How important is sex?

In My Humble Opinion
41

[QUOTE=GrandCentralStation]
…My gf and I have a wonderful relationship. We’ve been dating for over three years. We rarely, if ever, argue. We share some hobbies, and happily give the person the free time to pursue their own hobbies. We have never had a fight about money. We have great friends we like hanging out with, and we have a very active social life. She’s equally happy staying home with a DVD, or heading out to a bar with friends. When I go out, sometimes she tags along, sometimes she doesn’t. We have a great system for sharing cooking and cleaning that has us both oddly enjoying the activities that in the past I would have snubbed for root canal wok. We can be with each other 24/7 for days on end and not get on each other’s nerves. We can talk about anything and everything under the sun…
[/QUOTE]

So why aren’t you married again?

42

Just wondering if this is another version of the “picky eater” being discussed on other threads. She “just doesn’t like” some things. (At least, she’s apparently taken a taste or two.)

Have you told her that you, personally, would be happier with more variety? That you have been wondering whether her truly sterling qualities are enough to get you through the years ahead? Well–that might sound like an ultimatum–not a good idea.

She sounds a bit selfish, but you are the one to figure out your priorities.

(You mean, she’s never distracted you from a TV show? On the couch? With the lights on?)

43

[QUOTE=Bridget Burke]
(You mean, she’s never distracted you from a TV show? On the couch? With the lights on?)
[/QUOTE]
Of course she has.

The minute things start getting interesting, <Kevin Spacey in Usual Suspects>Poof</KSiUS> out go the lights and into the bedroom we go.

Come to think of it…we’ve never had sex in any room of the house other than the bedroom. Not once in the living room, kitchen, bathroom etc. Hmmmm. First relationship where I could have said that.

44

You’re not alone, I too have a GF that doesn’t like oral. At least she’ll give for 5 minutes or more, but not “finish the job.” She absolutely doesn’t like to receive.

However I love her and she does turn me on, I’m just hoping the no-oral is a hangup she’ll get over eventually. I’ve decided if she doesn’t it’s not a deal-breaker for me. But it’s too bad because I enjoy giving as much as receiving. I guess just because most people like oral doesn’t mean that everyone should be expected to.

I haven’t really talked to her about this, but I’m expecting it’s probably a perceived cleanliness issue, I suspect she thinks she not “clean enough” down there.

45

Amen Brother! (or Sister)

I agree with Sapo on his comments. Sex is important but as time moves along and families are made, its usually the least important of a long list of other important stuff.

You should ask yourself if something medically happened to either one of us were we couldn’t have any sex, would you still be with her? If yes, then dont worry so much about doggie style. If no, then maybe you two shouldn’t be together anyway.

46

[QUOTE=Beaucarnea]
GCS, she sounds wonderful. Next time you feel a complaint about mediocre sex coming on, refer to this list.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, it definitely sounds as if you really aren’t asking for much advice after all, you seem to have your mind made up. If “strong-willed” (which I would interpret as, “really stubborn and inflexible once she’s decided she doesn’t like something”) appeals to you, then you have found it with this great lady, and you must take the good (self-confidence, assertiveness, boldness) with the bad (completely inflexible about sex).

I personally find complete inflexibility about ANY couple issue, which precludes even attempting something I might find distasteful just to see the look of pleasure in my partner’s eyes, a complete “dealbreaker”. But then again I cannot think of much I would NOT do if asked, sexually, so that’s just me.

If I were a magic 8-ball, I’d flash the “ask again later” sign to you. If in another couple years, you change your perspective on how valuable “flexibility” is, then some of us might be better equipped to advise you.

47

I don’t know. I’ve been in relationships that were sexually adventurous and bland.

Eventually the adventurous becomes bland as well. Being tied up loses its thrill.

So, I’d suggest getting her to compromise more on some of the issues, but even if you can’t, as you’ve stated: bland doesn’t equal bad.

I wouldn’t break up with someone over it.

