I see it all the time with clients.
A man and his woman have some pretty exciting sex when they first get together.
Then they get committed and serious. It declines maybe a bit. Then they move in together. It goes down a bit more. Then they get married… and it drops a bit more still.
But then kids enter the picture… and the sex life COLLAPSES.
The guy contents himself at first with this idea that maybe it’s just hormones… that the whole thing is temporary.
And sometimes it is.
But, while the sex usually resumes… it often changes.
More rushed. Less passionate. Certainly less exciting.
Not necessarily a “let’s get it over with” energy, but the eroticism is notably down.
And guys get frustrated about it. They don’t know why it’s happening. They think the desire in the relationship’s dropped, and they need to “up their game” to get her back in the mood again.
As I pointed out in my comprehensive article, Why Your Woman Stops Wanting Sex, this may or may not be true. There are other reasons.
But what I really want to draw your attention to in this email is something I tweeted about yesterday:
The reality is women often will stop being sexual not so much because of the man, but because with young children she stops thinking of herself as a sexual object.
This is of course somewhat understandable. Much of her day is spent changing diapers and cuddling young children. She’s a wholesome mother, not a horny maiden. Her breasts are meant for infants, not a man’s enjoyment.
The “red pill” lambasts the transformation of the sexually open sorority girl to the closed-off suburban mom as some sort of grand deception. “Remember when she doesn’t want to give you head, that she gave it to some chad at a party she didn’t even know in college.”
But while this frustration is understandable, if there is deception going on, it is predominantly between the woman and herself.
Women simply struggle to hold conflicting identities of themselves. A woman shuts down her own eroticism because she believes it to be incompatible with her current maternal role. She persuades herself that she is the madonna, and packs her inner-whore away, hidden not only from her man, but from herself.
A man can only do so much to re-ignite this fire when a woman refuses to see herself sexually. And so the main challenge is actually in getting the woman to understand that it’s not wrong for her to be both a responsible mother and a horny girl. To be both a doting wife and a filthy slut to her man.
Many may find these terms crass, but I am at a loss of how else to describe the id of human sexual desire. As I discussed on yesterday’s Q&A, some degree of lust exists in nearly everybody. It cannot be fully stamped out, and if suppressed it emerges with a vengeance — see infidelity and porn addictions. It must be alchemized. And a committed relationship is the place for this to occur.
So the key thing in the end for a woman, is that she must be allowed to feel that erotic part of herself. Regardless of what other roles she has in her life that seem antithetical. She must be able to embrace multiple personas without shame.
This is the key to healthy, passionate, integrated relationships.
If you want to turn yours into one, apply here: www.patstedman.com/application
– Pat
PS Ladies – check out this thread to understand some of the roles:
