From this morning’s Grauniad. . .
“If sex – or rather, the lack of sex – in long-term relationships isn’t a hot topic, it’s because no one dares talk about it. Or admit to it. Until now …”
It’s rather a long article and I think some of it is kinda crap, but there are some interesting ideas in it nevertheless.
What do you think?
casa azahar 
I’m more concerned by a lack of long-term relationships that include me. The sex aspect I try not to dwell on.
(Who’d have thought that a thread called ‘Hot Sex’ would attract so few comments? It was posted at least 12 hours ago, yet I’m the first one here…)
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Well maybe the article is right, that “no one dares talk about it”. 😉
Actually, I was a bit concerned about the extra spam I might attract as a result of the title . . .
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Well, according to my personal experience love life fades over the years. Not that the hatchlings´ dad ever had any great interest. The last ten – fifteen years of my almost quarter of a century long marriage was mostly quite calm and eventually ceased totally. I´m glad I was very fertile in my youth, else there shouldn´t have been any hatchlings at all.
Now, in a still very new and blossoming relation, the concern in more lack of sleep the far to rare occasions we meet in person.
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I think the woman has a pretty poor concept of what intimacy is. I also pity her if she feels that being in a comfortable relationship with a minimum of fighting and drama somehow means a worse sex life.
My experience has been quite the contrary. I feel very secure in my relationship, and share a level of intimacy with K I’ve not had with anyone else, and our sex life is more than satisfactory. That’s all I can say without embarrassing the poor guy.
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A lot of interesting stuff here. I’m interested in the way she separates love from desire. Yes, you can love someone without desiring them – in fact they can become two quite separate things after a while.
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You can desire someone without loving them.
I think this woman is making tons of money being an iconoclast. She has kids, doesn’t she? and yet she has the balls to say that being young and single and hot and stressed is no different than the experience of having a new baby. I think she is full of shit.
I have been married to the same guy for 21 years, living with him in a sexual relationship for 24. We do not fight. We have incredibly hot sex when we have sex. But frankly, I find the fires have burned down a bit as I have passed 50 and so has he. We fan them into flames that consume us on a regular basis. But I don’t have the time and energy that I had when I was 23 to amke love all night and work all day and then do it again the next day.
I have made love at the edge of the sea in the dunes, and I have made love in the muskeg, and I have made love out on the edge of the cliff and I am here to say that it was erotic as heck until I was trying to walk back to the car with sand in all my private areas chafing me to death, and it was erotic for about 3 minutes until the mosquitoes started eating us alive, and it was erotic as all get out and then the next morning I had this huge horrible bruise on my back where there was a rock under my sleeping bag. And sand and bugs and rocks are not as attractive to me as they once were.
Maybe we don’t talk about it so much because we have discovered that sex is just one facet of our many faceted precious shiny relationship. And it is not the most important facet. Maybe we don’t do it as often as we did 24 years ago. We do it a lot more often that we did the year that he was stationed in Bahrain and I was in San Francisco. and when we have the energy and the time, we are very very good. Practice makes perfect you know.
Would I rather make love once a week and have a whole bunch of mindblowing orgasms that make me worry that my heart is going to explode or do it every day and get a nice little flutter? A
Perhpas we don’t talk about it because it is nobody else’s business. And we have learned that over the years. Maybe we just don’t want all those poor single people to be jealous.
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Interesting article, especially from the perspective of someone who lacks all that life experience. 😉 I haven’t quite digested it yet, partly cause that life experience thing means I don’t really get it at all, but thanks for sharing all the same.
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You shouldn’t be getting any at yur age!
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“I think the woman has a pretty poor concept of what intimacy is. I also pity her if she feels that being in a comfortable relationship with a minimum of fighting and drama somehow means a worse sex life.” (PC)
Well, that is clearly her version of intimacy, which might work for her. But that was the main problem I had with the article – the idea that any ‘one size fits all’ concept is somehow right for everyone.
It seems quite natural to me that desire/passion would ebb and flow during a long-term relationship. Also that people would work out a sexual quantity/quality thang that feels best for them.
‘Sexperts’ who claim stuff like the average healthy couple has sex 2.5 times a week often do more harm than good (to those who take them seriously) by creating insecurity and feelings of inadequacy. And anyhow, how do they actually know how often people are doing it? Especially as many people probably won’t tell the truth about this when asked.
