Setting Up “Dates” To Insure Opportunity
 
Instant “Ahah!” # 8: “Sharing Your Day” (link to blog with exercise) will increase intimacy, sensuality, the desire for sexual closeness. However, even in the best of relationships, keeping sexuality alive seems to be aided by “making dates,” setting up specific times as protected space for sexual intimacy.
 
Remember, within a set up time, you can be as spontaneous as you want. Some people may find a certain routine creates a ritual “Sacred Space,” for others it may be important that “anything can happen.” However, once the early romance is over, and especially when jobs and children and chores and TV can gobble up all available time, it is important to set up “dates” (just like when you were first getting to know each other) which guarantee an opportunity for sexual intimacy to arise.
 
The longer couples go without having sex, the harder it can become to bridge that gap. And having sex really does increase intimacy for some people, rather than the other way around (increased intimacy increasing sexual desire). So, many couples find that aiming for two to three sexual encounters per week, along with daily”Sharing Your Day,” can be optimum for keeping the sexual channel open in the midst of busy lives.
 
Even including lighting candles, starting music, doing massage to increase sensuality, 45 minutes to an hour can be plenty of time for a wonderful sexual encounter. In the beginning, it may be important to allow more time to take away pressure. But having a wonderful, memorable “date” takes little enough time that couples can make a commitment to fit that time into their schedules.
 
Erotic Equality: Untangling Sexual Desire
 
So, one partner might say, “Two to three times a week! But I hardly ever feel like having sex!” and the other might say, “Two or three times a week! That is nowhere near enough times to meet my need!” And upon this difference in sexual desire many relationships have foundered.
 
Here are some possible solutions. They are based in the ideas of equality and negotiation basic to the entire Creative Edge Focusing model. However, for some people, they may break sexual taboos, so, if you are uncomfortable with these suggestions, feel free to stop reading! These are all links to Dr. McGuire’s blogs:
 
Erotic Massage To Increase Desire

Self-Satisfaction To Equalize Desire

Learning Self-Satisfaction

Sensitivity To Issues Of Sexual Abuse

Increasing Intimacy With Sexy Board Games

Please read entire blog entries on Conflict Resolution and Relationships in order to place Intimacy and Sensuality/Sexuality within the broader range of self-help skills of Empathic Listening and Intuitive Focusing and Interpersonal Focusing which are taught at Creative Edge Focusing (TM), www.cefocusing.com .

 Intimacy comes from clear, open communication, and Listening/Focusing skills allow that communication. See Conscious Relationship Interest Area on the website for a full introduction to Dr. McGuire’s model for The Way of Relationship.

Download complete Instant “Ahah!” Mini-Manual, in English and Spanish, from CEF Website

Find links to free articles, personality tests, multi-media Self-Help training, Classes and workshops

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com

The site of new insights and creative solutions is at the edge of what is already known. This edge, The Creative Edge, holds implicit within it all past and future knowing about the problem, more than could ever be put into words in a linear way