While it can be very painful to feel poorly matched sexually with your lover, many people are quick to claim poor sexual compatibility. Compatibility is not the same as mismatched libidos, which is about appetite for sex rather than what turns you on. Sexual compatibility has a lot more to do with people’s willingness to make it work than with some mystical matching criteria.
There are obvious rule-outs to compatibility, however. If one of you is monogamous and the other is not, if one of you is an exhibitionist and the other not, if you’re gay dating someone of the opposite sex, or if one of you is dominant and the other is not submissive (in BDSM terms): those pairings are not compatible…unless you’re exploring.
But even challenging pairings can work if both lovers want it to. If she wants more sex than he does. Or if he’s turned on by cross-dressing and she’s not into that, together they can find a way for him to express that side of himself without involving her. With compassion and tolerance there’s room for both lovers to get what they want.
When someone complains that their lover is not sexually compatible with them, it often means that they are not communicating clearly with each other. That’s not about incompatibility – it’s about communication and willingness to be vulnerable. What makes sex good is how much of your Self you put into it, how you show up.
And being true to yourself, being in Erotic Integrity®, can help you get clear about your sexual compatibility with your lover. But don’t discount them as incompatible until you’ve taken a thorough look at yourself and what limitations you might be choosing.
And…sometimes couples are just not a good fit. Sex therapy can help you sort that out and decide compassionately where you want to go from there.
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