Sarah Litvinoff - The Relate Guide to Sex In Loving Relationships

Sex is part of a loving relationship. At its best, when there is openness, trust and friendship as well as love, sex can be everything you ever hoped for and even better. But sex with someone you love can also be as routine and dull as brushing your teeth. It can be a cause of shame and misery. It can be painful and disturbing. Sex with someone you love can be something that you avoid at all costs.

How can doing something so intimate and potentially good with the one you love also be the cause of such disappointment, even pain? On the one hand it is the most natural thing in the world, a logical result of romantic love, the physical expression of a more symbolic union. On the other hand, just because it is natural doesn't mean that it is simple. Talking is 'natural', but there is a great difference between a four-year-old child who has the vocabulary and grammar to get by in life and an adult who is able to express complicated ideas and the subtleties of emotions. To use words is natural, but to become an articulate adult involves work, education and practice. Sex is similar. It is a basic drive, and most healthy couples will manage sexual intercourse. But sex that is good and satisfying is more than that, and it doesn't just happen. Loving someone is not enough to guarantee a happy sex life. This book tells you what else you need to know to improve your sex life.

There is probably more written and talked about sex than any other aspect of a loving relationship. In some ways this is good, but it is also part of the problem. Many people have recognised that good sex needs time and technique, and this has helped some towards a more rewarding sex life. But, along the way, this focusing on the mechanics of sex has caused a distortion that increases unhappiness.

Sex has become both separated and elevated in our time. The most obvious result of this is the complete separation of sex from love. It is no longer considered unusual for sex to come before love one of the first acts of a new relationship or as an end in itself, something you do with a stranger, like a game of tennis. The emphasis in recreational sex without love is on performance being 'good' at it, and on gratification measured in orgasms.

Perhaps because of this, sex in a loving relationship has also come to be to be viewed as separate from the rest of your lives together. But sex in a loving relationship is different. Sex in this case is also an expression of the way you feel about each other, and as such it can be much more rewarding, varied and subtle than sex with someone you scarcely know. Loving sex can be more sensual than sex without love. Discovering sensual sex brings the revelation that penetration and even orgasms are not essential to joyful and satisfying sex. But, as sex in a committed relationship reflects the way you feel about each other, about yourselves and about the state of your life, it can also have its difficult times.