Not enough sex driving you nuts? Get things moving before it is too late!
Get rid of the confusion! Break the gridlock of your sexless marriage! Figure out what the REAL problem is! Use this frustrating dilemma to actually strengthen your relationship!
Yes, now you can actually use this “Traveler’s Guide” to create the healthy dialogue you’ve struggled to have between the two of you. (There is “a method to my madness” which will help the two of you to share more deeply. Scroll down for more information.)
Both of you can come together around this sound, practical, and professional advice, and in so doing you will be taking action to get your sexless marriage moving faster!
“ . . . I can’t continue to live like this anymore . . ..”
How many emails have I received from people who are incredibly frustrated with their partner, with themselves, and with their relationship?
I’m certain you can identify with their struggles. Here are 6 examples of the emails I’ve received.
The issues are often pretty clear, as when someone writes me, and shares that his wife “lost her job 5 months ago and is having a hard time finding a new one. She is feeling down and depressed and is putting our relationship aside. She is also only into her feelings, and our sex life in the past 6 months has gone from bad, to worse. There is hardly any passion or playfulness left. Any advice?” Well, believe it or not, this is a pretty easy one. Personal “emotional and cognitive” challenges can slow you right down, affecting your mood about sexual desire.
Relationships that lack satisfying sex are commonly coupled with depression. What compounds the challenge is that the medications prescribed to treat the depression actually diminish sexual desire.
Here is another situation of sexless marriage that is pretty clear. “Nearly a
year ago, my wife had a complete hysterectomy at the age of 30. Now she says she has no sex drive at all. Maybe I am being a self-centered jerk, but, I am still human and I still have wants and needs. This is starting to put a lot of stress on me. Can anything be done about this before it ruins our relationship? Help!”
There are any number of physical challenges that face men, but women are especially vulnerable because of the complexity of their arousal system. It involves “hardware” as well as “software” and challenges with either can result no desire for sex.
It gets harder when “family enmeshment,” as we Marriage and Family Therapists refer to it, gets involved. “My boyfriend and I have been together for 3 years and we have a child together. He lived with his mother until I got my first apartment, and then he moved in with me. Gradually he started to spend more time with his friends, and less with me. Our sexual relationship just shriveled up to nothing. He wouldn’t talk about it, so I told him to leave. He went home to his mother’s. We have worked a lot of our problems out since then, but he won’t move back in with me. What should I do?”
Enmeshment, alliances, power struggles, identity confusion, lousy communication . . . there are a lot of “family dynamics” that can show up in the bedroom, or keep you out of the bedroom!
There are a lot of complicated issues surrounding one’s “arousal threshold” and “orgasmic threshold” that all mix together under one heading: “the control of sexual desire.”
But you are here, and you are doing something about the challenging relationship in which you find yourself. You are not helpless! You are taking action!
That is a great sign of hope!
Together, with my expert advice, and your serious effort, change is possible!
The people who visit this website are about evenly split, 50% are men, and 50% are women. I find that to be rather interesting, and refreshing.
While both men and women come to this site, it is predominantly the women who are able to talk about the sensitive and personal issues involved in their sexual challenges.
We all know that women tend to go for therapy more often than do men. Women can talk about their feelings more easily.
The challenges you both are facing are probably very difficult to talk about… but if you don’t, change won’t happen.
I’ve created a tool that will help you two to talk with each other.
My eBook is written around a metaphor… a road trip that the two of you are taking. Yes, it is the journey of life that you are on.
This literary technique gives me the opportunity to use some humor, some symbols that guys can grasp, and some language that the two of you can share without getting too embarrassed. By publishing on through the Inernet like this I am able to use common language to talk about common subject. So, YES, all of this is “sexually explicit.”
The “Table of Contents” is six pages long. Here are just some of the topics covered.
Who else is out there traveling through “the land of sexless marriage problems?”
Anxious? Of course you are! This is an adventure!
Anxiety is feedback on how well you are driving with your partner.
Let’s look at your driving record – personal history, sexual history, and relationship history.
Where are you now, and where are you going on this journey?
Here’s a Pocket Map that will show you where you might be off track.
Who are you traveling with? Who is your partner? The works of Myers and Briggs can help you to know.
You and your partner are different. You enjoy foreplay differently. Your engine gets turned on differently. You have different attitudes toward oral sex. Lots of differences.
