Too Wild Orchids is here to unshame sex, praise penises and glorify vaginas. Nothing is off limits and all your questions are always anonymous.
Q: Hi Seanlai, I love the show and look forward to new episodes each week. Here’s the deal, I really love my girlfriend. I know she loves me too.
But there is literally no passion between us. I’ve tried to get her to listen to your show. I’ve bought books, I’ve talked to her. I’ve tried just doing things. I’ve tried asking for things. I’ve tried demanding. I’ve tried writing her stories and dirty texts. It’s all met with the same anxiety and “I’m not enough for you, why can’t we just have “normal sex”.
I need passion, foreplay, sexiness, desire, and a little humor. Her idea is to lay in bed naked playing on her phone and say something like, “so do you you want me or what?”
A: Thank you so much for the question. It’s hard for me to know 100% where she’s coming from but after working with so many couples, I can tell you with absolute certainty that both men and women complain about the same things when it comes to sex; particularly when they’re in a long-term relationship.
Passion doesn’t just die and breakups don’t just happen. In the beginning you were unfamiliar to each other. That unfamiliarity is called the space in between. It’s the fuel that drives passion.
Remember how hot it was in the early years when you were learning each other’s bodies? Remember how it felt as you figured out what pushed your buttons, and heard the unfamiliar sounds you both make when you made love.
That’s passion. That’s the space between. That’s crucial for long term success.
Then you got to know each other, you got more comfortable and, like everyone else, more critical.
Resentments, unspoken arguments, life pressures, all of those are silent passion killers.
This issue comes up in a thousand different ways at my couples retreats and in my coaching practice but the #1 thing women crave in long term relationships is safety.
Women have to feel safe in order to feel passion. Women have to feel safe in order to feel adventurous. Women have to feel safe to feel desire.
It seems counter-intuitive that there would be more passion and sexual risk taking in an unfamiliar relationship but there are less feelings involved when it’s new and not permanent.
It’s easy to feel frisky and safe when we aren’t in danger of having our heart broke. But when love, family and stability are on the table the game is changed.
Imagine you are in a tug of war. There’s a long rope between you and you’re both pulling on it as hard as you can. That’s your relationship. You are in a classic power-struggle.
But in a tug of war, there’s a winner and a loser. In a relationship if there’s a winner and a loser there are really two losers.
The only way to get out of this dangerous game is for you to let go of the rope.
I don’t mean leave the relationship. I mean let go of the struggle.
You have to start taking care of the only relationship that really and truly matters and that is the one between you and you.
Remember when I said that unfamiliarity and the space in between was the fire that drives passion?
Get unfamiliar. Start finding activities to fill your time. Meditate. Learn a new language. Take up hobbies that interest you. Get to know you better.
Create healthy distance between you and her and three things will happen:
- You will stop feeling so resentful
- She will stop feeling pressured which will give her the space she needs to relax and feel safe again.
- You will become less familiar to her which will make her more passionate with you.
You are not responsible for her happiness or her unhappiness and she is not responsible for yours.
No matter what happens, the only person you have to wake up with every day is you. Cherish that relationship above all others and watch as everything else in your life becomes filled with love, joy and the passion you deserve.
Seanlai