SWM 143 – Redefining sex – How to have a thriving sex life despite sexual dysfunction

Sex Within Marriage Podcast : Exploring Married Sexuality from a Christian Perspective

I feel like I have some explaining to do. A couple of weeks ago, I shared that lately, Christina and I have started having sex a lot more than usual. We had more sexual encounters last month than there were days in the month. We’re at about 30 for this month already. This has led to some questions by some people. I wrote a large thread in our supporter’s forum to try and answer them all and thought it might be helpful here. Because it goes beyond just an “ask me anything” sort of post. It’s really about how we’ve adapted sex to deal with sexual dysfunction in a way that’s not only positive but actually ends up being more fun and connecting than I think most people’s sex lives are.I’m going to try to adapt a forum thread into a post and see how it goes. If you want to read the original, then you have to become a supporter, and you can search for the thread called “Sex with erectile dysfunction and delayed ejaculation” because there’s more to the thread than this topic, but I’m just pulling out the topic I wanted to hit today in this post.To start off, we’ve dealt with some sexual dysfunction for our entire marriage. Christina has had vaginismus (pain during penetration). I deal with erectile dysfunction most of the time and also delayed ejaculation, which means it’s hard for me to orgasm. Christina also suffers from post-coital depression, which means after she has an orgasm, she tends to get depressed for the next day or two.As such, we’ve had to redefine sex. Most people, I find, tend to have a fairly narrow expression of sex. They often have the same routine – some sort of initiation, some sort of foreplay during which the wife might orgasm, then penetration until he orgasms, then they’re done.It might change a bit, but for a lot of people, that’s what sex is. When they say “sex,” they often only mean the penetrative part, and foreplay is a separate category.But what happens when penetration doesn’t happen? What if you have ED? What if you have vaginismus? What if he can’t orgasm (like I can’t a third of the time) – when does it stop? What if you’re the wife and you don’t want an orgasm first because then you get depressed/bored and aren’t really interested in continuing? Sorry, Ian, not every wife wants to come first.These are all things we’ve had to deal with. So, how do you still have sex with all that going on? Well, I’ll tell you. What counts as sex?For us, sex isn’t solely defined by penetration. In fact, only about half of our sexual encounters include PIV sex. Instead, we view any activity that involves arousal and genitals as part of our sexual life. A night might only include manual sex, or it might include oral sex. It might include blindfolds, cuffs, toys and more, and still not have any PIV sex. We still consider it sex, though.This broader definition helps us keep intimacy alive, no matter what happens. If I can’t get hard, that’s okay because we’ve built a sexual repertoire that doesn’t require an erection. We have many other options, even before we get to toys, which don’t come out that often anymore.When does sex end?For most couples, it seems sex ends when the husband has had an orgasm. This is part of the reason for the “she comes first” advice we see everywhere because if she doesn’t have an orgasm first, then she might not get one at all.For us, orgasm is not the end of the fun. It’s not even the goal. For me, it’s often not even possible. Delayed ejaculation can make it so that you run out of energy before you get to orgasm. For Christina,