Image Credit: Daniel Horacio Agostini
Ah, the bed. So much promise is contained by it when we go to bed each evening; however, how often is that promise fulfilled? Consider my situation just a while ago. I found that when my wife and I were going to bed, we’d both do the normal evening toiletry stuff and then we’d crawl into bed on our own sides, perhaps read for a bit, then turn the lights off and the evening was over. Nice, but not what I’d really call intimate.
Struggling For Intimacy
This situation didn’t just happen overnight. As with all such things, it sorta snuck up on us. Yes, yes – early on in the relationship we could hardly wait to go to bed for all of the kissing and physical exertions that it promised each evening. Over time, jobs, kids, outside obligations just started to wear us down and we’d find ourselves dragging ourselves to bed and craving that sweet surrender of sleep. This wasn’t always the case, but it cut down on our interaction until just preparing to go to sleep became what we did in bed. Not always of course, but most of the time.
That was until I finally realized what was going on. Just like in that movie The Matrix, I must have taken the red pill and I realized what our bed relationship was missing: intimacy, touch, connection. Initially I tried to solve this problem by cuddling with my wife. This was especially easy to do during the cold winter months. However, although she accepted my cuddling and the contact that came along with it, she just laid there facing out into the room and I was left wondering if she was feeling anything closer because of my actions. In the end, I decided that it just wasn’t enough.
I’m not proud to admit it, but it was at this time that I started to get angry. Any relationship is the result of two people and if my relationship was broken in terms of bed intimacy then it was just as much her fault as mine. Why was this not a big issue for her? Why was she not doing something about it? My first thought was that I was going to grab some covers and go over and sleep on a couch that we have in the master bedroom. That would show her! Then I got a better idea: I would make her go over and sleep on the couch. I would point out that we may as well be sleeping in separate beds based on how little contact there was between us and so she needed to go.
The good news here is that I ended up rejecting both ideas. They were born out of my frustration with where things currently stood and was a negative place. Since what I was trying to accomplish was a positive thing, more intimacy in the bed, then I figured that I needed to come up with a better plan.
Finding Intimacy
As I pondered what my options where, I found myself wrestling with trying to define just exactly what I defined intimacy as being. If you take a look in a dictionary, you’ll find it being defined as ” close familiarity or friendship; closeness”. Look, I was married to the woman that I was sleeping next to each evening, I defined intimacy as being contact between us that only a couple involved in a relationship could have. It’s more than you would have with a friend. Of course making love meets this criteria, but unless you are superman / superwoman that’s not going to be happening every night. I needed a different solution.
I eventually came up with a plan. I must confess that I was pretty pleased with my plan in part due to its simplicity. When I revealed my plan to my wife, yes there was some pushback but she didn’t reject out of hand. My plan went like this: one night when the lights were turned out, I would slide over to her side of the bed and using my right hand (she sleeps on the right hand side of the bed), I would gently place it over her crotch. No stroking, probing, or sexual come ons, I would just rest my hand there for 10 minutes. Once this time was up she was more than welcome to roll over and I’d cuddle with her.
On the next night, she was required to slide over to my side of the bed, take my crotch in her hand and just hold it there. No stroking, squeezing, or other activities were required. My thinking was that both of these actions were incredibly intimate and in our relationship nobody else in the world would be allowed to perform them. It was my hope that both my action and her action would be pleasurable for both of us even if they didn’t lead to anything else.
So we gave it a try. Yes, she did look at the clock the first night that I slid over onto her side in order to determine when this would be done with. However, the next night she didn’t and she actually fell asleep in that position. Not for long, but for long enough. I for one can’t sleep on my back (neither can she) and so we don’t really expect to spend the night this way, just the start of it.
What All Of This Means For You
It’s still early on in this experiment. I can tell you that right now I feel that I have solved my case of missing bed intimacy. Will I be able to keep it up? Will she? What happens when someone becomes sick or injures themselves in some way – will we drop it and not come back to it? I really can’t tell, but what I can tell you is that I’ve made a startling discovery since we started this little experiment.
As I cuddle up to my partner and place my hand over her crotch, my mouth is located right next to her ear. She starts to drift off, but when I’m in this position I can easily talk with her. Considering the intimacy of our position, more often than not that conversation that we engage in has to do with our relationship, physical contact, what she wants and what I want. This new approach to going to bed has opened the door to a lot of conversations that just weren’t happening in the past.
Every couple has their own set of issue. A loss of intimacy is all too easy to allow to sneak into your relationship. If you discover that what you once had is no longer there, then it’s going to become your responsibility to find a way to get it to come back. Intimate touching as you drift off just might be the spark that your relationship needs. Give it a try and see if it allows the two of you to once again become closer.
– Dr. J.
Question For You: Do you think that this kind of touching should have time limits placed on it or is this how you should fall asleep?
P.S.: Free subscriptions to the Seduce Me Again Newsletter are now available. It’s your relationship – it’s your choice.Subscribe now: Click Here!
What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
So shall we talk about your sex life? I don’t mean to get to personal, but how is it going? Lots of us can think back to when our relationship with our partner was new and we have very pleasant memories of having sex with them – the first time, the first time that we did something new, the first time we did it in a new place, etc. However, then things changed.