There’s this commonly held myth that you will be all over each other at the beginning of a relationship but it’s normal for sexual desire to just end after a year or so.
This is codswallop! It only dries up if you haven’t worked on your own self development.
The answer to this problem about sex drying up is about becoming more emotionally mature and autonomous. Starting to work on a stronger sense of self can help bring back sex into a long term relationship. A strong sense of self means you aren’t dependent on having a positive reflected sense of self from your partner. This is an idea that sex therapist David Schnarch came up with and is an extension of Bowens Theory.
Tell me, do you want to have sex with someone who needs you to prop them up all the time and needs constant validation from you? I didn’t think so. Maybe at the beginning of the relationship that did it for you but it’s not going to last the distance.
Working on a stronger sense of self means that you will be:
-less reliant for your partners attention and not take differences in libido personally or to heart.
-less likely to force your partner to go along with your ideas or be forced to compromise on things you don’t want to just to keep the peace.
-less likely to always need validation and being ‘propped up’ constantly from your partner.
It’s usually not about sex at all. Sex is the battleground these conflicts are fought on but it’s about something much bigger.
I had someone scoff at me in my therapy room about the idea of self development. However it’s key to our sexuality and inextricably linked.
Working on issues surrounding our selfhood means we can resolve sexual problems in a relationship much better.
Art- Nathan-Dumlao