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!

Welcome back to abundant sex! In the last post we discussed the first principle of laying the foundation for your marriage on mentoring. You need three types of mentoring in your life on a regular basis: One: intentional relationships with couples that have much more experience than you do in being happily married. Two: at least 50% of your social/free time spent with individuals/couples on the same journey as you who value the same things in marriage and relationships. Three: being intentional about mentoring couples and individuals with less experience than you.

This week we will be discussing the second abundant sex principle: Emotional Intimacy.

I remember a discussion in the Pre Cana, premarital counseling class Vicky and I attended when we were engaged. The guy instructor said, “Great sex starts in the kitchen!” Of course, my immediate thoughts were, wow, that’s kinky! Like, kitchen table? Swinging from the light fixture? Experimenting with items from the refrigerator? I wonder what he means?!?

Well,he didn’t mean that great sex starts with actual physical acts of sex in the kitchen (unfortunately). He meant that great sex starts with the husband honoring his wife by helping out in the kitchen. Making dinner regularly, helping with the dishes regularly, helping with shopping regularly, etc. That blew my mind when I first heard it.

Of course, after having been married 25 years now, it makes so much more sense to me. There are well-known books that discuss the concept known as Love Languages. The most popular authors out there have identified five of them. The important part of the concept with regards to abundant sex is that, believe it or not, the physical sex act is prioritized in importance differently for different people. Additionally, what gets people in the mood for sex is different for different people.

Let’s look at the specific example of great sex starting in the kitchen. There are a few things going on here. When my wife feels loved and valued by me in ways that invest in her emotionally, and non-sexually, she is going to feel better about me in general. When I go out of my way to remove some of the burdens and chores in her life, to help her in ways that are practical and somewhat obvious, she is going to be more likely to naturally go out of her way to value and honor me.

When I consider things important, purely because they are important to my wife, that values her greatly. If small gifts are important to her and I make it a priority to surprise her every now and then that values her. If spending one-on-one time with her is important to her, I can value her by not only having regular date nights, but to take the stress out of the planning by coordinating child care, rides for the kids to their activities, etc. If my wife has to do all the work and all of the no-fun stuff related to having a date night, she is going to naturally not enjoy it as much as if I share the burdens with her. If encouraging words are important to her, I can write her notes, give her heart-felt cards with messages in them, send fun, encouraging, flirty texts and FB messages to her during the day, etc.

All of these seemingly little investments and displays of honor and value  can remind my wife of why she fell in love with me in the first place. It creates an atmosphere of non-sexual romance – which, can very often times be followed by sexual intimacy later on when the time is right. Non-sexual romance is so huge is creating rich and satisfying sexual intimacy. Great sex can start in the kitchen.

I remember the lady who taught the Pre Cana class telling us that her husband looks super sexy when he bathes the kids at night, changes diapers and gets them ready for bed. It’s about value, honor, caring and romance. Spouses need to cherish each other.

Nothing kills the mood faster and more completely than unkind words, actions that so apathy towards someone’s hard work and effort, etc. Creating the right atmosphere in the normal routines of daily living often times leads to incredible passion in the bedroom.

Additionally, abundant sex is related to energy levels. If your spouse is physically exhausted by the time they get to bed, instead of getting a fireworks display you might bet a single firecracker or maybe even a smoke bomb. If your spouse is doing all of the shopping, cooking cleaning, washing AND PUTTING AWAY of clothes, etc., forget about the lack of value she may feel, she will just be way too exhausted to fully engage in sexual intimacy later that night.

Another big romance killer I have a habit of falling prey to is starting intense and stressful topics of discussion as we turn into bed for the night. That’s a classic mood killer right there. Sex or no sex, discussing stressful issues before bed is never a good idea. It is really just laziness on my part – not creating the time and space to have the discussions during parts of the day that are better suited mentally, emotionally and physically for stressful discussions.

So the abundant sex principle of Emotional Intimacy is all about finding creative ways to regularly honor and value your spouse in ways that are meaningful to them – in their preferred love languages as it were. Of course, some people get too militant about which one is the number one and you can get stuck in a rut. Truthfully, my wife loves to be treated to all of the love languages as often as she can. It’s not as black and white as people may think it is. It’s not like Vicky only loves gifts and doesn’t care about kind words. She would like nice gifts, kind words, one on one time, etc. To really honor your spouse, mix it up. Keep it exciting.

This is not easy to do. As I am writing this, I am being convicted of my lack of creativity in these areas lately. It’s easy for me to get into ruts, habits and lose the freshness. If I really want to cherish Vicky, I need to keep it creative. Creativity and romance go well together, and emotional intimacy (non-sexual romance) and sexual intimacy also go well together. It is almost impossible to have one without the other.

If you know a couple that is still having great, mutually satisfying, exclusive sexual intimacy after 15, 20, 25, 30 years of marriage, you can be guaranteed that there is a very healthy amount non-sexual romance in terms of emotional intimacy. That not only pays dividends in the bedroom, but it makes daily life in marriage so much more fun and enjoyable!!