When Did You Stop French-kissing?

(If you still do, please tell me, you absolute legend)

If you’re happily married, or in a happy long-term relationship where you still have sex (at least) once a week and still French-kiss your partner on a regular basis, then what I’m about to say might not be for you.

You may be still curious, though. Keep reading, if you want.

But I want to talk to the people who are in long-term relationships and don’t have much intimacy (or none at all).

Intimacy is not only sex, let’s make that clear, it is passionate kissing tongue to throat in the cinema (and the occasional fingering 😅). It’s the craving, that movie-like scene on the kitchen table or going down-there just because and not just on your birthday.

I know your exact thought right now:

Who on earth does this in a 20-year relationship?

I mean, seriously, if you’re one of them, please tell me in this button below because that needs and deserves to be told. But for the majority of us, we kind of accept that this is just what happens with long-term relationships.

They get boring... and, eventually, sexless.

Where did passion go?

If you know me, you know the story, you know I was in one of those (the boring ones 😕) but the key thing is: I didn’t know I was in one.

I didn’t have the awareness. I didn’t come across any post from anyone at the time. Back then I wasn’t really using social media. If I had been, maybe I would have stumbled on somebody talking about this, and I would have gone: “Oh, wait. So that’s my situation. That’s me. That’s why.”

But there was none.

After a few years with somebody, things get familiar. There’s no excitement, no newness. There’s nothing. And then you just lose it. We just lose the attraction, right? (or at least one does). But because you’ve already built something and there‘s a project and a family, you stay.

Think about it. When you’re with somebody and you haven’t built anything yet (still in the boyfriend-girlfriend stage) and the attraction dies, you just break up. It’s easy. I don’t feel anything for this person, somebody else comes along, you feel pulled toward someone else, you move. Easy.

But once you build something with that person (and this is the key), once you’ve got the history, you get stuck. And then you accept that the passion is gone. Declined. Diminished. And you accept it. And that’s it. And that can carry on forever.

Stay with me here. Let’s look at the energetics.

When someone manages to take that lost energy (the unused sexual energy) and pour it into something else: work, a hobby, a passion, they’re kind of okay, at least for a long time.

But most people don’t know how to use that energy and then come the addictions. The destructive ones. Along with other things, of course (we’re complicated, there’s traumas, abuse, etc.) but let me stay on the sexual energy, because it’s primal.

Maybe it’s the base of everything and if you’re not channeling it into creativity, and you’re not burning it off in addiction either (some people aren’t addictive) then you’re depressed. Profoundly unhappy.

I know one person who fits this exactly. Doesn’t get drunk, nothing like that. Just drinks every day and is depressed, hopeless and pessimistic about everything.

And then there’s the person who wakes up. Who does the work. Who notices things, gets self-aware, starts looking around and asks the question:

- What’s actually going on here?

I couldn’t do that because what happened to me wasn’t just a question. It was a tsunami (the one I describe in my book).

And the thing about a tsunami is: you can’t respond to it. It hits when you don’t expect it. You can only react by trying to stay alive. That’s what I did.

And what does a tsunami do? It destroys. And then you spend a long time cleaning up the mess. I had to do that and I wish I hadn’t had to.

The way to avoid it would have been awareness. That calm awareness. Just looking at it and saying: “Okay. I’m telling myself this is normal but something in me knows it isn’t and I’m allowed to ask whether I even want this.”

I was 43 but the age doesn’t matter, the question is never how long am I going to be like this.

The question is right now: Do I want to be living like this?

The other way

My message is not: “get the fuck out of a sexless marriage now”, like there’s no other option.

The only time I’d ever say that (to anyone, to the world) is when there’s abuse, then yes, that's therapy territory (and I'm not a therapist) but these other situations are much subtle. You can be in a loving, caring relationship and still be starved sexually, of intimacy. That’s very specific. And honestly, those are the people I most want to work with.

And I’ll be honest, I’ve probably never said it quite this way before. But this is what I want the message to be.

So the question I throw out is this: what if you could keep the good things (the familiarity, the comfort, even the friendship) and release only the tie that isn’t working anymore? The romantic one. Just release that.

Because there’s always something good in your relationship. There has to be (otherwise it’s madness, why are you even there!?).

And there’s a lot tangled up in it (money, the history, the project you built, the family) lots of ties. You keep the ones that are good for everyone. Especially anything to do with the kids. All of that stays (yes, even if it means staying in the same household). You just let go of the romantic tie, because it’s dead anyway.

And I think the simple act of doing that (even if the family carries on, even if you stay under the same roof) is already a step forward. A healing, in a way.

(It has to be looked at case by case, obviously. The kids’ age changes everything, young kids and grown kids are not the same situation at all. Always individual. Like everything in life, because we’re unique beings with unique situations).

So I’m talking to the people who were where I was. Where everything looked perfect, and the sex was just… gone. A roommate situation.

Why would you sleep the rest of your life in a bed with someone who feels like family? Who feels like a brother/sister?

That’s against nature.

If you reach this in your 80s, okay. Maybe that’s natural. I’m not going to tell you to stay sexually active into your 90s; some people do, but that’s not my point. There may come a stage where you’re self-aware enough to say, I’m done, I’m done with sex, and I’d understand that completely. But that is not where you are in your 30s. Your 40s. Your 50s. Your 60s. Probably your 70s. Depending on who you are.

The Big Fear

I find that, when people start thinking about leaving, they jump straight to imagining another relationship like their life depends on it and then the big fear appears: “What if I leave and I never find anyone else? Ever?”

Good question. I don’t know the answer myself but at least you’ll be open to it.

You’ll keep growing your own awareness, and who knows where life takes you from there. At least you won’t be starving for passion lying in a dead bedroom, closed to the possibility (or perhaps waiting for a tsunami that could happen to your partner too, just saying…).

And even if no one ever comes (even alone) it’s enough to grow you as a person. To make you feel better which, in the end, is what we all want.

To feel better.

Love :)

Eva