Couple Confidential

Do you brag to your friends about the latest steamy encounter with your partner - or complain about what they're lacking in the sack? If so, you're compromising the safety needed for real intimacy. Even if you're never found out, the breech of trust affects the sexual relationship because you're sharing something that belongs just between the two of you.

Trust can also be breeched by sharing private thoughts and feelings that you know would upset your partner. If you are having conversations or email exchanges that you would be mortified for your partner to overhear or discover, you need to consider the potential damage of those privacy violations. Intimacy thrives in an atmosphere of openness and full disclosure - and suffers from secrecy.

The relationship with your partner is sacred ground. It deserves safeguarding and the utmost respect.

Protecting Privacy

I posted yesterday about the difficulty of juggling relationships and the need to save some of your 'best self' for your partner. Another challenge presented by outside relationships is knowing how much to share with others about your couple life.

You've probably listened to people complain at great length about their partner's failings or been subjected to intimate details of a friend's love life. What's ok to confide and what's a violation of the couple boundary?

As a general rule, I recommend refraining from criticism and complaints to others about your partner. It's obviously unfair to your partner, and you risk alienating him/her from the people you love. (You will most likely be quicker than others to forgive and forget your partner's crime of the week.)

There is an exception to this no-griping rule. Because many people get stuck in a negaive loop of 'poor me' thoughts when they encounter problems with their partner, I often ask couples to agree on two safe people - one for each of them to confide in. It's usually better for these people to be friends rather than family and it's absolutely necessary that they can be trusted to keep things confidential. It's ideal if they can maintain some degree of objectivity in helping you process the problems and consider generous interpretations of your partner's behavior.

Protecting each other's privacy is essential for your sexual relationship. I'll talk more tomorrow about the couple boundary.

Who Matters Most?

Managing all the relationships in your life requires great juggling skills. But the truth is that you need all those people (or most of them anyway!) to meet a multitude of emotional needs. It's unrealistic to expect your partner to be your sole source of encouragement, advice, validation, and love. Family and friends pitch in to provide a network of emotional support. Sometimes, however, your partner may feel in competition with these other relationships. Seem unreasonable?

Think about the kind of energy you bring to outside relationships compared to the energy invested in your partner. I often hear people complain about a lethargic, distant partner who suddenly comes to life when a friend calls on the phone. Listening to the obvious interest, empathy, and laughter being shared in this conversation, it's no wonder the partner begins to question who really matters most.

If you're presenting your best self to the outside world and collapsing into your worst self when you walk through your front door, your partnership is going to suffer. Don't let your partner get the dregs of your time and energy.

The Happy Factor

Ever think about how much your overall satisfaction - or dissatisfaction - with life affects your sexual desire? Even the daily fluctuations in your mood have an impact on your sex drive. Maybe you've experienced one of those surges of sexual energy after getting a major promotion at work or after winning the big softball tournament.

Worry, disappointment, grief, anger, and sadness often shut down interest in sex whereas excitement, joy, confidence, and serenity are likely to turn it on. Now that may seem pretty obvious, but people often fail to make the connection between what's going on in the rest of their lives and what's going on with them sexually. Sex is an integral part of the self. If you want to recharge your sexual battery, first figure out how to recharge your life. Getting happy may be the best possible cure for a lagging libido.

Talking Matters

What do you talk to your partner about? Probably jobs, kids, politics, family, the room that needs to be painted, etc. We talk about the things that matter to us. Interestingly, the talking itself makes those things figure more prominently in our consciousness. In other words, talking about issues reinforces their importance. You can probably guess where I'm headed with this.

When did you last talk to your partner about sex? When did you last tell your partner how much they mean to you? Interest in sex is fed and maintained by thinking and talking about sex. If you never have conversations about sexuality - yours, your partner's, or the next door neighbor's - sex is more likely to fall off your internal map.

Start noticing what you and your partner talk about. If sex talk is limited to, "Do you want to get lucky tonight?", try recalling and sharing some of your favorite sexual memories. That's with your partner. Even if it doesn't set off any sparks, it will probably be more fun than discussing the new plumbing you need for the bathroom.

The 'Right' Orgasm

When orgasm is the primary goal of lovemaking, the timing and quality of orgasms becomes way too important. Women worry about taking too long and men worry about coming too soon. A woman's multiple orgasms become a measure of her lover's skill. A man's ability to have multiple orgasms is viewed as proof of his virility (though more accurately a proof of his youth). Men and women can both feel like failures if their orgasms are not simultaneous. What is it that we're really trying to prove?

Because our sexuality is an area of great vulnerability, we all want to feel 'good enough'. One of the values of sex within an intimate relationship is that we can drop our need to impress and be truly present in the moment. But even within an intimate relationship, society's sexual indoctrination still takes its toll. When couples are able to talk to each other about their sex lives, they can take some pressure off the need for every sexual encounter to have a preordained ending. Then orgasms can be a delightful component of sex - or not.

The Obligatory Orgasm

In yesterday's post, I wrote about the pressure involved when a man feels responsible for satisfying his partner sexually. In addition to turning men into 'success objects', there are a few more problems with this orientation. One of them is that sexual satisfaction is usually equated with orgasm. The female orgasm becomes the goal, which then puts pressure on a woman to cooperate in reaching that goal whether it's important to her or not. Achieving an orgasm becomes her 'assignment'.

Our society's narrow interpretation of sexuality has created an over-focus on the genitals and made an orgasm the end-all, be-all of sexual encounters. This interpretation cheats us of a full body experience of sex and limits our enjoyment of the flow involved in making love. Orgasms are great, but when they become an obligation and the sole focus of lovemaking, both men and women suffer a reduction in their total sexual capacity.