48

I hope this doesn’t sound like a joke, but have you tried getting her drunk? Lower some of her inhabitions and see if she’ll let you go down on her before you go into your normal routine. If you take your time and slowly work your way up to different things she might become more flexible. If you try to go from vanilla sex straight to bondage she’ll probably not go for it, but if you take your time and work up to it over the course of a few weeks, she might go for it. Also you may not be good at going down on her, maybe you need a refresher course?

49

I have refused to receive oral sex since I found out I have genital herpes. Guys - a lady refusing to receive my be doing you a BIG favor. Hopefully, though, you’ve traded your respective STD status before getting to the bedroom.

50

Most of the time in advice threads like this, I open the thread with an opinion, and find that the vast majority of posters have already expressed exactly the same opinion. Particularly on things like this, I’m usually in line with the conventional wisdom, which is why I rarely actually participate; don’t want to be redundant, you know?

But every once in a while I hit a thread where the conventional wisdom makes me wonder if I’ve gone and lost my mind.

All I can say to the OP is this: I strongly disagree with the prevailing tone of the advice given so far in this thread. In a good relationship, no particular amount of sex is required. No particular type of sex is required. There are just as many couples who have found that missionary-style three times a year and some rocking conversations are best for them as a couple as there are couples who turn every evening into a Cinemax movie. I would never presume to tell a couple that this act or that act or this frequency was right or wrong for them; whatever works for the two people involved works for me.

But a mutually satisfying physical relationship is going to be part of the vast majority of lasting romantic relationships. If both partners are happy with frequency and type, great. But that is not the case here. One of the two people involved in the relationship is not satisfied, is not happy. And sex is important. Sure, 20 (or 40, or 60) years from now, your sex drive might cool and you may no longer want what you want today. Instead, what you will have is 20 (or 40, or 60) years worth of memories of a sex life that was diffident and mediocre, in which your happiness was ignored. And you will be bitter about that. And your bitterness will poison the things that you do enjoy about your partner.

My advice - which is obviously quite different from most of what’s been said here, so take it with as much salt as you please - would be to talk to her about this, in fairly direct terms. You cannot be expected to live happily in a long-term relationship where such an essential thing as physical intimacy is so one-sided.

51

How about letting her know you’d really like more variety, but let her be the one to take the lead on how to add the variety? That seems like it would have potential.

52

Ya know, as I look over the other responses again, I realize a lot of posters in this thread agree with me after all… so… uh…

<Emily Litella>

never mind…

53

[QUOTE=msmith537]
Have you considered cheating?
[/QUOTE]

This is a bullshit response and I hope it’s a joke, although coming from msmith537 I doubt it. I don’t think cheating is ever an “option”–her health and her life may be at stake. Even if you use condoms 100% of the time, they are not always effective at preventing skin-to-skin transmissible diseases, such as HPV or HSV, and furthermore the concern of HIV and so on. Even oral sex, typically considered a low-risk behavior is not no risk–chlamydia and gonorrhea can be carried in the mucus membranes of the mouth and throat as well as HSV. I know a lot of people hear this information and absorb it from a personal distance, but the rates of many of these things are frighteningly high. One in four sexually active adults will come into contact with HSV at some point in their lives. In my county one in three teenagers is infected with chlamydia. It’s estimated that eighty to ninety percent of people carry at least one strain of HPV.
Having a sexually open relationship is another discussion entirely. If she’s open to it and aware that you are having sexual contact with other partners than it’s fully her choice to accept the risks or not. Not giving her this option is reprehensible.

