Beyond fantasy: ‘Real Sex for Real Women’

Get the romance back
Don’t just long for those heady moments you experienced in the early days of your relationship — make yourselves a promise to reignite that excitement you shared together. Turn off the TV, feed each other strawberries and champagne, make love into the early hours of the morning — and don’t worry if you are late for work.

Pursue adventure
Your initial feelings of excitement when you first met your lover cannot be duplicated, but they can be imitated. When people engage in adventurous activities such as bungee jumping, riding roller-coasters, skiing, or even watching a scary movie, their brains emit dopamine and adrenaline, which are similar to the chemicals emitted during infatuation. By participating in these types of activities with your partner, you get to spend quality time together and benefit from the surges of excitement and attraction.

Stay sexy
The way we dress and groom ourselves is a large part of sexual attraction, yet many couples let their appearance fall by the wayside once they become comfortable with each other. Paying attention to your appearance reminds you, and your partner, how sexy you are. Even though you have been together a few years, making as much effort as you did on your first date can lead to similar emotional and sexual rewards.

Make a date
No matter how busy your lives and careers are, or whether you have children, all long-term couples benefit from setting a date night and spending quality time together outside the home. Go to a restaurant or a bar and spend an hour or two flirting with each other. Don’t talk about work, domestic troubles, or the kids’ homework. Instead, make each other laugh, enjoy kissing at the bar, holding hands in the taxi home, and having great sex afterward.

Affairs
The urge to be with an attractive stranger is often a natural element of our sexuality, and striving for something new is part of being human. This is even more true when a relationship is faltering as a result of arguments, miscommunication, and unspoken needs. Affairs can create the rush of the unknown, a sense of romance, and a feeling of being sexy and desired. While infidelity is damaging, some people believe it is easier to satisfy their sexual desires with someone other than their partner.

Video   Staying satisfied in your relationship Nov. 10: TODAY’s Amy Robach talks to psychotherapist Laura Berman about keeping the fire going in your relationship. Today show

Face the truth
As tempting as that sexy stranger or seductive co-worker may be, you first need to ask yourself a hard question: what are you looking for? Is it sex? Romance? Feeling attractive, wanted, or loved? The latter is the common response, but while you get this feeling in the short term, an affair doesn’t provide for your long-term emotional needs.

Is an affair worth it? If your partner caught you or knew you were doing it, would it then be worth it? You also need to ask yourself another hard question: are you willing to do the work needed in your relationship to get what you want?

If your relationship has been under duress because of external factors, such as a change in financial circumstances, blame the issue at hand and not your partner. An affair might help you forget problems at home, but it won’t solve them.

The danger of emotional cheating
Even if you remain faithful physically, emotional infidelity has the potential to short-change your partner and stifle your relationship. Emotional cheating comes about when you devote undue amounts of time, energy, humor, sensitivity, and affection to someone other than your partner — a colleague, for instance, especially as many of us now spend more time with our co-workers than we do with our partners. We only have so much emotional energy, and if we bestow these gifts on other people, our partners will inevitably feel neglected and resentful.

Know what is real, and what isn’t
You can allow yourself to feel lust for that handsome guy in Marketing. It’s okay to think someone is sexy and to express those feelings in private, because the more you repress your thoughts the more they will persist in your mind. You can even daydream from time to time that you are with a different person — but that doesn’t mean you actually have to act on those fantasies.

Realize that what is real is the relationship you have with your partner — warts, roses, and all. If you want to get your relationship back on track, you need to put in some time and effort to make this happen. Consider counseling as you and your partner work on strengthening your relationship.

Picking up the pieces
Many people consider cheating an absolute deal breaker, but in some relationships, healing is possible. Couples’ counseling is a good idea when healing. A therapist can help couples rebuild their relationship and reconnect sexually with each other, and can also help people discover why the infidelity occurred in the first place.

But to go about healing this massive wound, the injured partner will need time to vent about the way he or she feels. Couples often have a hard time bouncing back from an affair because the betrayed partner can’t let go of the pain and the guilty partner feels helpless to fix the situation.

To help begin the healing process, the betrayed partner should be able to vent about his or her anger and sadness for 10 minutes a day. After the 10 minutes is up, the affair should not be discussed for the rest of the day. This will help to prevent the affair from becoming the focus of the relationship.

The cheating partner will have to be honest without being hurtful if the relationship is to make it through this period. When discussing the affair, the betrayed partner is likely to have many questions. The guilty partner should offer truthful answers, but avoid any intimate details about the other woman or man as it will only further upset their partner. Honesty is a must when rebuilding a relationship after an affair — but so is tactfulness.

Know your limits
Email, instant messaging, texts, and social networks blur the line when it comes to adultery. Sending your colleague a suggestive text or email seems harmless, but it is a form of cheating. Don’t write anything in an email, blog, or text that you wouldn’t say in front of your partner. At home, avoid spending hours in front of the computer when you should be with your partner. If it feels wrong, it probably is.

Connecting with your relationship
All relationships take work, so it makes sense that the most important relationship in your life should require the most work and commitment. “Happily ever after” is the stuff of fairy tales, but deep, lasting love is possible. It just takes effort, communication, and dedication. Luckily, the payoff is huge — a happy life, a fulfilling relationship, and unconditional love. However, it helps to know how to bypass the roadblocks, keep your love life exciting, and navigate the trials and triumphs of monogamy.

Keep it realistic
Make a commitment to reality. Your relationship isn’t going to be a fairy tale. There will be times when you are not attracted to your partner, times when you want to kill him, and times when the sex isn’t great. But by making a commitment to realistic goals—such as not expecting sex to be mind-blowing every time — you can create an atmosphere in which unconditional love will thrive. In addition, you will be relieving yourself of the pressure that women feel to be perfect, especially within their relationships.

Maintain the excitement
Once two people are in a committed relationship, they tend to let certain aspects of their lives fall away — sex and excitement are sometimes among them. And some couples reason that if sex isn’t there naturally, you can’t create it. They’re wrong. By the time your relationship hits the two- to three-year mark, you need to put in some effort and use a little imagination to recreate the passion and romance of your early relationship. This might mean regular weekends away or marking a “sex night” on the calendar. But in order to spice things up, you both need to be willing.

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