Threesomes
MOST people in steady
relationships occasionally wonder what it would be like to have sex with
someone different.
It’s not easy to keep your
sex life fresh. Swapping partners for the odd night, or a threesome, can sound
like the best way to sharpen your appetite without risking a relationship.
It doesn’t involve deceit,
like an affair, and you both have fun. The internet has made it easy to contact
other potential swingers. But it’s not as simple as all that. The sex life of
humans is closely linked with emotions. Having sex with a partner can be
difficult to keep separate from feeling in love.
Three's a crowd ... sex is linked to
emotions and this fantasy often ends in misery
It’s often the man who
first raises the idea of the couple taking another man or woman into their bed,
swapping partners with another couple or going to a swinging club. He goes on
and on at his partner not to be prudish.
But week after week I hear
from couples who have experimented and been made miserable. A husband who has
pushed his wife into having sex with another man may then reproach her for
being unfaithful.
He may say he feels he can
never trust her again – and leave. Or the woman may decide she has fallen for
the other man – women tend to feel emotionally drawn to someone who makes them
feel special in bed.
We all have problems in
long-term relationships. It’s easy to fall for the idea that someone you’re
sharing different and exciting sex with would be a better life partner.
But this supposedly safe
way of you both enjoying sex with someone new can wreck relationships – and
bring the risk of a sexual infection or unplanned pregnancy. Before you get
involved, look at what is drawing you or a partner to the idea.
Has your love life become
dull? See my tips tomorrow on how to go on having hot sex year after year.
Or is it hard giving
yourself over to real intimacy? If you can learn to trust your partner with
your deepest feelings, love-making can be so rich that you feel no need to involve
others to spice it up.
Cheating
I OFTEN hear from men –
and rather less frequently women – who long to remain faithful to their loving
and loved partner but are compulsive cheats.
It eats into their
relationship and blights their sex life.
When young, men may not
see it as a problem. They can be the envy of mates as they get off with girl
after girl.
Sooner or later, however,
they usually meet someone special yet are soon having one-night stands again –
maybe while their wife or girlfriend is pregnant and even though they hate
themselves for doing it.
A guy like this is putting
himself and his partner at risk of sexual infection and their sex life often
hits the rocks. Relationship after relationship bites the dust.
Risky business ... a common problem
among male readers is their inability to stop cheating
As the years go on, his
life feels more and more hollow as he tries to bed various women who become
increasingly fed up with him.
Women, too, can find it
hard to be faithful. Many write to me wondering why men always seem to want
them for one thing only and why their relationships never last.
The answer is usually that
they give men the impression that a one-night stand is what they expect, by
being too ready to have sex when what they really want is love.
They may try to settle
down but always fall for a chat-up line then feel cheap and guilty afterwards.
How do you get out of this sort of pattern? The root cause is very likely in
your childhood. You probably felt unloved as a child so suffer from low
self-esteem and are on an endless quest to feel loved. If yours was a troubled
home and your parents had a turbulent relationship, you can get hooked on the
adrenalin high of getting off with someone new.
Just understanding the
causes can help you to change. Share your memories with your partner but do not
expect them to be more accepting of your infidelities.
You still have a
responsibility to change.
If, like most cheats, you
are more likely to stray when you drink too much, cut down on the booze.
Stress
STRESS is really our
reaction to change – any change, good or bad. Our body goes into
fight-or-flight status, in memory of our caveman ancestors who had to fight or
flee from any threat.
Stress is healthy as long
as it’s only temporary, but if we’re unhappy long-term, in our job or due to
family worries, the underlying tension may show in being generally
short-tempered, depression, insomnia or sex problems.
What many doctors now
recommend instead of medication is that you learn relaxation techniques.
Although the stress may
have a mental or emotional cause, learning how to control the physical symptoms
of stress helps you feel calmer and more able to tackle the real problems – and
get your sex life back on track.
Slow, steady breathing is
a good start. Breathe in through your nose to a count of four, hold for a count
of four then breathe out through your mouth to a longer count of six or eight.
Repeat this six or eight times.
Once or twice a day,
wearing loose clothes, lie down or sit in a comfortable chair, do the breathing
as described above then work your way through your body, first clenching then
relaxing each set of muscles.
It is easiest to start at
the toes then work up the body to the face, then relax for around 20 minutes –
perhaps listening to some soothing music.
Look online or ask your
doctor’s surgery if there are relaxation, meditation or mindfulness classes in
your area.
Keeping fit helps prevent
stress having an unhealthy effect on your body – and is great for your sex
life, too.
Drawing the line
ARGUMENTS about just what
type of sex is and isn’t OK cast a big cloud over the lives of some couples.
