Topic Tuesday // Sexuality and intimacy // Tues 24 July, 7pm AEDT

Yes @BlueBay I was wondering where you think your lack of confidence had come from? Anyone else for whom this is a problem, please add your thoughts.

That's a common assumption isn't it @Former-Member, that men are always needing sex but women have less of a sex drive. That may be true in many relationships but the responses to my survey caused me to question that a little. There were lots of people in your position who were struggling with the uneven desire within their relationship. And then having to manage the self-esteem of their partner who wasn't able to meet their needs. Layers of complexity!

Because I feel I don’t look great feel great. I don’t love myself. I have no love or like myself. I’m always judging myself self doubting. I second guess myself. It comes from my childhood my mum was and still us controlling snd domineering all my life. I could never make my own decisions or choices.

I think my confidence is low I’m diagnosed with bipolar and not had sex in almost 4 yrs worried I’m putting to much pressure of sex on my shoulders and how a relationship might affect my teenage children

The good news from the survey is that 44% of the participants said that they’d found ways to reduce the impact of the illness on their sex lives and/or physical intimacy. But still a sizable 37% said that they hadn’t and the rest were unsure.

I’m going to share some of those strategies but please don’t read them as THE ANSWER. No-one presented them in that way. It was more a work in progress that involved a number of approaches and a great deal of persistence.

There were a key strategies. Here are the first four in the respondents own words:

1. Commitment: We refused to allow it to take over. Sheer bloody-minded determination to refuse to allow meds to rule our sex life. Set day for sex which reduces stress as no need to be spontaneous. We have an agreement on the frequency of sex/what we can and can’t do.

2. Communication: Talk and plan in the good times so that there’s a strategy in the bad times. Don’t wait until things go wrong again. Open and ongoing communication. Making an effort to connect by talking in depth first. Keeping up the communication as isolation compounds despair, hopelessness, loneliness and feelings of being unworthy. Honesty, eye-contact, sharing fears and concerns.

3. Care for the relationship: Good conversation, compliments, respecting boundaries. Sharing comforting moments with my partner instead of intimacy when I cannot continue with physical contact. Being non-sexually physical intimate every day builds the relationship and makes sexual contact easier. Gentle loving challenges of negative self-beliefs. Make sure we have fun and do other things to keep the closeness in our relationship. Time alone or away. Date nights.

4. Therapeutic tools: Focus on getting better which flows over into increased desire and capacity for intimacy. Distress tolerance skills help me stay in the moment and enjoy things rather than dissociating. Try not to let bad-headspace-brain decide what the other is thinking or whether they would be better off without me. Therapy plus diet help me manage my MI which in turn helps me hold the painful memories more gently and not be over-whelmed by them. Meditation and mindfulness to try to train brain to stop negative thoughts over-whelming. Grounding exercises. Relationship and intimacy coaching. Long-term CBT and DBT resolved some of the issues and increased ability to self-manage.

How do these sound to people? Is there anything useful in there that you think might help your own situation?

Yes I agree @Former-Member, @Former-Member,

Thanks @BlueBay and @winni. Many men and women feel that way about themselves and it can definitely get in the way of physical intimacy. But I wonder if it needs to. Do your current or future partners really share the same view about you? Do they bring the same standards and judge you by them or are they simply wanting to connect and share some pleasure?