I was out at dinner the other night with my girlfriends, a bunch of 30 to 40 something women, all of us wonderful strong women in our separate ways. There’s mums, career gals, combinations of the two and the odd blow in from one of our girlfriends who lives overseas and has blown in for the week. It’s always dinner and wine in some fabulous restaurant, a chance for us all to have a good catch up and see where everyone is at.
Inevitably, after a few drinks, the conversation gets a little more salacious, and some of the secrets start coming out. Over the years there’s been tales of having to pull the kids out of private school to pay the bills, affairs with the boss, and some particularly ugly health issues.
One of the girls, the group, live vicariously through her sex life. It’s a little bit Samantha Jones from Sex in the City, really, although she’s a little younger and perhaps not as out there as Sam Jones. She regales us with tales of European lovers and trips, adventures in threesomes with a current boyfriend, and the latest sex toys she’s been purchasing.
My Sam Jones friend, her sex life appears healthy to me. She owns what she does, and she has a fabulous time doing it. Other girlfriends have whispered to me before wondering if Sam there has a problem, or maybe some strange repressed memory that causes her to act out sexually. If she did, then I would say that her behaviour may be unhealthy. However, I am pretty sure this is not the case.
Then you have one of the other girls at the table. Her long-term partner, she complains, wants to have sex every day. She says she likes sex as much as the next person but every day is just a little bit much for her. Sometimes she is tired, or not feeling great and simply isn’t up for it. On the other hand, there’s me. My partner’s sex drive doesn’t match my own either, but the other way around. Whereas I’ll like to have sex every two to three days, my partner is happy with a week to two weeks, which can make me feel unsexy at times. Occasionally he will take some medicine so that he can make me feel special when he’s not really in the mood.
There have been issues with partners not being able to get it up on a regular basis (also fixed with medicine and some counselling – yay for them!), there have been issues with not wanting to have sex at all due to weight gain and after pregnancy, and a whole lot more.
It’s interesting to think about whether men sit around talking about this sort of thing when they’re watching the footy – perhaps not.
So, back to my question posed. How to tell whether your sex life is healthy. Well, the way I see it, everyone is different. Some of us have different sex drives. Some of us like to try out wild sexual behaviours. Some of us go through rough times in our sex lives, which can either be helped out with professional care or sometimes things get better on their own. What defines a healthy sex life is how you feel about your sex life – not anyone else. So if you are unsatisfied with yours, then perhaps it is time to take a look at what you could do to help turn things around.
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