UFO Sightings

One under-recognised factor in overweight is lowered metabolic rate due to anxiety or depression related to a non-existent or unsatisfactory sex life. In examining a range of important lifestyle factors that impact on metabolic rate and weight loss, this is one area that certainly deserves consideration and support.

If your sexual relationship provides the deep emotional bonding and satisfaction that you desire, then it provides a boost to your wellbeing, including to your metabolic rate! A healthy sex life can be very important to weight loss!

Did you know that diet and exercise programs fail for nearly 100% of people? It’s no wonder, because the whole issue of overweight and obesity is much bigger than diet and exercise. In fact a poor diet and too little physical activity can be seen as SYMPTOMS, not as causes of overweight. When you’ve successfully “ticked off” all the important lifestyle factors, you won’t have to think about dieting ever again because overweight will be a thing of the past!

I’ll be writing about other lifestyle factors in other articles about weight loss, but this article is specifically about one factor: the state of your most intimate relationship.

The Importance of Your Most Intimate Relationship

From “fast-food” sex to “gourmet” sex, intimate partners usually have a range of sexual styles or experiences but what they all have in common is that they are expressions of intimacy that non-verbally communicate the state of the relationship as well as the wellbeing (or otherwise) of the partners at that time.

Sex is as much about communication as is any other interaction that you, as intimate partners, could possibly have. And the same considerations apply to sex as apply to purely verbal communication!

Being on the Same “Wavelength

If you and your partner aren’t using the same “language” or aren’t on the same “wavelength” you’re most likely experiencing a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding. This leads to feelings being hurt, to disappointment, and even to resentment.

This is not so much to do with technique, but rather with things like the amount of eye contact, the facial expressions, or the noise you make (or don’t make). In conversation “body language” accounts for a very important 70% or more. In sex, it’s practically all about body language.

What happens when you take the time to really notice your partner’s non-verbal expressions and mirror those back? What difference does it make to the quality of the experience for both of you?

Are You Actually Compatible?

Obviously not every partnership is between people who are naturally compatible. Different body clocks may have libido rising at completely different times and there’s not much you can do about that if your libidos virtually live in different time zones.

Many women wear little or nothing to bed in their younger days, but become very sensitive to the cold as they age and need to be wrapped up snugly in flannalette in order to sleep well. If the husband perceives this as a turn-off, then there is also an incompatibility!

He prefers sex that is deathly silent, with no eye contact, and she likes “connection”, eye contact, and racy conversation!

If he likes wearing women’s clothes and she finds such “lack of masculinity” totally off-putting, that is also a basic incompatibility.

These are examples of “barriers to bonding” that occur in even the most loving couples. The extreme the mismatch, the harder it is to do the work to overcome it. I’m not saying this is impossible, just that each partner must be prepared to put in some very hard work.

Left alone, left unspoken, these types of incompatibilities can cause raging resentment that eventually implode the relationship. If you have these kinds of incompatibilities, then the best thing to do is to be very honest and open about them, very respectful of each other’s differences, and work, if necessary with a therapist, to resolve them happily.

If only we lived in the sort of ideal world where people were more aware of the variety of human nature, were able to acknowledge and accept their own characteristics, and feel comfortable and confident in sharing those with potential partners. I’m sure the divorce rate would plummet.

And of course that leads to …..

The Vital Importance of Honesty

So many relationships stagger on with very little sexual honesty. I’m not talking about infidelity here, but the sexual dishonesty of holding back one’s true thoughts and feelings about sex, and in a cowardly or resigned way, giving up on making that all it could be. And the longer it goes on like this, the harder to face up to it, and the harder to now communicate the truth.

But that’s what you need to do if you’re committed to building (or rebuilding) a truly fulfilling intimate relationship.

We’ve all heard the joke about women faking orgasms while men fake relationships, but you should realise that faking an orgasm IS faking the relationship. A faked orgasm is a way of saying “I’m bored now”, “I want this over with” or “I can’t connect with you”.

And unfortunately “faking” soon becomes the closest the woman will get to orgasm because in terms of behaviour theory, she has trained herself to associate this “fake” state with sex. I knew one woman who decried the fact that she even faked orgasm during masturbation!

So you can see that “settling” when it comes to your sexual relationship is not good for your relationship, or for you personally!

One way to deal with this that many people find easier than a straight-out confrontation is to take your courage and write out:

1) What is not happening during sex that you want to happen, 2) What is happening during sex that you don’t want to happen, 3) What words you might actually say to your partner, or what things you might actually do, to communicate the changes you want

For most people this is very unfamiliar territory and it could help your comfort to practice a little first. You might benefit from reading chapter 4 of my book “Intimate Partners”, where you learn to pre-frame a request (and also respond resourcefully to criticism) and chapter 6, where you’ll learn to ask more directly for what you want!

Time Out Alone

The intimate partnership is intimate partly because it is exclusive and private. If the parties don’t have that privacy, don’t fully experience that exclusivity, then it can be difficult to maintain the intimacy, and certainly it can become difficult to stay in touch with your and your partner’s sexual needs.

It can be challenging to get exclusive and private time together with the busy-ness of modern life, especially if working hours are long, or there are small children, or elderly parents living in the home. But in all cases your household must revolve around the intimate partners, especially for the sake of the children. The quality of your relationship together is the foundation of their wellbeing, growth and development, and you have a responsibility to keep that foundation strong.

Help for Sex Issues

I believe that adult human beings actually need to have immensely satisfying sex, much the same as they need to breathe good, clean air, or to eat good-quality nutritious food, in order to function well physically and mentally. And yet many couples are tolerating a less-than-satisfactory sex life because they just don’t know what to do to make it any better. That’s not good for the relationship, and it’s not good for the people in the relationship.

I want to assure you that you can have hope, and that you can make a difference and enjoy a much better sexual relationship, even if that means working with an experienced and compassionate therapist to get the goals you’re after.

With your sex life sorted, that’s one lifestyle factor you can “tick off” as you work toward the greater health and wellbeing required for permanent weight loss.

Filed under: Self Improvement