Is your sex life regular and yet you feel no mutual connection or bond to your spouse?
That is a possible indicator that one of you is not really enjoying the sex, despite what you see and/or hear. I have written about the hormone released during orgasm before; oxytocin, also called the cuddle hormone, does not lie and cannot be faked.
Yes, one can enjoy sex even without getting an orgasm, but that does not mean oxytocin is released during such encounters. I guess it explains why some people who cheat in their marriages tell their spouses when caught:
“Honey, it meant nothing; it was just sex.”
For sex can be pleasant but not intimate or binding in the all- meaningful way that transitions it into lovemaking. And I guess it is also true that when ‘away matches’ result in this meaningful bond as a result of oxytocin being released by both parties, they [away matches] then become a real problem to one’s marriage.
Especially if the only bond that marriage boasts of is the wedding ring, with sex based on faked orgasms and duty-bound coupling. Learn how to enjoy your marriage and discover how to truly get to another dimension during lovemaking and create an unshakeable bond with your spouse.
It can be achieved, whether through prayer and deliverance, exploration and communication as a couple, therapy…all I know is you can improve the sexual experience. Especially if you are in marriage for the right reasons.
Popular televangelist Joyce Meyer wrote in her book, Making Marriage Work, that for decades she dreaded the sex part of her marriage, and insisted it be done in complete darkness and with her eyes screwed shut through the whole ordeal.
It took divine intervention for her to start viewing sex with her husband Dave differently, leaving the lights on and truly enjoying the intimate bond that arises from great sex.
Meyer’s sex life most likely changed the day she allowed the release of oxytocin naturally, taking care of previous inhibitions. So, don’t settle for mediocrity in your bedroom; it will cost you more, especially if that unmistakable bond is created with a concubine elsewhere – God forbid.
Naomi Wolf writes in her book, Vagina: A New Biography, “[Oxytocin] is also released during orgasm in both sexes, and acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain, facilitating bonding and the formation of trust. It can reduce fear or behavioural inhibition, and promote the expression of social behaviours such as pair bonding and sexual and maternal behaviours.”
Women grow immensely attached to their newborns – regardless the sometimes-unfortunate circumstances of conception – because childbirth is the other
time oxytocin is released. And when a pregnant woman has a healthy sex life during pregnancy, oxytocin also aids in contracting the uterus, making pushing the baby easier.
In fact, a midwife at Nakasero hospital once told me, labouring mothers who put off orgasmic sex during pregnancy find that they need vaginal suppositories or intravenous ‘synthetic oxytocin’ to aid contractions and natural childbirth.
Plus, any woman who has placed a baby to her breast and felt it suckle for that first time will testify how emotionally binding and life-changing that simple action is, because lactation is another oxytocin-induced and oxytocin-inducing action.
See? God had us covered from the beginning, but we have, with modernity, sought alternative routes that inadvertently block the necessary hormones from being released.
Where these naturally created bonds do not exist, it is also easy to throw the towel in at the feel of the first signs of a storm, be it in marriage, or even parenting.
Is your marriage on the rocks? Fix the sex first, by bringing the authentic, giggling, swooning pink elephants back.
There is always an untapped erogenous zone; unsaid words that could remove inhibitions and resentment; an unexplored sexual position; unbroken routines or monotony… It can be done.
And don’t even get me started on going around releasing healthy doses of your oxytocin for every Tom, Dick and Harry; creating countless one- sided bonds that only leave you wailing into a cup each time: “He used me!”
carol@observer.ug
