Several months ago Hank and Paula came to see me with an all too common problem: their sex life had fizzled, in part because the man had developed erectile dysfunction. They were in their 30s, and though they were only married a few years, they had lived about half their marriage without any sex at all.
Hank's eyes welled up with tears as he told about the fights he and Paula had had about feelings of jealousy and insecurities.
"Neither of us feel loved," he explained. "We would have fights in bed almost every night, yelling at each other about how we weren't getting our needs met in this relationship."
"Whoa, back up," I said. "Did you say you have long fights in bed?"
Hank and Paula both looked puzzled, but they nodded their heads up and down.
"Do you see the connection? When you fight in bed
you're creating a powerful association between it and the negative feelings that you're having. How could you possibly feel like making love in your bedroom if that's the place that you fight?"
Although it may seem obvious to you, it wasn't obvious to Hank and Paula that part of the problem Hank was having was that he felt angry and upset when they were in bed together. Now, in my office, he also said that he had been having trouble sleeping for months. One of the reasons they couldn't make the connection is because they were too close to the situation, and their emotions clouded their thinking.
Hank and Paula aren't the first couple to come into my office that admitted fighting in bed. For all those couples that do, there are easy guidelines to follow. They are that the bed is for two things, and two things only:
- sleep, and
- sex
Everything else is just a bad idea. If you want your bedroom to be a den of passion, then you need to think of it as the place where you get emotional and physical replenishment–not a boxing ring.
I wish I could say that my guidelines solved all of this couple's problems. They didn't; the couple not only needed to move their fight to another part of the house, but to fight fair. And they needed to learn how to reconnect sexually in a way that Hank felt safe and comfortable to try making love. But breaking that association between bed and bad feelings was a good first step toward good sex.