Have any other women noticed how they can get to a certain point in their relationship where sex is no longer fulfilling?

I certainly have.

My realization started when I left my last relationship and my mentor told me to, “buy a vibrator and stay home.” Yeah, he’s pretty blunt like that. What I like about him is that he doesn’t feel the need to tell me why—he expects me to figure it out on my own. There’s a safe assumption that anyone is smart enough to do that.

It’s taken damn near two years and a lot of searching within to understand.

Okay…maybe some experience too. I didn’t necessarily stay home with my vibrator the entire time. I’m learning that courage to have the experience is the ultimate teacher…and that’ll lead to mistakes. Sometimes, I make them twice, just to be sure!

It wasn’t until I had someone in my life who I just adored, that I began to wrap my head around what it was I should probably learn. Not only did I share some pretty amazing and ridiculously sensual moments with him, he also assumed that I was doing that with other people (even multiple people at once) and asked if we could invite another person into bed with us. Since I was coming from a place of adoration, I felt incredibly hurt…and firmly said no. I even tried to ask questions to understand why he thought I would be okay with this. Problem was…he wasn’t willing to tell me.

Something inside of me snapped one day. Instead of being angry with him about the way he was treating our time together, I decided it was in my best interest to not visit that aspect our relationship anymore. My intentions were one thing, but the results I was getting were another. I’m humble enough to realize that the connection between the two wasn’t clear enough to me, but also I’m smart enough to recognize that the longer I kept myself immersed in it, the harder it would be to see clearly. Emotions are almost always the biggest driving factor in reinforcing beliefs.

I always go back to basics. My personal principles. One of them is to treat others the way I would like to be treated. I thought I was doing that, but it wasn’t being reciprocated in the manner I expected.

So, if I wanted my sexual nature to be honoured in the way I felt like was a true reflection of my personal value, then I needed to start carefully questioning my motivations.

Here’s where I’ve arrived:

I was having sex to feel better. I was having sex because I have a huge drive for it (no longer ashamed of that).
And I was also having sex because I thought that was highly important to the other person.

None of that was for anything that would actually bring me anything of lasting value. So, I adopted a simple solution to almost anything that I was trying to change in my life:

If I am on the verge of making a bad decision, I just go to the grocery store instead.

I learned that I needed to go to the grocery store when I was in a bad mood and more likely to entertain affections from a guy that was pretty obvious about what he was looking for.

On the more positive side:

I learned that I needed to go to the grocery store, too, when things were going great in my world and I wanted to beam as much of that awesomeness as possible around me by having sex and adding to it.

The difference is:

One way keeps me in the driver’s seat about where I place that power to feel good. The other is selfish and/or me trying to decide what’s best for another—which denotes a certain level of arrogance. Or a lack of faith. Take your pick.

So, it boiled down to two reasons for such acts:

1. Having sex because you need to feel better (need ego strokes) or you’ve made it an addictive priority in your world that you can’t function without.

2. Having sex because life is awesome and adds to it.

The key? Finding someone who sees it that way too…

And finding someone when life is awesome—not when it’s rough and you need to feel better. That just sets the tone for what’s to come.

I think this is the rut we get into in relationships. We forget this. Even make-up sex sets the tone for such failures if the result of a fight doesn’t leave you feeling like you’ve come up with a solution worth actually feeling good about.

I go to the grocery store less often these days. What started as an exhausting fear of consistently getting the results I once had (and trying to justify why each time was “different” by finding outrageous patterns that only served my own self-deceptive behaviour) has turned into the ability to say only what it is I mean and act with strength that’s in alignment with how I see my own self-worth.

The beauty of self-worth is that you get to define it. Without outside influence. My words here shouldn’t even do that…they are merely to make you think. The hard part is changing your own behaviour to demonstrate that.

What I’ve learned so far is that while it gets easier over time…it must never stop. We never benefit from being complacent about such things.

Let the beauty within you be the embodiment of strength and personal accountability. Let people notice that.

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Author: Mandy Metz

Image: Courtesy of Author

Editor: Travis May