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Single Sex and Personal Sex
Gottman draws a line between two genders. Informal sex is based on a specific attraction, body part or scent, and does not require an emotional connection. She has fun, she writes, and as a scientist she doesn’t judge anyone for her fun. Personal sexuality is based on the relationship between two people. Most married couples, in his experience, want a strong erotic life and a deep emotional connection, and they want both from the same person. A third of parents who were still happy in bed kissed more and touched more outside the bedroom. When some of them played with the oddities of picking each other up in a bar, it was erotic fun between two people who knew each other deeply, as opposed to impersonal sex. Put love and passion together, writes Gottman, and you have the opposite of impersonal sex: intimate trust.
Personal sex should be talked about, and many couples stop there. Embarrassment and fear of rejection lie beneath the pounding of words, writes Gottman. Culture does not help; Sex manuals sit on a separate shelf from relationship books. His answer is what he calls intimate conversation. Express your feelings in words. Ask open-ended questions. Follow this type of expression that deepens the relationship. Show empathy. In one of the two-day workshops that he teaches with Julie, a long-married couple, Sherry and Hunter, used it on a sex life that had stopped. He wanted more. She wanted him to focus on what they needed. When he asked what he could do to seduce her, she told him that he could start by asking her what she needed, and that asking was a wonderful first step. Gottman gives marriage questions to get started. Is there a way I can contact you that I have missed, and can you give me an update? When one of us wants sex and the other isn’t interested right now, what would be a good way to do it?
If the two of you have completely stalled, Jordan Rullo explains a way back Can a Sexless Marriage Be Saved? If one of you reaches out and the other backs off, Terry Gaspard describes The Pursuer-Distancer Dynamic. If all the relationship went civil, we also wrote about it.
A Ritual for Saying No, and Why It May Lead to More Sex
Gottman also looked at the moment when one partner wants sex and the other doesn’t. In the usual scenario, the rejected one berates, complains, argues, blames, criticizes or ignores the other. Each of them is a punishment, and the partner who said no wants less sex the next time. Gottman writes, if a woman has sex often, neither partner can meet the other’s displeasure with anger, rejection, or punishment. It probably costs nothing to say no. The one who refuses should get a small reward, if anything.
He worked this out in game theory, but his example is an old joke: not tonight, I have a head. The answer that revives a sexual life, in his example, is poorer than the complaint that always hurts you, I understand, I love you. The difference, in his model, between a couple that makes love a little more than once a month and a couple that makes love twice a week comes down to one variable: how you say no.
That’s why Gottman recommends that couples agree on a ritual for inviting sex and for refusing it. He borrows one from sex therapist Lonnie Barbach, a scale of one to nine, where one means no thanks and nine means oh yes. A couple says they are now eight years old. The other says five, and maybe the two of them kiss a little and see where it goes. At that level, rejection stops being personal.
Can “Dead Room” Come Back?
Gottman’s research never used the words, so every answer here carries that caveat. She has measured friendships across genders, and has modeled what happens when they are not punished. So the questions for a couple in Hannah and Luis’s position might be questions Gottman asks for any couple. Do you two still know each other’s inner worlds, or just know each other’s maps? What is the cost when one of you says no? Have each of you said out loud, in words, what you want more of?
One way to describe what Andy and Marcia seem to have is, in Gottman’s words, intimate trust: a passionate mutual love, a strong interest, and sometimes almost a crush on your partner. He writes, the clothes can start one evening. Revealing himself continues his passion for years, and he, in his context, may start a couple like Hannah and Luis. Gottman’s research suggests where to look, and the place may not be close to the bed.
That Friday, Hannah went to bed again at a quarter past ten, and Luis turned off the game. In the dark she said she loved him, last winter, when they slept at the same time. He said he had too.
Where it comes from: John Gottman Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (discovering friendship and passion, Love Charts, oral history interviewing, and basic rules for talking about sex) What Makes Love End? (personal and impersonal sex, third-year parents, intimate communication, Andy and Marcia, and why some couples stop having sex) and The Science of Faith (oral history interview and game theory of saying no). Kristin Davin’s definition of a “dead room” for Choice Therapy. The one-to-nine scale is Lonnie Barbach’s, as Gottman presents.
Frequently Asked Questions
“Dead sex” is a relationship in which sex has decreased or stopped altogether. Kristin Davin, writing for Therapy Choice, calls it “an informal term and not a clinical diagnosis.”
Davin gives two examples: couples who only have sex on special days or holidays, and a couple who have sex several times a week and go months without it. A change from your marriage style that is important; There is no official number.
In John Gottman’s research, couples who had healthy sex lives had closer friendships, made sex a priority, and talked about it. He teaches intimate conversation for that conversation, and he suggests a ritual to invite sex and to say no at no cost to the person who refuses.
Don’t need. In Gottman’s study, partners’ satisfaction with sex, love, and romance in their marriage depended 70 percent on the quality of their friendship. “Dead humor” may be a sign to improve the friendship first, and a marriage therapist can help you start the conversation.