"Guilt-Free" sex

January 1:

According to Smalley and Cunningham, in The Language of Sex: "Creativity is healthy and can be enjoyed "guilt-free" and with greater passion than ever."

Today ask your spouse the question - What parts of your body are you insecure about? What can I do to ease those insecurities?

Great Sex for 2012

The magazines have begun to arrive with titles like: "A New You," "Half My Size" and "Start Over." My husband faithfully goes to the YMCA every morning. His work-out buddies all warned him that the gym would be flooded starting next week. So, I've been thinking, we all have goals, resolutions, new things we want to try... but how many of us focus on improving what we have.

Before I got married, January was marked by whether I was "in a relationship" or "not." And that was before the days of Facebook. For the past fifteen years I have evaluated the status of our relationship based on good years or bad ones. There have been very good years and very trying years and a bunch in between.

This year I am publicly declaring that I commit to keep the romance, love, affection, and steadfastness alive in my marriage. I believe that by making that commitment... it will secure Great Sex for 2012.

Over the next month... stay tuned for ideas to wake up romance and receive updates on my relationship progress.

It's Only Sheets

It has now been weeks since our new sheet purchase. The sheets have been changed, washed and changed again. We have become accustomed to them. The new-ness has worn off. My experience with our sheets reminds me of a conversation I had a long time ago. A friend of mine shared with me that she had invested literally thousands of dollars into her bedroom. She had bought 600 count egyptian cotton sheets and all the accessories. She had tried numerous scents on her pillowcase. She had lit candles and even tried electric candles that could burn all night. But no matter what she invested in her bedroom decor, the nightmares would not go away. She would sleep in her near perfect bed with the scent of lavender and the softness of silk but she still could not sleep through the night. What she realized was that it wasn't her bedsheets that were haunted.... it was her! It took her hours of talk-therapy, journalling, group and education to kill the demon that had taken up residence in her. Henry Cloud says that circumstances only change your mood by 10% for the good or for the bad. The sheets can only change our pillowtalk by 10% and once the new-ness wears off, we are left with the same talk. We have to do the hard work on our hearts to change our emotional set-point. Once our emotional set point changes our pillowtalk changes and everything else that happens between the sheets will change also. The bed linens are only a circumstance. It is ME who has to change: My thinking, my discplines, my choices and my HEART.

The Red Sheets

My husband and I slept on our new sheets. After a stressful day, there was no time for anything else but sleep. During our brief pillow talk he said: "I was expecting something more from these sheets." His observation took me by surprise because I thought the sheets were a little slice of heaven. My cotton t-shirt and sweatpants slid around on top of the smooth (un-pilled) surfaces. But for him,the sheets didn't meet his expectation. Maybe it was the hours of preparation, from shopping to washing to fixing the bed. Whatever the case, the sheets weren't "doing it for him." I think expectations are a big part of what gets in the way of experiences. So often we build things up in our minds: by 'fixing it" or "managing it" or "solving it." And then we bring our solution to our partner and it doesn't "do it." Both partners end up crushed because the expectation is that the solution will fix the problem. But what if we didn't identify the true problem.

There is a great line in the movie: "Is He the One?" Reese Witherspoon reluctantly seeks counseling. In her brief counseling encounter she asks if the counselor could give her one piece of advice, what would it be. The counsellor says: "Figure out what you need and ask for it."

This is priceless advice. It removes all the expectations that our partners can read our minds are fix our problems. It puts the responsibility on us, to spend time figuring out what we need and self-actualize enough to ask for it!

A New Set of Sheets

It's my 14th wedding Anniversary! My husband asked me a few weeks ago if I could buy us new sheets. He expressed his dissatisfaction with the scratchy cotton and stretched elastic that left him intimate with our mattress cover, night after night. Yesterday we went together and bought our 14th Anniversary present- new sheets. We opened about 10 packages of sheets, feeling the fabric. We compared thread count, material and cost. I was more concerned about the price, after all I'm the "tight wad" in our relationship. In the end thanks to T.J. Maxx we ended up with red Ralph Lauren 300 count sheets. On the way home I second guessed the decision, knowing the $39 was a trade for dinner out. But after hanging the sheets out to dry.... I realized that quality does make a difference. I felt like I was in a downy commercial. My red sheets swaying in the breeze. The thick cotton wrapped around my hand brought instant comfort. Ralph Lauren wished us a Happy Anniversary.

Sometimes we just need to invest in a new set of sheets (literal or proverbial).