Disabled Australians should be able to access sex toys, dating support and sex workers under the National Disability Insurance Scheme if they require them to live a normal life, a coalition of disability advocates says.
Four of Australia’s major disability groups argue the NDIS needs a “sexuality policy” to cover a broad range of needs such as adaptive sex toys, services from sex workers and sex therapists – as well as education about sexuality and relationships.
But the National Disability Insurance Agency, which administers the NDIS, says the scheme does not cover sexual services or therapies as part of its assistance to disabled Australians.
The agency recently launched an appeal against a tribunal decision that granted a severely disabled women access to a sex therapist under her NDIS plan.
People with Disability Australia spokesperson Matthew Bowden said it was a “human need” for people to be able to express their sexuality and have fulfilling sexual experiences, urging the government to show a “compassionate approach to a private and sensitive issue”.
In a new position statement, Disabled People’s Organisations Australia says disabled people date, have casual partners, marry and enjoy loving relationships like others in the community.
“Historically, people with disability have been subjected to societal beliefs that we are either asexual or hypersexual, while constantly being denied full autonomy over our own bodies,” says the alliance, which include organisations that represent women, Indigenous and multicultural Australians.
“While accessing services of a sex worker may not be for everyone, this option should not be denied or dismissed on the basis of disability, or the moral beliefs of third parties.”
Disability advocates stress that access to sexuality supports – particularly sex workers – would be considered on a case-by-case basis, and involve significant disability. For example, this might include someone with severe cerebral palsy who could not reach their own genitals.
Saul Ibister, president of Touching Base, an organisation that has been helping disabled people access sex workers for 20 years, said sexual expression was part of an ordinary life.
“The community does not expect people with disability to live the life of a nun,” he said.
In July, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal found the provision of a sex therapist was a “reasonable and necessary” support under the NDIS for a woman with multiple sclerosis.
The woman is in her 40s and was diagnosed with MS about 16 years ago. She finds it difficult to walk but has no loss of intellectual capacity.
The NDIA originally refused the woman’s request for “sexual release” but the AAT found in her favour. The government almost immediately announced it would challenge that decision, and an appeal has been lodged with the Federal Court.
Sex therapists do not touch clients but focus on issues such as how to adapt sexual activity to a disability.
An NDIA spokesperson said: “The NDIS does not cover sexual services, sexual therapy or sex workers in a participant’s NDIS plan.
“The NDIS can fund supports to enable [people] to participate in the activities they choose; however, the NDIS does not fund the private activity itself and does not generally fund the cost of private activities.”
How often do we really talk to our partners? About the big stuff, not about childcare arrangements, or what the funny noise coming from the fridge means? According to a study at the University of California, Los Angeles, couples with small children, and who both have careers, talk for just 35 minutes a week, and mainly about errands. That study, says John Gottman, “alarmed” him and his wife, Julie. “It seemed like couples who had been together a long time were not taking care of the relationship – their curiosity in one another had died,” he says.
Gottman, the renowned relationships researcher known for his work on divorce predictors, and Julie Schwartz Gottman, a psychologist, have been married for 32 years. They founded the Gottman Institute, which conducts research and trains therapists. Their Gottman method is an approach designed to repair and deepen relationships, concentrating on three main areas – “friendship, conflict management and creation of shared meaning”. They have also written many books, together and separately. Their latest book, which they wrote as a couple, is Eight Dates. It guides couples through eight conversations – to have on dedicated dates – on the big issues such as sex, parenting and how to handle conflict. It was partly sparked by the rise of online dating and to provide new couples with a roadmap to navigate tricky subjects, but mainly to give long-term couples a project to steer their relationship to a better place. “Couples who have been together for quite a long time create a relationship that grows stale with time, and they lose track of one another,” says Julie. “People evolve over time. They change.”
The categories – trust, conflict, sex, money, family, fun, spirituality and dreams – came out of the Gottmans’ years of observing the flashpoints in relationships, and they sent 300 heterosexual and same-sex couples out to test the dates. The dates have suggestions of places to go that fit the category – for instance, for the trust and commitment date, choose somewhere that is meaningful to your relationship – though they also have suggestions for meaningful dates at home, and open-ended questions to ask each other. Amazingly, they report that only one couple had an argument on one of their dates. But might disagreement be a danger for readers of the book? “It’s possible, but what we like to do is give people preparation in case conflict arises, so each chapter includes a bit of that,” says Julie. “But also we very carefully tailored the questions so that people were encouraged to self-disclose as opposed to comment on each other’s thoughts. And when you self-disclose, that’s really the antidote to creating conflict as opposed to judging the other person for their point of view.”
Each category has exercises and prompts to think about before the date – for instance, in the money and work section, you are encouraged to think about your family history with money, and complete a questionnaire on what money means to you, then bring these to the date to share, along with suggestions for discussion including: “What do you appreciate about your partner’s contribution to the wealth of the relationship?” and: “What is your biggest fear around money?”
Many of the questions will encourage you to confront your own prejudices and ideas of what a relationship should look like, probably influenced (for good or bad) by your parents’ relationship. “People tend to role-model after their caretakers,” says Julie. “Those are hard to step out of. It takes knowing what the alternative is and then practising it, making repairs when you do make a mistake and trying again.”
I can see the point of all of the dates, but some fill me with horror (talking about sex, mainly – I am British, after all). And my boyfriend would probably rather abandon his family, change his name and leave the country than have a date during which we try to have a serious conversation about growth and spirituality (sample question: “What do you consider sacred?”). How can you get your partner on board if they’re resisting? “Start with the chapter on sex,” says Julie. “I think it depends on what the objections are. If somebody is afraid of having a deeper conversation, you could say this is not about being judged. This is not meant as a sadistic torture for your partner, it’s about having a fun conversation and being able to have a jumping-off point. People are so caught up in the day-to-day tasks, they rarely have time to sit and reflect on: ‘What do I not know about my partner that I want to know?’” So many people in our culture are “broadcasters”, says John. “They think the important thing in a relationship is to be interesting, rather than to be interested.”
Which are the most important dates? Julie chooses trust and commitment, and dreams and ambitions. “When people talk about that, they have a chance to plumb their own depths, to see what really matters to them and what they really value, and how they want to give their lives meaning. Those are things that change and evolve over time.” She turns to John: “How about you, honey?” He smiles and says: “Fun and adventure, and sex.” They laugh and Julie says something about him being a typical man and kisses him on the cheek. “It was really sad that more than 70% of couples said that their lives had deteriorated in the bedroom,” says John, of his research. “They weren’t having much fun with one another. The things that really draw people together, that enhance living, wind up being put on the garbage heap. It’s certainly easy for relationships to become drudgery.”
John and Julie met in a coffee house in Seattle in 1986. John had recently moved to the city and was getting to know his new home: mainly, he says, by answering personals ads in the newspaper. “I dated 60 women. In three months.” Julie laughs and says: “He made a job of it.” Julie walked into the cafe and he invited her to join him: “Julie was number 61.” They were married within a year. How did they know each other was the right person? “We’d had other relationships so we had a lot of negative comparisons,” says Julie. “We’d made so many mistakes, and you really learn from your mistakes. Lo and behold, here’s this beautiful person who thinks you’re funny and cute, and whose eyes light up, and with whom you know you’ll never be bored.” They have worked together for much of that time. Even when they were newly married, they would go out “and we would ask each other these big open-ended questions, just like the ones in the book”, says Julie. John would bring a notebook on their nights out and make notes.
Both agree on the most productive category for them – dreams. Each year they take a holiday together (they call it a honeymoon) and discuss three things: what was bad about the previous year, what was good, and what they hope for the year ahead. “We really take some time to take a look at our lives and figure out how to make it better,” says John. Julie adds: “That’s where the dreaming comes in.”
They seem happy and connected. What do they wish all couples knew? “If your partner is having one of the negative emotions – fear, anger, sadness – you approach it with interest and curiosity and really communicate: ‘I want to know what you’re feeling, I want to know what’s going on with you,’” says John. Julie laughs and says it says a lot about their relationship that John focuses on listening when she chooses the opposite. “My thought is related to the speaker – there’s a lot of responsibility for the health of the relationship from how you bring up issues,” she says. “What I wish all couples knew is, when they have a concern or complaint, they need to describe themselves, not their partner.” It’s the difference between “I’m feeling hurt” and “you’ve hurt me”.
They both still get it wrong, says John. “We’re all facing the same kinds of problems and we need these blueprints,” he says. “We’re not experts on relationships, we’ve taken these ideas from real couples that we’ve done research on. It’s the data that’s informing us, not our own expertise: we don’t really have that, we’re like any other couple, we struggle with the same things.”
Confidence: “The quality or state of being certain.” That’s the Merriam-Webster definition, but for many people who are starting to date again after 50, confidence can falter and it can be difficult to be certain about anything.
For those who have lost a spouse or partner to death, divorce or a break-up, a feeling of being vulnerable may begin to settle in, leading to concerns about finding intimacy, as well as about when and how to fully open up to another person.
In the Dating After 50 series on Next Avenue, we’ve covered several topics including online dating and dating etiquette, which have provided tips and suggestions for the “how” on ways to start dating again.
But there’s another kind of how — how to make yourself emotionally, and physically, available to someone new. Taking a risk to share yourself and everything you have to offer at this stage of your life. Accepting and acknowledging what potential partners are offering you. Being confident about what will happen next. And knowing that even though it might not be easy, you are certain that you are genuinely ready to find fulfillment and happiness with another person.
Are You Ready to Move On?
Experts like Lisa Copeland, an author, speaker and dating coach in her fifties, say the first step to tackling that feeling of vulnerability and to start building confidence is to properly grieve the end of a marriage or relationship, whether through a break-up, divorce or death, before you even think about moving on.
For those who have divorced, Copeland says the best way to tell if you are truly ready to date is to gauge if “you’re feeling fairly neutral about your former partner.” She notes, “If you don’t feel that way yet, you are going to bring that [experience] right into the new relationship.”
The situation is different for widows or widowers. “If they had a good marriage, they are wanting to repeat the same relationship with a different person,” Copeland says. The lost spouse is also often brought into a new relationship, but that person frequently becomes “like a saint,” she says, which can be counterproductive to establishing an authentic connection with another person.
Before opening yourself up to dating, start by building a new social circle. The first step, says Copeland, is “to get out of the house.”
“Make friends. Take classes. Get involved with activities. When you are involved in doing things you love, you will light up,” she explains.
Taking that first step to put yourself out there can be uncomfortable. Copeland is a big fan of Meetups, which she says are “an amazing way to connect with others.” In her view, going into a Meetup gathering with a mindset of simply making new friends is best.
