WHY MARITAL SEX CAN BE DIFFICULT.

By Stanley

Married life can sail along quite amicably in a routine sort of way, but if there are unresolved communication problems, the bedroom is where they surface. In day to day life a couple can get along quite happily. There are no hard words and each is kind to the other. Their relationship is a success. They have learned not to tread on each other’s toes; they both know where the trouble-triggers are, have learned to avoid them and have achieved that happy state of being almost unconscious of them. But the unresolved barriers are there. The problem is that sexual congress requires a deeper intimacy that cannot flow past those hidden barriers – they are like invisible elephants in the bedroom. Eventually both partners quietly learn to leave sex alone.

Why does marital love degenerate like this? To answer we must remember that a partnership or marriage emotionally approximates childhood. Marriage revives long lost hopes, wishes and desires that were given up ages ago. Given up? Not quite – rather sleeping in daydreams and imagination, waiting for a better day. They remain quiescent so far as behavior is concerned.

This is not so hard because, as a child, I learned how to live in two worlds: one where I do what I’m supposed to; and the other, a fantasy life, where I do what I want. But when adolescence comes along there rises up a want so powerful that it overwhelms the whole neat solution. The burst of my hormones shout: ‘I don’t care what you want me to be, I AM ME. At that moment I become a revolting adolescent. My wants are very strong and embellished with fantasy.

But it is this unequivocal ‘I AM ME’ you need as a sexual being throughout your life. It simply means being in touch with your body and being able to let it take over when the time is right. In a satisfying sexual encounter you are able to let the body run the show and progress to where two bodies are running the show in sync. The beauty of this is that I become both of us, without loosing the sense of ME. It is a process beginning with ME as one, towards ME as two; through selfishness to love. This blessed state precisely mirrors the ideal nursing relationship of infancy.

The problem is that the dream of a relationship revives all these long lost desires. At last there is the hope that I will really get what I want, the hope of harmonious union. Maybe I can recover that blissful state of safe, innocent togetherness; a place where I don’t have to try. At last I will know what love is – all that I had to give up to grow up.

Anxiety about sex is typically infantile. It is the fear that if I don’t do it right I’ll be cut off. In infancy this spells disaster. It is literally the fear of abandonment, annihilation and death. Such emotional intensity goes with trying to re-kindle the deepest attachment since babyhood. In the beginning of life, such an attachment was a matter of life and death and thereafter, all one’s life, sexual closeness takes one back to the beginning and opens up the same vulnerability.

In my sexual life I am wide open and vulnerable. I have to risk it. There is no escape. Without the vulnerability I cannot reach the centre of the sexual experience, but I also risk failure and disaster

Intimacy is where I can safely bare my soul, and the other to me. The resolution of the sexual problems does not lie in the sexual scene per se. The resolution lies in improving the quality of the relationship in general. The kind of intimacy that is needed in sex is required throughout a relationship, although perhaps not quite so intensely. Intimacy is not specific to the sexual scene; but whereas in other situations I can blur the lack of it, in my sexual life I cannot.

The quality of sexuality is present across the whole spectrum of a relationship. It is easy to see it in a way couple look at each other and in the tone of their conversational interchange. You can always tell when Eros is present or if he has left.