In general, I would say
that no form of physical pleasure and satisfaction is wrong between a loving
couple – as long as you are both willing and enjoying it and neither of you is
being hurt physically or emotionally.
If the only thing holding
you back from enjoying oral sex is your mother’s claim it is disgusting then
remember – it’s none of her business.
However, it’s rarely that
simple.
All of us have lines we
draw. What one of us finds erotic, another finds degrading.
It helps not to start
taking moral standpoints and judging one another, but to see it as a practical
problem to work through. First, work out whether there are real grounds for
ruling some things out – such as the fact they might hurt one of you or you
would find it degrading.
Be firm that you will not
consider anything you feel really isn’t for you.
And don’t try to justify
any objection. If you start trying to say it’s wrong or dirty, then your
partner will just attack every point you come up with. If you try something
under pressure, then it cannot be fun for you. Pornography is not the new
“norm”.
However, be willing to try
suggestions which you may have been rejecting as embarrassing or too naughty
but which are actually harmless.
If the rest of your
relationship is strong, you may surprise yourself and find you are wonderfully
turned on by the very thing you never dared try.
Online porn
THIS isn’t available only
via desktop or laptop computers, it’s on our phones, tablets, net books –
everywhere.
I regularly hear from very
young people worried about their porn habit, and pornography can condition what
they imagine sex will be like when they meet a partner.
Instead of gradual
exploration and developing intimacy along with mutual respect, which makes for
a happy start to sex, they get hooked on ideas which are often about one person
exploiting another.
Therapists report that
online porn seems to be addictive in a way that old-fashioned erotic magazines
and videos are not, and I am hearing from more and more adults worried about
their partner’s activities online as well as individuals troubled by their own
addiction.
Some couples enjoy erotic
material together and most of us accept that men, especially, will see some
porn.
It would be sad to make it
a relationship-breaker if a couple are otherwise happy. Looking occasionally at
mild porn is a world away from looking daily or nightly at hardcore porn and
withdrawing from your relationship.
An addict can end up so
cut off from their emotional and sexual responses that it takes more and more
extreme material to stir a reaction. They lose interest in real sex, even when
they have a loving and willing partner.
Preventing addiction to
online porn isn’t just about installing blocking software. Use your computer or
phone in shared areas of the home.
If you use porn to deal
with stress, learn deep relaxation techniques. Review the times you’ve looked
at porn online and what the trigger was.
If it’s alcohol, cut down.
If it’s when you are low or lonely, phone a friend when you’re feeling down –
or organise an outing that doesn’t expose you to temptation.
If you have a partner,
tell them you think you have a problem but remember they cannot solve it for you.
What is really important is to tackle the underlying issues.
If it’s your partner who
is addicted, only they can end their addiction. If they won’t try, you have to
work out whether this is a relationship-breaker for you.
Online sex is fantasy, not
a real relationship. Sex chat doesn’t prepare you for real intimacy. People
drawn to sex on the net tend to find real relationships difficult.
If you are the anxious
partner, tell your online sex addict they risk losing you unless they change.
Like any addict, they need to stop the “drug” – preferably avoid using the
internet at all for a while – and arrange counselling.
Fantasies
IF you think sexual
fantasies are dreams we always want to fulfil, be warned there is a lot of
confusion about this subject between couples. Men and women tend to have
different sorts of fantasies and have different expectations of them.
If you ask a man about his
favourite sexual fantasy, he will usually tell you something he would very much
like to put into practice – if he dared. It is probably something he’s learned
about and wants to try. So a man may say his sexual fantasy is oral sex,
bondage or having sex with two women at once.
When a woman talks about
sexual fantasy, she usually means an image or imagined scenario she may have in
her head as she has sex. So she may actually be in her suburban bedroom with
her tubby hubby of 15 years, but in her head she may be Anastasia in Fifty
Shades Of Grey.
Tied up in knots ... pushing partners
into fulfilling fantasies can lead to the end of the relationship
But to a woman, a sexual
fantasy is rarely anything she expects or indeed would even want to happen.
Generally, women’s secret
sexual fantasies help free them up to enjoy sex and are nothing to feel guilty
about. But if they do tell their partner, it can lead to confusion because men
tend to view fantasy and use the word quite differently.
I often hear from couples
where the man is putting pressure on his partner to help him act out his
fantasies, but actually putting such fantasies into practice is often a
terrible mistake.
Unlike people in
fantasies, real people have feelings which get stirred up. Pressuring a partner
to join in anything they don’t feel really comfortable with shows there are
serious underlying problems in your relationship.
If
you truly loved them, you wouldn't want them to feel uneasy. On the other hand,
if it’s your partner who is asking you to act out a fantasy, do think whether
there is any real reason why you shouldn't experiment.
