Weight loss is not just a matter of energy in, energy out, as most diet companies would have us believe. Just as important as these 2 factors is our metabolic rate, but few people understand how lifestyle factors, including sexual relationships, impact on metabolic rate.
There is no doubt that a healthy metabolic rate requires a healthy lifestyle, and a healthy sex life is part of that for almost all adults. If you are working toward weight loss, it’s sensible to consider that this area of life might also need improvement.
The problem with “diet and exercise” approaches to weight loss is that they fail for nearly 100% of people, and that’s because they don’t even touch the reasons for the overweight in the first place. By attending properly to lifestyle issues, you won’t ever have to worry about overweight again!
When it comes to weight loss other lifestyle factors are just as important as the topic of this article, but I’ll be writing about those separately. For now let’s just focus on your most intimate relationship, and see what we can do together to improve that and ensure it supports your sense of wellbeing.
The Role of the Intimate Relationship
Although intimate partners experience different kinds of sexual expression together, ranging from “fast-food” sex to “perfunctory” sex to “gourmet” sex, in every case they are communicating to each other their state of wellbeing, and the state of wellbeing of the relationship itself.
Sex is just as important a vehicle for communication as any other communication you could possibly have with your loved one. See if you can apply the same considerations to your sexual communication as you do to other less intimate conversations!
Talk the Same “Language”
If you and your partner aren’t using the same “language” or aren’t on the same “wavelength” you’re most likely experiencing a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding. This leads to feelings being hurt, to disappointment, and even to resentment.
In sex this isn’t really about technique (although of course that’s important!) but about the non-verbal communication that you both engage in. When are you silent, what sounds do you make, what eye-contact do you have, what facial expressions? Are these similar, or is there a big mismatch?
It will really pay to detach a little from the experience and perhaps for the first time really become aware of your partner’s non-verbal communication. What happens to the quality of your experience when you consciously mirror those back?
Compatibility
It’s quite possible for partners to be sexually incompatible even though they may match well in other ways. For example she may tend to be aroused only in the early-to-late evening and tend to be irritable if woken in the wee hours of the morning. If he seems to experience arousal only in the hours before dawn, there is a serious problem!
If she likes wearing flannelette to bed because it keeps her warm and toasty and she sleeps better, and he is revolted at the sight, barring therapy there’s not much you can do about that one, not if he also refuses to have an electric blanket!
Perhaps he’s the “strong, silent type” even during sex, but she finds this cold or even repellent.
If he likes wearing women’s clothes and she finds such “lack of masculinity” totally off-putting, that is also a basic incompatibility.
I’m not saying these problems are the end of the relationship, but each of them does present a very big barrier to the enjoyment of a good sexual bond between the partners. It takes a great deal of love and commitment to work through and resolve these types of challenges.
It’s certainly not wise to keep your head in the sand about these types of incompatibilities because left unspoken they can seriously damage your relationship over time. Bring them out into the open and resolve to work through them together to find a solution which is fully acceptable to both of you. Sometimes of course it can be very helpful to work with a therapist to achieve that.
If only we lived in the sort of ideal world where people were more aware of the variety of human nature, were able to acknowledge and accept their own characteristics, and feel comfortable and confident in sharing those with potential partners. I’m sure the divorce rate would plummet.
And that brings us to .
The Vital Importance of Honesty
There is so little sexual honesty in so many relationships. I’m not referring to outright lying or cheating here, but a betrayal just as insidious: the holding back of true feelings, the silence in the face of inadequacy, the “giving up” on the whole deal. Sadly, after years of “settling” for fairly lousy sex, it can be enormously difficult to now be open and honest.
However if you want to build a deeply fulfilling intimate relationship, that’s exactly what you must now do.
Have you heard the old joke about women faking orgasms but men faking relationships? Well really they’re one and the same when it comes to unsatisfactory marriages. A faked orgasm is a lie, pretending that an encounter is fulfilling when it is anything but.
This faking has more consequences. Practised often enough it can become so habitual that the woman is unable to achieve the real state.
So putting up with unsatisfying sex is harmful for the individual as well as for the relationship itself.
A good way to deal with this is to take a deep breath and actually write down:
1) What is not happening during sex that you want to happen, 2) What is happening during sex that you don’t want to happen, 3) The words you might actually speak to your partner, or the things you might actually do, to clearly communicate your wants
I know this can seem very confronting to think of diving in like this, so you might like to do some reading about easier ways to pre-frame requests, and how to consider and then accept/reject criticism (or perceived criticism), as well as ways to ask for what you want in ways that are more likely to be accurately understood. All of these things are covered in my book “Intimate Partners”.
Getting Time Out
An intimate relationship IS intimate because of its exclusive and private nature. Without privacy and exclusivity the experience of intimacy is drastically reduced, and so is the quality of the relationship.
With all the busy demands of daily life, particular where there are new babies or small children, the challenges of intimacy may seem insurmountable. Keep in mind that the world, including your children, must turn around YOU. Together you are the solid foundation to their lives and it’s up to you to keep that foundation intact and healthy.
Help for Sex Issues
I believe that adult human beings actually need to have immensely satisfying sex, much the same as they need to breathe good, clean air, or to eat good-quality nutritious food, in order to function well physically and mentally. And yet many couples are tolerating a less-than-satisfactory sex life because they just don’t know what to do to make it any better. That’s not good for the relationship, and it’s not good for the people in the relationship.
I want to assure you that you can have hope, and that you can make a difference and enjoy a much better sexual relationship, even if that means working with an experienced and compassionate therapist to get the goals you’re after.
With your sexual relationship in great condition, you can be confident that it’s supporting your health and wellbeing, and thus helping you to maintain a naturally healthy weight, permanently.