About 20% of Brits say they feel somewhat sexually incompatible with their partners; a factor you might think determines their levels of happiness.
But speaking to HuffPost UK, sex therapist and intimacy coach Leigh Norén said that “oftentimes unhappily married couples and happily married couples bring up the same sorts of issues in sex therapy”.
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What tends to be different, though, is how they present and the causes behind their concerns.
What do happy vs unhappy married couples bring up most in sex therapy?
Both groups often come in to discuss “mismatched libidos, erectile unpredictability and orgasm issues,” the sex therapist said, “but the sexual problems affect the couples in different ways”.
Among happy couples, there might still be a lot of physical, but non-sexual, affection, she added.
They’ll also have, “A lot of emotional connection. But it’s no longer translating into sex for various reasons.
“For instance, they might feel more like roommates than lovers because their identities have become enmeshed. They act like a collective and do everything with one another, as opposed to being two individuals who have chosen to live together and have both separate and joint lives.”
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Meanwhile, for unhappy married couples, “mismatched libidos or a sexless marriage might have come about because of different views of sex, or because one partner is responsible for the mental load and has started to feel resentful. When sex has become a chore for one of the partners, it can quickly escalate into high conflict or avoidance.
“When that avoidance becomes the norm, it moves from avoiding sex to avoiding anything that could ‘send the wrong signal’, so physical intimacy lessens over time, leading eventually to the erosion of emotional intimacy, too”.
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How you talk about sex matters, too
It’s not just the topics themselves that matter, Norén told us. How you talk about sex can reveal a lot, too.
“Oftentimes, unhappily married couples struggle communicating at all about sex, just as they might do about other things in their relationship. There’s often a sense of one of the partners being ‘in the right’, and the other being ‘in the wrong’ about how they function sexually,” she said.
“Perhaps the high desire partner says stuff like ‘it’s not normal to never want sex’, and the partner with low desire says ‘all you care about is sex’… Fundamentally, the unhappy couples aren’t on the same team, whereas the happily married ones tend to be more on the same team.”
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Happily married couples tend to find communication a lot easier and less likely to follow rigid scripts about what a “good” sex life should look like, she continued.
Though it’s not always that black and white, she added: “whenever any couple comes to sex therapy, there is usually a part of the sexual problem that is negatively affecting the relationship”.
How can I improve my relationship and communication around sex?
It sounds a little obvious, Norén said, but talking openly about sex with your partner is “usually one of the first and best steps to take if you want a happier marriage and sex life.
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“Just like the rest of us, our sexuality evolves over time, meaning what once turned your partner on might not anymore, and as we age, our genitals tend to get less sensitive.”
Letting things fester can cause resentment and blame.
Educating yourself about sex can help, too. “We know surprisingly less than we think we do about things like how libido really works, and common sexual difficulties in relationships and why they come about. The more we know, the less likely we are to spin into anxiety over it, and the more likely we are to solve it quicker.”
And lastly, the sex therapist said, don’t be afraid to try something new.
″Step out of your comfort zone from time to time. For instance, yes, you may love oral sex, but what happens if you try something else that feels slightly intimidating but also exciting?
“You’ll likely find it infuses a bit of humour into your sex life, a bit of vulnerability that can be really gratifying, and a bit of spice that can make you more aroused,” the expert advised.