“If you meet someone, that’s just a bonus,” she says.
Different Ideas About Sex
Fast forward a bit: You’ve met someone, the two of you have found common ground and the relationship is progressing well. But what comes next could produce the biggest crisis of confidence you’ve had, well, in years: the thought of a sexual relationship.
“People often approach sex with very different ideas,” says writer and speaker Walker Thornton, who is in her 60s and the author of Inviting Desire: A Guide for Women Who Want to Enhance Their Sex Life. “The basic question most everyone starts with is: ‘Am I going to get naked with this person? And then what do I do?’”
The first roadblock is often body image, which Thornton says is typically more of an issue for women than men, although men are definitely not immune to concerns.
“Women are more concerned about sags and folds,” she says. “But men are worried about getting an erection or about satisfying a woman.”
When it comes to sex, Thornton encourages women “to share the valuable information” they have about what they like and don’t like with a partner.
“What we desired at thirty is different from what we desire at fifty,” she says, adding that she understands that for many women, the conversation about likes and dislikes is uncomfortable.
“But if you can’t even ask [a partner] about sex, how are you going to do it?” Thornton wonders.
The Myth of STDs and STIs
One particular conversation that is vitally important is around the topic of STDs and STIs, explains Thornton, and it really is non-negotiable.
“Here’s the simplest way to couch that conversation: I care about your health, so I will be tested. If you care about my health, I ask you to do the same,” she says. “Offer to send him or her a copy of your test results and ask them to send theirs in return.”
The conversation shouldn’t stop there. Thornton goes on to say that if a partner is unwilling to use a condom, for example, “they aren’t showing you that they respect your health and well-being.” If that is the case, Thornton says, “be prepared to say ‘No’ to sex, and say that this refusal makes you question their commitment to being in a relationship.”
It’s a myth that older adults don’t get STDs or STIs such as syphilis and gonorrhea; condoms can protect from genital herpes, which while not life-threatening, can be very uncomfortable and more so for women than men, says Thornton.
Make a List of What You Need
Other health issues may also come into play in sexual relationships between older adults. “Sometimes, you have to broaden your definition of sex,” says Thornton. “Focusing on pleasure, in ways inclusive of orgasm or not.”
Chronic illness can be an issue, as can cancer treatment, which often results in hormonal changes; other challenges may include fatigue or muscle/movement problems. “That can lead to a discussion about a time of day that’s better for sex, or accommodations that are needed for a bed,” explains Thornton. “Again, the best way to address all of these issues is through conversation.”
Thornton, who most frequently speaks to groups of women, often suggests making a list of just what you are looking for when it comes to a sexual relationship in midlife and beyond.
“If you have sex with someone, do you anticipate that this will be an exclusive relationship? Or if your partner decides he or she doesn’t want a sexual relationship, is that okay? Maybe it is,” says Thornton. “For you, is sex merely a goal or a natural progression of becoming intimate with another person?”
‘You Have More Freedom’
Copeland, who has been divorced twice and is now in a relationship, says there is often healing to be done before people are ready to fully open themselves up to a new person. Still, she adds, it’s vital “to know your value and know that you are worthy of someone.”
“One thing that’s often overlooked when it comes to dating after fifty is that you have more choices. You have more freedom than you did when you were younger,” she says. “You can have companions or lovers, or be in a committed relationship.”
However, Thornton — also divorced and in a relationship — understands how some might not perceive this place in life as a place of freedom.
“If we think our time is limited, we can feel more vulnerable,” she says. “But it’s really all about going into dating with an open attitude. Be willing to take the risk.”
A leading researcher challenges the belief that all men have higher sex drives than women. Many feel under pressure to initiate intimacy and would prefer greater equality in bed.
It is one of the most famous phrases in the English language but it is doubtful that Napoleon ever uttered the words “Not tonight, Josephine”.
However, it remains a humorous standby precisely because of its ‘nudge-nudge, wink-wink’ unlikelihood. What man ever turned down sex when offered up to him on a plate?
However, it could be that this isn’t as unlikely a scenario as we think, according to Canadian relationship therapist Sarah Hunter Murray, who has carried out extensive research on the subject of male sexual desire. She has delved beneath the stereotype of the man who is always ready for sex, finding that many men don’t always feel ‘up for it’ and are uncertain and fearful about how to raise the issue with their partners. As a result, relationships and intimacy are at risk.
In her book Not Always in the Mood, Hunter Murray aims to debunk the myths that surround men’s sexual desire. She says that we have been culturally conditioned, through songs, films, television and advertising, to view men as having an insatiable sexual appetite.
“As a sex researcher, I started studying women’s sexual desires, which were complex and nuanced, with so many factors impacting whether women were in the mood or not. I started to notice there was a counterpoint. In the research, there was this implication that men’s desire was always high or they were always in the mood, and would never turn down sex,” she says.
Over the course of 10 years, Hunter Murray interviewed 237 men of all ages and backgrounds in an attempt to discover whether this was really the case.
“I started by interviewing men without knowing what I’d find… it wasn’t long before they showed they wanted to discuss a more complex narrative than the one we had heard.”
While in initial interviews, the subjects would suggest they had higher sex drives than their partners, when Hunter Murray probed deeper, a different story began to emerge.
“With the in-depth interviews, we would talk for an hour, and they started opening up. I’d ask ‘is there ever a time you’d say no?’ and they’d say ‘if I was sick, or tired’, and I felt the more space men had to express their experiences the more I’d hear stories like ‘my wife and I aren’t really on the same page, we’re emotionally disconnected, I’m not always so turned on, sometimes my wife will suggest having sex before we’ve had a chance to talk and I feel pressured to say yes’.
It struck me that those interviews would begin with men following stereotypical descriptions of their desire — and how we rely on those first minutes and those stereotypes.
Hunter Murray’s book is an attempt to change the conversation around sexual desire, from a male and female perspective.
“What I mostly see is that women either presume men’s desire should be high, so that if their partner has lower desire than them — which is quite common — they take it personally, that he’s not attracted to her or there’s an issue with the relationship. They can also feel frustrated if their male partner does have a high level of sexual desire but they feel ‘he’s just a horndog’ and it has nothing to do with attraction, that he just wants to experience the physical pleasure.
“But I also hear from men in my research that sex is a really intimate way for them to connect and when they initiate sex they can feel quite vulnerable. In addition to physical pleasure, they want some emotional connection.”
Sexual politics has become a hot-button topic, with the advent of the #MeToo movement, and an increasing awareness of sexual harassment and violence towards women. The rise of social media has also seen an exponential rise in the availability of often violent porn, as well as the disturbing advent of the ‘incel’ — men who see themselves as ‘involuntarily celibate’, who express their desire in online chatrooms to punish women for their rejection. How does Hunter Murray see such issues as affecting the portrayal of male sexual desire?
“Women have experienced a lot of harm from men, whether through power or sexuality. But I am hearing a lot of men saying ‘that’s not my experience, that’s not how I want to be’. The men I interviewed were all in [heterosexual] relationships, while the incel is all about not having a girlfriend, so that’s a different subset of men.
“With a lot of the men I spoke to, they were aware of the idea of what men should be, this more traditionally masculine approach to sexuality — being in control, providing pleasure, not being the one who’s desirable or receiving sexual advances, being in the dominant position but what I’m hearing from men is that they question how many people that really fits.
“I’ve spoken to men who say ‘how can I refuse sex, isn’t that going to upset my partner?’ or ‘am I a real man if I don’t do this?’. It’s important to put it out there that the idea of what masculinity means can change over time and we can question what fits, what’s healthy and what no longer fits.
“A lot of the men I spoke to said they enjoyed their female partners initiating sex, when she expressed her desire and her attraction to him, when she flirted, when she touched him sexually or romantically. They said they enjoyed this egalitarian approach to sex rather than the pressure being on them to be the initiator.”
Hunter Murray’s research also found that while on a case-by-case basis, there may be men with higher sex drive than women, men are not statistically likelier to be the partner with a higher sex drive. She stresses the importance of men and women challenging sexual stereotypes and norms.
“Women have been brought up in a culture training them to be demure, or gatekeepers, but a lot of women have higher sex drives which they quash because their male partners haven’t as much of an interest — they feel they shouldn’t step into a dominant sexual role.”
While stereotypical attitudes may not reflect the real picture when it comes to sexual desire, Hunter Murray says that lifestyle factors can also affect men’s sex drive in a way that is not acknowledged.
“We’re aware of how motherhood, child-rearing and running a household can take a toll on a woman’s sexual desire. But we also need to take into account the changing role of the father in society,” says Hunter Murray. “In the past, the dad went to work and wasn’t as involved with his children as much, whereas now we see a lot more involvement for the most part and there are more stay-at-home dads. These are normal stresses and distractions but they can have an impact on men the same as women. Men also talk about wanting to support their family, and that’s also a pressure.”
Hunter Murray believes the link between men’s greater role in family life and their decreasing interest in sex is not reflected in research because much of it is based on university [student] samples.
Much of her research, she says, is reflected in her clinical practice as a relationship therapist, where she sees many men who, as they get older, panic that they are suffering dysfunction when in reality, what they are experiencing is normal.
“Men come in, in their midlife, concerned their sex drives are not as high. They have financial responsibilities, they’re taking care of kids, they’re not getting enough sleep, they have ageing parents. It’s about normalising such experiences — it makes sense that sex drive wouldn’t be as strong. But a man may jump to erectile dysfunction just because he’s not in the mood quite as often. That’s what made me want to write the book — it resonated not just in a research context but because quite a lot of men and women are struggling with these issues in their relationships.”
Ultimately, it is about connection and communication with our partners, says Hunter Murray.
“It takes our strongest version of ourselves to say ‘I want us to connect, I want to be close to you, I want sex to feel good’ — that’s a very vulnerable thing to do — ‘I care about you and am putting myself out there, do you care about me too?’.”
Men want to be desired
Hunter Murray found that in relation to levels of desire, about one-third of the time men have higher sex drives, one-third of the time women have higher sex drives, and the rest of the time it’s about even.
She also found that many men wanted to feel desired by their partners, to receive compliments, to be told they were sexy. “The more that happened the more validated they felt, and it wasn’t just sexual, they felt love and affection.”
Men in their late 30s and early 40s were the ones who identified being most aware of (and sometimes the most distressed about) their desire not being what it used to be.
Desire naturally changes and decreases over the course of a relationship. Companionate love, where our partner feels more like a companion and not our sexual partner, is normal and healthy.
