Sex after children
Maureen MatthewsApril 3, 2011 - 8:31AM
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About Last Night, with Maureen Matthews
How do you rekindle romance after childbirth?
Maureen Matthews is a sex educator, speaker and founder of the online female sensuality business, bliss4women. Send your questions to asklastnight@gmail.com, and follow Maureen on Twitter @mazztsm
Maureen MatthewsApril 3, 2011 - 8:31AM
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About Last Night, with Maureen Matthews
How do you rekindle romance after childbirth?
Maureen Matthews is a sex educator, speaker and founder of the online female sensuality business, bliss4women. Send your questions to asklastnight@gmail.com, and follow Maureen on Twitter @mazztsm
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Q My wife and I enjoyed a fantastic love life before having kids, but over the past five years she's gradually withdrawn her love and physical affection. I'm not the most romantic person, but she rarely touches me in bed, and on the occasional times we make love she won't kiss me, and lies in bed with her legs crossed. I'm not allowed to touch her genitals or go down on her, and it's the missionary position only. Please help me touch base with my lovely wife and rekindle our relationship.
A Your situation is very common. Things will improve, but the way you handle this situation will affect how well, and how quickly, things get back to normal.
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Melbourne psychiatrist Dr Martien Snellen has addressed exactly this in his book, Rekindling: Your Relationship After Childbirth.
He writes: ''Following the birth of a baby, it takes on average a year before sex lives even begin to approximate what they used to be ... There are many reasons for this: hormones, exhaustion, lack of opportunity, altered love dynamics, conflict around maternal and marital roles, postnatal depression, just to name a few.''
You need to talk. When we fail to discuss such things effectively we fill in the blanks, and the thing about guessing (when it comes to such sensitive matters) is that we usually guess negatively and incorrectly. That's when the resentments kick in, and these resentments are often expressed behaviourally, out of context.
Eventually, your relationship strains under the weight of it all.
''If your sex life is fading after childbirth,'' Snellen says, ''open up a dialogue about it. But never in a fight — introduce it when things are good. This prevents defensiveness, withdrawal and anger.''
Perhaps your wife no longer feels desirable. Changes in the body; the tendency to dress for comfort rather than style; a lack of time and energy for grooming; all these things can cause a woman not to feel very sexy, and therefore, sexual. Try to give her some ''me'' time in which to rediscover herself as a woman, not just as a mum. Encourage her to buy some new clothes, get her hair done, get some exercise and other self-pampering things.
Once some sense of desire and desirability have returned, the next issue is the relationship more generally. Get communication, conflict resolution, honesty and commitment in place before you even think about sex.
Next, Snellen says, ''focus on a sex life first, rather than on whether you are 'gettin some sauce'. By this I mean all of those sensual and non-sex sexualities that constitute a sex life but do not constitute sex ... That involves basic touch, how you look at each other, where you sit on the couch when you watch Two and a Half Men etc.''
The basic rules for rekindling are: ''Be patient, accept your predicament in order to improve it, open up meaningful dialogue, focus first on one's own sexuality, then the relationship more generally and then worry about whether you're bonking or not.
Q My wife and I enjoyed a fantastic love life before having kids, but over the past five years she's gradually withdrawn her love and physical affection. I'm not the most romantic person, but she rarely touches me in bed, and on the occasional times we make love she won't kiss me, and lies in bed with her legs crossed. I'm not allowed to touch her genitals or go down on her, and it's the missionary position only. Please help me touch base with my lovely wife and rekindle our relationship.
A Your situation is very common. Things will improve, but the way you handle this situation will affect how well, and how quickly, things get back to normal.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Melbourne psychiatrist Dr Martien Snellen has addressed exactly this in his book, Rekindling: Your Relationship After Childbirth.
He writes: ''Following the birth of a baby, it takes on average a year before sex lives even begin to approximate what they used to be ... There are many reasons for this: hormones, exhaustion, lack of opportunity, altered love dynamics, conflict around maternal and marital roles, postnatal depression, just to name a few.''
You need to talk. When we fail to discuss such things effectively we fill in the blanks, and the thing about guessing (when it comes to such sensitive matters) is that we usually guess negatively and incorrectly. That's when the resentments kick in, and these resentments are often expressed behaviourally, out of context.
Eventually, your relationship strains under the weight of it all.
''If your sex life is fading after childbirth,'' Snellen says, ''open up a dialogue about it. But never in a fight — introduce it when things are good. This prevents defensiveness, withdrawal and anger.''
Perhaps your wife no longer feels desirable. Changes in the body; the tendency to dress for comfort rather than style; a lack of time and energy for grooming; all these things can cause a woman not to feel very sexy, and therefore, sexual. Try to give her some ''me'' time in which to rediscover herself as a woman, not just as a mum. Encourage her to buy some new clothes, get her hair done, get some exercise and other self-pampering things.
Once some sense of desire and desirability have returned, the next issue is the relationship more generally. Get communication, conflict resolution, honesty and commitment in place before you even think about sex.
Next, Snellen says, ''focus on a sex life first, rather than on whether you are 'gettin some sauce'. By this I mean all of those sensual and non-sex sexualities that constitute a sex life but do not constitute sex ... That involves basic touch, how you look at each other, where you sit on the couch when you watch Two and a Half Men etc.''
The basic rules for rekindling are: ''Be patient, accept your predicament in order to improve it, open up meaningful dialogue, focus first on one's own sexuality, then the relationship more generally and then worry about whether you're bonking or not.
(source:smh.com.au)
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