Welcome to the sixth Abundant Sex! blog post! It’s been a week since my last post! In the last post we discussed how feeling attractive and sexy increases sexual attraction – especially for the ladies!

Principle #4 of Abundant Sex! is: A Healthy Sex Life is a Strong Indicator of Healthy Marriage! (Unfortunately, the converse is also true: unhealthy sex life is a strong Indicator of an unhealthy marriage)

Since a healthy sex life is dependent on so many things outside of the physical act – including emotional intimacy, connection, etc., it follows that where there is great, healthy sex there is a great, healthy marriage – especially after many years of being married.

It’s not that great marriages need great sex (even though I would argue most do), it is more so that, great sex requires a great marriage. If great, healthy sex is present, then a great, healthy marriage is sure to be found as well.

Why is this? Think about it. If you have been married for many years – especially if you have kids – sex of any kind is difficult – great or not-so-great. You are likely physically, emotionally and/or mentally drained by the end of the day, on many days, if not most days.

The newness of the initial sexual attraction is not so new anymore. After many years of living together you will have discovered most, if not all of the habits and behaviors that your spouse has that range anywhere from mildly irritating to full-out annoying the heck out of you. You will have seen your spouse at their worst on many occasions. You will have experienced fighting about the usual subjects and the usual suspects, that are usually present when you do argue.

The honeymoon, as it were, is over. Many couples experience a decrease in sexual fulfilment as the years of marriage begin to add up. While this is not unusual, it is also not necessary – as this series of blog posts intends to support.

Let’s look at the flip-side. If a couple, married for many years – with kids even – is able to make the time and effort, for mutually satisfying healthy sex, good things are happening in the marriage overall. I guarantee it!

Let’s break it down. For most women to be in the right mood, and not only willing, but eagerly awaiting, a late evening sexual encounter with their husband, they need to feel loved, cherished, romanced and valued (and sexy, as we learned from the last post!). While different women prefer different ways of being loved, cherished, romanced and valued (and sexy), those things pretty much have to be there. If the two of you are still (quietly) swinging from the light fixture in your bedroom after all of the kids go to bed – the lady is probably feeling pretty loved, cherished, romanced, valued and sexy to get there.

Arousal and sexual fulfilment in women is more complicated than it is for most men. Women need to have a sense of balance and integration in most areas of their lives to focus on sexual fulfilment. While most men can almost immediately transition from any mood or previous activity into satisfying sexual expression, most women cannot easily do the same. The ability to for a woman to achieve heightened arousal and org*sm is an indicator of a healthy and balanced life in general – emotionally, physically and mentally.

Keep in mind, that when I use the term great, healthy sex life, there are a couple of noteworthy stipulations that come with the healthy part.

Stipulation 1: Exclusivity of sexual activity. If you are having an affair, frequenting strip clubs and/or deeply ingrained in pornography – that might be fueling sexual desire leading to good physical sexual intimacy – but that is not healthy. More on that in a later post.

Stipulation 2: There are seasons and times in a marriage where great, healthy sex is not possible and that is OK – so long as it doesn’t last too long. If you are having a tough couple of days at the office, dealing with being sick, grieving a loss of life, having serious issues with your kids or your extended family, etc., it is not unusual for those things to put a temporary damper on fun and exciting bedroom activities. It’s normal. Don’t worry about it. If you are in an emotional or physical condition for weeks and weeks with absolutely no sexual desire that may be a sign of a more serious problem and you should seek some external, professional support.

Stipulation 3: Great, healthy sex is mutually satisfying. By that I mean, great for both husband and wife – including fulfilment for both – most of the time. If you are faking fulfilment most of the time to keep your spouse fulfilled sexually, that’s not healthy – for you or your spouse. There are going to be days where it might just not be happening for whatever reason. It’s unhealthy to obsess about the once-in-a-while lack of mutual fulfilment. It’s normal. It is the extended lack of mutual fulfilment that should be cause for concern.

The topics of fulfilment and mutually satisfying sex can be very difficult for some couples. We will discuss fulfilment and mutually fulfilling sex in the next blog post!

Welcome to the fifth Abundant Sex! blog post! In the last post we discussed how emotional intimacy/romance is very closely tied to meaningful sexual intimacy. We also learned that it requires valuing and honoring the other person enough to meet their needs, especially when their needs do not match your own.

Kind of ironic how great sex depends on so many things that have seemingly so little to do with sex! That is because we are fully integrated beings. All of our thoughts, feelings, emotions and all of the contexts we live in are all mashed up and mixed together like spaghetti.

Principle #3 of Abundant Sex! is: Feeling attractive and sexy increases sexual fulfilment – especially for the ladies!

I remember hearing of a big survey many years ago. This questions was posed, “If you had the choice between these two, which of the two would you choose?”

• You are incredibly sexy, but your spouse was average looking
• You are average looking, but your spouse is incredibly sexy

Men and women each overwhelmingly chose one of those over the other one. And, as you might have guessed, men and women overwhelmingly chose the opposite ones. Who chose what? Men chose the sexy spouse over being sexy themselves, and women chose being sexy over having a sexy spouse. Sorry, both sexy was not an option in the survey!!