One New Zealand study researching the female partners of men who took Viagra, found the women actually preferred the fact that their partners had softer erections as they aged, as they found Viagra-induced ‘rock-hard’ erections painful.
Murray Hunter’s research found that being sick was the main reason for men saying no to sex, with being tired in second place.
We’ve been inundated with the concept of “the one” throughout our lives. But what if “the one” is really more like a great entrée with some side dishes? Although we’re led to believe that monogamy is the gold standard of relationships, sociologist Dr. Elisabeth “Eli” Sheff says that “polyagomy is far more common across cultures and societies and history than monogamy.”
In fact, thanks in part to the internet and dating apps, open relationships are seemingly on the rise (or perhaps more people feel comfortable openly acknowledging them). According to a 2016 study, one in five Americans has been in a non-monogamous relationship at some point. Plus, age, race, political affiliations and socio-economic status doesn’t seem to affect the likelihood of someone entering an open relationship. However, people who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual were slightly more likely to have experienced non-monogamy.
As we all know, relationships are work. And when you add in more parties, it gets decidedly more complicated, and you might discover that sometimes more isn’t merrier. So if you’re considering starting an open relationship, you’ll need to weigh your wants and needs, consider your partner’s and establish some guidelines beforehand. But first things first…
What exactly is an open relationship?
“Open relationships fall under the umbrella of consensual non-monogamous relationships and generally, but not always, tend to focus on sexual activities over emotional with other partners,“ explains clinical psychologist Dr. Catalina Lawsin. “Under this larger umbrella there are many types of consensual non-monogamous relationships, some of which include: polyamory (where partners support one another having both emotional and sexual relationships with other partners with the understanding that love can take many forms and individuals can love more than one person at a time), monogamish (similar to open, but restricted only to sexual activity with other partners), swinging (exploring sexual activities together at social events and meetups with other couples), and relationship anarchy (there are no set rules but instead the relationship is flexible to the needs of each partner).”
She also emphasizes that open relationships are not like affairs, a common misconception. “It’s quite the opposite,” she says. “The core ingredient of an affair is the secrecy of it. In open relationships partners are open in their sexual activity with others and supportive of it.”
Is an open relationship right for you and your partner?
First, for an open relationship to work, both partners need to enter it willingly, not begrudgingly. If a person acquiesces to an open relationship, perhaps out of fear of losing their partner, it’s “a disaster because open relationships are challenging, even if everyone wants to be in them. Relationships in general are challenging. If it’s a non-monogamous relationship, and someone has been pressured or bullied into it, or has given in because they feel the person will leave them if they don’t, then that builds up resentment,” Dr. Sheff says,author of The Polyamorists Next Door: Inside Multiple-Partner Relationships and Families. “And then when something happens, [for example] someone accidentally gets pregnant, someone gets a sexually transmitted infection, then that just blows up.”
Also, it’s not a strategy to fix turbulent relationships, Dr. Lawsin cautions. “On the contrary, consensual non-monogamous relationships rely on trust and require a healthy stable relationship that is mutually supportive to succeed. All relationships require negotiation, and bringing in additional partners to a relationship often requires more negotiation, communication and planning.”
To start, figure out why you want an open relationship. “People should think deeply about their motivations,” says Dr. Sheff. Do you want multiple partners, but recoil at the thought of your partner being with other people? Are you simply looking for an excuse to hook up with other people? Or a way not to fully commit? “It’s not reasonable to expect a partner to be sexually exclusive with you, while you have sex with anybody that you want,” she adds. “Sometimes couples can work out a poly-mono relationship, but in my experience, as a relationship coach and in my research, I have seen that that hardly ever works…Usually people who want a monogamous relationship want their partners to be monogamous with them.” So make sure you and your partner are on the same page.
Next, consider how well you communicate and handle conflict as a couple, which are key ingredients for relationship success, especially in non-monogamous ones. “Because conflict will inevitably arise in any relationship. And if you add additional people into it, the potential for conflict dramatically increases,” Dr. Sheff says. “So if people don’t know how to handle conflict and then they enter a potentially incredibly sticky situation like non-monogamy, that could definitely blow up in their faces.”
Psychotherapist Dr. Kristie Overstreet also suggests working with a certified sex therapist if you need help navigating the possibility of an open relationship. And if your gut is saying “yes yes yes” or “oh God, no no no,” listen to it.
What type of open relationship works for you?
The type of relationship that’s best for you and your partner really depends on what you’re seeking. Dr. Overstreet says that “both partners in the couple need to decide if they are open to emotional, physical or both aspects for an open relationship.”
Dr. Sheff breaks it down like this: “Are you both wanting sexual variety with no strings attached? Then swinging is good for that. Are you wanting more emotional intimacy? Then polyamory is better for that. Do you want no rules and for each relationship to be taken on its own individual independence? Then consider relationship anarchy.”
People who practice relationship anarchy choose to be together out of desire rather than obligation, Dr. Sheff explains. “They are not necessarily on this ‘relationship escalator,’ where there’s one way to have a relationship with increasing exclusivity and commitment until you’re married, with sex only happening with that one partner. Relationship anarchists are not down with that at all.”
The rules of an open relationship
While no two relationships are alike, there are some general guidelines to consider when trying to establish a healthy open relationship. Dr. Lawsin offers the following checklist, adding that any rules or boundaries should be discussed, negotiated and reassessed occasionally throughout the relationship and adjusted as needed.
1. Negotiate your sexual boundaries
Boundaries regarding sex should be explicitly negotiated, such as how often sex can occur (e.g., weekly, monthly, etc.), with how many partners at a time, where (e.g., on business trips) and whatever additional physical or logistical (e.g., time) dimensions a couple wishes to define in their relationship. This includes the type of sex as well. For example, is penetrative sex OK or just oral? What about BDSM? Also, do you prefer your partner to only have sex with strangers who they will never see again or rather with someone you already know and trust. Yes, it might get weirdly specific, but you’ll want to figure this stuff out before you open the flood gates.
2. Define your emotional boundaries
Emotional boundaries can be harder to define and set, but they should definitely be discussed, with each partner being honest about what they can manage for themselves and their partner.
3. Safe sex is a must
When you transition your relationship from exclusive to open, you might be super excited to get started with your new ventures, but don’t let all those safe sex practices fly out the window. Discuss with your partner what you’re both comfortable with and how you’ll actually practice safe sex IRL.
4. Be honest
Open relationships relinquish partners from needing to hide or suppress their sexual needs, therefore honesty about what they’re doing should be maintained. Couples need to specify how many details the other wants to know (if any at all) as well as how often. This should be reassessed as needed (and this also applies to #3).
5. Schedule check-ins with your partner
Transparency about how each partner is feeling about the other’s sexual pursuits should also be negotiated and checked on. Partners can make assumptions in any type of relationship, so it’s important to have check-ins with one another to provide a safe space to process emotions, make any adjustments to negotiated boundaries and assess the health of the primary relationship.
6. Don’t forget your about your relationship
Schedule time and space to nurture the relationship and make sure to maintain this. Date nights, trips away and expressing love need to be prioritized to maintain the relationship foundation. Dr. Sheff agrees, saying that it’s easy for one partner to get distracted with a shiny new, exciting relationship and forget to pay attention to the longer-term relationship. “Don’t just save all the fun juju for the new relationship,” she adds.
What about jealousy?
You’re gonna get jealous. It’s inevitable. So, Dr. Sheff says, people “should anticipate it and start building skills around dealing with it before they even engage in open relationships.” And if you do get jealous that doesn’t mean you have to give up on the idea of an open relationship altogether. Rather, you need to face the jealousy head on and figure out why you feel that way, perhaps because you’re feeling insecure or threatened by your partner’s new relationship. Dr. Sheff says that this is a good time for your partner to reassure you (or for you to validate your partner) by saying, “I love you. It’s OK. I’m not leaving you and here are all the reasons why I love you.”
“Hookup culture,” especially as it plays out on college campuses, is a much-discussed topic. Often, hooking up is studied and speculated about like it’s some kind of sexual epidemic, or at the very least, the outcast of sexual intimacy: Is it increasing or decreasing? Perpetuated by dating apps? Gendered? Dangerous? Sure, hookup culture and the many ways we have and experience sex is worth studying and having opinions about, but it can’t be that all hookups are bad or blah.
Despite the often-negative press, hookups, or, short term sexual/intimate encounters, like one-night stands, summer flings, and semester-long friends-with-benefits relationships, can come with a lot of descriptors: “casual,” “fun,” “random,” and “spontaneous” can be some, but can they also be ethical, considerate, and satisfying? We think yes!
Determining whether or not something is officially ethical can be confusing work, as ethics tend to rely both on our individual values and also what society deems ethical — which might not always align. Get your conservative, married-for-50-years grandfather and your liberal, nonmonogamous LGBTQ+ friends at the same dinner table and ask what makes for an “ethical sexual encounter” and you’ll likely get very different responses from each of them (and if anyone ever does do this, please let me know how it goes).
Regardless of what your hookup entails (making out, oral sex, penetrative sex_ or whether you met via a dating app, a party, or a chance meeting with a beautiful stranger — hookups tend to be understood as uniquely separate from a relationship in that they are typically described as being casual or short term and require minimal official commitment between the people involved. For some, the very short-term nature of a hookup can feel unethical (and that’s a totally fine opinion to have as long as we’re not judging others’ choices!), but for others, short-term intimate encounters are exactly what they want. The reality is, we’re certainly not creating more happy hookup experiences by immediately throwing out the possibility of hookups being conscientious, respectful, and downright ethical just because they’re only happening once, sporadically, or when the mood strikes.
So how do you make sure your hookup is ethical?
As a resident sex educator for a youth collective of 16- to 19-year-olds, I had the great opportunity to sit down with a group of the collective’s youth leaders to talk about what they wanted to communicate to their peers about the components of an ethical hookup. Here’s the advice we came up with to help you make your hookup as ethical as possible.
Know and share your STI status.
Being aware of the state of your personal sexual health and sharing it openly and without shame is a key part of making sure our partners and ourselves are informed participants in our hookup. The general rule of thumb is to get a new STI test at least every six months if you’re sexually active with more than one person, or anytime you have a new sexual partner. Empower yourself by knowing that you can set the tone for this “status talk,” so practice speaking confidently and nonjudgmentally about your status and your partner will likely follow suit.
In addition to sharing your status, you should also know and share how to prevent the transmission of STIs via various safer-sex practices. And when it comes to hooking up, it’s always a good idea to have those safer-sex supplies on hand! This HRC Safer Sex Guide (available in both English and Spanish) can help connect the dots between levels of risk, certain sex acts, and which safer-sex practices to put in place.