As others have said, no one can tell you how important sex is to you. I have heard it said that with sexually satisfied couples sex is a low priority on the concerns list… while sexually unsatisfied couples generally rank it near the top. I did like someone else’s response that sex is one of the major defining differences between lovers and friends and I would tend to agree. NajaHusband and I have some sexual issues which mainly stem from the differences in our libido–I’m an every day, twice a day kind of girl and he’s a once a week or so kind of guy. Even still he’s thrilled to do anything I want try and vise versa. Our sex life is colorful and adventurous, if not as frequent as I would like. I am bisexual and he is open to the idea of me having a girlfriend, but I wouldn’t be comfortable with the arrangement–he’s my husband and I committed to him, and only him and am just not interested in seeing someone else, or in casual sex. Because of his willingness to try different kinds of sex play, we’ve reached a fairly comfortable compromise. I am not sure we’d still be together if we hadn’t.
While I would never, never consider cheating on him, I can imagine the problem would extend to other areas of our relationship and eventually things would reach a point where we’re better together as friends than committed, mutually monogamous partners.
But as others have said, some couples reach a point where they agree that sex just isn’t as important to them as are other elements of the partnership… just like a sexually hot relationship where one partner is a total slob and the other is a neat freak. They’ll need to learn to compromise and both make concessions for it to work, long term. If the situation is comfortable to you, then great. If not, it’s not the frequency or type of sex that’s a problem (or the innate level of tidiness)… it’s your dissatisfaction that is. It’s a legitimate concern if it’s a legitimate concern to you.

54

I’d like to chime in here as the OP hit pretty close to what-used-to-be.

I was married for 7 years.

Best friends, no fights, joined at the hip. Just like you.

However, the sex with my wife was just “blah”. No more than once every other week. No foreplay (from her, at least), no oral (from her at least), and no intimacy (which is **much **more than sex). It was all bang-bang-bang, get it over with. More than a few nights I was promised intimacy (don’t read that as just sex – all I wanted was to be close to her), only to have her snoring on the couch by 7pm. No apologies the next day. In short, she was a very selfish lover.

I thought as you did that she was sexually abused/attempted rape or something somewhere in her life.

I bought her books, communicated rationally (from me at least), and gave her everything she wanted in and out of bed (as far as intimacy is concerned), but she flat out refused anything I would ask for. Or worse yet, agree to it, then never perform nor mention it again. All I was asking for was foreplay. Nothing unreasonable.

It killed me. For 7 years I convinced myself that I was a better man for not treating satisfying sex as importantly as communication and commitment.

I was wrong. A healthy relationship is like legs on a chair. Intimacy, commitment, communication and compromise. Without any of these, the relationship is doomed to either fail or be a miserable existence. Intimacy (not just sex) is included in this classic tripod because without, you’re just friends.

When I found myself rationalizing to myself that if an affair fell into my lap, I wouldn’t refuse, I knew the relationship was doomed.

It is not unreasonable to ask your SO to compromise to something that you feel is important in a relationship. That’s her role in the relationship As long as your requests are not unreasonable. That’s your role in the relationship.

I guarantee that if you go unfulfilled (sorry about the pun) in one area, it WILL bleed over into the others unconsciously.

If it bothers you this much now, ignoring the issue or following the same way of thinking I did will not make the situation any better. Do something about it before breaking up with her involves lawyers and child support payments.

55

I agree with NajaNivea, of course you shouldn’t cheat, but sleeping with other people doesn’t seem out of the question to me. If both of you are OK with it, of course. From a logical standpoint I think it makes sense, from an emotional standpoint it might not (but only might not).

She doesn’t seem to need more sex, you seem to. She doesn’t seem willing to indulge you (and, in fact, you might not enjoy it if she did). Assuming that both your needs are relevant and valid (I do), then it makes sense to me that sex outside of your relationship is the solution to the problem. This being the case, it is my opinion that this has to be done completely openly and responsibly.

Now, this may not in fact be a solution to your problem. This is why I said it might not make sense from an emotional standpoint. She or you might feel jealousy or guilt or have some other strong emotional response that would play serious havoc with your relationship. If you find this to be the case then an open relationship really won’t work.

Now, as for oral sex and sexual positions not being logical, I don’t agree at all. She may have an emotional reason for not liking these things (and I include being uninterested in them as an emotional reason), but I fail to see how these things aren’t ‘logical’. I’d love to hear why they aren’t. (I’d also like to point out that something being logical is a strange requirement for an act that typically involves so much emotion.)

Having said that, I must also say that she has every right not to want to engage in those acts, but IMHO the argument that they are not logical is not the one to use both because it isn’t true and because in this particular context logic doesn’t hold sway.