Substance abuse, pornography, masturbation, sex addictions, anger… all might be making it difficult to travel together.
How about the travel games you play, and your different styles of “driving?”
Are you test-driving, leasing, or owning? Each is a different level of commitment.
How well tuned-up are each of you? If you have mechanical problems you’ll have a break down.
Have enough gas, enough energy for the trip?
Oops, a real breakdown. Where do you go for roadside service?
On a life-long trip, how do you stay psyched up and not bored?
What are those gauges on the dashboard? Your arousal threshold, orgasmic threshold, and your subjective emotional responses can help you to stay on the road.
Some of the common problems encountered on any road trip, such as not being able to turn over the engine, questions of gender identity, female “mechanical” problems, his struggle to keep it up, popping the clutch with premature ejaculation, etc.
How to spend your time while traveling together – talking, growing, being silent, and giving road-head!
What to do when traveling together sucks (or doesn’t) and you aren’t happy any longer.
Picking up hitch hikers – 7 kinds of affairs of the heart and genitals.
Falling asleep at the wheel – benign and hostile neglect.
Necessary pit stops to relieve yourself.
Getting lost on the journey, and finding your way back home.
Running out of gas for the journey. Are you too pooped to put out?
Unexpected problems that really stop you – mental, emotional, physical, relational and cultural breakdowns.
Electrical problems – when the spark is gone from your sexless marriage.
The point system – getting busted by the cops for bad behavior.
Tips for driving through bad weather – some of them are obvious, and some of them might seem kinky.
What to do when you get car sick, or just plain sick physically.
Crashes – like when you erection fails you, or romantic interludes fail, or when you work real hard and can’t come.
Dead ends – abuse, either physical or emotional.
The role of a regular 3,000-mile maintenance check-up.
Cruising along and visiting scenic overlooks – everything is beautiful!
Marking and celebrating your progress.
There are 50 Chapters in Hopeful Solutions for Your Sexless Marriage, and as you can see, they all hang together as “A Traveler’s Guide.” Makes it a little silly at points, but it is a way of working with a subject that all too often makes people anxious. Silly stuff is easier to talk over than heavy serious stuff.
After three decades of clinical work, reading the best books and research articles, and after talking with people for hour-upon-hour, I have taken the information I’ve learned and the wisdom I have accumulated and I have packaged it all together in an eBook titled,
What I have written is Hopeful, Frank, Informative, Sexually Explicit, and . . . believe it or not . . . fairly Humorous. You’re on a Road Trip, remember?
If you lose your sense of humor about all this, the shame and anxiety will kill you!
Is your relationship stuck on the side of the road?
Are you full of frustration, awkwardness, anxiety, shame, and confusion?
Remember, don’t lose your sense of humor! If you can’t laugh at yourself you will surely suffer from serious-itis!
With some help, your relationship could be like this!
Yes, your situation can change!
“But, what should I do?”
1) Don’t give up hope on your sexless marriage! So often in life we face a crisis, we work and work to find a solution that will bring us relief, but it isn’t until we are ready to give up (or, until we have given up!) that some miraculous answer comes from somewhere out of the blue!
2) Stop right where you are, take a deep breath, and get centered. I’ll give you some tips on how you can do that. The more anxious you get, the worse the problem is.
3) Work TODAY with the advice I share in my e-book. Read along and “reflect and write.” Look at who you each are, journal some, and get your head straight about the challenges you each are facing.
4) Use my material to get some healthy dialogue going within your own head, and between the two of you. I know from decades of experience that it is easier for two people to talk together about what is in my eBook, than it is to look at each other – eye-to-eye – and talk about oral sex, (for example). I’ve tried to include just about every subject in my eBook, so you two can talk about “it.”
Don’t misunderstand me – I am working hard to foster more intimacy between the two of you. We are after “making love,” not just “screwing.”
Whatever you do, do something NOW
There is hope in your sexless marriage!
Start thinking together and talking together today!
If you are having sex at all, but it isn’t satisfying, then you will benefit from Hopeful Solutions for Your Sexless Marriage.
Here’s hoping you have a wonderful life together!
Warm Regards,
Dr. Andrew D. Atwood Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Certified Social Worker
Who else is out there traveling through “the land of sexless marriage problems?”