Consider others’ feelings.
Despite common portrayals, a hookup doesn’t need to be completely devoid of feelings to be considered successful, and not all people experience short-term sexual encounters as emotionless. You can absolutely enthusiastically agree to a hot roll in the one-day hay and be kind, check in about your hookup partner’s feelings the next day, and still maintain casualness. A simple text of appreciation or a “How are you?” can go a long way; as long as you’re clear about intentions, feelings don’t need to get hurt or ignored.
Know and be clear about your intentions.
Intentions are just that — what we set out to do, on purpose, with the knowledge that what we intend might not pan out. If you know that you’re only available for a summer fling but lead your partner on into thinking you want to continue your short-term relationship indefinitely, that’s not ethical because you’re creating a connection based on false pretenses.
Despite our intentions, things can change, feelings can get caught, and our best-laid plans can shift, and that’s okay. But if we have specific intentions from the get-go and aren’t communicating them, then our partners can’t make their own choices about how they would like to interact with us, their own feelings, and their own boundaries. Knowledge is power — don’t strip your partner of theirs by withholding intent.
Respect your own boundaries.
Intentions and ethics start with you. Just like communicating your intentions to your partner gives them power, checking in with your moral compass, your sexual desires and limits, and your hopes for your own intimate interactions gives it to you. Hookups can really get us caught up in a moment, so be prepared for a casual connection by thinking about some of these elements ahead of time. How do I want and like to be touched? What do I want out of a hookup? What do I not want? Scarleteen.com’s sexual inventory checklist, Yes, No, Maybe So, can be a helpful piece of hookup homework to do on your own, in advance.
Respect your partner and their boundaries.
Yes, a fling can be casual and maybe even happen quickly, but always make sure to make time to ask your partner directly about their own yeses, nos, and maybe-sos. Not only does this ensure that we’re respecting our partners and practicing consent, but this also drastically increases our chances of having a mutually pleasurable experience.
If a hookup is indeed temporary, why waste your time guessing at what your partner might want rather than simply asking them directly? And when they give you an answer, you should listen to it. Asking our partner about their desires is consensual, ethical, and just plain economical.
Create more emotional, relational, and sexual safety in your hookups by maintaining mutual respect for your and your partner’s particular desires, wants, yucks, and yums — including wherever you and your partner might fall on the spectrum of sexual experience.
Being fearful to express what it is that turns you on or shaming your partner for what tickles their intimate fancy is a terrible way to explore a mutually satisfying hookup. Sexuality is a very wide world, so it’s impossible that you’ll both be totally into every single thing the other person is into, and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as everything is consensual. Instead, focus on where your desires overlap and remember that you can enthusiastically consent to trying something new because consent means you can change your mind at any time if the new thing just isn’t for you.
Honor consent and seek it actively and in an ongoing manner.
Consent starts with asking for explicit permission before your intimate interaction begins, making sure that each party involved is fully informed about and understands what they’re saying yes, no, or maybe to. Make sure your consent practice doesn’t end there, though!
Active, ongoing consent continues through your intimate interaction and for the duration of your hookup relationship, no matter how long it lasts. During your hookup, ask questions like “Is this still okay?” “Do you like what we’re doing or should we switch it up?” and never assume that just because you hooked up once that your partner (or you!) wants to hook up again, or do the same things you did last time. Keep asking questions and don’t be worried about asking too many. It’s better to spend more time asking questions and less time feeling regret or remorse.
Practice makes perfect.
Feeling awkward is one of the main reasons high school and college students tell me they don’t utilize consent skills and safer-sex supplies. Though putting a condom on a banana is one of the most tired classroom sex-ed tricks in the book, getting your hands on things like condoms, dental dams, gloves, lube, and knowing how to use them properly before you find yourself in a hookup situation will make using these tools more seamless (and less awkward-seeming) in the moment.
Masturbatingusing condoms, gloves, and/or lube to get familiar with the sensation can be a fun way to practice. You can visit your local Planned Parenthood to get accurate information about birth control and risk-management options (even if you don’t plan on needing them anytime soon), which can help bust myths and let you know the resources available to you. Better yet — make it an educational outing with a few friends, complete with going out for ice cream afterward — because why not?
Check in regularly.
Though the general lack of commitment can be part of what makes hooking up appealing to folks, it’s always a good idea to check in every now and then about whether or not keeping it casual is still what you want to do. Checking in with ourselves about our own wants and needs and communicating them clearly also makes sure that we’re keeping tabs on our own priorities, too, and makes sure that we’re remembering to stay clear about our intentions.
Ask for info on pronouns, body parts, no-zones, and triggers.
Even if our sexual interactions are short-term, hooking up is still a vulnerable place to be. All of our partners deserve respect and to feel safe and valued. Nothing will ruin a hookup faster than crossing a boundary (even if accidentally), so make sure to ask where and how your partner likes to be touched, the words they use to talk about them and their bodies, and where they absolutely do not want to go with you whether that’s right now or ever.
Pro tip: Remember that someone saying “no” or “not there” to you isn’t something that you should take personally. Rather, a no can be valuable information your partner is sharing with you about themselves so that you can get to know them better. This perspective can make the “nos” easier to hear while keeping our egos in check.
Respect the gender and sexuality identities of your partners and support their ongoing journey.
Gender, sexuality, and identity is fluid and, especially between teenagehood and adulthood, can change and shift a lot. If a partner tells you about how they identify, believe them, respect them, use the language they ask you to use, and adapt if what’s true for them changes.
Your sureness about your own gender and sexuality doesn’t need to get rattled just because your partners’ identities shift — we promise.
Don’t stir drama.
A truly ethical hookup doesn’t kiss and Snap. While getting support from or excitedly dishing to your friends about hookups can be a totally healthy part of the experience, spreading rumors, sharing information, or even dropping hints that violate your partner’s privacy, consent, or are intended to hurt them or someone else is not. Know the difference, ask your partner before sharing their personal information, and absolutely keep their sexts to yourself.
Now, a new study by the North American Menopause Society reveals a major reason for women having less sex as they age: the lack of a partner, most often because of widowhood.
In fact, just 22.5% of postmenopausal women surveyed were sexually active. And of the 65% who did have significant others, just over 34% were sexually active in the past 30 days.
The study looked at roughly 4,500 women in the United Kingdom who were enrolled in a trial for ovarian cancer screening. As the trial continued, the women reported having less sex and that it was less enjoyable over time.
Only 3% of participants described positive sexual experiences, whereas only 6% sought medical help for sexual problems, despite the availability of effective therapies, ScienceDaily.com reports.
Most studies look at the physical reasons for a decline in satisfactory sex during and after menopause (usually captured from a checklist of complaints). This one instead examined free-text data to try to understand why women feel the way they do about sex.
“Sexual health challenges are common in women as they age, and partner factors play a prominent role in women’s sexual activity and satisfaction, including the lack of a partner, sexual dysfunction of a partner, poor physical health of a partner, and relationship issues,” NAMS medical director Dr. Stephanie Faubion wrote.
And there are a variety of psychosocial factors that come into play, too: body-image concerns; self-confidence; and perceived desirability, stress, mood changes, and relationship issues. The study also cited how their partner’s physical condition, as well as their own health, played a major role.
The bottom line: Having an intimate partner with whom you share good physical health are key to sexual activity and satisfaction.
Here’s a universal truth we generally don’t discuss enough: It’s totally normal to fantasize about other people even when you’re so happy in a relationship that your heart almost bursts every time your partner wrinkles their nose right before laughing at one of your terrible puns. That definitely doesn’t always mean that you want to act on those urges—that might seem like a bad idea for a variety of reasons. But in some cases and for some people, acting on these thoughts with the blessing of their partner is a really attractive idea. Enter: non-monogamy.
Non-monogamy refers to relationships that allow people to have sexual and/or emotional intimacy with people besides their primary partners. People who may be interested in non-monogamy include those who want to explore multiple facets of their sexual orientations or who don’t feel as though it’s natural to only love one person romantically, for instance. Fortunately for people who are interested in pursuing something like this, relationship models beyond monogamy are rising in mainstream visibility, which is where open relationships can come in.
More people are visibly warming up to the idea that it’s OK to want to have sex with more than one person for life. (Forever is a really, REALLY long time.) But knowing that open relationships are a thing doesn’t help much when it comes to figuring out if one might be right for you.
Since every relationship has its own strengths and weaknesses, there’s no One Easy Trick that will reveal if an open relationship could be great for you and your partner. However, there are various tip-offs that can indicate if your relationship would thrive or crumble after opening it up. To help you figure out where you fall, we reached out to experts in ethical non-monogamy (as in being non-monogamous without being an asshole). Here are the signs they say can hint at when it might and might not make sense to consider experimenting with an open relationship.
Here’s when it could make sense to have an open relationship.
1. You’re both genuinely interested in non-monogamy.
As the founder of the educational platform Unscripted Relationships, Stephanie Webb, Ph.D., often gets the question, “How do I get my partner to agree to an open relationship?” That’s completely the wrong way to go about opening up a relationship, says Webb.
“You don’t ‘get’ them to,” Webb, whose Ph.D. is in communication with a focus on nontraditional relationships and who has personally practiced ethical non-monogamy for over a decade, tells SELF. That kind of phrasing implies that one partner is interested in an open relationship and trying to bend the other’s will, which definitely isn’t a healthy relationship dynamic for introducing non-monogamy (or just in general).
“Many people do not want to be in an open relationship and forcing a [partner] is not a way to approach it at all,” Webb says. “Instead the interest can be raised, but not pushed. If the [partner] draws a line and wants monogamy because that is what was initially expected in the relationship, it should be respected or the relationship should end.”
With that said there’s a huge difference between a partner who makes it clear that they would never want any form of an open relationship and a partner who is interested but may need time to understand how an open relationship would manifest.
“Fears and insecurities about a new type of relationship style are typical,” board-certified clinical sexologist Rhoda Lipscomb, Ph.D., tells SELF. Experiencing these emotions at the thought of opening up a relationship doesn’t automatically mean it’s not a good idea. “This can actually help the couple so long as they are able to communicate well about what the fears mean and move forward at a pace that works for both of them,” Lipscomb says. That brings us to our next point.
2. You’re ready to communicate your ass off.
A healthy open relationship does not start after a single talk. “Opening a relationship takes so much time and work,” Webb says. Properly navigating this new terrain requires a series of ongoing conversations where you and your partner discuss what you’re looking to get out of the new relationship dynamic along with any rules you need to follow to make that happen.
