What are some sex myths that should be dispelled for couples in long term relationships?
an excerpt from Emily's interview with Champ
Emily recently did an interview with Champ, a purveyors of cool condoms and lubes. Here’s an excerpt. You can read the rest of the interview here. They had some great questions!
Q: What are some common sex myths that should be dispelled for couples that have been in long term relationships?
Oh gosh, so many. I think the most destructive myth is the idea that sex in a long-term relationship “should” be like sex in a short-term relationship. There is no “should” in sexuality; as we sex educators like to say, “stop ‘shoulding’ on yourself.” But we all have an image in our heads of what a lasting sexual connection looks like, and I’m here to tell you that that image is wrong.
Here’s an example of the wrong image a lot of us have in our minds: We think that a great sexual relationship starts out with lots of hot-and-heavy, can’t-wait-to-get-my-hands-on-you “spark” of spontaneous desire, and that this is the right, normal, best kind of desire. We think that that spark can’t really last very long, and yet we should do everything we can to try to “keep that spark alive,” to make our long-term sexual connection the same as that short-term sexual connection.
When we look at the research on people who have great sex and people who have great sex in the long-term, they do not talk about spark. Desire barely squeaks onto the list of the ten most important characteristics of great sex.
There’s a metaphor I use for this in both Come As You Are and Come Together: Imagine that your sexuality is a garden. On the day we’re born, we each get a little plot of rich and fertile soil that is the sexual response system in our brains. Immediately our families of origin and our cultures begin to plant ideas about bodies and sex and gender and love and safety and touch, and these ideas grow as we get older. By the time we get to adulthood, our sexualities are these fully grown gardens. Some of us get lucky, with gardens full of ideas we want to cultivate and harvest… but most of us get stuck with some pretty toxic crap that actually makes it really difficult to experience sex we really enjoy. When that’s the case, we can go row by row through the garden, considering each of these ideas and deciding which ones we want to keep and which we want to pull and throw on the compost heap to rot. It’s not fair that we have to do this work – after all, we didn’t get to choose what got planted in our garden to begin with – but it is an opportunity to create an erotic self that truly reflects who we are, rather than we who were taught we “should” be.
Early in a relationship, partners visit each other’s gardens and see what it’s like to play in those spaces. But eventually, you begin to cultivate a shared garden. You bring your favorite plants from your garden; your partner brings their favorites from theirs… and you hope these plants don’t strangle each other! This is the difference between sex in a long-term connection versus a short-term connection. Are you just visiting each other’s gardens? Or are you cultivating something new together?
Our long-term erotic connection is a shared hobby, something we prioritize in our relationship because it matters to us, not because we’re so horny we can’t help it.
Here’s a couple questions to get partners started thinking and talking about sex the way people who have extraordinary sex think and talk about sex:
What is it that you want, when you want sex with your partner? (Hint: It’s not orgasm. You can probably do that on your own, and if you can’t there are whole books to help you with that.)
And what is it that you don’t want, when you don’t want sex?
These questions replace, “Why won’t you have sex with me?” or “Why did we lose the spark?”
Read the rest of Emily’s interview with Champ here.
Just a quick note about Come Together and the tour:
Come Together is out on the 30th. You can still preorder!
I’ll be on tour starting on January 30th.
You can still come see me and my friends in Brooklyn, NY, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Portland, OR, and San Francisco. Those are all links to the events.
The Brookline, MA and Los Angeles events are already sold out!
All the ticketed events come with a copy of the book! Portland is free, but you can get a book at Powell’s. More dates to come.
That’s all for now. Stay safe and be true to yourselves.
