Myths & Truths about Sex in Long-Term Relationships

This post was first published in http://www.expatnest.com

In therapy sessions, psychologists and clients regularly have to work through often harmful myths or perceptions about sex. We get together with psychologist Fani Traikou to bust some of the most common myths about sex in long-haul relationships.

Myths & truths about sex in long-term relationships

Often in discussions with my clients we have to clarify what is true or a myth regarding sex. Many times we found it difficult to realize what is true and what is not about sex between couples. Below I will refer to some subjects that couples find interesting to discuss but also confusing.

How will you understand that you found your person?

“How do you know that a relationship is different from others? How do you understand that the one and only is here or not?” a friend recently asked me. We had a full conversation about relationships (you know, women!) and how do we learn to pick right and not wrong people for partners. Before we noticed it we were to the point of the “one and only person” subject. Does one and only exist? Should we wait for him/her? And the most important: If he/she is already here, how will we know it?

I want to make clear something: I don’t believe in the theory of one and only love. It doesn’t have to do with being romantic or not, it is more a matter of statistics. There are billions of people out there so there could be billions of potential combinations, meaning people in relationships. Some fit better, others fit less and some are not compatible at all. Some of them will find their ideal partner easily and quickly while some others will be tortured enough until/maybe they will end up in a beautiful, healthy relationship. But what happens with people that will find love more than once? Is it something that they want to believe in? Did they misunderstand something? Or maybe is something else going on?

My answer to every person that falls in love deeply and honestly for more than once and they believe that they have found their “other half” is this: Everything is completely fine, there is nothing to worry about. Simply, the other half doesn’t exist. There are much more good combinations for you and you are so lucky that you found more than one during your life! You should be really happy and not worried!

Is there a selfless love?

The question if there is selfless love seems similar to the question if there are selfless good actions. The answer to both questions is negative but I am sure that this is not the first time you get informed about it. First of all, I think that a lot of us out there have watched the “Friends” episode titled “Selfless good seed”. In this episode Phoebe tries her best in order to prove to her friends that unconditional good acts exist and could be done. What she finds out in the end? Well before we reach this point let’s watch (again) this hilarious episode!

But why there are not unconditional selfless actions? Why there is not selfless love? And in the end what means selfless? It’s an adjective frequently used but actually it’s so difficult to exist in our lives.

Summer love: will it last?

Most of us, someday, at some summer vacation, we felt a need to find someone to feel charmed or even in love with some help of the sound of waves, the light of the stars, the moon and the sense of light air with an aroma of flowers (Enough romantic my description, right?). Then, what happens when our wishes are heard and become true? If summer love comes up, are we ready for it? Can we live the whole experience accepting that probably it will last for only some days? Otherwise, if we really desire to make our love last until autumn or even winter, do we know which factors will play an important role to that goal? Let’s see one by one our chances.

4 factors that could lead to divorce and 4 ways to prevent it

I recently read that in a research in 2000 two researchers (John Gottman from the University of Washington and Robert Wayne Levenson from the University of California – Berkeley) investigated the predictability of divorces in long-term relationships. More specifically they managed to found between other data that there are four behaviors that could probably lead to a divorce if they occur frequently. The model of Gottman and Levenson (2000) found to have 93% accuracy in predicting divorce.

More specifically:

Two periods have found to be more critical for the conservation/continuation of a marriage:

– The first seven years of a marriage during which half couples have a divorce

– The period during which the first child becomes 14 years old “which has been suggested as a low point for marital satisfaction in the life course” (Gottman & Levenson, 2000).

Short film “The gift”

He meets her and he gives her a “gift” which he took out of his chest. She keeps the “gift” and she is extremely happy. The relationship starts. In the beginning everything seems ideal but since love passion decreases, the two partners face reality and get disapointed. She will decide to end the relationship. When he will ask his “gift” back she will refuse to give it. What our hero is going to do now that the room in his chest is empty?

A beautiful short film about being in love, having a sexual relationship, painfully breaking-up and hoping that one day we will love again (and maybe we will do it better than previous times).

Short film: “He took his skin off for me”

In this short film we watch a weird but not so uncommon love story! A man decides to remove his skin because he believes that he will make the woman he loves happier. At the beginning his partner seems excited with the interesting “change” of him but soon she will figure out the disadvantages of this choice.

We all have been in love and we all have been tried to make important things to please our partners. But if we have to remove our “skins” to be happy in our relationships, then maybe we should look our relationships and ourselves in them in a different way.

Lean more about this beautiful movie here.

Breaking up (Should I stay or should I go?)

Together or apart?

It has already happened or it will happen to almost all of us to be in a relationship and don’t really know if and for how long it is worth to stay. The criteria of a relationship conservation vary from person to person but let’s be honest: There are some objective factors to consider a relationship as “good” or “bad”. If we are real to ourselves and our partners then sooner or later we will feel and figure out what exactly is going on regarding our relationship and then we should make up our minds. We are staying or we are leaving.

After reading a variety of different articles and posts I collected some of the most important factors to stay in your current sexual relationship or to go from it as soon as possible. The more of the below reasons are true to you the more possible is the need to make a decision.

10 characteristics of true, sexual happiness

What is sexual hapiness?

Since the ancient years Eros was considered as a creature with divine power. He was the son of Aphrodite and the husband of Psyche and he was the one who was controlling hearts of human beings. So, he was the one who was making decisions about their moves and their actions. Human beings never stopped believing that the sense of being in love (“Erotas” in Greek) is “magic” and they kept praising Eros all these centuries. Eros was always an inspiration for every kind of artist and he was hope for every young individual with dreams about his/her life. Even nowadays, the emotion of being in love (erotas) give us a big “power” to live our lives fully, out of the normal way, the rules and the various “must”. Being in love make us (even temporarily) happy through the passion we experience with each of our partners. But is the emotion of being in love enough to make us happy? Is happiness a synonym of being in love? When the most power of the intense emotion of being in love “goes away” from a relationship can couples keep feeling happy? How much important is “Eros” in our lives and how much important are other factors in order to experience the true love happiness?

Maybe a big mistake of many people until nowadays is the separation of “love” and “being in love”. There are many people who believe that if the one exists the other doesn’t. They think that the one follows the other which means that when someone is in love, he/she cannot love his/her partner or if someone loves deeply his/her spouse, he/she cannot be still in love. And having made this previous hypothesis a “necessary rule” maybe we didn’t predict the most simple and expected thing: the coexistence of love and being in love even for a short chronological period. If we cannot accept the coexistence of these two emotions/situations then we practically refuse the existence of erotic/sexual love and this would be really unfair for all these people and couples who managed to share this emotion.

If being in love is the result of some substance in our brains which make us happy and which slowly decreases, then we should see the possibility of rebirth of “erota” under specific conditions. If being in love is equal to passion, then there are already a lot of people who confess their personal passion rebirth with their longtime partners after specific facts/circumstances. As you may understand the list of facts and situations who help the previous passion to be reborn (or they give birth to a new, much better one!) could be really long! For those who decided to try to keep their existing partnership alive – instead of start searching of new, different and continuous affairs with different people – they should have to their minds some special “secrets” to conserve their being in love emotion.