Perhaps in order for you both to feel fulfilled and safe in your open relationship, neither of you can have sleepovers, play with friends, tell each other details of your trysts, have sex with other people without protection, or have sex with others inside your shared home.
Discuss emotional boundaries too. Are you both only interested in having sexual connections with other people? Or are you OK with polyamory, which allows for emotional connections and even loving other people too? Making sure you both agree upon these types of boundaries is key.
3. Your relationship currently stands on a foundation of honesty and trust.
Every expert quoted in this piece made one thing abundantly clear: Successful open relationships can require even more honesty and confidence in your partner than monogamous ones.
When a couple has this foundation, it’s a lot harder for non-monogamy to harm their bond, Lipscomb says. But without that trust or ability to be completely truthful, it’s much easier for an open relationship to exacerbate your relationship issues or create new ones. For instance, if you don’t trust your partner as much as possible, will you believe them when they say they’ll always use protection? If you feel like you can’t be honest with them, will you be able to share what about an open relationship makes you feel most vulnerable—which is the only real way you can get reassurance for those fears?
It’s necessary that both of you feel comfortable discussing questions and concerns you might have even if you’re a little nervous. Otherwise, your open relationship could implode pretty quickly.
4. You and your partner have mismatched libidos or kinks.
“Some folks have a partner who is uninterested in having a sexual relationship but still desires an emotional connection,” clinical psychologist and American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists–certified sex therapist Kelifern Pomeranz, Psy.D., tells SELF. This may happen when one partner falls on the asexual spectrum, is taking medication that stunts their libido, is too stressed from work to want much sex, or for any number of other valid reasons. On a similar note if one of you is all about a certain kink and the other has absolutely no interest, allowing one partner to practice that kink with others might offer a solution.
Of course these types of situations still require honesty, trust, and thorough communication. Those are nonnegotiable in any good relationship, especially open ones.
5. You’re in a mixed-orientation relationship.
If you’re in a mixed-orientation relationship, you may already know that term for it, but just so we’re on the same page: A mixed-orientation relationship means that partners have different sexual orientations.
Here’s when opening up your relationship might not be the best idea.
1. It’s in direct response to infidelity.
One of the worst things you can do after a partner cheats is immediately open the relationship. That’s not to say you can’t open it up if one of you has cheated in the past, but there’s that trust issue again: You both need time to work through infidelity as a unit before bringing anyone else into the mix, even if it’s no longer in secret.
“Open relationships of all kinds require trust, knowledge, consent, and emotional (and sometimes physical and spiritual) labor,” says Webb. “Infidelity breaks trust; opening the relationship when this kind of trauma has occurred is not impossible, but it does not set anyone up for success either. I recommend doing the work to rebuild the relationship and then approaching openness from a foundation of trust.”
2. Your relationship is already on the brink of ending.
Opening up a relationship in a desperate attempt to stave off a breakup isn’t a great idea. Without the strong, healthy bond that’s necessary for an open relationship to work, introducing non-monogamy might just push you over the breakup precipice.
People who try an open relationship as a last-ditch effort to avoid a breakup typically already have one foot out the door, Lipscomb says. “They do not have a strong connection and want someone—anyone—other than their primary partner,” she says, but they might be staying because of children, a fear of what their family will say, comfort, worries about hurting their partner, social stigma around divorce, or other reasons. An open relationship might seem like the perfect compromise in these cases, but it won’t work as a bandage over fundamental relationship issues or unhappiness.
3. One or both of you can’t handle jealousy.
It’s a misconception that people in successful open relationships never feel jealousy. The difference is that they know jealousy can happen, respect boundaries in an attempt to avoid it, and deal with it in a healthy manner if it arises anyway.
None of this is possible without—say it with us, folks—honesty, trust, and communication. That essential combination is what allows you to say something like, “Hey, I don’t know what it is, but I get wildly jealous when I know you’re seeing that guy.” It’s also what allows your partner to accept this kind of statement from a loving, empathetic place and reassure you as necessary.
Issues besides jealousy might come up when you’re in an open relationship, just like they would in a monogamous one. Bottom line: “Partners need to be able to listen to one another with compassion and not defensiveness, communicate their wants and needs, express themselves honestly, and take responsibility for their actions,” says Pomeranz.
If you and your S.O. haven’t done the deed in six months or longer, you are not alone. In fact, you are trending. If you believe recent headlines, tons of married or long-term couples all over the world are in the midst of a full-blown sex strike. Even Pink is talking about it: “…you’ll go through times when you haven’t had sex in a year,” the singer and mom of two recently said of her 13-year marriage to Carey Hart. “Is this bed death? Is this the end of it? Do I want him? Does he want me? Monogamy is work! But you do the work and it’s good again
According to the New York Post, “’Dead bedrooms,’ the buzzy new term for when couples in long-term relationships stop having sex, are on a zombie-apocalypse-like rise.” It cites a study that shows 69 percent of couples are intimate 8 times a year or less; 17 percent of those surveyed hadn’t had sex in a year or more. This is on the heels of research out of the University of Chicago demonstrating that between the late 1990s and 2014, sex for all adults dropped from 62 to 54 times a year on average. And, per Time, “The highest drop in sexual frequency has been among married people with higher levels of education.”
In her cover story on The Sex Recession, The Atlantic’s Kate Julian reports on the many possible causes behind this unsexy ebb: “hookup culture, crushing economic pressures, surging anxiety rates, psychological frailty, widespread antidepressant use, streaming television, environmental estrogens leaked by plastics, dropping testosterone levels, digital porn, the vibrator’s golden age…helicopter parents, careerism, smartphones, the news cycle, information overload generally, sleep deprivation, obesity. Name a modern blight, and someone, somewhere, is ready to blame it for messing with the modern libido.”
Chances are you and/or your spouse are impacted by one (if not several) of the above. So what can you do to break a dry spell? Read on for expert tips.
1. Focus on each other as well as the kids
We could tell you to start putting each other first. But chances are it’s not gonna happen. Parents with children between the ages of 6 and 17 are having less sex than even those with younger children, according to research. Blame co-sleeping, snowplow parenting or “generalized family anxiety” caused by everything from travel soccer to SAT prep. More than past generations, parents are putting kids front and center, and their sex lives are taking a hit. Here’s advice from psychologist and author Dr. Debra Campbell: “Dispense with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ attitude to sex because passion and excitement thrive most on creativity and a bit of novelty. That means, don’t limit yourselves by thinking about sex as purely intercourse, as only happening at a particular time of day or night, or requiring certain circumstances— especially now circumstances have changed.” A weekly date night might not be feasible, but making out in the car after a parent-teacher conference could be. Hug occasionally. Say thank you. Kiss hello and goodbye. As relationship guru Dr. John Gottman says, good marriages thrive on “small things often” as opposed to the single, annual, grand romantic gesture.
2. Check your meds
This one’s complicated. Depression and anxiety inhibit sexual desire. But often, so do the essential antidepressants and birth control pills we take to mitigate both. However, depending on multiple personal factors, from physiology to psychology, you may find that a lower dose or a certain type of birth control impacts your sexual desire differently. You may have a better response to an IUD than to an oral contraceptive, for example. Definitely talk to your doctor. And (here’s an idea) bring your spouse in on the conversation.
3. Banish tech from your bedroom
For many long-term couples, Netflix and Chill evolves into Netflix and Pass Out. We’ve done deep dives into how phubbing can be toxic for romantic relationships. And research shows that sleep deprivation (whether it’s caused by parenthood, work worry or tech use) reduces sexual desire. More sleep = more and better sex. And it turns out all that late-night Instagram scrolling may be eating away at your self-esteem and your sex life as well as your sleep. “A large and growing body of research reports that for both men and women, social-media use is correlated with body dissatisfaction,” writes Julian in her Atlantic story. Feeling hot is key to arousal. Is watching a 26-year-old travel Influencer jog down the beach in Phuket going to help? “A review of 57 studies examining the relationship between women’s body image and sexual behavior suggests that positive body image is linked to having better sex. Conversely, not feeling comfortable in your own skin complicates sex.” Anything healthy and positive you can do for your body—and the less time you spend comparing it to anyone online in a bikini—will probably improve your sex life.
4. Stop counting
When it comes to sex, it’s quality over quantity. How often you do it matters less than how happy you are with your sex life, according to relationship therapist, author and sex researcher Dr. Sarah Hunter Murray. The average married couple has sex once a week or less, and those who do are just as happy—and perhaps happier—than those having it two to three times a week, per research in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. “The frequency with which we have sex receives a lot of attention because it’s the easiest way to measure and compare our sex lives to our peers,” writes Hunter Murray. “But having lots of bad sex isn’t going to make anyone happy nor is it going to leave you feeling satisfied.” She advises looking at the reasons why you’re not having sex and doing what you can to work on those together. Is it because you approach money differently? He’s critical of your parenting style? Your careers are in different stages? You resent the division of household labor or carry more than your share of the mental load? What can you do to communicate about or change your circumstances? “If we are fighting or falling out of love with our partner, not having sex could be a symptom of a much larger problem,” writes Hunter Murray. “However, if we are simply busy, sick, navigating parenthood, or identify as asexual (and the list goes on) then it may be more circumstantial and nothing to panic over.” The bottom line? Less frequent good sex is better than bi-weekly sex that leaves you cold or not feeling any closer.
Anticipation is part of the reason why sex is so hot at the beginning of relationships
Inevitably, having sex becomes a part of most romantic relationships but, sometimes, there is a hindrance that couples can’t always stop from happening: stress.
A new client recently began our session with “I’m just not that into sex anymore. It’s not that I don’t think about it, I just don’t have the same kind of drive for sex that I used to have.”
Lack of interest in sexual intercourse is one of the most common concerns I see as a sex coach. It affects all kinds of people of all relationship statuses, but its roots can be found in similar areas.
Single men and women come to me explaining that they don’t think about themselves sexually and they feel out of touch with their own sexual energy.
Couples tend to come to me after dating for some time and feel that the sex they have now isn’t as fulfilling as the sex they had at the beginning of their relationship.
But, why are they feeling less into sex?
Stressed out singles
Today, the average person is busier and more consumed by distraction than ever before. Most of us work long hours, maintain busy social calendars and have numerous commitments to family and friends.
To stay on top of everything, the average person checks their cell phone approximately 80 times a day. Why should this matter when it comes to our desire for sex? Because we don’t have an endless supply of energy.
If the energy we do have is used to accomplish things outside of ourselves all the time, it can’t be used to connect to our deepest needs if it’s been depleted.
In my experience, this is the number one reason why people can go weeks or months without even checking in with themselves about their sexual needs.