The other problem with ‘averages’ like this is that they don’t take into account things like a person’s age, health, number of children, type of job, personality type, culture, etc – all the factors that make every individual case special and different.
“Perhaps we don’t talk about it because it is nobody else’s business.” (hmh)
Well quite. I’ve often wondered about people (especially older people) who feel the need to discuss their sex lives with all and sundry. I mean, I’m certainly no prude, but when someone goes on and on about their sexual escapades I end up cringing and going 🙄 and wondering who they’re trying to convince. Though that sort of behaviour is more understandable with teenagers, who of course invented sex … 😉
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One of the main problems I had with the article was this woman’s opinion that it’s insecurity that breeds desire, therefore feeling secure in a relationship makes the people invilved desire each other less. While insecurity may make people desire things, it’s usually not the healthiest sort of desire. And I know plenty of people who appreciate and desire security.
Like you say, some people have health issues, or children at home, or work busy or conflicting schedules, etc. I don’t think any of those things are necessarily indicitive of lack of intimacy or desire. I also think that intimacy can be expressed in so many other ways- even simple things like cooking dinner together, sending an occasional email from the office just to say “hi”, and stuff like that. I’ll take “I’m happy to have you around” over make up sex any day.
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Psychocandy: “I’ll take “I’m happy to have you around” over make up sex any day.”
Amen sister! I’ll also take the guy who listens to me have a conniption about some thing or another, and then tells me he loves me. Intimacy can be expressed in SO many more ways than sex, the article writer seems to thing that the only thing that shows a good relationship is sex.
I remember reading a book about 35 years ago that was written by the widow of a man who died of cancer. She wrote an extremely touching scene about the absolutely last time they made love and they knew it was going to be the last time because he was scheduled for a surgery that would preclude it forever after. At least “normal” sex. And after the surgery and during the time he was going though chemo and radiation and then dying, they were still intimate. I forget the book title, author, all. It was quite touching, however.
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As far as I’m concerned, the truest indications of intimacy are things like finishing each other’s sentences – or not bothering to finish sentences because the meaning will be understood anyway.
(Sure, sex can be fun, but I find it cuts into my reading time. My best relationships involve the mind.)
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I quite agree with you, Ivan. That stuff you mention does show that genuine intimacy exists. I was also once told that if two people can happily read together (reading different books) that this is also a sign of genuine intimacy.
I really love cosy winter evenings when Nog and I get into bed with our books, and every now and then we’ll tell each other about this-or-that bit we’ve just read that we particularly enjoyed. Reading together whilst snuggled up under the duvet with legs intertwined – tell me that isn’t sexy! 🙂
I think that a lot of sexy stuff that goes on between couples doesn’t really have to do with actually doing it, you know?
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Different relations have different kinds of intimacy, I think.
The most intimate and emotionally close relationship I ever had was with a gay man. Sex was really out of the question there. We shared a lot, and had an immediate understanding of eachother mostly. By no means it was an easy realtion, since we both are very catious about integrity and independence.
Sadly it ended when he met the man in his life. We are still friends, and we can rely on eachother when needed. But the closeness we once shared is not there anymore.
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Back in my mid-to-late twenties I had a very close relationship with a mostly gay/part-time bisexual man. It was very intense. The only thing ‘missing’ was sex. And that was simply because we didn’t find each other sexually attractive (or would not admit to it) even though we could admit that both of us would be very attractive to other people … it was maybe a bit strange.
The other strange thing was that we’d often end up having the sort of ‘spats’ that lovers tend to have. And although we obviously weren’t having a sexual relationship we’d get all protective and sometimes a bit possessive about each other when ‘somebody else’ showed up.
He was a wonderful guy, and no doubt still is. But he went off to live in Italy and haven’t heard from him in years.
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I also enjoy those quiet times reading together (usually at opposite ends of the couch, with footsies going on and a kitty on top of all the feet). Even nicer is when I can lie back and close my eyes and K reads to me from whatever book he has.
I like being able to be intimate on many levels in several ways, with the same person. It’s nice.
One of my closest and most loved and cherished friends was a gay man, though I don’t recall any jealousy or “lovers’ spats” or anything like that. He passed away in 2002. That was a really hard time for me. I still miss his company sometimes.
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