Time for Sex

Printer-friendly PDF Version

How often have you collapsed into bed late at night feeling just too tired for sexual encounters with your partner? Have you ever suddenly realized that days or weeks have gone by since you had a good heart-to-heart talk with your partner? Perhaps days or weeks since you shared physical intimacy?

Couples Often Feel They Don’t Have Time For Sex

Often couples find that if they don’t set aside time to be together privately, their day-to-day responsibilities and activities fill their lives, and there seems to be no time or energy left for intimacy or sex. In many couples, both partners spend their daytime hours working outside the home. This offers little opportunity for easy access to one another during the day (except perhaps on the week-ends). Some couples work different shifts, and are rarely home at the same time. Couples with children need to spread their attentions in a number of different directions. Extended family may also be living in the home, which may make private time all the more difficult to arrange. These are only a few of the examples of challenges that couples face (or don’t face, as the case may be) in creating private time for intimacy and sex.

Setting Aside Time for Sex and Intimacy

A key requirement when planning time for sex is for the couple to merely set aside time as private time for themselves. While allowing the opportunity for sexual interaction, they must be careful not to expect that it must happen. Often what people want most is to have a feeling of closeness with one another. Rather than talking about tasks and responsibilities, private time can be used for sharing feelings, affection, sex or any combination of such meaningful sharing that the couple chooses.

Individuals who are in a relationship, but are not living with their partners, usually plan dates together. However, couples who are living together often complain that they don’t want to plan time for sex because such planning spoils the spontaneity of loving. They wistfully say, “We wish our love life could be just as spontaneous as it was when we first met.” In fact, a closer look often reveals that back in “the good old days” the couple would plan a date and then look forward to it with joyful anticipation. By setting aside time for sex, you can renovate your relationship!

If you feel you and your partner could be helped by marriage / sex therapy, contact Dr. Rucker, at her Vancouver, BC therapy office. She can be reached by phone at (604) 731-4466 or by email at BR@biancarucker.com.

Printer-friendly PDF Version