Are you trying to fix your marriage but still stuck on “What happened?”
You were once passionate lovers—now you are roommates. If you’re feeling like this, you are likely stuck in a sexless marriage. Don’t worry, you are not alone. Many marriages dissolve themselves into an endless cycle of life tasks and little communication—certainly in the bedroom.
Is it hormones?
No.
Is it you?
No.
Is it your partner?
No.
Is it your relationship?
No.
Have you worked on improving your marriage and failed?
Sure, you have. You’ve probably tried many different ways to revive your relationship since it is no longer driving you into the bedroom. Does that mean your relationship is beyond repair?
When your car breaks, do you immediately go out and get a new one? No. You fix it. Then you commit to do better maintenance so it doesn’t break in the future.
You have to work at fixing your sexless marriage today and every day.
Saying relationships need preventive maintenance sounds boring—because it would be. You didn’t get married to maintain a marriage or to prevent a sexless marriage. You got married because of love, passion and the dreams you were created together! It’s likely that the thought you’d have to work at improving your marriage years later, never even crossed your mind.
The way to fix your marriage isn’t easy – but it is simple.
Get back to what you were doing in the beginning. You were exploring together. You were getting to know each other. You were having fun. You were opening your hearts to the other person. When your deep communications stopped, your hearts stopped opening. In a subtle level, you both went into survival mode. Attachment theory teaches us that humans are hardwired to need connection—just as we are hardwired to need air, water, and food.
When we for whatever reason begin to lose that connection we had, we get scared. When scared we feel threatened. When threatened we pull back, trigging our partner even more. Unknowingly we create a downward spiral.
It’s no one’s fault. We weren’t told that this could happen. We weren’t shown how to prevent it or recover from it.
In our couple’s workshops, we lay out a simple, but powerful, process to bring back the deep communication—the sex.
The secret to fixing a marriage is vulnerability.
When you were falling in love, you were vulnerable. You trusted your partner to accept your personal revelations, just as you accepted your partner’s disclosures. It was an honor to hear your partner speak about difficult and personal issues. After a couple goes through a period of not revealing such deep information, jumping back into doing so is awkward—if not difficult. There is no need to fear vulnerability. You can practice this dormant skill in safe interactions with your partner. You can practice when you go slowly and stay connected to your own experience.
Rather than wait for the “right situation to fix your marriage,” create it.
When the two of you are alone, take a risk—tell your partner that you want to get back to where you were back when you were still in the honeymoon phase. Then start speaking about the impact of being disconnected. Try communicating to your partner about not about what’s wrong with your relationship now, but instead what was right. Speak to your partner from the heart, and be honest about how you miss forging new emotional connections, how good those connections feel.
You might not be used to having these conversations when thinking about improving your marriage.
Like it or not, you might need to step up and take responsibility to broach this challenging topic. It’s not how well you do this; you won’t do it perfectly. It’s about being vulnerable as you do it. Your partner understands that the words are hard to find, and will feel sympathetic. As you start to communicate, your partner’s (and your) frustrations may lessen, turning criticism into compassion. Be patient! After feeling disconnected, it may take a few conversations for you both to trust one another again.
After the first time of reconnecting, plan the next. Make it fun. Go slowly. Treat it as if you are starting to date once again. Realize both of you are sensitive to it falling back to disconnecting. Being in nature is often one of the easiest places to connect with your partner.
Start improving your relationship today – there is no reason to wait.
Don’t wait. Initiate that first conversation, then co-create a strategy with your partner to fall back in love and put an end to your sexless marriage. If you find that need to change your plan as you go along, that is fine. Just start ASAP.
If you have questions or want to share your success, please write a comment. I will respond. I want you to have better sex than you had before.
Many people who followed this plan report back their sex life is better than they imagined it could be. When you fall in sync with what is natural—connection. Everything else starts working itself out.
Enjoy. :)
