This guest article is from my friend Steven Lake, a relationship coach and author of The Sex Formula: How to Calculate Sexual Compatibility. Steven is a friend of mine from Vancouver and I asked him if he'd be willing to contribute an article on relationships to the blog. I'm absolutely pleased with what he's written below for us, as it will benefit anyone that's in a relationship and wants to improve their sex life. Enjoy!
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Have you ever been in a relationship and asked yourself, “What happened? Sex used to be fantastic, and now, we hardly do it.”
Maintaining a mutually satisfying sexual lifestyle is no easy feat it seems. Nowadays, with the hook-up culture, sex is short, fast, furious, and drunk or stoned. It is hard to evaluate if you are compatible or not if you are always under the influence when having sex. If you get past this stage and become friends-with-benefits, but only see each other when lonely, bored or really, really horny, again – hard to evaluate.
Let’s say you actually become boyfriend and girlfriend, this is where, within a relatively short period of time, you will come to know the truth about your sexual compatibility. It might take three, six, or twelve months, but eventually the excitement and novelty will fall away, and if your partner is feeling secure in the relationship, she will assert her preference regarding quantity. If you haven’t noticed, women have the control on how much sex you get.
Typically, once you are committed, their preference goes down, and I don’t mean her going down on you. I mean you will be getting less sex. Unfortunately, this is so common it is almost a joke. Correct that, it is a joke. You may have heard your friends teasing the groom, “Well, now that you are getting married, kiss sex good-bye.” Scary stuff. No wonder some guys seriously consider whether getting married is worth it. No sex – forget it.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. You can determine your partner’s or potential partner’s sexual compatibility if you are willing to do a little digging, honestly examine your needs, and get her to play along on this journey of sexual discovery.
But before we get into the nitty-gritty of calculating sexual compatibility, let’s create some context by clarifying concepts and orienting definitions. Three concepts that can be overlapping but are often separated are sex, sensuality, and love.
Sex can be many things, but for this article let’s define it as intercourse with another person, the purpose of which is procreation (biologically speaking). Most of us however, rarely engage in sex for this reason. We (men) do it because it feels good, hell, sometimes it even feels GREAT. If it didn’t feel good we wouldn’t do it. Simple. Men are driven by testosterone especially when young and sex is often a major preoccupation.
This is where life gets complicated. Women, often, but not always, are driven to have sex for different reasons. Part of this has to do with their bodies or physiology, and culture. The stats are downright depressing even in this day of easy hook-ups. Did you know that most women do not experience orgasm through sexual intercourse? Nope. And that only 50% of all women have had an orgasm. Gasp! Are you kidding me? Again, no I’m not. And if every woman you’ve slept with has acted as if she has had an orgasm, odds are that half of them were faking it. Oh, big blow to the ego.
Let’s look at sensuality. This is an interesting word that we typically assign to women. Men want to appear confident, macho or have mojo, but sensuous is not a term most men would feel comfortable with. If you feel this way, you may want to reconsider your position after hearing the Oxford Dictionary definition; “of sense or sensation, depending on the senses, carnal, fleshy . . . voluptuous . . . and given to the pursuit of sensual pleasure or gratification of the appetites.” Hey, that sounds like fun. I’m into sensation. You?
Poets, philosophers, and psychologists have been trying to define love for aeons with varying degrees of success. I put my money on the poets. Defining love is tricky because we all know what it feels like if you have ever been in love, yet we often don’t trust it. Is it just pheromones, a collapse of the ego or wanting to go back to the womb? Love knows no boundaries and has little regard for your intellect. Many guys find this dangerous. On the upside, love warms the heart, eases the spirit, and takes sex to another level.
Who reads Romance Novels? Mostly women, right. This should tell you something. Have you ever heard the expression, women want intimacy to have sex and men want sex to have intimacy? This becomes important when in a relationship as there is a key in that phrase to increase the frequency of sex.
Sex, sensuality and love are complex concepts that are often confused, confounded and confabulated making for unpredictable interactions when in a sexual relationship. Cutting to the chase, let’s dive into how to divine sexual compatibility. Keep in mind that this formula focuses on quantity, not quality of sex.
Ideally, you want to find someone who has the same sex drive or libido as you. Believe it or not there is variation among men. Generally speaking, the younger you are the more you want it. Aging brings a decline in testosterone and sexual desire. Statistically this may be true, but me and all my close friends, who are non-smokers and physically active, are as horny as ever.
There are three variables to consider when calculating your sexual compatibility. They are sexual value, sexual fantasy and sexual minimum.
Your sexual value is the importance you place on sex in your life. Your sexual fantasy is the maximum amount of sex you would like and sexual minimum is the least amount you could live with to be happy in a relationship.
It is critical to determine the least amount of sex that works for you and your maximum as well. Because, if you find someone whose minimum is above your maximum (it is possible), it won’t work.
Now comes the tricky part. You will have to convince the other person to think about these variables and assign values. This could be a fun or a highly embarrassing conversation. But it is better to have some embarrassment now than to find out a year later that you are not sexually compatible. It will save you a lot of pain and frustration. Been there and done that. It was not fun.
After you and your friend have discovered your sexual appetites, you are in a position to make an informed decision. Not all relationships are based on sex. However, if you know that sex is important to you, you are now in a position to be honest with yourself and your potential partner and chart a course that will make both of your lives a lot happier. And if you are compatible – great! Still not a guarantee for a successful relationship, but at least you know sex won’t be the problem area.
Thanks for reading this article. If you want to explore the topic more and understand what BL = SV x SM means, check out my ebook The Sex Formula: How to Calculate Sexual Compatibility
About Steven Lake
Steven Lake is an author, speaker and relationship coach. He has a private counselling practice, works for the BC Society of Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse, and is an adjunct professor at the Adler School of Professional Psychology. His latest book in hard cover, talk2ME: How to communicate with women, tune up your relationship, tone down the fights, dodge divorce, and have sex more than once a year, can be found on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca
For a fun and informative read, Dr. Lake has an ebook, The Sex Formula: How to Calculate Sexual Compatibility which can be seen at Amazon.com.
Contact author at TheRelationshipGuy
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