Sex and romance

When we decide we want to improve our relationship we’ll begin by identifying the area of our relationship that isn’t working well or the issue that seems to cause trouble between us and our partner.

Exploring these areas and issues - what’s going on in our relationship - is the first stage in the helping process.

But if we want things to change we need to move to the next stage of the process - to get a clearer understanding of what’s really going on.

At One Plus One we have over 30 years experience of studying couple and family relationships - finding out from ordinary men and women why relationships matter to them, how their relationships work, why they sometimes go wrong, and how they coped when they did.

In starting to explore aspects of your relationship, you have checked out the issue of sex.

Couples often say that the area they find hardest to talk to each other about is sex. But sex is an important way in which we communicate our feelings for each other. It can become a bit of a chicken and egg situation – when we are unhappy with ourselves or our partners we may not want to have sex and so we lose a major way in which we feel close and express affection; losing a sense of closeness can make communication more difficult and reduce our interest in sex .

Through our work at One Plus One we have created - the relationship insights - these will help you to understand more about why the issue of sex and romance is concerning you at this time and how you might improve things. The Relationship Insights will help you to understand:

• How you can help yourself – what’s involved - the helping process
• How the protective factors make your relationship work and what they are - the sliding scale of happiness
• How relationships develop over time, the stages they go through and how to spot vulnerable times – changes and stages of relationships
• How the hidden issues in our relationship are the key to understanding what’s really going on – hidden issues
• How to find the balance between “me”, “you” and “us”, the secret of the happy compromise – journey to shared goals
• How to anticipate the not-so-good times and keep connected as a couple – the roller coaster of change
• How your feelings thoughts and behaviour are linked; by changing the way we think about our partner and our relationship, can change how we feel and how we behave – circle of thoughts, feelings and behaviours
• How for fathers especially, a lack of satisfaction with their relationship affects their involvement with their children – vicious cycle

Sometimes sex is an issue because there are physical problems. And for some people it is the area of their relationship in which they really need a bit of extra help. Relate and Marriage Care offer couselling services.

When partners become parents their sex life changes in a number of ways go to transition to parenthood.