Sexual Intimacy And Family Life

 Welcome back, fellow friends!

This week we will be talking about sexual intimacy, and how it affects family life.

Let’s start with some researches. In the 1960s, William Masters and Virginia Johnson pioneered the investigation of the responses of the body to sex. The research identified four stages of human sexual response: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

Excitement, the first stage of arousal, is the result of some kind of physical or psychological stimulation. The excitement stage may or may not lead to the next phase. However, if the process continues, it can lead to the second stage, the plateau. In the plateau stage, there is a continuing high level of arousal preparing the way for orgasm. Orgasm, the third stage, is a discharge of the sexual tension that has been built up and maintained during the plateau. Following orgasm, there is a refractory period for the male, a time following orgasm in which the individual needs to recover and is incapable of having an additional orgasm or ejaculation. The refractory period may last anywhere from minutes to an hour. As the male ages, the refractory period gets longer. For the male, the refractory period is part of the fourth stage, resolution. Resolution is a return to a state of being sexually unaroused.

According to Erich Fromm, sexual desire reflects the human need for love and union. We can say that intimacy has primacy over sex. Intimacy is a more fundamental need than the need for sex. Sexual relations bring pleasure and stress relief, but they are also strongly related to emotional and relational well-being and the fulfillment of intimacy needs. Most people seem to sense the fact that sex needs to be an expression of an intimate relationship and that the emotional satisfaction of sex is strongly associated with being in a committed, exclusive relationship. Feelings of intimacy often express themselves in sexual activity. In most societies, people continue to have sexual relations throughout life. Women are less likely than men to be sexually active, but far more of them were widowed. In short, aged people tend to continue sexual intimacy as long as they are healthy and have a partner.

From these researches, we understand that intimacy is important. But how would you rate a good sex life? Sex itself is unlikely to either break up a marriage or keep it together. At the same time, given such things as a sense of friendship, satisfying communication, mutual respect, and admiration, good sex life can greatly enhance the quality of a couple’s intimacy. This idea leads to another question. How important is sexual satisfaction to marital satisfaction?

First, a high degree of sexual satisfaction early in marriage tends to increase the quality and the stability of the marriage. Most Americans agree that a happy sexual relationship is very important for a successful marriage. Second, sexual satisfaction involves more than intercourse. Sex is not as important as caring and affection. In fact, it is precisely such caring and affection that enables couples to have a satisfying sex life. We can have intimacy without sex, but we cannot have satisfying sex without intimacy. In other words, sexual satisfaction is likely to be the result of marital satisfaction. Third, sexual satisfaction is less important than other things in the quality of an intimate relationship. More important than sex in intimacy are such things as the way that differences are handled, the extent to which the partners express affection, and the degree of commitment to the marriage. Fourth, the relationship between sexual satisfaction and marital satisfaction is one of mutual influence. Marital satisfaction affects sexual satisfaction and vice versa.

Finally, there is no such thing as a normal or ideal sex life for all couples. It isn’t the kind or frequency of sexual activities that are most important but the extent to which the couple agrees on whatever arrangement they make.

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