On top of energy depletion, we are also tapped into what feels like an endless supply of potential sexual partners through online dating sites and apps.
Dating can be another stressor when you’re single. It can be fun, for sure! But there’s a lot that goes into finding a match, sparking up a conversation, and moving that conversation into real life.
Some single folks are so burned out by the process that online interactions are all these relationships end up being, which is fine if you’re a digisexual, but most of us are looking for in-person sexual experiences.
Long-term loving couples
Some married couples or couples in a relationship are concerned that they’re not having enough sex. This might be a legitimate issue if they’ve seen a dramatic drop in frequency or quality — or the concern may be rooted in the myth that the sex you have at the beginning of a relationship will continue to be the sex you have for the duration of your relationship.
In general, there is a natural bend towards less frequent and less explosive sex as a relationship develops over time. On average, most long-term couples have sex about once a week. Knowing these two facts can sometimes alleviate any concerns the couple might be having.
Couples are not immune to stress as individuals or as a unit, so some of the stressors mentioned previously for single people apply to couples as well.
Couples also have sources of unique stressors including but not limited to shared household and financial responsibilities, childcare, managing in-law relationships, finding time for individual pursuits and making sure that the overall health of the relationship is good. This is a lot of unsexy stuff that’s all part of a loving relationship.
If any of the above sounds familiar, then there are ways to help you tap back into your sexual connection with yourself and your partners.
Ask yourself, “What kind of sex life do I want?”
Answering this question is a worthwhile activity for anyone regardless of their relationship status.
Being single might mean that your sexual life is deprioritized because of your busy life, but it’s a good idea to take a few minutes to think about what kind of sex and sensual experiences you would like to have as part of your life. This can give you some clarity about what to work towards.
If you are partnered, do this activity separately and then share your results. There may be some things on your partner’s list that will surprise you and will even make your marriage better than ever!
So if stress has made you less interested in sex, here are 3 ways to fix that.
1. Respect your need for pleasure
Many clients tell me that they think about sex regularly, but that they don’t allow themselves to engage in fantasies.
Your body has natural sexual rhythms, and it will communicate to you what it wants. Your job is to listen to it. Of course, you do not have to indulge in every fantasy that pops into your brain, but take note of when you’re having fantasies and rather than pushing those thoughts away allow yourself to entertain them a little longer.
No one is going to know and you’ll benefit from maintaining your connection to your body’s need for sexual pleasure.
2. Find pleasure in everyday activities
When we’re stressed out and living in our head, we forget to use all of our senses, which are crucial for tapping into our sexuality. That’s why I encourage my clients to develop mindfulness as they move through the world.
This can start with the simple act of invoking all of your senses while enjoying your cup of coffee or tea first thing in the morning. Create time to hear the sound of the boiling water or coffee pot brewing, take in the sight of the liquid being poured into your cup, smell the aroma, feel the heat of the mug in your hand and notice the taste.
This is a classic mindfulness practice that can set the tone for your day and get you rooted in your body.
3. Put sex on the calendar
This may sound cheesy, but for some couples, putting sex on the calendar is a great tactic to build back that anticipation for sex that was there at the beginning of courtship.
Think about it this way: when you were dating you set up a time in the future to meet and you had all this time before the date to fantasize about how the night would go.
That anticipation is part of the reason why sex is so hot at the beginning of relationships, so building it back in is such a game-changer when couples need to recharge their sex life.
Single folks or individuals within a couple can benefit from calendaring in solo sex as well. I often recommend that busy folks put masturbation on their calendars. Think of it as part of your wellness routine or self-care.
A regular masturbation practice can help you maintain a healthy amount of sexual desire while also reducing stress. For these reasons, your sexual connection to yourself deserves a place on your calendar.
If you feel that you could use some help putting practices in place to re-connect to your sexual self, consider working with a sex and dating coach like myself.
If I asked you what the worst thing about having sex is, what would you say?
For nearly one out of three women, it’s body shame.
Sex toy company Lovehoney asked over 3,000 people this question. Men’s top concern about sex was when it was over too quickly. But for women, the most commonly reported worst thing about sex was feeling self-conscious—some 30% of women said this.
Why women feel so self-conscious during sex—and how it affects their pleasure.
“Our culture puts a lot of pressure on women to be attractive yet not too sexual—open and receptive to sexual experience but not too knowledgeable or demanding,” certified sex coach Myisha Battle, M.S., explains to mbg. “There is also societal pressure for women’s bodies to conform to an often unattainable standard of beauty. All of this (and sometimes more) contributes to why women feel self-conscious during sex.”
Past research has found body image to be a big roadblock to women’s sexual well-being: Studies have shown feeling bad about your body makes you less likely to advocate for your needs in bed, stand firm in your boundaries, and ask for safer sexual practices. On the other hand, feeling confident in your body—particularly your genitalia—has been linked with being less stressed over “performance” during sex and actually having an easier time getting turned on, lubricated, and having orgasms.
“It’s really challenging to believe in your sense of pleasure when you are constantly questioning whether or not you are living up to standards that the world imposes upon you,” Battle says. “When we don’t feel the best in our bodies, our sex lives can suffer. In my practice I see people who have difficulty with arousal and orgasm as a result of self-monitoring and overthinking. It’s actually very common. When our minds are racing with these thoughts, it can inhibit our ability to tap into physical sensations and dampen our experience of pleasure.”
How to get out of your head during sex.
1. The “M” word.
Yes, it’s about mindfulness—you can’t get away from it!
Mindfulness is deeply tied to sexual pleasure. No matter your gender, if you regularly find yourself feeling self-conscious and anxious about the way your body looks during sex, Battle recommends taking up a meditation or mindfulness practice to be able to monitor your thoughts and learn to release the negative ones.
“Notice when you’re having a self-critical thought. Keep a journal if it’s helpful. You may be surprised at how many times this happens,” she explains. “You can then try replacing each negative thought with a positive one. It takes time and sometimes a lot of effort to come up with something positive, but over time it can be really helpful for cultivating a positive self-image.”
(If you need some ideas for positive thoughts to repeat to yourself about your body, I love feminist life coach and women’s rights lawyer Kara Loewentheil, J.D.’s recommendations.)
2. Rally the troops.
Self-confidence stems from within, but that doesn’t mean the people in your life who love you can’t help you in that journey. Research shows people who talk about sex with their friends tend to have more sexual self-confidence and are more willing to ask for what they want in bed. And if you’re in a relationship, that partner of yours should be worshipping your body—and making it obvious. Another study found people who feel like their partner really appreciates their body are more sexually satisfied, have more desire and orgasms, and are more satisfied with their relationship overall.
3. Develop a body love ritual.
“I also recommend taking some time out of each day to practice body acceptance and self-love. Take a moment to thank your legs for getting you to work, your belly for digesting your food, your arms for helping you carry your groceries, and so on,” Battle says. “We only get one body in this world, and regardless of ability, age, size, or race, every body has the capacity for pleasure and is deserving of it.”
Winnipeg relationships therapist Sarah Hunter Murray found a male desire that’s less voracious, indiscriminate and skin deep, and more emotionally complex – fragile, even.
Although sex researchers historically gave male subjects centre stage, they paid surprisingly little attention to how men actually desire. Today, contemporary sexologists say our cultural understanding of men’s sex drive remains simplistic and leans on old clichés – that male libido is always sky-high, self-centred and ready to go, with practically anyone. Men who aren’t this way are still treated as exceptions, not the rule.
Canadian researchers and clinicians are starting to push back on these ideas by asking deeper questions about the inner world of male desire. They’re looking at how heterosexual men lust (and don’t) within their relationships, what motivates them to have sex with their partners, what frustrates them in their intimate lives and how they process rejection from the women they love. What they’re finding counters much of what’s been previously assumed about men.
“We’ve got this stereotype about men’s desire being constant and unwavering. More recently, we’ve got #MeToo highlighting stories of men’s sexual desire being dangerous, toxic and about power. But what else is going on?” said Winnipeg relationships therapist Sarah Hunter Murray.
Murray interviewed nearly 300 men and spoke to hundreds more over a decade in her therapy practice – executives, truck drivers, athletes, teachers and dads among them. Their insights are included in Murray’s recent book, Not Always in The Mood: The New Science of Men, Sex, and Relationships, which offers a rare glimpse into a world we think we understand, but possibly don’t at all.
Notably absent from Murray’s book are the usual tales of raging male libido. One husband is too stressed out by the family business to think about sex. A boyfriend turns down his girlfriend’s advances for two months as he dwells on an unresolved argument. Another husband tells Murray his sexual interest piques when he and his wife talk late into the night. In her conversations with men, Murray found a male desire that’s less voracious, indiscriminate and skin deep, and more emotionally complex – fragile, even.
While Murray offers a strikingly new perspective on heterosexual male sex drive, other Canadian researchers are studying men’s sexual problems in long-term committed relationships. In Halifax, clinical psychologist Natalie Rosen is looking at why men experience low desire with their partners. At the University of Waterloo, PhD student Siobhan Sutherland is exploring male and female partners’ sexual complaints, which happen to be the same. And at the University of Kentucky, Canadian researcher Kristen Mark mines “sexual desire discrepancy” in couples, finding it’s sometimes wives and girlfriends who are more interested in sex than husbands and boyfriends – guys who find this scenario particularly troubling because of social expectations about the supposedly more carnal male gender.
Their emerging research suggests serious blind spots around male desire are harming relationships and holding couples back from broaching what they want in their intimate lives.
“If we ignore the nuances of sexual desire in men, we risk continuing to perpetuate stereotypes – that men’s sexual interest is uniformly high and independent of context – to the detriment of the many men whose experiences are multifaceted,” said Halifax’s Rosen. “In enhancing our understanding of men’s sexual desire, we can improve individual and couple sexuality and ultimately promote the quality of intimate relationships.”
The Globe spoke to researchers – and men – about busting the most pernicious myths lingering around male desire.
Not in the mood
Despite stereotypical depictions in pop culture, real-world men aren’t always fired up.
“The myth is that men are a sex toy that you can pull out of your closet and it’s always ready to go when you are. Well, no, that’s not actually the case,” said CJ, a 41-year-old government employee in St. John’s who is divorced and now in a relationship with a woman he’s known for two decades. (In order to protect the men’s privacy, full names are not used). “If your time and energy is spent on the adulting – paying bills, working overtime, trying to keep your energy up for elderly parents or young kids – is there really time to connect emotionally and build that bridge that ends up in the bedroom?” said CJ.
