3 Honest Mistakes That Lead to "No Sex Tonight"!
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There’s a reason couples have a hard time keeping sex passionate and exciting in a long-term relationship. Or make it work at all.
Three reasons, actually.
In my coaching practice, where I work with clients all over the world, I see three huge mistakes that all couples make — regardless of age, culture and nationality — that lead to no sex … tonight, and tomorrow night, and then the night after.
And when that happens, couples fall into a vicious cycle of …
Making one of these three mistakes (or all three) ...
Ending up not having sex, AGAIN ...
Feeling bad rejecting the other. Feeling frustrated being rejected ...
Running a script of negative thoughts, how frustrating this is and have they had enough:
“We should have this figured out, we’re adults after all.”
“I feel so unappreciated and all he wants is sex!”
“I do so much and she doesn’t even want to touch me.”
Then the shame creeps up …
Energy runs low … Frustration mounts … Disappointment grows …
You feel like a shell of who you wanted to be …
You feel like a failed couple …
You push each other away …
And you make the same mistakes, AGAIN, tomorrow.
Look, many couples … no, scratch that … MOST couples make these mistakes every single day. That basically means that it turns their week into a “no sex” week and the month into a no-sex month.
And they wait till vacation time to have sex again … only by then, they feel like strangers.
It’s time to break out this pattern — or avoid ending up in one.
It’s not serving you or your love!
The missing link across all of these mistakes is the lack of intentionality when it comes to sex and intimacy in the relationship. No, it does not mean you have to schedule sex to make it happen. It is about prioritizing the contexts where connection between you can grow — the way you did when you were dating. It means making choices to put the couple and the relationship first above all else.
In fact, numerous studies of couples who have a robust and fulfilling sex life and experience what has been called “magnificent sex” show that being intentional and placing value on planning sexual experiences is critically important for maintaining sexual satisfaction in committed relationships (Ferreira et al., 2015; Kleinplatz & Ménard, 2020). Particularly, in a recent qualitative study of "extraordinary lovers", defined as people who reported having great to extraordinary sex (Kleinplatz & Ménard, 2020, p. 5), participants often mentioned being intentional about creating the right conditions from which great sex could emerge.
MISTAKE #1: You prioritize everything and everyone else in life, take care of business, achieve your career goals, love-up your kids (and your pets), clean the house, answer emails, then bring the leftover energy to your partner … and expect passionate sex to happen in the last 5 minutes of your day.
This sounds ridiculous, isn’t it … yet, we LIVE this every day in the age of non-stop work, cellphones, and entertainment.
At the end of our busy days, we have little to give. Most want to crawl into bed and turn away from each other — not towards.
Women have little to give physically. Men have little to give emotionally. Both are drained and empty.
Sex is like making Pasta Bolognese. Put in old tomatoes and rotten meat, and you have one shitty dish. You would not eat this dish, would you? Then how can expect to have sex when you bring the worst of you in the bedroom — your most tired, frustrated and exhausted self?
The absence of sexual passion in a marriage does not happen in a vaccuum. It is tied to emotional and physical availability of each partner. Bring your A-game, come from a full cup, and then we’re talking.
Now, maybe you don’t know how to be at your best, but you know what is not working.
Great, that’s a start! Reverse engineer your complaints and what is not working to discover the elements you want and need — and start to prioritize them. Different choices lead to different results.
Not knowing how to ask for what you need?
Not knowing how to ask for help?
Awesome, now we know what the problem is and what you need to be at your best. You have the resources to help you, right here at your fingertips. Schedule a free consultation and we’ll build a roadmap to your A-game.
MISTAKE #2: You expect sex to happen passionately and spontaneously … when you’ve spent less than 30 minutes together today (and that was attending to your three-year old’s tantrum together or on your laptop working while your partner zoned out on their phone).
Before I go further, let’s look back at when you were dating — when sex was easy, spontaneous and fun. You probably brought the best parts of yourself and in large quantities. You were spending a lot of time together over dates, talking on the phone, asking curious questions and looking into each other’s eyes, being open and vulnerable about your dreams and fears, holding hands, making out just because, flirting, fondling and exploring your bodies because it felt so good to be with each other. It was foreplay, all the time.
Whatever your love language, you got your fill — and, not at all surprisingly, it made a big impact. You wanted sex! And sex was passionate because you had something to give to each other!
Fast forward a few years, and you’re lucky if you can spend an hour a day together. A good third of couples spend less than 30 minutes of quality time together a day, and 16% admit to no time together at all. At all!
And if you have kids, most of your time together is likely spent in their presence — as parents, not romantic partners.
Does this have an impact on intimacy? You betcha!
Back to the recipe analogy … if you were making that Pasta Bolognese, and added no tomatoes, no pasta or no meat to your dish, and forgot to turn on the heat … what exactly would you be eating?
Sexual intimacy in long-term relationships requires time together as lovers now as much as it did when you were dating.
Dr. John Gottman of the Love Lab at the University of Washington at Seattle suggests that what happy couples from unhappy ones is having at least six hours of quality time together a week, dispersed between small daily check-ins and longer times together.
When it comes to sex, happy couples make a conscious effort to prioritize their intimacy and sexual connection — through the same mechanisms that worked when dating: time together to talk openly and vulnerably, touch and explore sexually, and play with each other without needing to rush somewhere.
This grows intimacy for couples, but that’s not all it does. Unstructured time to be with each other is an essential element for women’s ability to relax and even consider being sexual. Women need connection with their partners to relax and open to sex. Take away this part, and many women shut down sexually.
But here is the sad thing. So many women blame themselves because they can’t get turned on without connection to their partners. They think they’re broken. This buries them deeper into the vicious cycle of shame, further pushing them apart.
I did this too. When that connection naturally waned after the honeymoon stage in my marriage, I thought I was broken. I started to question if I was sexual enough. Little did I understand (until it was too late) that I was simply running on empty — missing the connection that I so needed to start the sexual engine going within my body. It breaks my heart to know other women are doing it too.
MISTAKE #3: You, a smart, logical person, rationally assure yourself that things should be different in your sex life … while you do nothing about your energy levels or how much time you spend together with your partner.
Wait, isn’t that the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and hoping to get different results.
I see couples waiting for years for things to change, often when they reach the breaking point. When the resentment calcifies and the paper-cuts add up to huge wounds that refuse to heal, they’re well on their way down the relationship death spiral. Couples want to believe that they have it figured out — or that they should — because, you know, they’re adults, but it does not actually change things on the ground.
Too often, however, we don’t see our own patterns when we’re in them. They’re too consuming and often shameful.
But the only thing that’s almost guaranteed when doing nothing is — nothing!
Nothing will change unless you take responsibility for bring your best self forward and learn to consciously create space for sexual connection and intimacy. Extraordinary relationships don’t just happen to lucky people. They don’t just fall onto your lap just because you’ve met the right person — they’re created. That’s exactly what the study of extraordinary lovers by Kleinplatz & Ménard, 2020 unequivocally showed. With the right tools and courage to make some changes, they’re available to everyone!
On the ground, it takes daily efforts, with lots of motivational support and hand-holding through the challenging moments to get to the other side. My clients will tell you that the journey was worth it.
