New guide! Is This Going to Work?
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I have a new guide out! It’s called Is This Going to Work? 5 Topics to Discuss With Your Partner Today
Like my other two guides, it’s $10. You get 13 pages of hard-earned wisdom and research that can help you save yourself a lot of trouble. While you’re not likely to agree with anyone on everything, it helps to decide what you really can and can’t live with, and agree to disagree and live with it or part ways as early as possible. This guide seeks to help you get to the root of the important disagreements, and come to a decision faster.
Here’s an excerpt!
When we talk about sex, money, religion, substances, and fighting we’re often not just talking about those things. These topics are often imbued with strong emotions and can be inextricably tied to bigger, deeper themes.
If you find yourself or your partner getting emotional about a question, try to get curious about what’s underneath that emotion. Does spending money on someone, for example, unconsciously represent love to you? Is there any trauma in your past that makes you feel triggered when your partner says they’d like to have sex more often?
I believe these five topics are the five to focus on because they’re so emotionally triggering for most people. I think these are the five topics that couples often inadvertently hurt each other with the most often and the most severely.
The subtitle of this guide reads “The 5 topics you really need to agree on.” But in reality, it’s not essential that you agree on all, or maybe even any, of them. What I believe is absolutely essential for a healthy, thriving relationship is being able to stay curious, decide what you can and can’t live with, and navigate your disagreements well.
At least some of these questions are likely to prompt difficult conversations. But if handled with honesty, transparency, and kindness they can give you the clarity you need to move forward confidently, whether that’s separately or together. If you do continue the relationship, discussing these five topics in-depth can bring you much closer together.
The five things
These are the five areas of inquiry that I believe the research shows are most important to a healthy and thriving relationship. Understanding where both of you stand on these issues and how important they are to you both can prevent a lot of future misunderstanding and pain.
Sex
Many people point to infidelity as the number-one cause of divorce. From what I’ve read, about half of married people have an affair at some point.
For most couples, sex is a big damn deal. Usually, your partner is the only person you’re having sex with. Even for non-monogamous folks, it’s likely you’ll have sex with them the most.
Beyond that, sex is a big deal because we’re taught to have so much shame around it. Shame makes things seem bigger, scarier, and more important than they would be if they weren’t as stigmatized.
Plus, trauma around sex is extremely, distressingly common.
When we talk about sex, we’re rarely just talking about what to do or not do with our body parts. We’re often unconsciously also talking about deeper, more important things like love, acceptance, affection, and commitment. It’s important in these conversations to remember that whatever you’re talking about on the surface likely has some deeper, subconscious meaning to one or both of you. And it might not be the same for you both.
Alignment area: How important is sex to you?
Even if one partner could take or leave sex, if the other one thinks it’s important then it is for both.
How aligned are you and your partner when it comes to how important sex is to you?
Questions to try
On a scale of one-to-ten, how important would you rate a healthy sex life?
If you were to list the most important things in your life in order of importance, where would you put sex?
Alignment area: How much sex do you want to have?
From what I’ve read, sex tends to be more important to people with high libidos. However, that’s not always the case. Some people can be super horny all the time, but find it merely mildly annoying to not have sex as frequently as they’d like. On the other hand, some people can get really upset when they’re not able to have sex on the rare occasion they want it.
According to sex therapist and researcher Justin Lehmiller, most couples aren’t perfectly aligned when it comes to how often they want to have sex. This isn’t necessarily a big problem in and of itself. What will likely be a problem is if your sex drive is very different from your partner’s and having sex as often as you’d like is a big deal to either of you.
Questions to try
Ideally, how often would you like to have sex?
If I wanted us to have sex more or less frequently than that, how big of a deal would that be for you on a scale of one to ten?
Alignment area: How important is monogamy?
This is one area where I believe our culture’s discomfort with talking openly about sex leads to a lot of unnecessary misery.
Every long-term romantic relationship should be monogamous. Monogamy means not having sex with anyone else. What’s there to discuss?
Well, a lot, actually.
First, not every long-term romantic relationship should be monogamous. If you decide monogamy isn’t for you, there’s nothing wrong with trying to open up a dialog about transitioning into consensual non-monogamy or ending the relationship. But you want to have that conversation as quickly into the relationship as humanly possible. If you even suspect that you might want to try non-monogamy at some point, I think you owe it to your partner to be transparent about that up-front.
Questions to try
Have you ever thought about consensual non-monogamy?
On a scale of one-to-ten, how important is monogamy to you in a relationship?
Alignment area: How do you define monogamy?
Over the years, I’ve learned that some people define monogamy very differently. Some people see texting someone else a heart emoji as a betrayal. Others think anything other than penis-in-vagina sex is just fine.
Once again, it’s okay to disagree about what’s allowed in a monogamous relationship. But if one person thinks heart emojis are cheating and the other thinks everything but actual sex is fine and it’s very important to one or both of you, that’s not great.
If you like to be close friends and/or flirt with attractive people, or go out to a club and dance with attractive people, and your partner is very jealous and threatened by that behavior, that’s going to be a long row to hoe.
Questions to try
What do you think should and shouldn’t be allowed in a monogamous relationship?
Alignment area: What kind of sex do you want to have?
Let’s say you really like rough sex, kinky sex, vanilla sex, dirty talk, etc. but your partner doesn’t. Is that a dealbreaker for you? Or let’s say you get bored easily and need to experiment frequently to keep things interesting.
It’s important to get alignment on the type of sex you want to have, and how important it is for you and your partner to have, or not have, that kind of sex.
Questions to try
What’s your favorite kind of sex, or sex act?
If you couldn’t ever have that kind of sex again, or only had it rarely, how upset would you be on a scale of one-to-ten?
Want more? Of course you do! Buy the guide today and let me know what you think!