To sum up my opinion: it’s OK for you to want more than she is giving you and it’s OK to ask for more from her. However, it’s OK for her to say no. In that case, if it’s amenable to both of you, then sex outside the relationship is OK, but you better be open about it and she better be OK with it. If you get to the point of having an open relationship conversation with her and she’s not OK with it or you already know you couldn’t do it, then it really is time to consider whether you want to stay in the relationship. It’s not a foregone conclusion that you leave, but it is time to consider how important an enjoyable sex life is to you (and also whether you might not learn to like the sex life you have).

I may not know what the heck I’m talking about, I make no pretensions of having vast amounts of experience in this arena. I’ve just told you my opinion.

56

Oh, and one more thing, I think the people who say “without the sex you are just friends” are onto something. One shouldn’t sneeze at “just” friends, that’s good too, but many many people need sex and intimacy.
Of course, it appears you are getting sex and intimacy, but not the amount or variety of sex that you want. So I guess the no sex=just friends formula doesn’t quite apply to you . Even so, I think there is a lesson somewhere in it.

57

[QUOTE=Sapo]

Anyways, let me be the first to say that if you are thinking marriage and kids, sex won’t be there forever anyways. My wife and I were very sexual when dating. Somewhat sexual after marriage and just a step above potted ferns now that we have two kids.

There is the odd time when we are both frisky but those are few and far between.

I am sure many here will have a similar story (or are lying) :slight_smile:

Sex goes down the list of priorities as time goes by. Good conversations are everything.
[/QUOTE]

Speak for yourself. Having two kids, both now gone, I can say that you can have a great sex life even with kids. You might need to be more opportunistic, and not expect to romp about the house, but you don’t have to give it up. Little kids go to sleep, or can be sent to the grandparents. (Now I know why my brother and I went to Brooklyn every so often :slight_smile: ) Older kids go out.

For us its been 35 years, and we’re just as interested as ever - and better at it than we were in the beginning. And I ain’t lyin’.

58

One other thought. I work at Planned Parenthood, and after talking to multiple dozens of people daily about sex and the decisions they make in the name of their sex drive I have to offer one other piece of advice:
Never underestimate the power of the human libido.

People make remarkably unwise decisions in the heat of the moment. People throw away relationships and families, sometimes careers, put their partners at risk, put themselves at risk for unintended pregnancies and STDs, do all kinds of things that override rational thought and decision making in the name of gettin’ some.

I’m not saying you’re at risk for any of those things, but I do want to urge you to take careful stock of your situation and assess how significant this issue is to you. If it is, talk to her about it now, rather than two or three years down the line when the new hottie at work is making advances. This sounds like an otherwise great relationship and I hope she’s willing to make concessions and compromise. You deserve to have a fulfilling sex life too, you truly do.

59

Not to go all Kama Sutra on you, but if size/insertion/pain is a problem, none of the other positions you’ve mentioned would mitigate that - they would make it worse.

You could try from the side (think ‘spoons’) or with you on top and her laying on her stomach (sort of missionary position position X180 degrees). Then if those work, try looking up other positions for the ‘larger’ dude.

Otherwse - maybe counseling. Clearly it’s a problem for you. Why else would you be telling us? If you want to keep this relationship, and it sounds like you do, you need to find a solution. Together.

Good luck.

60

[QUOTE=herownself]
Not to go all Kama Sutra on you, but if size/insertion/pain is a problem, none of the other positions you’ve mentioned would mitigate that - they would make it worse.

You could try from the side (think ‘spoons’) or with you on top and her laying on her stomach (sort of missionary position position X180 degrees). Then if those work, try looking up other positions for the ‘larger’ dude.

Otherwse - maybe counseling. Clearly it’s a problem for you. Why else would you be telling us? If you want to keep this relationship, and it sounds like you do, you need to find a solution. Together.

Good luck.
[/QUOTE]

Honestly, I can sort of understand the positions thing - if she tends to be uncomfortable or even in pain, I can totally get behind (heh - no pun intended) sticking to the position that works.

But no candlelight? Ever? That one seems oddly and pointlessly stubborn.