Sexual intimacy is the major thing that distinguishes your relationship with your partner from your relationships with other people. Sexual intimacy is also a limited resource. If you are being intimate with people other than your partner, you are robbing and sabotaging your relationship. Affairs occur for a variety of reasons. In my opinion, the foremost reason that people engage in affairs is that they are in need of love and intimacy that they feel they are not getting from their relationship. Why do so many seek love and intimacy outside of their relationship? The question that comes to my mind is, "When and how did the love and intimacy in the relationship start to vanish?"

At the start of a relationship, during the euphoric stage, the sex is incredible: you are in love, and you could not imagine being with anyone else. Reality eventually sets in, as it always does, and the euphoric bubble bursts. You spend less time with your partner, and, especially, less time making love. Many of us get into a pattern of making work or other things outside the relationship a higher priority, putting ourselves last, and continually running ourselves ragged. Particularly when you have children, time and energy are precious commodities. As one woman I talked to once said, "You are so tired, the last thing you really want to do is do that one thing that got you in this situation in the first place." Some reasons why sexual intimacy becomes neglected are fatigue, lack of time, or lack of privacy. Another is lack of interest: sometimes lovemaking becomes routine or a little boring. People frequently have affairs to recapture the excitement of the initial stages of a relationship, or to escape from the predictability of daily life with their partner. There is no doubt that life's daily pressures take a toll on our loving relationships. Fatigue and boredom make us lazy and complacent, so we start to take one another for granted. No wonder the passionate intimacy we once had fizzles out to next to nothing.

I feel that when sex disappears, it is usually a sign of a problem in the relationship. I feel that two people can have a passionate, satisfying, fulfilling sex life with one another, forever. Before I share how, take a moment to contemplate one idea. If there is nothing else you remember from reading this article, remember this: Sex is fun. So often we complicate it and make it a topic for serious discussion. Sometimes this is necessary, but sometimes you just need to look at sex as playtime for you and your partner. Sexual intimacy is the defining factor that makes your relationship with your partner different from all your other relationships. The sexual intimacy that you share with one another is what makes your love for one another ever so sweet.

Like every other facet of your relationship with your partner, sexual intimacy is an integral part of the practice of the art of loving. Like every other facet of your relationship, you have to make the time for sex with one another. I am not saying that you have to pull out your calendars and isolate a specific day and time when both of you are free to have sex. Some days there might be more time than other days, but it is important that you set aside that time together. Having time together allows you to communicate and to engage in activities with one another. It allows for some romantic time and sexual intimacy together, if that's what you both want. It all starts with you. Both you and your partner have to make time for one another.

When sexual intimacy starts to disappear in a relationship, many couples fall into a trap that I call the standoff. In a standoff situation, neither partner is honestly communicating their needs with one another. One or both of them are afraid of being rejected by the other, and so neither partner initiates physical contact of any type, and it virtually disappears. The hand-holding, hugging and kissing -- all forms of affection and touch that they once had -- vanish. When this type of situation occurs, you have to step back together and look at what is happening. You have to communicate with one another to discuss the sensitive issue of why physical closeness between you has deteriorated.

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Tags: Sex and Romance, Love

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The Art of Loving
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