Kids and why you can’t kill them - CoupleDumb

Real Relationship Advice

In the world of a parent, we all need to know how to juggle. We juggle the kids, their routines and schedules, our work, our home, our meals, our lives and not to mention our interaction with our extended families and friends. Being a parent requires multi-tasking on the order of a covert operative diffusing a bomb while being shot. Maybe not as dangerous but the consequences of dropping the ball could be bad for your family. If you do not experience this level of stress while parenting, you have a secret for which you will be paid handsomely. For the rest of us, we trudge on and wait for the days where things calm down.

With all of this going on, how is the tired parent supposed to enjoy sex? If we understand that sexual arousal takes 10 minutes for both men and women, then another however long to achieve orgasm for both partners, we could be talking about 15 minutes to one hour of sex for mutual satisfaction. In our everyday life, who has time to spend 1 hour on sex? If you are a tired parent getting in bed at 11 pm knowing that you have the possibility of 7 hours of sleep before wrangling kids, home, kitchen, work and life, who would choose to have sex?

Thanks to Kinsey and Masters and Johnson we know a bit about the human sexual response. Because of their diligent work with surveys and physical testing we understand that the more aroused a subject is the easier the orgasm is achieved. This puts all the pressure of the act onto foreplay. Penetration is wonderful but once again, not to beleaguer the baking metaphor, if the oven is not hot enough, things just take longer to cook. This is why CoupleDumb proposes that foreplay be all the time.

Family Therapy has a theory called Structural Family Therapy by Salvadore Minuchin. This theory postulates that a family has a certain hierarchal structure that, if maintained, creates a healthier family. As therapists, one of the things we do is to map out a family when we see them. A ‘normal’ family would look like this:

H	W
F	M
S	S

The hierarchy shows that the most important relationship is that of the original partnership, the couple. The next line belongs to that of the Father and Mother. Under that authority, are the siblings. Each person is divided from the other with open lines (dashes) which symbolizes healthy boundaries that are permeable and not rigid.

What usually happens in a family when we get into the roles of the tired parents is that once upon a time there was a couple who was hot for each other. Children have a way of keeping us focused on them and the immense responsibility of parenting can make the most well adjusted person stressed. Being a parent comes with this underlying fear that we will fail. It isn’t unfounded. We have all seen the semblance of a great family torn apart by a child with issues. So, sometimes, we tend to forget about being a woman or a man and just focus on being Mom and Dad.

If there is anything that will affect your sex life with your husband/wife it is remembering them as sexual beings. When you are together, treat one another as a couple and not co-parents. Parenting has a way of having us forget the excitement of being together. The exhaustion and mounting responsibilities overwhelm us. By maintaining the husband and wife relationship separate from your roles as parents, you automatically create a boundary that will allow you to be sexy with one another.

Psychological Foreplay can fix a dysfunctional family hierarchy and reset it to a more healthy structure. Psychological Foreplay, if done correctly, makes the recipient feel confident, attractive and sexy. When we feel good as a Man or a Woman, we automatically become better parents. And when we are feeling good about ourselves, our sexual response is heightened. Ultimately, being desired is the most powerful aphrodisiac.

Real Relationship Advice

We teach kids how to walk. We teach them how to talk. We teach them how to drive a car, boil an egg and even how to tie their shoes. If we are feeling omnipresent, we teach our kids about love, loss and how not to wear conflicting patterns and colors. With all this education, we completely ignore that our children are growing up and becoming sexual beings. The latest research shows that parents are giving the sex talk after the fact. That’s right, our kids are having sex before we explain who, what, why and how to stay safe. We teach them everything but expect our children to figure out one of the most important things about humanity on their own because we feel uncomfortable.

The most basic of topics is masturbation. It may be one of the most embarrassing topics in the field of sexuality. Sixty years ago, Kinsey showed us that 92% of men and 62% of women reported that they had masturbated at some point in their life. These numbers have held up over the years with a slight rise in females reporting that they had masturbated. As parents, we have seen our babies find their sexual organs and blush at the idea that they may be masturbating. The conclusions we draw due to our own limited understand of sexuality and puritanical up-bringing is that it is perverse and should not be discussed. The reality is that our sexual organs have been created for pleasure and masturbation plays a large role in our ultimate understanding of how we respond sexually. To condemn masturbation is not only detrimental to a child’s future sexual satisfaction but may also affect their relationships.

Masturbation, the solo act of touching our sexual organs for the purpose of pleasure and orgasm, is beneficial for many reasons the least are:

1. Teaches us our sexual response.

2. Releases endorphins which make us happier.

3. Builds our confidence.

4. Reduces depression.

5. Provides us a template of where and how we like to be touched with which we can teach our sexual partners.

6. Is a safest of sex practices

With the negative stigmas attached to masturbation, not to mention the religious opposition to the act, it is not surprising that people feel such incredible shame concerning solo sex that it is preferable never to mention it. Even today, after supposed sexual revolutions, we find ourselves arguing over the value and necessity of masturbation.

