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For those of you in long term relationships...
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Do you ever go through stages of not fancying your partner? I mean, sometimes the thought of being intimate makes you cringe a bit (because despite the sex rarely being what it was at the beginning) I feel like sometimes I'm having sex with my best friend rather than boyfriend?
I haven't posted in a while, but I've been going out with a man for 2 and a half years. There was a sticky time last year when I thought we'd break up because our beliefs about marriage and kids and religion and...well everything were completely different, but we've moved on and he's since acknowledged he was a bit premature and that one day he would love kids.
Fine, fine.
We are meant to be moving in together this summer but I keep noticing other men, and deliverately initiating contact and generally enjoying attention. Which is scummy, I know.
Is there a magic way that you can start looking at your partner the way you used to when you first went out and humped like rabbits? We've had this talk before, but he puts it down to him being tired all the time (he does work insane hours) whereas I'm beginning to think this is coming to an end, I've felt like his best friend for a while now.
I haven't posted in a while, but I've been going out with a man for 2 and a half years. There was a sticky time last year when I thought we'd break up because our beliefs about marriage and kids and religion and...well everything were completely different, but we've moved on and he's since acknowledged he was a bit premature and that one day he would love kids.
Fine, fine.
We are meant to be moving in together this summer but I keep noticing other men, and deliverately initiating contact and generally enjoying attention. Which is scummy, I know.
Is there a magic way that you can start looking at your partner the way you used to when you first went out and humped like rabbits? We've had this talk before, but he puts it down to him being tired all the time (he does work insane hours) whereas I'm beginning to think this is coming to an end, I've felt like his best friend for a while now.
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Comments
No. Sadly.
Don't underestimate the value of spending your life with your best friend. Why assume that because you're not humping like rabbits, and are now best friends, the relationship is over?
If you dump every man that happens with, you'll be dumping them every two years for the rest of your life.
sex drives go up and down, but i always fancy him more than a best friend.
Then one day I'll look at him and go OH HELLO ;D.
Its ok to nitice othermen in my opinion i think its healty for my partner and me to flirt with other people, it makes me feel good about myself and him feel good about himself. However dont go too far.
We hadn't had sex for at least 5 months and had just grown into being friends. So thats where it is, we are just good friends now and it does seem to be working
This.
Of course if sex puts you off completely, then there is a problem (but I don't imagine sex with my best friend as THAT bad). I'm always surprised for what reasons women I know choose their partners. It seems to me those are rather short time fascinations.
that said, I tried it on with a good friend of mine, because the friendship was like I imagined the relationship too. We never argued, could always talk out everything, loved to spend time with each other, and generally worked pretty well together. That's what I am looking for in a relationship that is meant to last for ages. It's really not mostly the looks.
Well, she rebuffed me and kept moaning about her bf, how he never initiates sex, how he spends too much time with his friends and not with her and so on, but I digress.
To quote an ex-working collegue of me (When I worked for the ambulance, so don't expect something of high intellectual value), but he once said (ripped out of context), "After 20 years of marriage you couldn't give less of a shit if she swallows or not." In the long term those "spark-y" things wear off, just like the toy you got for x-mas that was boring a week later. What really counts is, that you are with someone you can call a good friend, not some super-handsome, extra-sexy man who is a stranger to you.
This.
When you've been together a while, life can get more and more in the way, and you're less absorbed in each other than you were, but you should still fancy them. Otherwise you are just best friends.
Threads like this make me a bit sad. A lot of people seem to stick in relationships that aren't necessarily that happy, because they think that's how it always is after a while. But it doesn't have to be. My parents have been together nearly 40 years, and they still fancy each other (it makes me want to gip when my mum tells me about their sex life, like really, TMI, but it gives me hope that love can last like that). My grandparents were together nearly 70 years and my grandma says that even right before he died, when he was so old and ill, he still made her heart skip a little bit every day. I've grown up surrounded by stories like this, so I guess I have high standards, but I've seen it happen - just to ordinary, everyday people - so that's what I always wanted for me.
I personally don't think people should aspire to anything less than long-term butterflies. Your partner should be your best friend, yes, but they should also be the love of your life.
There's no magic solution, other than picking the right person in the first place, and yes, obviously you will not be at the humping like rabbits stage your whole life, but I very much hope that when I reach my mum's age, me and Mr Olive are freaking out the Olivettes with our old, flabby, hairy-in-the-wrong-places sex life.
But I hate the way the issue is often phrased, like spending your life with your best friend is a bad, safe, depressing option and that there's some fairytale Hollywood romance waiting out there for all of us, if only we were brave enough to chuck our loving, stable but boringly dependable partners and go looking for it.
