Here’s the reality: 24 hours a day, all over the world, people are falling in love. And out of love. Or so it seems. Most of our relationships begin with some type of physical attraction, and then the key to stay together and grow and prosper, must include something bigger than that. The fact is, sex in a relationship can be the glue that holds people together. Or, the thorns that push them apart. Especially if you seem to have very different sex drives.
Are you with someone who you are sexually compatible with? Do you play passive aggressive games, or power plays in the bedroom because you are filled with unresolved resentments? Do you think it stems from different sex drives?
The fact is, people need to be on the same level in every area of their marriage or intimate relationship in order for it to work out in the long run. Now this doesn’t mean you have to like all the same things—food, sports, theatre, hobbies, but it does mean that especially when to comes to intimacy, we must be on the same wavelength.
Check out these kinky ways to spice up your sex life
But, do we put too much emphasis on sex, and sexual compatibility in the world of love, marriage and relationships? No, I don’t think so. We all need a sex reboot now and then. Here are a few ways I have helped people heat up their sex lives, just by helping them to balance their different sex drives.
How can you balance your different sex drives? Just like this.
In 1997, I started working with a couple that had fallen in love 10 years earlier, had several children, but were now struggling with sexual compatibility. It wasn’t an issue in the beginning of their relationship. Like most couples, they started out with strong sexual drives, but after years… The inconsistencies in when they made love and how they made love came to the surface.
What was going on exactly? The husband wanted the wife to be the aggressor, she had a higher sex drive which he loved, but he wanted her to start to take control in the bedroom. He wanted her to initiate sex, to take him by the hand and lead him into the bedroom, and to create an aura that she was in charge.
At first, she balked. She didn’t understand his approach to love, and thought it was too kinky. She thought he had a problem with sexual addiction or fetishes. He had waited a long time to talk to talk to her about the perfect sexual relationship that he always wanted with her because he was afraid this very thing would happen: that she would reject him.
After several months of working together, we came up with a compromise. Three days a week when they had sex, it would be what she called “normal sex“, and one day a week, she would take charge in the bedroom.
He was ecstatic. She was relieved. And they went forward into a very long, healthy and strong marriage.
Another couple I worked with came to me because the husband had a huge sex drive, and his wife had a very small one. In her own words, her sex drive was “almost nonexistent”.
They constantly battled about sex. Why? She had been very sexually active with him when they were dating, but back then, she had an ulterior motive: marriage. So in the beginning, she would do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. But once they got married, she put her foot down and said that she only wanted sex once a week at most, and actually, once a month would be perfect for her.
It soon became apparent that once she had the goal of marriage in her hand, she was going to play the power game of sex in the bedroom.
Several months later, she figured out where this power play came from. She realized that she had grown up watching her mother bully her father. Her father was very passive, her mother very aggressive, and her mother always got everything she wanted in the exact way she wanted it. Subconsciously, this woman was acting out the role of her mother in her own marriage. And her husband would have nothing to do with it.
She was shocked that the role she played in the bedroom was a repeat of her mom’s dynamic, which she had sworn she would never repeat in life. It took a long time but eventually this couple created a beautiful, healthy, sexual relationship.
But what happens if you are born with a high sex drive, and your partner has a low one? Some people have low sex drives due to hormonal deficiencies, while others have low sex drives due to the environment they were raised as children. If we were raised in an environment where sex was dirty, bad, naughty, and no one wanted to ever talk to us about sexuality, we may suppress our natural sexual desires due to the way we were raised.
Where there is a huge imbalance in sexual drive—where one partner has a much higher sexual drive than the other—both parties need to take care of each other physically, even if they’re not in the mood.
One such example was a woman who truly did love her boyfriend very deeply, but she had never had much of a sex drive in her life. She chose a man with an outrageously high sex drive, and even though he loved her back, his needs were not getting met.
What she learned was that even though had a naturally low sex drive, it would only take her 3 to 4 minutes to pleasure her boyfriend, which he appreciated immensely. Once she felt comfortable in her own skin with a lower sex drive, she felt happy because she knew that she could also meet his sexual needs.
And her boyfriend? He was ecstatic. No more resentments. No more passive aggressive behaviour. No more snide remarks in the bedroom. They finally found a way to be compatible, even with two totally different sexual drives.
Bravo.
David Essel is a best-selling author, counsellor and life coach, who has helped millions of people get a clear understanding of the role of love, communication and sex in relationships. His latest release “FOCUS!” – will help slay your goals and is now available everywhere.
