Your Attitude Determines Your Libido
I am a lifelong learner. My goal is to find success in every aspect of my life. In order to do attain this
lofty ambition, I know I can never get to a place where I think there is nothing more for me to learn. One of the biggest mistakes people make -especially those of us who are marriage advocates or counselors- is believing our relationship is too great to fail. That’s a bunch of hogwash. We can all make mistakes…big ones. We can all grow apart in our relationships if we don’t take the time to nurture and protect our love and spouse.
It is with this knowledge I have made it my personal mission to learn as much about marriage as possible. Every week, I’m hoping to bump into a couple who will sew words of wisdom in my heart. Every year, my goal is to have a stronger love and marriage than the year before. My marriage is phenomenal. I can honestly say that. But that will not keep me from desiring it to grow stronger every moment of every day.
Throughout this year, I will take time regularly to interview a woman happily married for at least 20 years or more, and will share what I’ve learned from her with you. Today, I have the pleasure of posting an interview I conducted last week with Sheila Wray Gregoire with Honor, Love & Vacuum, who proudly proclaims she and her husband have been “happily married for 14 years and have been married for 20.” Hmmm…that leaves 6 years unaccounted for I immediately thought. Well, she certainly had the explanation.
“We had such a lousy first couple years of marriage,” Sheila said early on in our interview. She and her husband were both in school, she was getting her masters and her husband was a pediatrician doing his residency. He worked 120 hours each week. On top of that, within the first 5 years, they had 4 pregnancies and only two of the children survived. One was lost through a miscarriage and the second was born but only survived through his first month. It was rough. Really, really rough.
I asked her what the turning point was in their marriage after 6 year of difficult times, “A lot of it was our son’s death,” she said. “You have a choice when you go through something like that. Either you’re going to pull together or you’re going to pull apart. And we just decided that we’d already lost our son, we weren’t going to lose each other too.” She continued, “I think walking through something like that can bring you really, really close of pull you apart and for us it brought us closer.” Thank God for that because today we will all benefit from the great wisdom she and her husband have gained regarding marriage over the past two decades.
Following the death of their son, and their subsequent bonding together, I wanted to know if continued to grow closer together through adverse times or was it a one-time thing. Her response was not one I expected. It almost came completely out of left field. But now knowing her a bit more, I understand how our conversation so quickly pivoted from talking about tough times to what makes a great sex life. Are you confused at that pivot too? Don’t worry…it’ll all make great sense in just a moment.
With every interview I conduct for our Sage Wisdom column, I ask the same question of the interviewee, “What are the top 5 things you and your husband do regularly or believe that attribute to having a healthy and loving marriage?” When I posed this question to Sheila, she responded without hesitation by saying the one thing they always had going for them in their marriage, even throughout the tough times, was a good relationship. However, she was quick to point out what was lacking in their good relationship, in her opinion, was a good sexual relationship. And that was something she intently worked on to improve.
A good sexual relationship did not come natural to Sheila. I can relate. It didn’t come natural to me either. “In the early years,” she said, “I thought he was the equivalent of a lizard wanting it so much and that men are shallow.” But then she realized how important it was for couples to maintain a healthy and active sex life. So, what is one of her Top 5 beliefs in her own marriage: Attitude determines your libido. Do you remember the famous line from the movie Jerry McGuire, “You had me at hello?” Well, Sheila had me at libido.
She explained, “For women, sex is almost entirely in our heads. When we see people on the television screen and both are ripping their clothes off, we think both are aroused and they’re both totally hot for each other and everything is all great.” When she said that, I knew where she was going with it and quickly chimed in, “We want that movie scene.” So often we forget the sex scenes we see on TV and on the movies are highly orchestrated affairs. You don’t just have the two people on the screen in a room by themselves. They’re surrounding by directors, producers, assistants, sound men and scores and scores of others. If one of the actor’s heads aren’t tilted at the exact degree to show the kiss at the right angle, they’ll likely here, “Cut!” and then be given instructions on how to tilt their head prior to attempting to film the scene again.
We generally have this misperception that sex on television and in the movies is the way it should be. We somehow get this wacky impression that what we see on the silver screen is real. And that couldn’t be farther from the truth. It’s fiction…or at least an incredibly exaggerated version of the truth. Are there times when you will want to rip your partner’s clothes off? Yes! I hope so. But will there always be fireworks or as Kirstie Alley said about a kiss in the movie It Takes Two, “High fly ball over the left field wall?” Probably not.
So what do you do when you don’t feel like ripping his clothes off? What do you do when you feel like your sex life is stuck in a rut? Well, I can tell you what to do tomorrow: Join us for part two of this fascinating interview with Sheila. I can tell you my sex life has already improved just by talking to her and I think I had a pretty dandy one to begin with…so join me here tomorrow (same bat time, same bat channel) and let’s keep talking about that fabulous word: libido.
Until tomorrow…make it a great day!
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Fawn Weaver
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