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When it comes to sex, “It’s about you” is a huge issue.
We each come into marriage with sexual expectations. Perhaps there is some sinful premarital experience behind that. Or it might be full of wrong ideas we got from porn or romance novels. Friends and popular media also fill us with ideas. And some of it is our imaginations.
If those sexpectations are not too many, and we hold them loosely, there’s a chance to build a good sex life with our spouse, who brings his or her own sexpectations. But all too often, a couple has a clash of sexpectations that causes frustration, fighting, or worse.
The problem is when we decide our expectations are the right way to do sex. If our spouse has done the same with their different expectations, we are at an impasse. He feels cheated if there is no oral sex, and she feels disrespected if there is. She expects soft lighting, and he wants enough light to clearly see every inch of her body. She wants loving words, while he desires passionate slang. He thought sex would be driven and hard, while she has always envisioned soft, slow sex.
None of those things are wrong. Some of it won’t work for some folks, but honestly, more of that is about expectations than most of us want to admit.
If you both had come into marriage with a list of things you wanted to try in bed, you could have found the common ones and done well. Then you could have played with things just outside that common ground, and grown. But if either of you came in with a list of must-haves, you had problems. If you both had must have lists that didn’t overlap well, there were probably fireworks of the wrong kind.
If you’ve been married for years, you may wonder how any of this matters today. But it does. Are you still upset that something you expected never happened, or only happens on rare occasions? Have you found common ground, or are you living a compromise that makes neither of you happy?
If you want to address this, sit down together and lay all your cards on the table. Not just what you want, but why you want it. Confess any sin behind that preference being created. That could be seeing it in porn, reading it in a romance novel, or doing it with your high school crush.
Also discuss why you don’t want to do things your spouse wants, and again any sin behind why. That could be a previous sex partner who did it and hurt or offended you, or asked for it all the time till you hated even the idea of it.
If you can be honest and see each other’s reality, there’s a chance for change.
~ This is Paul, reminding you that Doing Sex Well looks different for every couple.
It was a hard day.
But it was a good day!
Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with ideogram.ai & Paul Byerly
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