Sexless Nights, Sexless Days

Why did your love go sexless? A zillion reasons, but you still want to know why yours. If there’s anything that can make your heartache, make you sob in your pillow, and rehearse scenario after scenario of why and who’s at fault, it’s too many nights and days that have gone sexless.

Love without sex gone one day too long whips up a male mental brew of a beautiful relationship gone to hell and a self-image only marginally more desirable than a steaming pile of animal scat.

It’s not our fault. God made us that way.

Guys know exactly where to find their next hit of oxytocin, that hormone that makes you feel strong, affectionate, male, connected, and close. It’s as close as belly to belly, skin on skin, tucked in an embrace with an inviting warm place to slip your penis for the next 28 minutes and exchange assurance, love, and validation. Once safely inside your lover, your world tips slightly and you feel centered again.

If it sounds like a raging case of insecurity, it likely is, but chemistry is chemistry, and chemistry doesn’t always cooperate with emotions. And we wind up sexless.

So, when our lover is so close and all we need to do is shout, “Hey, let’s play naked!”, why do we so easily throw in the towel and let sex slide for days, weeks, or even months? We know that physical intimacy is a binding factor in our relationships. What gives?

Here are four ways to remedy your sexless night malady:

Play at Sex and Never Be Sexless

Our Western way of doing sex is frankly by the manual — foreplay, penetration, climax, afterglow, and this weird compulsion to feel we should climax simultaneously. This way of looking at sex creates libido-killing performance anxiety. You feel you might not get it right, fail to come at the right time, or even worse, fail to bring your lover to climax. The result? You avoid sex altogether.

Try throwing out the book rather than the towel and do sex in any way that grabs your fancy. Consider your sex as child’s play and your bedroom or even your home your sexual playground. Mix it up. Play with one another’s bodies. Give pleasure and be gracious enough to receive pleasure with no expectation to climax or even penetrate at all. Play is only done for play’s sake. You don’t perform in play or function in play or even succeed in play. You just play.

Tip: Flip a coin and select one person to choose how you’ll begin sex play. Pick a scenario and get into it. The same person then at some time decides when to stop playing and just cuddle.

Come Only Some

We usually think of sexual climax as an orgasm with ejaculation. And we would like to help our partner to come as well. We know that particularly in men, ejaculation sets in motion a hormonal parade that includes a sensational dopamine spike before orgasm and a frightening plunge after ejaculation. Unfortunately, for a lot of men, some measure of sexual repulsion for your lover follows ejaculation for minutes to even days. If you think back to previous ejaculations and the accompanying emotions you’ve felt, you’ve likely noticed some degree of sexual avoidance from your lover. And some resultant sexless days or weeks following

Tip: Follow sex with lots of skin-to-skin cuddling. Even if you won’t have penetrative sex the following day, spend time skin-to-skin. This will provide you both with your dose of oxytocin and give you that feeling of bonding that will ensure ongoing sexual desire. Also, you might consider more frequent sex but ejaculate less frequently. After all, no one says that penetrative sex must include ejaculation. You will find unimaginable beauty in the sensation of edging with your lover and withdrawing your penis while still warmly aroused.

Love No Stress

Harried, burned out, and exhausted aren’t great qualities to bring to your erotic circle of passion. Usually, people won’t even try. While our culture seems highly sexed, it’s really anything but that. What we see in media isn’t sex. It’s something perverse. It isn’t erotic. It’s something opposed to sex. Stress either demands sex or leaves you sexless. No wonder we seldom lead our lover to the bed and tumble into erotic bliss. A little emotional and physical preparation is needed beforehand to undo all the damage our day has done to our libido.

Tip: Plan a buffer between your stressed life and sex. Turn off your TV or computer at least an hour before sex. Don’t think the only time to have sex is when you’re exhausted — plan for when you feel good. Have sex early in the evening or in the morning if you’re tired at night. Get into some preparatory relaxation such as yoga, breathing, or meditation. Take a slow shower and then dress (or undress) for sex. Encourage your lover to do the same.

Don’t be Sexless, Say So

Guys are masters of sexual passive-aggressive. Drowning in the vacuous pain of no erotic touch, guys are prone to wage war with their weapons of silence. The battle is totally natural. Our desire for erotic touch is part of our biological wiring, and when we lack skin-to-skin with our lover, our hormones tell us it’s no use, and we imagine a conflict. And the imagined conflict quickly becomes real through our war with no words. As strange as it seems, building our sexual relationship with constructive words somehow never occurs to us.

Tip: Avoid the passive-aggressive vortex by saying exactly what you would like. But don’t have conversations about sex immediately after sex or even right before sex. Take some moments when your need is not urgent and objectivity is possible then build a mutually fulfilling sexual conversation. Many lovers find that some sort of schedule of sex play works well and that spontaneity really doesn’t serve them as well as frequently as they might have thought. The point — say what you want, listen carefully, and work it out. Keeping your frustration with sexless nights to yourself won’t get you anywhere.

–Photo Flickr / Stan Dalone

–Photo Flickr / Chris Chan