Someone once asked one of my favorite authors, John Green, how she should get a guy she liked to know she liked him. John’s response? “I’m going to stop you right there and tell you the same thing I tell my 4-year-old multiple times a day. USE YOUR WORDS.”
The course of long-term relationships never does run smooth. There will always be times where sex doesn’t happen as well or as often as you want it to. Whether that’s because of kids or work or political stress or your pet chinchilla’s babies, it happens. It’s life.
So when my relationship hit a bit of a dry spell, I – being the educated, enlightened sex blogger that I am – sat down and calmly addressed the issue with my partner and found common ground where we could compromise and satisfy both of us.
Ha. No. I sat and stewed about it for months and let resentment build up until it came out in weird unexplained arguments about nothing. Because that seemed sensible.
Thankfully, I have friends who are honest enough to bop me over the head about my own stupidity. And OH HEY GUESS WHAT? Being a grown-up about shit actually works. For my situation, the solution was literally as simple as “let’s stop passing up opportunities to have sex when they arise, because they aren’t actually as plentiful as we think they are.” Other than being a bit embarrassed that it took me so long to address something so simple, I’m pretty happy about life now. Though that might be the dopamine talking…..
So tell me. What are your communication failure/success stories?
