How To Keep The Spark Alive With Your Partner

Lots of couples have a guilty secret that they wouldn’t even tell their best friend, and certainly not discuss together.

This secret is that once a couple has the right number of children for their family, sex happens so sporadically it’s probably less than ten times a year – what sex therapists call a low-sex relationship. This applies to about one in five marriages.

Most couples blames circumstances – stress, tiredness etc – but these are excuses; often it’s down to their attitudes and behaviour:

1. Unrealistic expectations

We have all sorts of expectations about how sex should be. In most cases, these are so deeply ingrained that most of my clients don’t know they hold them. So I often get them to complete this sentence: ‘Sex should….’ The most common answer is ‘sex should happen naturally’ but when you have a family nothing happens spontaneously – not at least without a lot of groundwork first!

Other couples worry that ‘sex should always be special’ so hold back until everything is perfect, except that the perfect time never comes. And what they don’t realise is that a quickie can be just as much fun. Perhaps the most damaging expectation is that ‘a couple doesn’t need to have sex to have a good marriage’ – as this allows a low-sex relationship to drift into a no sex one.

Of course nobody should be pressured into having sex they don’t want but equally nobody should have to do without the sex they do want.

Turn it round: To keep a healthy and vibrant love life forget spontaneity, you need to plan ahead and make a sex date. Of course, if one of you is under the weather, you can have a reorganise but always agree a new date together and still use the time to do something nice together – like have a long hot bath.

2. Pestering

Alan Riley is professor of sexual health at the University of Lancashire and he tracked levels of desire in a large sample and plotted them on a graph from highest to lowest. The majority of us lie in the middle but Riley found that, in general, women tend to fall somewhere on the lower end and men, in general, on the higher end. Therefore a typical woman in a relationship with a typical man will want sex less often than he does. Unfortunately, in a bid to get the sex he wants this makes him likely to not only drop repeated hints, but make sarcastic comments or crude remarks – which is a huge turn off for his partner or leads to duty sex (which doesn’t really satisfy him and damages her libido). Worse still, his wife is also more likely to repel all touch – whether sexual or not – because she’s worried that it might lead to intercourse.

Turn it round: You can get round the ‘all or nothing’ trap by agreeing a cuddle can be just a cuddle – not an invitation to sex. Agree places where loving touch – stroking and massages – are just that (for example on the sofa). In this way, you can both relax and enjoy the moment – without worrying if you’re going to get lucky or feel pestered.

3. Resentment

Many desire problems have their origins outside the bedroom. If you’re the principal breadwinner, you can feel that your hard work isn’t properly appreciated. When it comes to running the house and organising childcare, it’s easy for the partner doing the lion’s share to feel unsupported. However, instead of rocking the boat, most people swallow their dissatisfaction or let it seep out with barbed comments – either way it leads the biggest turn off of all: resentment

Turn it round: If you can talk about issues, it not only resolves them but stop another layer of resentment being added. Try explaining your position using the formula: I feel…. (so your partner doesn’t imagine something worse) when you….. (so reassures your partner it doesn’t happen all the time) because… (so he or she doesn’t assume the wrong reason). For example, I feel annoyed when you check your phone in front of me because it makes me think you’d rather be somewhere else.