There's actually a lot to be said for spending your life with your best friend, and if it's a choice between mindblowing phenomenal sex with some totally irresistible but wildly unreliable Romeo type, or a stable and secure but happy relationship with a dependable partner who you know loves you and will be around for you always, it's not a cowardly option to choose the latter.
Now I realise that that's a false dichotomy too, because our choices aren't ever quite so stark. But the fact is that the honeymoon period does wear off, and you're not going to be humping like rabbits like you were in the beginning forever. If you can't bear the thought of sex with your partner, then that's undoubtedly a bad thing. But if it's just that you now only fancy it twice a month, rather than twice a night, I think it would be foolish to ditch an otherwise happy and loving relationship in search of the humping like rabbits phase again.
The only relationship I ever had where the sex was still as exciting and passionate and rampant three years in as it was as the beginning, was with a guy who clearly never loved me, didn't want to be with me, to commit to me in any way, who never showed any care or emotion toward me, who was unreliable and unpredictable and who I never knew whether or not he was going to want me. I don't think the two facts are unrelated.
If youre both happy with the way things are then fine, but if youre feeling like something is missing, then maybe something is?
He wouldn't say there's anything wrong, he acknowledges that he needs a boot up the arse every few weeks when we never go out and we literally are just friends sitting with wine and watching tv. That's fine most nights, but months would pass on end before he realises that we need to dress up for each other and look nice for once lol.
My parents have a happy marriage, there's still a lot of groping and I would love to have that 30 years after meeting my man. I'm afraid that while there's nothing else wrong with us, (he's changed from an obnoxious player to a settled, kitten-providing partner) sex really does differentiate you from your friends surely?
Maybe I'll never actually feel like I've met "the one". Gah.
I'd say there's more to be said for spending your life with your best friend, in a stable and secure but happy relationship with a dependable partner who you know loves you and will be around for you always, but who you also have mindblowingly phenomenal sex with.
Sex and romantic love are intertwined, and if you love someone that much, you will have great sex with them, and although, yes, it might slow down a bit eventually, but it should still be great. Even if it is only great twice a month, or great very briefly because you're late for work, cause it's a connection. And that connection, IMO, is vital for a good relationship.
But if the question is, is my relationship over because we no longer hump like rabbits? Then I think it's important to point out that you won't be able to keep humping like rabbits with any one individual, forever. I think it's worrying that Halloween has said "maybe I'll never actually meet The One",as if there is some magical ideal person out there who you can have the honeymoon period with for fifty years. That's not realistic.
Part of what you have to do is adjust to the honeymoon period being over, but manage to feel in love and excited by each other nonetheless. It's manageable; but it's different, no doubt about that.
Awesome as the honeymoon period is, you just can't have it indefinitely. Not without hopping form partner to partner every couple of years, anyway.
As a couple, we have been fortunate. It could have been a disaster. We were both married to other people when we met and embarked on a short, but passionate, affair before leaving our respective spouses and moving in together. We had only known each other for 3 months.
At first, we could barely keep our hands off each other and we had such vigourous sex that internal bruising set off a succession of cystitis infections (v. painful). Thank heavens it didn't last LOL! Within a few months we had settled down to a much more normal/regular sex life. And now, 15 years later, we sometimes have quite lengthy periods when we hardly have sex at all. But we do still fancy each other. We both look after our looks (as far as possible), flatter each other, and I still enjoy buying saucy undies for his enjoyment, etc. We're still very "touchy feely" with each other.
I am attracted to other men though, and find a bit of flirtation and fantasy to be beneficial to my marriage. Frankly, it makes me feel sexy, which can only be good for my OH. He is my best friend, my husband and my lover - even if sex is less regular and quicker than it used to be. The honeymoon is over, but we were lucky. We found in each other "The One".
I dont feel the same way about him as I once did, I see him more as a friend I can rely on but he doesnt make my heart flutter the way he did, I dont get excited when I see him or speak to him and if I dont hear from him for a few days I couldnt care less whereas usually I'm paranoid as hell!
I dont think there is any way that you can magically feel this way about your partner again. As other have said, after the Honeymoon period is over, the 'excitement' factor might have died down but you feel happy, settled and secure with each other, not needing to be told everyday that they love you because you know they do.
Who knows, maybe if you spend some time apart you'll realise how good you have it and find you really do care for him alot. As Suzy said, if you love somebody, you find them attractive no matter what and want to have that intimate physical contact with them. The fact that you no longer what this from him signals that you've definately slipped into each others 'friend zones'.
I think if you continue on like this, you'll find yourself cheating, leading to all kinds of other issues, ending it on good terms as friends will let you carry on as that as its clear you have a good relationship just not the one that you're looking for