When you’re in a relationship for a long time, it’s normal for your sex life to change. Passion and sexual desire can fade over time, and the dynamic between you and your partner evolves. Being able to address these changes can help you to maintain a healthy, loving sexual relationship.
Dr Michael Karson, a professor of psychology at the University of Denver has written for Psychology Today about how couples in long-term relationships can improve their sex lives.
Referring to his own counselling experiences as a couples’ therapist, Karson emphasised the need for teamwork, and to consider each other’s needs, “Couples often needed to wrap their minds around the necessity and benefits of meeting each other’s needs.”
Karson was able to explain eight strategies for couples to implement in their relationships in order to improve their sex lives:
1. Avoid resentment
Your partner is not perfect and is not a robot. It’s important to acknowledge that some of their faults that irritate you are balanced-out by the charactertistics that you love about them. Karson explains, “Your partner’s apparent faults might stem from traits you love… no one can be assertive and reticent, or relaxed and driven.” Keep this in perspective and stop and appreciate what your partner does offer, rather than what they don’t.
2. Don’t dream of spontaneous sex
When a relationship starts it’s all about the sex, and wanting each other all the time. But as time passes this changes. Seeing Hollywood scenes of spontaneous sex is not realistic. Realising that the chances that both of you will be in the mood for sex at same time is quite slim. Scheduling-in sex is much more sustainable and avoids feelings of rejection and resentment.
Karson adds that this means you can be more open to more physical affection if you know it’s not an invitation for sex, “Both parties can offer and accept caresses, compliments, and kisses if they know it won’t lead to sex.”
3. Give a rain-check
To address the issue of you feeling rejected when you try to initiate sex but your partner declines, consider accepting a ‘rain check’. Karson suggests offering your partner 48 hours (or whatever works for you) to be ready for sex. “This gives the couple a way to try and fail without feeling “shot down,” and it gives the less avid member the needed space to get in the mood or set aside some time.”
4. Take turns for pleasure
Karson suggests changing your standards and avoid seeking simultaneous orgasm. Instead, take turns to concentrate on each other’s needs. This allows you to enjoy your own pleasure, and separately enjoy your partner’s orgasm.
“Simultaneous sex makes no more sense than simultaneous massage. Of course you can massage each other’s feet at the same time, but isn’t it better when one person fully enjoys the massage and then the other does in turn?”
5. Choreograph your sex moves
It’s important to consider both of your needs. If one of you is in the mood for sex, and the other isn’t, then that’s OK. “In that case, activities need to be choreographed that can satisfy that one person without overly inconveniencing, annoying, or intruding on the other.”
Karson also suggests it’s important to be considerate of each other’s sexual limits and desires during sex.
6. Masturbation
It’s OK to take your sexual needs into your own hands, quite literally. Exploring sexual pleasure on your own through masturbation is healthy and can take pressure to meet your needs off your partner. Karson suggests masturbation is valuable to, “discover new fantasies, and acknowledge your sexuality and your ability to satisfy it to some extent.”
7. Impress your partner
When you’ve been living with the same person for a long time, it’s easy to enter a comfort zone. When you no longer feel the need to impress or woo your partner it can be easy to let yourself go.
When you’re trying to keep the spark alive, Karson suggests putting a bit more effort into your appearance and how you behave in order to be more appealing to your partner. “Stay in shape (proportionately to your age and overall health) and keep your hair clean and styled in your ongoing effort to make yourself appealing to the one person who really matters. Get better underwear. Pick your nose in private.”
8. Get kinky
If sex over time has become a mundane process of going “through the motions” Karson recommends exploring new desires can reignite the passion, “Exposing your fantasies to your partner will give sex an edge that is otherwise lacking in ongoing relationships.”
He suggests you openly talk to your partner about sex, what you both enjoy and what you would like to try, “As your partner reveals sexual fantasies to you, encourage any avenue that doesn’t repulse you by suggesting details yourself.”
