Your prospects for a great sex life with your long-term partner
“When you have the best and tastiest ingredients, you can cook very simply and the food will be extraordinary because it tastes like what it is.”
-Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse restaurant
One of the biggest misconceptions out there has to do with whether sex improves or declines in a committed relationship, and what it takes to have a great love life long-term.
Here’s an analogy. Let’s say that the two of you have a standing dinner date of cooking and enjoying a meal together, a couple times a week. And let’s say you’re more or less consistent about it over a number of years — gradually improving on your favorite dishes, making recipes your own, learning the nuances of this or that herb, allowing for your tastes to change, cultivating your collaborative flow in the kitchen, mastering a particular cooking technique or cuisine, skillfully combining flavors, etc.
(And deepening your connection, your capacity to savor a good meal, your presence with each other, your mutual love, communication skills, intimacy, appreciation, generosity, sensuality, etc.)
Over time, with little effort or drama, your ritual ripens and evolves to be a consistently profound shared experience. That becomes the norm. Your little home-cooked meal together rivals all but the very best restaurant experience.
Well your sex life can follow a similar path, if you both want it to.
I love the Alice Waters quote above. She helped pioneer what we now call California Cuisine, an approach that emphasizes fresh, locally sourced ingredients and seasonally driven menus. Her dishes were nearly all organic by default because she would go directly to the local growers and farmer’s markets, when her peers relied on the restaurant supply chains. Her menus changed daily based on whatever had just been harvested at its peak.
Chez Panisse quickly garnered awards, a Michelin star, and a “Best Restaurant in America” nod from Gourmet magazine.
The quote, taken from her book “The Art of Simple Food,” is an apt metaphor for relationships.
When I’m working with a couple, the simplest of shifts in how they relate with each other elevate the relationship to a superlative experience.
They are continually discovering, much to their surprise, that they have—or rather they are—the exact right ingredients to build a profoundly gratifying and fulfilling relationship. Nothing is forced or externally imposed.
Together they’re learning how to prepare a delicious relationship based on who they naturally are as human beings.
A relationship that is extraordinary because it tastes like what it is.
And there’s no reason why they can’t continue to enjoy a sensual life together that keeps evolving, ripening, and improving with age.
Copyright © 2018 by Ken Blackman. All rights reserved.
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About the author:
Ken’s passion topic these days is how women’s empowerment intersects with intimate coupledom. A former Apple software engineer turned international sex and intimacy educator turned relationship coach, Ken is in his 20th year helping couples co-create, bond, have great sex, thrive, and live happily ever after. His work has garnered mentions in Business Insider, Playboy, Cosmo, Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour series and elsewhere. Find out more at kenblackman.com.
