Serious illness, menopause, lingering resentments, low libido... life can throw all kinds of challenges at your relationship. A sex therapist for almost 20 years, Jo Robertson shares tips for how to navigate the barriers and find your way back to a physical connection with your partner.
1. Just open the door
People tend to fall into two camps, Robertson says, and knowing which one you and your partner are in really helps.
The first is 'spontaneous': “These are the people who can just feel like sex. There's not a particular rhyme or reason, they might be walking in the supermarket and they feel aroused”.
Others are 'responsive'. “Sex maybe doesn't even really cross their mind, but when something starts happening with someone they feel safe with, and in a way that they can enjoy, they respond with arousal.”
Robertson says the challenge for spontaneous people is to not expect everyone else to be like them, or be resentful because they're not. And the challenge for responsive people is to “just open the door...
“Being willing to kiss for a longer period of time, or lean into the physical encounter just for a bit longer to see how their body shows up," she says.
Responsive people tend to wait for arousal to turn up, but that may never happen, so their challenge is to step in and meet it. “It's really important that consent is at play," she adds. "So if they step in but their body doesn't respond and they don't authentically want that experience, then they should step back out.
"But it's just opening the door to the physical encounter and seeing how you feel.”
2. Don't blame yourself for your 'low libido'
When clients come to Robertson about low libido, she always tries to unpack what their expectations are around sex. Because "low libido" can be due to lot of things, and sometimes it isn't really all that low at all.
“It might just mean that the other person actually has a really high libido. So somebody who feels like having sex about once a week or once a month might think they’ve got quite a low libido because they don't feel like it every day.”
If it's really the case that your libido appears to have drastically changed or vanished, there are many potential causes: medication, mood, the relationship itself, past trauma, menopause, illness, or a natural decline with age, to name just a few. It's a matter of defining the underlying cause with a doctor or a counsellor, and then taking the necessary steps to deal with the issue, or reframe your expectations.
Banishing your notion of where your libido "should" be is a great place to start, alongside redefining your ideal of the perfect sex life. Which brings us to Robertson's next two points.
3. Value non-sexual touch
Live-in relationships offer endless opportunities for touch. “So holding hands, or when you're sitting in the car together, do you occasionally rub the other person's neck or give them a little arm scratch? Like, what do you do to show that person they are more than your flatmate?” asks Robertson.
Non-sexual touch is particularly key after a serious illness such as prostate cancer or a mastectomy. According to Robertson, reigniting your sex life after such life events requires a very gentle, graduated approach.
In sex therapist language this is called a “sensate focus” where a couple is advised to start with non-sexual touch, two times a week over a period of three months.
“It's a low-stakes way to build back up to more sexual intimacy,” says Robertson. “Your body might respond with anxiety or fear or pain, and we have to listen to that, and so then we know based off that touch experience whether you're ready for another step or whether you need to pause for longer or move backwards.”
The most important thing is to go at the pace of the person whose body has struggled, she says, and make sure they feel physically and emotionally comfortable.
“There can be emotional stuff that comes up, even if it was a physical illness.”
4. Mix it up and change your routine
Robertson believes couples – especially heterosexual couples – tend to fall into an intimacy formula.
“We kiss for a little bit, and then we touch each other for a little bit, and then we might do this kind of act, and then we start having penetrative sex, and then basically he ejaculates and then it's finished. And they just do that for years and years and years and years and years.”
She recommends almost everyone in a heterosexual relationship “removes the penetration for three months. Because when your body gets used to a formula, used to a final destination, creativity dies. That formula really devalues everything else that you're doing physically, and all that other stuff is typically what the woman likes more.”
5. Protect time with each other
“If you don't have time together, then you don't have fun, you don't have play, you don't have non-sexual touch, you don't have catch-ups and communication about other things that make you feel connected and safe with that person.”
When Robertson first started dating her now-husband, they were given advice to have two intentional connection times every week. “We would have a Thursday night date night, which was just fun, just play. And then we'd have a Saturday morning breakfast, and that's where we talked about our relationship. So we would say how we felt things had gone the previous week, something that we really appreciated, and something didn't quite work for us.”
She says that may sound “really cringy and a little bit too hardcore”, but it set them up for the future because it created a culture of praise and feedback. After a couple of years they found they didn't need to schedule that conversation anymore because it had become natural in the relationship.
But they still made sure to schedule the weekly fun time.
6. Look inward to help solve problems
Robertson often has clients ask, ‘What's going on in our relationship? Why don’t we have sex anymore?’
“And they're typically looking at what the other person is doing wrong, or what's gone wrong between them. But a lot of the time, we can look at ourselves and go, ‘Hmm, what are my beliefs? What are my expectations? What are my assumptions about what the other person wants, or how I should perform, and how is that impacting me? What did I grow up with in terms of messaging, and how is that showing up now?’”
A big one is thinking about how stressed or tired you are, and what you’re doing that’s taking energy away from your relationship.
And if that stress is because your partner isn’t sharing the load, then it’s important to say that out loud. “Say, ‘I really need more help. I think that the reason I don't feel like sex as much is because I'm really stressed and tired.’”
7. Don't expect to bounce back from betrayal
Robertson gets “enraged” when she hears a counsellor has encouraged sexual integration to a couple in which one person has recently learned of the other's infidelity.
“Like, no way! You are really just in shock and deep, deep pain, and you need time. You need to build up your trust of that person, and they need to show you that they are worthy of your trust," she says. "It would be wildly unethical for me to recommend anybody starts having sex unless they've really worked on the trust."
Sometimes regaining that trust can feel impossible, and the best approach is to find a counsellor who specialises in betrayal, she says.
“Really talking out what happened, and the why, and why it was so painful for you and what needs to be different in the relationship going forward.”
Her general rule is your relationship should be at 70% before you start working on your sex life.
Robertson believes that, even if the betrayal was long ago, it can still be very helpful to talk the experience through with a counsellor to make sure the wounds have been processed.
8. Be clear about what you like and don't like
That doesn’t look like bringing someone down, says Robertson, because many people’s greatest fear is doing something wrong or feeling rejected in bed.
Instead, it’s important to focus on your partner's strengths. “Like, oh, I really love it when you do that. Oh, I really enjoy this, I wonder if next time we could...”
For couples who have been together for decades and don’t even know how to start that conversation, Robertson says you can “outsource it” and recommends an app called Gottman Card Decks which has over 1000 questions you and your partner can ask each other.
Be bold and be brave, she advises. “If you want something different, you’ve got to try something different. You're not going to get a different outcome by never talking about it.”
9. Lighten up and be willing to laugh
Sex is supposed to be fun and Hollywood has a lot to answer for.
Sex is getting rougher in NZ: therapist warns of physical, psychological dangers
Brain damage, stroke, death: In a confronting new documentary, sex therapist Jo Robertson examines the radically changed sexual behaviour of New Zealanders and the serious dangers posed by acts such as choking.
Sat, Aug 22
“There needs to be more of an acceptance that sex is a bit awkward and funny, and you make weird noises, and you might get into a position where randomly your knee knocks their mouth, and it's just a bit funny," says Robertson.
"We've got this really strong idea about sex in our mind from media that it’s theatrical, sweaty, hot, loud, easy. And that’s just not the experience for most people. Sex is a funny thing we do with our bodies, and we just need to be okay to have a laugh.”
SHARE ME