When you have challenges in your intimate relationship, it’s not actually about sex but about other factors running under the surface.
Our issues around sex are rarely about the technicalities of sex. This is the same basic principle that we uncovered in researching and writing about the other big “issue” in marriage, for Thriving in Love & Money. As we have stated before, tension around money isn’t actually about the money – it is about what’s underneath the surface. It’s our feelings about money, our expectations, and so on. The same holds true with sexual intimacy.
What might this look like in practical terms? For the easiest example, think about a stereotypical couple, Billy and Brittany, who are in a strained season of marriage and aren’t intimately connecting very often. Maybe Billy privately believes something like She knows sex is important to me, so if she really cared about me she would want to have sex more. Maybe Brittany believes, He is traveling all the time, and doesn’t want to talk when he gets back, he just wants to jump into bed; he seems to care about sex more than me.
As you might imagine, what’s going on isn’t about the actual sex, right? It’s not about who wants more or how often it is happening. It may look like that on the surface because that is what they are arguing about. But as you can probably tell, it is actually about two people who both feel like their spouse doesn’t really care about them. And since our previous research revealed that even in struggling relationships, 97% of couples really do care about each other, that’s most likely not the actual explanation either. So what else might be going on?
Perhaps in this hypothetical case, the “under the surface” explanation is that Billy doesn’t know how to say that he feels lonely after being on the road for a week. But he instinctively feels that if he can sexually connect with Brittany, he will feel immediately closer to her – and that is what he is going for. (In other words, he wants to jump into bed because he cares about her and the relationship.) Or perhaps Brittany doesn’t know how to explain that she has a different type of desire than Billy does (see last week’s blog), and instinctively makes her decision on whether to connect in the bedroom by how she feels about the relationship outside the bedroom. (In other words, she wants to connect by talking first because she cares about him and wants to want intimate connection as well.)
See how what is going on isn’t really about the technicalities of sex, per se? It’s about a bunch of other factors.
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