My Partner is Responsible for our Sex Life
I’m entirely on board with this arrangement, and here’s why.
If you haven’t heard about the 5 Love Languages by now, you’re missing out. My partner and I use this personality science to communicate in a lot of ways, and often find ourselves referencing back to it when we’re trying to relate to one another in our relationship.
In essence, the 5 Love Languages are:
- receiving gifts
- quality time
- words of affirmation
- acts of service (devotion)
- physical touch
Dr. Gary Chapman, the creator of the 5 Love Languages, knows that relationships grow better when we understand each other. He believes that everyone gives and receives love differently, but with a little insight into these differences, we can be confidently equipped to communicate love well.
My top love language is Words of Affirmation, while my partner’s top love language is Physical Touch.
An obstacle we often come up against is that while my fiancé’s top is physical touch, it’s one of my bottom two.
The constant guilt of trying to meet a partner’s needs, but feeling like you’re dropping the ball.
It was an ongoing conversation of feeling bad that I wasn’t meeting his needs, and constantly worrying that he was feeling neglected by me.
Just to make one thing clear: Physical Touch isn’t just about sex — it’s also a hug that lasts longer than 3 seconds, or 15 minutes of cuddling on the couch, or giving my fiance a kiss as I pass by him in the kitchen.
These are all ways he feels affirmed that he is loved — these are all things which fall completely off my radar when I have a lot on my mind.
That said, relationships are about partnership.
Partnership means that you bring both your strengths and weaknesses to the table, and then figure out how to do life together as two unique individuals in this “Go, Team!” mentality.
One of my weaknesses is initiating sex — or at least, initiating a healthy amount of sex in our relationship. The amount I also need. The amount which keeps us bonded and intimate in our relationship.
Once we’re doing it, it’s great! Everyone wins and it’s a hell of an awesome time. But then I just get stuck in the daily routine of life and I really suck at checking in with my partner about how he’s doing and if his needs are being met.
Finding our “halfway-happy”.
Three years in, and the balance or a comfortable arrangement for our sex life seemed ever elusive… until my fiancé came up with a brilliant idea.
It was in the middle of laying out who was responsible for which chores in the house. He cleared his throat during this chat and said:
“What if we made an agreement that we be responsible for the things we’re strongest at. For example, you’re great at remembering to coordinate our social calendar with friends. What if… I was responsible for initiating our sex calendar to make sure we’re spending enough intimate time together… how would you feel about that?”
I looked across the room at him with silence hanging in the air… after a moment of processing, I said, “I think that’s a GREAT idea.”
Immediately, it felt like a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders.
Before now he was also struggling with his own guilt of feeling like he was pressuring me for his own benefit, and thus would not fully communicate his needs to me.
When he has much of a right for his needs to be met as I do. That’s partnership for you.
Half-way happy, as they say.
Final word.
Obviously, this isn’t an arrangement which would work for every couple.
That’s the thing about romantic partnerships — there is no one-size-fits-all for making a relationship work.
Partnership is about finding what works for the unique pairing of a set of individuals — be it two, three or more.
It’s about troubleshooting until that comfortable dynamic is found, and working to tweak it as the relationship grows and the nature of the relationship changes over time.
But at the end of the day, we are equally striving to ensure the other feels fulfilled and appreciated in our relationships.
His prompt of, “Hey — we’ve got 30 minutes until we have to meet our friends for dinner… wanna get it on?” is completely synonymous to me saying to him, “Hey, we’ve got 30 minutes until we have to leave — can I run something by you?”
It’s not about giving all of the power to one person to be the ring lord of a particular aspect in our relationship — if he suggests a good romp and I’m really not in the mood, there are no hurt feelings when I say, “Not feeling it tonight honey, sorry.”
But by his initiation, that communicates to me that he needs his fill soon —so now it’s on my radar to offer love to him in the way he best receives it sooner rather than later.
This arrangement empowers us both to feel safe and comfortable communicating what we need from our relationship, and communicating in a way which encourages us to do so without shame.
That’s why this works so well for us — but I know for a fact that it wouldn’t work for everyone.
That’s the beauty of partnership — you have the flexibility to create it into whatever you both would like, without the requirement to fit every aspect into a pre-determined box.
You have the freedom to make your relationship literally whatever you want it to be.
There is great relief, and great responsibility, in that reality.
