Is Your Mind Ready for Your Next Sexual Relationship?

Copyright 2015                   Aleasa M. Word

Recently I got a little hooked on a show called Married at First Site.  I’m not a big television watcher, however, here and there I find a show I like and that will be the only thing I watch until something else peeks my interest. 

The show is described as a social experiment where experts that include a Sexologist, Spiritual Advisor, Sociologist and Psychologist decide based on a set criteria who the best match would be for the participants. The catch is that the soon to be married couple never meets or learns anything about one another until the actual day they get married….yes legally married! They find out they’ve been matched and have about 7 days to digest the information while getting ready for their arranged marriage. They know NOTHING about the person they are marrying and agree to stay married for 6 weeks. After the 6 week mark they can either stay together or go get a legal divorce. Crazy right? Or does it make sense because many of us singles simply can’t make great relationship decisions for ourselves?

This leads me to today’s point.  When you look at television it’s full of sex. There is sex on the commercials, sex on the shows and even sex on the trailers for new movies. This show, although it focuses on basic emotional and behavioral tendencies also has a sex component that cannot be ignored. Of course a married couple would have sex right? In fact, most people are having sex before they even marry at all as kind of a test drive. Could you imagine marrying someone you never met and expecting to marry them and have sex with this perfect stranger all in the same day? As these couples go week to week trying to digest what they just did I wondered about a particular wife on the show who had not had sex for 2 years prior to the show. Not only was there a lot to process bringing someone into her life, but the idea of sex brought on an entirely different level of “what the hell am I doing?”  Being ready for a relationship is one thing, but being ready for the sexual/intimacy part that comes with it is another.

After not being sexually active for some time, our minds begin to shift. We certainly still enjoy the thought of sex, but it just isn’t happening and we position ourselves to deal with life without it.  It doesn’t rule our thought process and is not thought about at all for a couple of reasons. The first for many is because they don’t want to torture themselves thinking about something that just isn’t happening. The other is it isn’t part of the daily routine and gets replaced by other thoughts of things we can do at the current time.

In the show, this character I mentioned has a very hard time connecting with her mate at first and based it on how he looked. I saw nothing wrong with his looks and wondered, could her perception be off because even though she wanted to be married – she wasn’t in a sexual mindset? Ask anyone who hasn’t had sex for a very long period of time how they’d really feel when faced with having sex again. Things like “do I still have it”, “will I tap out”,  “will I be good enough, hot enough, sexy enough” and so on take over the mind. Sex is soooo ultra powerful, it can create fears and apprehensions in us that are relationship killers as we try to navigate our way through the many mazes the mind creates to convince us somehow we will do it wrong or not be enough for our partner. Some men will say “no not me!” The truth is, men are always sizing themselves up in some way just like women are. In speaking with many of my male clients, this is a concern they’d never share with 99.9% of the world. I guess I fell into that percentage that barely exists because it’s real. They wonder if a woman had a lot of babies if they can satisfy. They wonder about whether or not their bodies are up to par and begin to feel self-conscious. If it’s been a while, they wonder if their stamina is where it used to be and will they expire prematurely. Now, if that did happen, more than likely they’ll just shake it off but inside they’d be humiliated just like women would be if we couldn’t hang.  Truthfully,  we are all the same and want to feel like what we have to offer is good enough and in this case “great” enough to be accepted by the other person.

Additionally, if you’ve not been intimate in a while there are expectations that come with connecting sexually. Where is the other person in their head space? Do they want a long term relationship and can you handle it if that is what sexual relationships mean to them? As you get into your late twenties and early to mid-thirties as much as sex is important, it takes on a different importance. To enjoy it in its fullness, your mind needs to be in a place to embrace and let yourself enjoy the moment. So the question Is Your Mind Ready for Your Next Sexual Relationship really means…..will you allow this area where you may be a little rusty to be the fire behind what could affect behaviors in a way that your next relationship is a bust?  I’ve asked the question, it’s up to you to find the answer.

Is Your Mind Ready for Your Next Sexual Relationship?