Passion vs. sex: ensuring the viability of your relationship | Laurie Betito | TEDxJacksonHole

bonsoir that's French by the way passion as most of us experience it is fleeting it's that feeling we get at the very beginning of a relationship that feeling we have of being in love but if you were to break it down it's really maybe not such a great feeling the butterflies in the stomach the you know loss of appetite the obsessive thinking that we have doesn't that sound like anxiety sounds like anxiety to me and yet it's the one thing we seek out it's the one thing we try to recapture so many times so many times people come to me and say please help us get back what we had in the beginning how do we have as much sex as we had in the beginning and unfortunately my answer is can't can't really help you with that and I give them a question back can you get your virginity back huh you can't make something old new again you can't make something old new again but you can inject passion and there are things of course that we can do and I can talk to you tonight about how we can have passionate experiences to sustain our relationships long term so many of us come to have expectations right we have expectations about sexuality we have expectations about love love conquers all and these expectations hurt us they hurt our relationships they unfortunately you know have quite an impact and it really hurts us so one of the things my biggest pet peeve is when I hear people say things like I love my partner but I'm not in love with them if you ever heard that before I'm sure you have a lot of people get divorced will often say that I love them but I'm not in love with him but you cannot maintain that in love state forever love grows love deep in fact it's like a slow burning fire right you can inject passion just like you can make flames in a low slow burning fire by Fanning the flames doing something so how do we go about injecting passion into our long-term relationships into relationships that are years old couples often come to me and they say we have a problem in communication I'm not so sure that it's a problem in communication we want our partner to think the way we do we want them to communicate the way we do we want them to think and to know what it is that we want but are we good mind reader's can we do that as humans we can't do that and we need to not change how our partner communicates we need to accept and understand how they communicate when you feel understood by your partner doesn't that create some passion right so before which it requires compassion that's the key word here and before passion you really do need the compassion so think about that one as couples when we have children we focus exclusively on the family we virtually spend no time together as a couple have you experienced this as family people we all of us have we neglect ourselves we neglect the couple and that's not good for our relationships it has to be about me first I know that may sound selfish but a good happy healthy me makes me a better partner makes me a better parent a happy couple when you have a happy couple you have a good basis for a family you teach your kids a good marriage and then comes the couple unfortunately this is the part we have a hard time with because most of us when we're not spending time with our kids how do we you guilt right we feel guilty now as a couple when we come together we are a unit but we are a unit comprised of two separate individuals that individuality is really important it makes relationships stronger we don't become one and the same so that notion of we become one throw it out the window it doesn't work having that having your individuality doesn't mean you don't want to be with your partner it just means you want to grow as an individual that makes us more interesting to our partner more interesting and that breeds passion so how many of you go on vacation with your kids is it restful be honest do you have a restful time I can tell you when I would go on vacation with my kids I would come back more exhausted we had beautiful memories it was a you know wonderful pictures it was great however I was still running after the changing diapers cleaning up doing everything had to be done not restful for me so my husband and I we've been married for 23 years and for the first say 15 years we decided we were going to have separate vacations so we took a family vacation and then I would go away for a week and he would go away and let me tell you I get bad reactions from this like people like look at me and say what but we did it anyway okay and this really so we take our separate vacations and you know now that the kids are older we go on vacations together for longer than say you know an overnight could I stand here and talk to you about passion without talking to you about sex no I've got to talk to you about sex not that I've got you I want to it's what I do people often wonder and I'm sure every one of us in this room has wondered how often should we be having sex care to throw out a number there is no number I can throw out statistics and you know the ladies here would know just by reading those magazines and the covers of all these magazines that say you know couples are having sex two point two three times a week or whatever it is think about where those surveys are coming from they're coming from those readers it's not representative of the population there is no normal there is no norm every couple creates their own norm believe me your neighbor isn't doing it any more than you okay trust me on that one one in six couples by the way one in six couples have sex less than ten times a year huh and studies have shown they just released the study that showed the happiness level we would think that the more sex you have the happier you are no there's a sweet spot that sweet spot is once a week so couples who had sex once a week tended to be the happiest if you had sex five more times it didn't make you any happier some people might not be happy to hear that but nonetheless that's what it is um the other part so I get asked a lot about frequency but then I get asked a lot about desire desire that's a big one especially when it comes to men and women now I'm going to talk generally here to you but when especially women some men once we get into a relationship once we get past the initial in love in lust age and that you know science has shown us lasts anywhere from six months to 18 months two years once we get past that we lose the spontaneous desire for sex we lose the get-up-and-go that the need the feeling of being horny if you will okay for lack of a better word and it's unfortunate because we lose that but we don't lose the interest we don't lose the attraction to our partner we're still very much attracted to our partner we're still very much loved our partner we still are even interested in sex we may not have the get up and go but once we engage in sex once we engage in sex what happens we enjoy it and we want to continue and the desire then kicks in and so this is an area that's really important so obviously there's a choice to be made you need to at that point choose sex you're not going to choose sex if your relationship is in trouble if you're angry with your partner if you're resentful you won't be choosing sex let's be real if you're bored that's another thing change it up do something in your relationship inject some difference and believe me it's not about hanging off the chandeliers I mean if you want to do that go ahead but it might be a little dangerous but change things up whether it's sharing fantasies whether it's talking to your partner about sex reading a book together visiting a sex shop exploring sex toys whatever it is you need to change it up but we also have to change our definition of sex when we think sex we think intercourse when I think sex I think sexuality in my books whatever I won't do with my brother is part of sex hand-holding caressing cuddling anything that makes you feel connected is part of sex and as we get older and our relationships get older if the genital part is less important but the connection part is really important so at the beginning of a relationship passion happens spontaneously it just happens it's part of that being in love in lust phase and as we get older in our relationships as the relationships get older whether you're in a relationship that's ten years old at 30 or at 40 or at 50 doesn't matter then you still have to do something to inject it so a few things to remember some of the things you need to do is let go of your expectations let go of your expectations accept that love changes remember not just in love and love but love changes prioritize the couple prioritize the couple maintain your individuality maintain that approach with compassion and choose sex passion is possible in long-term relationships it just requires that little bit of effort thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 104,752

Rating: 4.8752341 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Love, Parenting, Passion, Relationships, Sex

Id: 0_eRNWN6fZc

Length: 11min 41sec (701 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 11 2016