did and neither one has been in rehab yet, so I count myself a successful parent.)

But many women never really get over their upbringing of being told, basically, that overtly sexual women are bad, and that women don't really "need" it. Intellectually they may know it's not true, but deep down inside they still hear that early lesson - nice girls don't! Am I making sense here?

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It seems to me very true that culture plays a profound part in what we consider to be "natural," and that "natural" is itself an extremely artificial, culture- and time-bound term. Aren't we often really discussing ourselves most of all when we discuss what we think is natural, or should be?*

The forum lady, Essexgirl, strikes me as far healthier and wiser than either of the professional writers whose work brought about her response.

(P.S.: For Raymond Carver fans, what story does this put you in mind of?)

[katyseagull]

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There is a big emphasis here in the USA on LOOKING sexy, but not on actually BEING sexy, and this starts young. It's important to have the perfect manicure and pedicure, perfect skin, to "cure" our wrinkles etc. to look desirable. Why bother if you don't actually want to be desired? I don't get it.


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Well I'm afraid LOOKING sexy and actually BEING sexy are not the same thing.
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This is a very mixed up society, which hammers into women that they should look desirable at all ages, then says it's fine to have no libido! To call this a mixed message is putting it mildly. No wonder so many people are so mixed up about sex.



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Wow, great article, Blarg. I guess I always thought it was a hormonal thing, like passed a certain age you didn't feel the drive as much but really, that lady has a point. I do think to some extent our society has told women that it's okay not to have a libido. It's crazy. I cringe whenever I hear people talk like that.

So many women are ridiculously self-centered. They don't seem to understand why they should be giving and enthusiastic in bed because it's just all about them. Wonder if this is just an American thing? I actually have had two friends confide in me that they are like this. Gah. Good insight by that forum lady.

[katyseagull]

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Sure, mind-blowing sex is great and all - but is it REALLY that critical to a successful, long term relationship?



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I'm one of those people who feels it is really important. I suspect that most relationships that are falling apart have extremely low intimacy.

I can't imagine putting up with another person, like living under the same roof, if sex weren't involved. Even if it's not mind-blowing, it's still really special to just feel someone else's body against yours. It doesn't have to be spectacular. It can be really sweet and comforting.

I just can't see how anyone could think physical intimacy is not absolutely important in a relationship. If I weren't getting it from my guy I might actually have to look elsewhere. I don't think I could survive in a sexless relationship. Can't visualize that at all.


Sex is the one way we can get close to someone and bond and forget about our fights or money problems. Even if it's just for 5 minutes [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Dominic]

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Sure, mind-blowing sex is great and all - but is it REALLY that critical to a successful, long term relationship?



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I'm one of those people who feels it is really important. I suspect that most relationships that are falling apart have extremely low intimacy.

I can't imagine putting up with another person, like living under the same roof, if sex weren't involved. Even if it's not mind-blowing, it's still really special to just feel someone else's body against yours. It doesn't have to be spectacular. It can be really sweet and comforting.

I just can't see how anyone could think physical intimacy is not absolutely important in a relationship. If I weren't getting it from my guy I might actually have to look elsewhere. I don't think I could survive in a sexless relationship. Can't visualize that at all.


Sex is the one way we can get close to someone and bond and forget about our fights or money problems. Even if it's just for 5 minutes [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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I'm not saying it's not important, or that physical intimacy isn't critical to a healthy, loving relationship - hell, just read Blarg's post on that! - I'm just wondering if society today is putting a little too much emphasis on it as a panacea to every little problem a couple might have.