In Biblical terms, masturbation is seen as a betrayal; a sign of physical weakness to the temptation of evil. All sexuality is seen as a means of procreation thus the expenditure of seed and strength is wicked. The term Onanism is used to describe the sin of masturbation, or self-abuse/self pollution. Onan, in the Bible, is the son of Judah who preferred to spill his seed on the ground rather than impregnate his brother’s widow. The act of impregnating the widow was considered a means of continuing the blood line but Onan, on several occasions, refused to ejaculate into his sister-in-law because the progeny of that union would not be considered his heir. This was the ultimate act of selfishness. Thus, the wickedness of masturbation is the same thing. We are wicked if we experience pleasure without the possibility of making a baby.

Today, even the Church understands that there is another purpose to having sex. They created the ever-so-effective Rhythm Method so that a married couple can enjoy themselves without the need to make babies. However, this is where the understanding of sexuality ends. The need for masturbation goes beyond just a simple sexual release. Understanding and controlling one’s orgasm is part of the foundation to maturity that we just don’t talk about. It is the basis of knowing oneself not just as a personality but as a sexual being.

Is masturbation a sin?

How often is too often?

If you have not taken our Sex Survey yet, please click here and take it. Thank you.

sharebookmarx Lets Talk About Masturbation

Real Relationship Advice

Relationships do not end with your lovers. We are in relationship with everyone and everything. For many of us, the prospect of having children was a natural process of development. We put little thought into how to parent. We placed lots of effort into making sure they had a great nursery that was both stimulating and visually appealing. We chose a name that was both meaningful and unique. We did our research into how we would give birth, what diapers they would use and weighed the benefits and drawbacks to co-sleeping over independence. Our birth-plans resembled tomes and their outfits that we picked for bringing them home from the hospital are nicely packed away in their keepsakes. In all of this planning, did you think how you would actually parent them?

Top 5 things we do to mess up our kids:

1. Making them the center of our universes: Between team sports, piano/mandarin/capoeira/glass blowing lessons, our little ones are busy. However, we hardly take a moment to see how this affects our lives. Mom Taxis are cutesy ways of saying that you have been reduced to transporter. Saturday mornings are a series of lessons, games and birthday parties that leave no time for adult activities. Make time for yourself and if you have no time, rethink the glass blowing lessons.

2. Parenting from guilt: If we are not the type of parents who over-book our kids we may be too busy to participate with them on a consistent basis. If we find that we are giving them what they want because we feel bad that we missed a game, this makes the relationship tainted. We are not in a guilt based economy and it is not healthy be remunerating your child with toys, parties or a lack of boundaries. We do what we do to survive and sometimes that means we have to work hard and miss out on some things. Make your peace with what you have to do at work and eliminate any activity that needlessly keeps you away from your family. Also, ask yourself every time you give your child something; ‘why?’

3. Who’s the boss?: In Marriage and Family Therapy we have a theory based on Salvadore Minuchin’s Structural Family Therapy where we map out the hierarchy of a family. A healthy family system would have the following hierarchy: Husband and Wife on top, Mom and Dad under them, kids on the bottom. When we allow kids to make decisions for the family, we disrupt the structure of a family. If we stop making decisions and defer to the desires of our children, our children will fill the vacuum and in turn sacrifice the safety of having the two layers of power and responsibility above them removed. This occurs more often than you think. This hurts a child and it will detrimentally affect their relationships.

4. My problems are my problems: Many parents pass down their issues to their children because they do not take the time to deal or even identify their own problems. If you have a bad relationship with your Dad figure it out before you replay it with your child. If you have a fear of heights deal with it before you find your child frozen on a ladder. Your children are taking in everything about you; the good, the bad and the issues. Minimize the bad, temper the issues and maximize the good. Our job is to train them to take on the world; not take on the mantle of our own demons.

5. Parenting from Perfection: If all parents learned the following, we would all be so much happier. Here is the wisdom of the ages and the sooner you accept and embrace it, the happier you will be: NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO YOU ARE GOING TO SCREW UP YOUR KID.

The trick of parenting is to minimize the damage. Keep your word. Tell them they are loved. Tell them you are proud of them. Tell them they are amazing creatures and you are honored to be part of their lives. Let them be independent but with an invisible tether to pull them back in case of danger.

sharebookmarx Top 5 things we do to mess up our kids

Psychological Foreplay

Let's Talk About Masturbation

Top 5 things we do to mess up our kids

Discount Codes

Sites We Like

Search