CARNAL NATION

Here's what Tom Robbins, a writer very influential to my sexual development, has to say on the subject in his Still Life with Woodpecker:

Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.

Who knows how to make love stay?

Tell love you are going to the Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay.

Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.

Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.

Though maybe, based on the phrasing of your question, you already know this version. In which case I say: keep having hot sex and make time for it; spend more time with your partner than your computer or tv; stay flexible to change; and take good physical and emotional care of yourself. 

You could also follow bell hook's practice of loving from her All About Love: New Visions: "A combination of care, commitment, trust, knowledge, responsibility and respect." Make love rituals together, breathe together, and let the exciting sweetness you're experiencing now fill its own space. Practice loving in mundane activities, with yourself and your partner and all the folks in the world you can muster it for. Talk to people you know whose relationships you admire—try to find at least 5—and ask them about keeping love around. You're just at the beginning here, and everything, including sexuality, ebbs and flows. Let the future figure itself out. Just do the love or the lover right in front of you as best you can, right now.

 

Ahhh... I've seen and heard and, yeah, even experienced this before... You're in that wonderful, sweet limerant "new" space. All the cylinders are hitting... Everything is amazing sweetness and hot go-go-go... And you're feeling them and they're feeling you... And you're talking things out... And the sex is just like, KABLOOIE! And you understand each other and finish each others sentences and... You're waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"This can't possibly last" is what you're thinking, right? Yeah, I can hear you. Don't sweat it though... that's just how it goes. Moreover, you can keep this going and going and going... for as long as it's supposed to go.

Hold on, don't get upset there... I'm not doomsaying here—just trying to give you a little perspective that you might not have. I have a couple suggestions that might help you keep it going and good (whatever 'going and good' is).

The first one is: Remember that your partner is on your team. That seems easy enough, right? You would be surprised how many people are tripped up on this. I'm not sure how "new" your relationship is, but I'm gonna guess that it is new enough for you to not have had a fight yet—about anything. Remembering to adhere to some basic notions of fairness, meaning getting a hold on whether or not you're always on the same floor of conversation so to speak, is key. The First Big Fight seems so shitty, scary, and awful when you have it. It's not just the fight, but the idea that you even had one can really get to you, crashing that cloud you’re on ("How could this happen to us?"). The remembering-we-are-teammates thing now becomes important—queer or straight, vanilla or kinky and so on.

It might seem that engaging your fair fightin' skills would be an intuitive thing when you're in the scrum with somebody you got the flaming sticky hots for, but it's not. It's a skill set that most folks have to learn, remind themselves of, and continually hone. Honest, respectfully intense disagreement is something that can strengthen a relationship because it can make a partner feel safe in letting you know what's going on, what they need, or what isn't working and vice versa... It also tends to let the Make-Up Sex be a reward for a job well done as opposed to a band-aid for a problem that's not getting worked on in the relating.

This leads to my second idea of… Checking in with each other. What I mean is what do you want to grow together? It might seem like I’m simply asking you your own question, but It’s a little more complicated than that. I’m saying so because what often ends up happening to people is they have many conversations they think are “open” but actually involve tons of presumptions. Asking questions of each other aloud, even if they seem clumsy or embarrassing, is a good way to get to the nuts and nails of what you have, especially if sex is a huge, important, and special part of your relating and connecting. This is especially good if kink is involved, as people’s relationships and notions of their relationships to their relative “kinkyness” can change, recede, deepen, or move laterally with time, age, experience, and the like.

And while we’re on the age and experience thing as a part of growing together, thinking about what these things may or may not mean for your hot sex life is really important.  Bodies change over time. Health and /or physical ability can change. Politics change. Available time and energy can be changed by factors not under your control. Will you still always be hitting on all the same aforementioned cylinders at the same time in five years? Could be.

However, understanding and accepting the possibility of the reality that you may not always relate in the exact same ways will help you in making decisions around how you can continue to support and strengthen your relationship. Acceptance of the possibility, as opposed to resignation to the inevitability, of change(s) will give you the opportunity to make more honest and holistic decisions about how you navigate your ongoing connection in the long term.

Couples frequently ask me about how to keep the passion alive, or how to rekindle it when it dies. I think there are a lot of factors at play that can cause "bed death." Sadly, I don't know any foolproof cure, but there are some remedies that often can make a huge difference.

It seems paradoxical to me that prolonged intimate contact often builds walls between us. It's as if, as we learn about each other at a deep level, we begin to expect our partner to just know what we want and desire. So we actually communicate less.

One way to make love stay is to keep that communication going. Make time to talk about your hopes, fears, upsets, hurts, joys, and sorrows. Make time to listen to each other. I'm not talking about that half-hearted, half-attentive, half-open substitute we do for listening when the newness wears off. I’m talking about real, intimate, caring, heart-opened, empathetic listening, like we did when we were in the throes of NRE (New Relationship Energy).

As important as talk is, in my opinion, touch is at least as important as talk. Keeping the flame of passion alive is a lot like how Boy Scouts start a fire—only instead of sticks you rub two people together. And if you've ever started a fire by rubbing sticks together, then you know it takes time, intention, technique, and practice.  So too with lovers.

Make a habit of setting aside time for love-making, and putting your naked bodies together. Include deep and meaningful conversation. Keep exploring new and exciting kinks. Keep a sense of humor and keep having fun.