Mars Vs Venus!
Men and women can be very different creatures, especially when it comes to love and relationships, as depicted in the best-selling book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” by John Gray. Published in the early nineties it has now sold more than 15 million copies and it’s easy to see why when we chat to our friends about their relationships and compare them to our own. I find, when chatting with my closest girl-friends, that they experience the same things with their husbands as I do with mine. For us then it shows we have different make ups and gives a clear indication as to why we sometimes might be, not so much on different pages, but in fact on different planets altogether. We always joke that “we know this” but wonder, do they? One of the common differences is that men don’t talk to each other like women do so perhaps they miss the memos many times over simply through lack of communication. And if they can’t work it out as a bunch together then there’s only one thing for it.
We have to tell them!
And it’s this communication that my friends and I have discovered is key. Men often need to have female feelings clearly explained, guessing just doesn’t cut the mustard meaning they often get it wrong. This does nothing but make difficulties for everyone. Once I worked out that my husband wasn’t simply going to just understand my unreasonable behaviour once a month when I got my period, work out that I was probably hormonal and give me the care I needed instead of his backing away to leave me to it, I realised that both of us were going to be far happier as a result. And we talked.
It’s that age old issue I guess of him needing communication to pick things up, but me having not felt it should be necessary to deliver the information, then, in the end causing us massive arguments. His genetics dictate that he misses situations, mine mean sometimes I’m unreasonable because of my hormones. The maths of that together creates fireworks that no one needs and now that we are older, and have spent time deciphering this language, we are far happier and this goes for all areas of our lives, including sexually, because this is just yet another area where men and women can differ. For me, and a lot of my friends, we know that in order to “be in the mood” we have to have been loved a little first. Hugs, conversation, wining and dining even, it all goes a long way to putting us in the frame of wanting to be intimate. For my husband however, we could be mid one of those massive blow out arguments and if I suggested sex he’d be all over it. The two degrees do not match but with age and that ability to communicate because we’ve learned we have to, he gets to dance the rudie far more than he ever has before, because now he knows my love language isn’t a simple “right, come on then” and I need an emotional level to bedroom antics, even though we’ve been together for donkeys!
There’s often been the joke that women “put out” when in actual fact there never needs to be such a notion for either if clear dialogues are part and parcel of a relationship. Knowing what the other person needs goes far further than simply what they like to do in bed. It’s all about the precursor for me and the rest will come naturally after that. Just as I like my irrational (at times – I mean, not always) behaviour understood when I’m in the rages of pre-menstrual tensions, I’d like the fact I desire romancing before I “put out” understood too. And whatever is required in the bedroom between two consenting adults is fine, be it missionary sex like you’ve done for hundreds of years, or you could be a little naughtier and indulge in something more fun and saucy like making a sex swing your next purchase from LoveHoney so that you can metaphorically swing from the chandeliers and pleasure yourselves happy as a couple who own their own private playground! (By the way, LoveHoney also have lots of adult toys to choose from too!)
Because a sex life is important, the less you do it the less important it may seem but actually, it’s even more important to have that connection if you find it’s waned a little and chatting, gently if you find it difficult (and I know my generation do – we were less free in the 90s than generations before us, and after us, like a little void of buttoned up ones but I don’t know the reason why?) is always going to be key to getting it on the track it needs to be on. You talk about what works for you, what they want, discuss the frequency and what it means to both of you, and how you can make it more appealing to the one who perhaps wants to be intimate less than the other. Find the reason, is it because you need more hand holding without there being sex at the end of it? Those cuddles can sometimes just be cuddles right, but I know lots of friends I chat to and they say their husbands cannot imagine a bed hug which didn’t lead to something more… The explanation that every now and again contact stays with a hand on the knee, will ultimately lead to it more frequently being more than that is often all men need. Clear instructions remember, their make-up and ours, just as it says in “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” is different. Different hormones, different genetics, different desires, needs and levels of what works. That doesn’t mean the two can’t merge – they absolutely will if you put the work in!
Collaboration.
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