I saw a client who is in a long-term relationship with a man she loves very much. He is warm and caring and gentle and loving. Their sex life is good…well, we got it there. It wasn’t always. She and her husband have sex 1–2 times a week. She gets turned on and has orgasms and for the most part enjoys it, except… Except that there is a part of her that doesn’t really want gentle and loving sex all the time.

 

There is a part of her that wants to be grabbed and thrown on the bed. There is a part of her that wants her husband to tie her hands above her head and push her against the wall and take her from behind. There is a part of her, the part that got turned on when she was reading 50 Shades of Grey, that wants something different from the gentle, loving sex she is currently having. And she doesn’t know what to do.

 

This is not a unique problem. Believe it or not, I see it fairly frequently. It doesn’t always go this way. Sometimes it goes the other way. A woman wants gentle loving sex and her husband is aggressive and more demanding than she likes and that’s a big issue also. And men get stuck in this dilemma as well. But more often than not, the problem I’m presented with is that a woman wants rougher sex than she is currently having. 

 

I suppose it makes sense on a number of fronts. We choose a partner for many reasons but hopefully a part of that is to find someone who can support us, love us and take care of us. Partners who are loving, solicitous, and gentle often rank up high in the relationship department. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they rank up high in the rough-sex department.

 

Also, I think we live in a society that assumes that women want a certain kind of sex. Your partner, one of the enlightened, egalitarian set, might assume that rough sex is just not kind enough, supportive enough or romantic enough. He might think “of course she wants gentle, loving sex”. Isn’t that what every woman wants? That is our cultural assumption.

 

In the end, we make our decision to marry (or get into a long term relationship) for a myriad of reasons and great sex might not necessarily be at the top, or a certain kind of sex might not necessarily be at the top. And let’s be honest, our lovers might not naturally understand what we want and it may be quite different from what we want out of the bedroom. So what’s a person to do?

 

STAY TUNED FOR PART II