Feeling you can reach your partner sexually, connect physically and be cared for and welcomed by your partner on an erotic level is important to individual wellbeing and to the health of a marriage. Unfortunately when resentments or distance build up in a partnership the sense of welcoming, physical openness and acceptance between partners can become damaged or diminished.
Excitement, passion and availability can be replaced by disinterest, uncertainty and anxiety about reaching out for intimacy. It’s easy to get caught up unwittingly into a cycle of increasing distance. Ending that cycle and reigniting intimacy can take some solid emotional ground work to enable sex to make a full comeback!
If you feel the first step to getting things back on track sexually in your relationship might be emotional repair (I think you’ll know if this is the case!) you can get some tips from my free ebook Hot Devotion. In this little book I teach you about getting out of the way of intimacy, having more fun together and making permanent repairs emotionally, especially around how you communicate and disagree. If you want another quick read on strategies to build emotional intimacy and make relationships last, here’s an article you might like Staying Together Means Learning to Handle Pressure. Once you’ve had a look at the emotional health of your connection you’ll have greater success reigniting excitement, passion and eroticism in your marriage.Here’s a few ideas for reigniting your sexual chemistry:
Therapist Esther Perel makes a great suggestion – that we think about sex as an erotic world we go to together as a couple. It’s a place away from the everyday humdrum of life and it can take a little preparation to change out of the less sexy roles we undertake daily and inhabit our lover side again. We may need to help each other find the space and motivation to make that transition at the end of a day.
Touching and physical contact that’s not overtly sexual is a great place to start connecting and moving out of the mundane towards the erotic space of life. Be willing to try something different – not trying kills passion and erodes a relationship further. To avoid feeling rejected just remember – it may be necessary to put in a good deal of work reconnecting emotionally before sex can really take off again between you.
If you are in a bit of rut doing the same thing in sex all the time together, you may like this idea. Talk about ruling out your usual sexual repertoire for a while just to get creative. That means if you usually favour penetrative sex in a couple of different positions, decide you simply won’t do those next time. It will push you both to expand your minds and actions.
Make special efforts to nourish your shared erotic world everyday in small ways outside the bedroom. Another beautiful idea is to think of foreplay as a constant gentle background state in your shared world. Whenever you’re not actually having sex you can be behaving towards one another as you did in the early stages of your relationship. That means, rather than take one another for granted, behave as you did when you wanted to attract your partner at the start – it’s the best way to keep attracting each other now. Being a loving presence for one another can be 24/7 even if it’s only in the most subtle of ways.
For even more intensive ideas specifically for reigniting sex in your marriage, have a look at this free mini online retreat course for couples. It’s brimming with practical ideas to get you started today.
Just BE the love that you ARE x