Adam, a Kitchener, Ont., retiree who’s been with his wife for more than two decades, also disputed the notion that the male sex drive runs non-stop, no matter what. “If I’m focused on something or upset about something at work, I just want to be alone or work something out in my head. You don’t want to have any kind of interaction with anybody,” said Adam, 67. “My partner used to talk about the ‘tent time’ or the ‘bear time.'”
In conversation with Murray, the Winnipeg relationships therapist, men pointed out that sex wasn’t at the forefront of their brains when they were sick, tired, stressed out at work or feeling emotionally disconnected. “Men’s sexual desire is not a static trait that never changes and is impermeable to outside influences,” wrote Murray, who holds a PhD in human sexuality. “We’ve gotten used to talking about the complexities of women’s desire being affected by how much sleep they’re getting, how much stress they’re under or by being a parent, but we simply don’t talk about this with men,” she said.
Halifax’s Rosen is currently recruiting couples for one of the first studies to look at men struggling with lowered desire within their relationships. “There’s so much pressure in how men’s desire is supposed to conform to the stereotype of always being ready and interested in sex,” said Rosen, an associate professor in psychology and neuroscience at Dalhousie University and director of the school’s Couples and Sexual Health Research Laboratory. “The men I’ve seen clinically feel a lot of shame around it, like there’s something wrong with them. Their family doctors don’t bring it up with them and they don’t see representations of themselves.”
Faking it
During their first therapy sessions with Murray, men often boasted about their robust sex drives. Subsequent conversations saw them dialing it back. Numerous husbands and boyfriends confessed that “some of their desire was feigned rather than authentic,” Murray wrote.
Men told her that they agreed to sex they didn’t fully want because they felt they had to. Having been socialized all their lives about high-octane male desire, men were playing the part. They were also faking it for the sake of their girlfriends and wives, who took sexual rejection and lagging male libido personally. “Men talked about this fear that their female partner might not be open to them saying ‘no’ to sex,” Murray said.
In St. John’s, CJ copped to faking sexual interest before. “It’s almost on a scale of 1 to 10. I’m not really there but I’m at a 6 and a half so I can go along with it,” CJ said. “Other times you kind of take one for the team, realizing that she’s probably done the same thing for you.”
Through her first interviews, Halifax’s Rosen is finding that men with low sexual interest are still reporting they regularly have sex with their female partners. Rosen said the men felt guilt and obligation to “please their partner to maintain the relationship.”
The female gaze
The standard thinking still goes in heterosexual dynamics: Men do the complimenting (and the objectifying), the desiring and the pursuing – and are naturally content with the setup. Not exactly, the men interviewed said.
“Men really don’t get checked out very often,” said Alexander, a 22-year-old Toronto student who has been with his girlfriend Mary, 21, for more than a year. “We have better sex when she’s complimented me and encouraged me. …It changes the whole tone of the evening,” Alexander said. “If a woman initiates even just one component of sex, that is the biggest vote of confidence.”
In her conversations with hundreds of men, Winnipeg’s Murray found many wanted their spouses and girlfriends to look at them, compliment them and act on their own urges. “Interview after interview, it started to become very clear that the most salient and important experience that increased men’s sexual desire was feeling wanted by their female partner,” Murray wrote. “A lot of women don’t think to outwardly demonstrate their desire for their male partners.”
Waterloo’s Sutherland asked 117 heterosexual couples in long-term relationships about their problems in bed for a study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine in March, and found men and women voicing pretty much the same concerns: frequency of sex, initiation and how much their partners showed interest. “We used to think that women just wanted to be romanced and men just care about sex. That’s not true. Men want to feel wanted as well, and for women to show interest in them,” Sutherland said.
Beyond skin deep
Current assumptions about male libido still often go like this: sex for men is about getting off, a practically robotic function.
Look deeper and many men balk at that assumption. For Kitchener’s Adam, intimacy is how he connects with his wife. “I may touch my partner … I’m not intending to be crude, but sometimes she reacts in a way that [suggests] this is the only motive I would have,” Adam said. “There are times when men are struggling to find a way to show intimacy. A touch is presumed to be a claim on the body, instead of just a way to connect and make some contact.”
Toronto’s Alexander expressed frustration with literature and pop culture that depict sex as solely about physical gratification for men. “If we’ve just had sex, I don’t want to go to sleep,” he said of his girlfriend. “I want to reflect on what just happened with her.”
In research interviews and therapy sessions with Murray, husbands and boyfriends described feeling their sexual-interest spike on date nights, long walks and during close conversations – the stuff of rom-coms. “To hear men talking about romantic and sweet things about their partner that turn them on, it challenged my own assumptions,” Murray said.
The therapist argued that women who are constantly cynical about the nature of their partners’ sexual desire might be missing the bigger picture. “When we have a limited belief about what turns our partner on, we unfortunately miss the more complex, nuanced, and meaningful ways that he feels desire for us,” Murray wrote. “Many of men’s emotional bids for connection go unnoticed.”
Mars, Venus and Planet Earth
Waterloo’s Sutherland found that women and men voiced virtually all the same desire-related problems in their relationships. Here, she hit on something sexologists increasingly note: When it comes to intimacy, there is often less difference between the genders than there is between individual people. “There used to be this idea that men are from Mars and women are from Venus,” Sutherland said. “We find more and more in our research that it’s just not the case.”
Winnipeg’s Murray found gender norms were limiting couples’ experiences in bed, particularly the sexual scripts that tell men they need to pursue and women they need to be the gatekeeper. CJ agreed: “If you’re conforming to the same roles, if you’re not stepping outside a little bit, it has a detrimental effect. It becomes a flow chart: I initiate. You respond. If yes, then bedroom. If bedroom, then missionary.”
Speaking to distraught couples, Murray noticed that false assumptions about raging male libido left both men and women feeling inadequate: Some women questioned whether their own lower desire was dysfunctional, while some men who didn’t experience near-constant sexual urges told Murray they felt broken.
The author wants relationships to become a place of respite from gendered expectations about desire that have little, if anything, to do with individual couples.
“These misconceptions hold us in antiquated boxes about what men and women should be, and don’t leave room to have a new discourse around what we actually want to experience,” Murray said. “It doesn’t let us be our authentic selves.”
Jessamyn Stanley recently talked about the many misconceptions surrounding polyamory. We reached out to experts to learn more about the relationship practice.
By Gabrielle Kassel
Bethany Meyers, Nico Tortorella, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Jessamyn Stanley are all stylish AF, badass entrepreneurs making waves on your social feeds. But they have another thing in common: They all identify as polyamorous.
By now you’ve likely heard of “polyamory” and “polyamorous relationships.” But do you know what they mean? Unless you’re also poly, Stanely says you probably don’t. In a recent Instagram Story, she said, “Polyamory gets confused with wanting to have sex or needing to have sex with a lot of different people, which is really not what it’s about.” (Related: How to Have a Healthy Polyamorous Relationship)
So what are polyamorous relationships actually about? To find out, we consulted with sex educators who specialize in ethical non-monogamy. Here, they explain the dynamics of polyamory and dispel some of the most common misconceptions surrounding it.
What’s the definition of polyamorous?
Our ‘ole friend Merriam Webster says the term “polyamory” refers to folks involved in more than one romantic relationship at a time. While an OK start, sex and polyamory educators say this definition misses one vv vital component: consent.
“Polyamory is an ethically, honestly, and consensually driven relationship structure that allows us to engage in many (poly), loving (amorous) relationships,” says pleasure-based sex educator and sex-positivity advocate, Lateef Taylor. “The consent component here is vital.” So while there may be multiple intimate and/or sexual relationships happening concurrently, everyone (!!) involved is aware that these are the relationship dynamics in place.
Note: If you’ve ever been in a committed monogamous relationship and cheated or been cheated on, know that that is not polyamory. “Cheating is a behavior that can happen in any kind of relationship because it’s any broach in the agreements or boundaries of the relationship,” explains sex educator and licensed psychologist Liz Powell, Psy.D., author of Building Open Relationships: Your Hands-On Guide To Swinging, Polyamory, & Beyond. Translation: Calling yourself “poly” isn’t a free pass for you or your partner to hook up with whoever you want.
Polyamorous relationship ≠ open relationship
Many non-monogamous relationship terms are often conflated and confused. Sex and relationships educator Sarah Sloane, who has been teaching sex toy classes at Good Vibrations and Pleasure Chest since 2001, explains that consensual non-monogamy (sometimes called ethical non-monogamy) encapsulates all of these.
Maybe you’ve heard the word “queer” described as an umbrella term? Well, Sloane says “consensual non-monogamy similarly operates as an umbrella term, too.” Under that umbrella are other types of non-monogamous relationships, including polyamorous relationships, as well as swinging, open relationships, throuples, and more.
Wait, so what’s the difference between polyamorous and open relationships? “These relationship terms may mean slightly different things to different people,” explains Sloane. Typically, though, “when someone uses the phrase ‘polyamorous,’ they’re using it to explain relationships that are emotionally intimate and romantic, as opposed to just sexual,” she says. Open relationships, on the other hand, tend to involve having one partner who’s your main squeeze/your boo thing/your partner/your honey, and other partners who are ~purely sexual~. Simply put, while open relationships and polyamorous relationships are both practices of ethical non-monogamy, polyamorous relationships typically have wiggle room for more than one emotional connection. (Related: 6 Things Monogamous People Can Learn from Open Relationships)
Just remember: “To find out what someone means when they say they’re in a polyamorous relationship, ask them, because it does mean different things to different people,” says Sloane.
Some poly relationships have “structure” while others do not
Just as no two monogamous relationships look the same, nor do two polyamorous relationships. “There are so many different ways to have intimate relationships with multiple people, so there are so many ways polyamorous relationships can manifest and play out,” says Amy Boyajian, CEO and co-founder of Wild Flower, an online innovative sexual wellness and adult store.
Sloane explains that some folks follow a relationship hierarchy in which partners are considered “primary,” “secondary,” “tertiary,” and so on, based on the level of commitment involved. “Others won’t use formal labels, but will arrange the ‘importance’ of their relationships around who they’re living with, have kids with, etc.,” she says. On the other hand, some people avoid “ranking” the folks they’re woo-ing and being woo-ed by, adds Sloane.
Figuring out a relationship structure (or lack thereof) that works best for you requires understanding yourself and what you need from your relationships, says Boyajian. “You need to deep-think on what you’re comfortable with, what your needs are, and then be able to communicate those things to your partners and potential partners.”
Folks of any gender, sexuality, and relationship status can be poly
“Anyone who believes in and is committed to having ethical non-monogamous relationships can explore this love style,” says Taylor.
