How to Sex up Valentine's Day | David Schnarch | Big Think

How to Sex up Valentine's Day

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Instead of building up expectations for the evening, couples should engage in one of life’s most intimate acts: mutual gazing.

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David Schnarch:

David Schnarch, Ph.D. is co-director of the Marriage & Family Health Center. He is a licensed clinical psychologist, world-renown sex and marital therapist, and international best-selling author. He is a Certified Sex Therapist (Diplomat status) by American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT). He chaired the Professional Education Committee and served on the Board of Directors for eight years, and received the first AASECT "Professional Standard of Excellence" Award. Dr. David is also a Clinical Member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), serves on the editorial board of AAMFT Journal of Marriage and Family Therapy. For seventeen years he was an Associate Professor in the Depts. of Psychiatry and Urology at Louisiana State University Medical School.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Is sex the tell-all barometer for a good relationship?

David Schnarch: I think it would be easy to say that sex is a good barometer because for most people when you’re battling out the wars of personal development, the wars of do I belong to you or do I belong to me sex usually suffers, but there are people for whom they can be battling things out and sex doesn’t deteriorate one iota, but that is not really something good. These are two people who are very often so out of contact with each other and also sex isn’t connected to anything personal that they can be in the middle of World War III and when it’s time to take off their clothes they can just go ahead. I won’t say that they have a good time, but they can certainly go through the act. There are a lot of us when we’re battling out the wars of self development, sex suffers and it should. If you’re going to have sex be personal. If you’re going to have sex be related to how you feel about yourself and how you feel about each other then when you hit the wars of independence, which are built into emotionally committed relationships, yes, sex usually does suffer, but a lot of people think that that means that marriage kills sex. I think it’s just a period that people go through that nobody anticipates and you go through that. You come out the other side. You usually are a more solid, whole person who is more capable of loving on life’s terms and we often find that sex goes onto be the best of people’s lives.

Question: What are some ways to spice up a comfortable relationship?

David Schnarch: You have to learn to hold onto yourself if you want the opportunity to hold onto your partner. That’s what nobody expects. Everybody expects their partner to prop themselves up and what a lot of people don’t realize is as human beings we don’t like having sex. We constantly have to prop up. We like a partner who can stand on their own two feet as long as we can tell them when it’s time to do that, so I think one of the primary tips to give people is to help them get a much more realistic view of the pattern of marriage and that gives you hope when you’re having a difficult time. We did some very interesting research now. We’ve had over 14,000 people take a survey that we’ve been doing and it turns out that about 85% of people say that either their sex is dead, comatose and in danger of dying or at the very least needing a wakeup call. Just knowing that that’s what normal sex looks like, that there is not something wrong with you and that it’s not a biological drive or you’re going to have desire if you’re in love. That’s one thing that is real important that helps people, but then we’ve also developed different activities that people can do that also tend to rekindle passion. One of them is what we call "heads on pillows" where both partners lie on their side. You can have your clothes on or off. Each person puts their head on the pillow and you both get your heads far enough apart that your partner doesn’t look like a Cyclops and you just gaze and there is a whole lot of people that they have the feeling of "I know why you’d want to have sex with me, but after all these years why would you want to look at me, why do you still love me?"

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