What is means for a woman to feel attractive can be somewhat different than what it means for a man to feel attractive. Why did the male and female genders pick so differently?

Women want to feel beautiful; however they typically see themselves as less beautiful than they really are.  Men on the other hand, have the uncanny ability to feel gorgeous even when reality is far from that. Men just naturally feel good about their looks, their bodies, etc. As such, men feel like they can demand better looking partners – because hey, they deserve it!

There is a really cool DOVE Real Beauty commercial where a police sketch artist has a woman describe herself, and he makes a hidden sketch from that. Then, the woman’s friends describe her to a police sketch artist, and he makes a hidden sketch based on that. When they compare the two, the following two concepts appear everytime

1. The woman has a much less attractive version of herself in her head than her friends do
2. The picture based on the friends’ description always looks much more like the woman looks in real life.

When the women see the two pictures, there are usually tears of joy. It’s a pretty emotional commercial. You should check it out if you have not seen it. You can see it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk

There is a super funny parody of that commercial involving guys getting their picture drawn by the same police sketch artists. The results are what you would expect:

1. The pictures made from the self-description all look like Brad Pitt
2. The pictures made from the descriptions of others are decidedly less unattractive, and unfortunately look more like the guy does in real life!

Here is the parody video with the guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Jiwo3u6Vo

This pattern of how women view themselves has an impact on their experience with sexual intimacy.

Here is a general rule of thumb – true for most, probably not true for all: The more beautiful a woman feels on the inside and the outside, the more she will enjoy sexual intimacy.

Since women tend to have a bunch of negative self-talk floating around in their minds all the time, it is possible to inflict a kind of self-sabotage their own sexual fulfilment to some extent.

Women need to be very careful about what messages they allow to come in and set up shop in their minds. Inside of every woman are two self-image voices that are constantly at war with each other. The positive self-image voice and the negative one.

Often times which voice wins is determined by which voice gets reinforced more in a given day, and what are the sources of that reinforcement.

For the ladies, when your thoughts wander to physical images of other women, either in real life, TV/movies, and/or social media, remember that you are seeing the airbrushed, photo-shopped versions of reality. As Steven Furtick would say, we are comparing our behind-the-scenes footage with everyone else’s highlight reels. If you allow yourself to get too caught up in this comparison, it will limit your sexual fulfilment and ultimately destroy romantic love in your relationship. I’m not even talking about pornography (that will be another blog post) I am talking about just regular TV, social media, Hollywood movies, etc.

As a woman, you need to be able to see through all of the image manipulation, make-up, spanx and airbrushing so that you can have the proper self-image. You are beautiful, attractive and desirable. No, really, you are! Your man is lucky to have you! Seriously! You need to know that and believe it!

As a woman, you need to prioritize things that make you feel beautiful. As a man with any sense at all, you need to support the things that make your dream girl feel beautiful. It is a little different for every woman, but it includes things like hair cuts/highlights/coloring/styles, hair products, makeup, manicures/pedicures, makeovers, spa-days, clothes, underwear, etc!

Ladies, and the adoring men in their lives need to be willing and able to budget for clothes, beauty/hair products and other physical pampering. It is a should be considered a necessity – even though women typically think of themselves and put themselves last.

How about the guys? Well, first and foremost, we need to make the dream girl in our lives feel beautiful, attractive, sexy, desirable. We need to let them hold our attention, turn our heads, make our hearts beat faster. Send flirty texts, posts, messages during the day. Passionately kiss your dream girl  goodbye before leaving for work. Leave romantic notes and cards around. Plan romantic dinners, outings and weekend. Make her feel like the most beautiful woman in the world – because, to you she is!!

Secondly, for the guys, we need to groom ourselves well and dress ourselves well If you have half-inch tufts of hair growing out of your nose and ears, and you haven’t brushed your teeth in 24 hours, you are going to find Abundant Sex somewhat elusive.

Guys, we need to dress well too. Sweatpants and undershirts all the time is not very sexy! Clothes make the man. While that is not entirely true, we usually can make more of an effort. Additionally, often times we can use some fashion advice. If you are like most guys, and you were not born with a commanding sense of fashion, let your significant other help you buy and pick out your clothes!

For both men and women, we need to take care of ourselves physically. We need to exercise and stay in shape. It will help us feel sexier, and help us perform better physically when it comes to sex. We will actually look better and feel better. We need to eat healthy. We need to get enough sleep. Physical exhaustion does not make well for Abundant Sex. We need to have regular health checkups and physicals, etc.  When we take care of ourselves physically, we look better, feel better, and we will experience more fulfilling sexual intimacy.

Feeling attractive and sexyleads to a better sex life! Do what you need to do for yourself to feel more attractive, and don’t forget to make your spouse feel like they are the most attractive and sexy person in the world!! See you next post!