BTW, you can also be single and identify as poly. You can even be sleeping with or dating only one person and still identify as poly. “Identifying as poly doesn’t mean you always have multiple partners at once,” says Boyajian, “It’s like being pansexual. You’re still pansexual even if you’re not currently dating or sleeping with anyone!” (Related: What It Really Means to Be Gender Fluid or Identify As Non-Binary)
No, being poly isn’t a “new trend”
Polyamory may seem like something ~all the cool kids are doing~ but it has a rich history. “Indigenous people and queer folks have been doing it for many, many years,” says Powell. “And when we call it a ‘trend’, we erase the history of the variety of folks who have been practicing ethical non-monogamy throughout history, before the white West started doing it.”
So why does it seem like it’s suddenly something everyone’s doing? First off, relax. Not everyone is doing it. While one survey found that about 21 percent of Americans have tried consensual non-monogamy at some point in their life, another source says only 5 percent of folks are currently in a non-monogamous relationship. However, the most recent data is at least two years old, so experts say the percentage may be slightly higher.
Sloane also offers her own hypothesis: “As a society, we may be in a place where we are having more conversations about what constitutes love and relationships,” she says. “And the more conversations we have about polyamory, the more people are able to consider it for themselves.” (Related: The Surprising Reason Women Want Divorce More Than Men)
Polyamorous dating isn’t just about getting laid
There’s a misconception that polyamory is about a need or desire to have a lot of sex with a lot of people, Stanley recently shared on Instagram. But “it’s really just a lot of radical honesty,” she wrote. As Powell explains: “Polyamory isn’t about sex, it’s about the desire (or practice) of wanting to have multiple loving relationships.”
In fact, sometimes sex is never on the table. For instance, folks who identify as asexual (meaning they don’t experience a desire to have sex) can be in polyamorous relationships, too, says sex educator Dedeker Winston, author of The Smart Girl’s Guide to Polyamory. “For people who are asexual, polyamorous allows them to cultivate relationships around commitment, intimacy, shared values, and shared experiences with a partner or partners, while still allowing that partner to be sexual.”
But, of course, sex can be part of it
“Polyamory is about designing an intentional relationship style that works for you, so sex can be a primary driver or just a component,” says sex educator and gender researcher Ren Grabert, M.Ed. (BTW: If you’re thinking poly=orgies all the time, guess again. Sure, group sex may occasionally be part of it. But that’s not a defining feature of polyamorous relationships.)
And when sex is part of it, Boyajian says communication around safe-sex practices and STI status is key. “Are you using protection with all of your partners? Are a group of you exclusive to one another and therefore not using barriers? Are you to use protection with all partners but one, who you’re fluid bonded to?” These details should be agreed upon before sexual contact happens and should be an ongoing conversation. (Here’s how to ask your partner if they’ve had an STD test.)
Polyamorous relationships *aren’t* for commitment-phobes
There’s a misconception that being polyamorous is synonymous with “bad at commitment.” That’s hogwash. In fact, Taylor says poly requires a ton of commitment—to yourself and to the people you’re seeing. “Think about it: Being in a relationship with multiple people requires committing to the folks you’re dating or seeing and honoring them and the boundaries of your relationship.”
In fact, if you start dating polyamorously specifically because you have a fear of commitment, your relationships will likely fail, says Powell. “What tends to happen is folks end up bringing their commitment-aversion—and the issues that come with it—into multiple relationships, instead of just one.” Woof.
If you want to experiment with polyamorous dating, you need to do your research
Maybe you’ve always wanted to explore polyamory. Maybe Stanely’s loving post for her partners after a bike accident (“I’m also feeling so f*cking grateful for my partners and the way in which they held me and each other down last night/this morning”) piqued your interest. Or maybe you’re just curious for future reference. Whatever the reason, if you—or you and a partner—want to experiment with polyamory, you need to do your research.
Kudos, this article counts. But if you’re actually looking to date polyamorously, it’s not sufficient. “Doing research on polyamorous relationships, boundaries within that relationship, and what you’re looking for from polyamorous dating is vital,” says Grabert.
For that, the experts interviewed have the following suggestions:
With some exceptions, gender constructs have served men well in the modern world. It’s landed them in more high-powered positions. It’s gotten them higher wages. And, yeah, it’s given them license to pursue sex in ways that would lead women to be ostracized or shamed. In her new book Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women Lust and Adultery Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free, author Wednesday Martin digs into the damage incurred through this “boys will be boys” mentality. And she blows a whistle on the many biases that have boxed their female counterparts into such sexually constrained identities.
Fatherly spoke to Martin about what authentic sexuality looks like in women and how men can help them find their own special shade.
A lot of Untrue is about adultery. Why was it important for you to look into how women function in relationship to non-monogamy?
Infidelity is really a great test case for how we actually feel about gender parity. We have people who believe women should make the same amount men do. We have people who believe that women should hold political office. But how do they feel when women seize a privilege that has historically belonged to men, the privilege of not being monogamous? We don’t have any autonomy if we don’t have the autonomy to do what we want with our bodies.
This book really looks at how science and social science has conspired to put out a narrative that keeps women from attaining sexual autonomy. We think it’s physical violence, coercion, and slut-shaming that keep women in their place within this culture, but it’s also bad science and bad social science. So much of it has been abused to coerce women into monogamy and to discourage us from being sexually autonomous.
How does that message relate to the current cultural climate? How does it relate to the ways in which women are now asserting their sexual autonomy?
In terms of the #MeToo movement, well, I feel like bad science brought us to this moment. There’s been inaccurate science that posits that men are naturally sexually aggressive and that the male sexual coercion of females is natural. There’s a lot of more recent science that tells us that’s not true. I think a lot of that bad, biased science helped bring our culture to a point of crisis.
What are some other misconceptions surrounding female sexual identity and desire?
There is some research to suggest that the institutionalization of a relationship, whether it’s marriage or moving in together, dampens female sexual desire even more than male desire. There are studies that document women talking marriage and long-term partnership as anaphrodisiacs, as something that dampens sexual desire. They talk about familiarity and security killing their libidos. Men need to understand this about the women that they’re with. These women need sexual adventure just as much as men do.
Okay. That’s probably going to unnerve or surprise some guys out there. And maybe that’s indicative of the issue. Why do you think so many women have a hard time coming out about their genuine attitude towards polyamory and other nonconforming sexual behaviors?
You pay a high price for being honest about your sexual desires in this culture. Everything from slut-shaming to lethal violence to someone just thinking that you’re weird. Women who do step out face a lot of danger. In this country, so many mass shootings involve men trying to control women who have left them. And a lot of the triggers don’t even involve infidelity, but the suspicion of infidelity. It’s still really dangerous for women to exercise that really basic form of autonomy within the U.S.
How can men help women feel safe speaking about their desires?
I think men need to educate themselves. They need to understand the female erectile network, the extensiveness of the clitoris, the possibility of multiple orgasms, the fact that we have no refractory period. This all seems to suggest, to me, that women really evolved for sexual pleasure and serial sexual pleasure.
What about guys in monogamous relationships with wives who are not likely to be experiencing serial sexual pleasure any time soon? How can they help their partners enjoy a more diverse sex life?
I wrote the book to be a conversation starter between women and their partners. Men should know that some women really struggle with monogamy. Now, that doesn’t mean they’re going to go invite a “third” into the bedroom as a way to attain novelty. But it should encourage men to step up their game. Buy her a sex toy. Talk about sexual fantasies. Watch porn together. Go on adventures that have nothing to do with sex. Go on a zip line. Learn to tango. Take a trip. Remember, adrenaline can deliver a similar feeling to what sexual novelty gives us. These are all options if you don’t want to seek out adventure by way of consensual non-monogamy.
What about men with daughters? How can they impart healthier sexual attitudes?
It would be extremely helpful to start educating kids about female sexual pleasure at home. It’s important we teach them that women are more than an extension of male desire. Girls are more than precious little things who have to protect themselves from the boys. They are thinking, feeling people who have an amazingly evolved sexual anatomy with an extremely high capacity for pleasure. This is really basic information that kids aren’t getting in school.
Sex is complex, but there’s a new wave of apps and websites that aim to help women connect better with their bodies and sexuality. One such app is Ferly, an audio app, that is redefining the meaning of online sex education while also helping assault survivors regain their sexual confidence.
The app, which was released on iOS last month, creates a community for women to learn more about their bodies through micro-podcasts on the science of sex, bite-sized articles on intimacy and sexual pleasure, and a journaling space to reflect on their growth.
The website reads: “This is not about great sex. It’ll never be about great sex. This is about you putting words to the shape of your pleasure, to acknowledge that it’s a strange, wondrous, and ever-changing thing. To develop an inner confidence that transforms your most important relationship — the one you have with yourself.”
“Ferly is an old English word that means ‘strange and wondrous,’ but it used to mean ‘strange and frightful,’” Billie Quinlan, the co-founder of Ferly, told TNW. “It was used to reference all the scary and unknown creatures, like witches. But as we came to understand they weren’t real and there was nothing to be afraid of, they changed the meaning of the word. We believe this is a beautiful analogy to female sexuality — something we once feared is now claiming its right.”
When the co-founders of Ferly — Quinlan and Anna Hushlak — came together to build a business that would support women’s relationship with sex, they found it helped tackle a much greater, systemic issue: female pleasure is taboo, and its veil of shame prevents us from achieving true equality.
For many women, understanding sex and being comfortable with their own sexuality is challenging, but for survivors of sexual assault, it can be even harder. Ferly provides a safe space for survivors to rediscover their sexual confidence and receive help from various listed resources – all in a safe environment.
How Ferly helps sexual assault survivors
Ferly was created from personal experience after Quinlan and Hushlak experienced sexual violence and assault respectively. “Anna and I have both navigated sexual trauma which had a profoundly negative impact on our sense of self and our relationship with sex,” Quinlan explained. “At the time, neither of us had the tools or community to help us (re)discover pleasure and invest in our well-being.”
The #MeToo movement gave other survivors the chance to speak up against sexual violence, and Quinlan and Hushlak realized they weren’t alone. In fact, there was a whole community of women who had endured similar experiences. “We wanted to build a safe, enjoyable, and scientifically grounded space,” Quinlan said.
While Ferly provides a space for survivors to get back in touch with their sexuality and confidence, the app’s technology comes with its limitations. For survivors to take their recovery process further, Ferly created a database of recommended resources and experts that can better support them. These resources will eventually live in the app so anyone can access them when necessary.
“I don’t think there are any substitutes for in person, expert support when it comes to such a delicate issue,” Quinlan told TNW. “But I do believe technology can work side by side with expert support and provide a space and tools that are available 24/7. That’s where we would like Ferly to progress to.”
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