Reader Question: Sex Just Doesn’t Feel Intimate to Me

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Sometimes past experiences or shame makes us distance ourselves from sex

It’s hard to know what exactly is going on with this particular woman, but I know that many, many of you could have written that letter, for one simple reason.

It’s hard to see sex as intimate when you have a negative view of sex. And many of us have negative views of sex for very good reasons.

Maybe you were abused as a child. Maybe you grew up in the purity culture which talked about sex with such shameful language. Maybe you were promiscuous and you havesexual baggage that is tainting everything.

So how do we get beyond that? We have to see the true beauty in sex that is part of God’s design. Two posts that may help you with that:

• Don’t settle for a dead sex life (even if you can’t picture it any differently now)
• How sex can be both hot and holy at the same time (and how it’s actually intimacy that makes the sex more passionate)

There’s another aspect to this, though:

Sometimes we have such a hard time with vulnerability that we’re not able to let go during sex

And that’s really the key to passion! I’d suggest reading this post on why it’s often hard for women to give themselves over during sex. It’s part of the Sizzling Summer Sex Series, and if you click on the links there to other posts, I think you’ll find those really help you.

Other times the sex seems great, but we’re emotionally distancing ourselves

Here’s another phenomenon that might be happening in this woman’s marriage: The sex may SEEM great, but really she’s not emotionally present. She has to distance herself from her husband and fantasize in order to get aroused (I deal with this in chapters 7 & 8 too!). So he may think they have great sex, but really they’re missing out on the true connection.

That’s called dissociation, and I talk about how to not dissociate during sex here. As for what to tell your husband if this is the case, I’d say the main thing is to focus on how we can make sex more emotionally intimate and how you can make sure your brain is staying put (in other words, concentrating on your husband!). I’d talk to him about that, rather than saying something like “we’ve been doing it wrong for 20 years”. Instead, say something like, “I want to feel even closer to you. Can you help me with this?” (And again, the book talks about how).

Sex is supposed to make marriage feel more intimate. But what if that just doesn't compute to you?CLICK TO TWEET

What happens if we DON’T deal with this?

One thing I always say during my Girl Talk (the event where I come to a church or women’s group and talk about sex and marriage) is that while there’s nothing wrong with having issues with sex, there is a whole lot wrong with refusing to work on those issues. All of us have issues with something, and sex is a natural one to struggle with because it’s so highly personal and vulnerable.

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So if you could have written that letter, please click through to the links that sound like they apply to you and start reading (you’ll likely find even more links and can go on a little bit of a rabbit trail!). Or even better, pick up The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex which covers all of this, and read it with excitement that you can start seeing sex differently. If God made something to be this amazing, you really don’t want to miss out on it! So don’t. Make it into the best research project you’ll ever do.

Check out The Good Girl’s Guide here!

Here’s why I’m so passionate about experiencing real intimacy during sex

If you’re still hesitating, and wondering if you could ever see sex as something good, here’s the sad truth: When we pull back from sex, we inevitably end up pulling back from our husbands, even if we love them more than anything.

When we pull back from sex, we inevitably end up pulling back from our husbands, too.CLICK TO TWEET

I’d ask you to read this letter that I received from a husband of a wife who doesn’t see sex as important:

We’ve been married for over a decade, have amazing children and a great extended family. One thing that has always seemed to lack in our marriage (which has continued to decline even more since adding kids to the mix) is our sex life. While I understand that different people have different levels of drive, having sex once every 2-3 months leaves me feeling unsatisfied and alone. Additionally, when we actually do have sex, it often feels like it’s my wife just doing it out of duty, not really out of enjoyment. If I try to do it more “for her,” typically it ends up being me trying to do different things to give her pleasure, her telling me she doesn’t want that and trying to just move on – making me feel like she just wants to get it over with. Even the way she kisses me before and during feels less than romantic and passionate. All this leaves me feeling like either a) I’m not “good enough” to make it worth her time, b) I’m not attractive enough to interest her, or she just doesn’t have any interest period. She will tell me that none of those are the case, that her mind is often into it, her body isn’t, or the anti-anxiety medication she’s on just keeps her from getting in the mood. I have shown her some of your articles in the past and, at one point, she read one, said she spent some time thinking about it a lot, which did lead to us having a night we still discuss fondly. But, she hasn’t really read anything since then. The times I have brought things up in the past, it ends up becoming a, “Well, I’m like this because you do that.” The “that” is often that I am too timid or something similar, which stems from my feeling like she’s not interested and I’m asking her to do something she doesn’t want to. I feel it’s become a strain on our marriage and it makes me feel so distant from her – basically feeling like we’re roommates raising two kids together, instead of a married couple. What can I do to let her see how important this is?

Can you hear the pain in his letter? Can you understand how much this is hurting their marriage? Can you picture what the family life will be for those kids as they grow up (assuming that those kids’ welfare is her main priority?) Is she really getting what she ultimately wants out of life?

I have been in the place where sex is simply an obligation.

When we first got married, I had no drive, sex hurt, and it just was so awkward. The more Keith wanted sex, the more I felt like he didn’t really love me for me–only what I could do for him. It was a huge big mess.

And the only way out of that was this realization:

If God made sex to be amazing, and if sex is something that can make us feel super intimate, then why would I want to miss out on that? I had better figure this out!

So I want to try to help this man.

I do have two posts that men can show to their wives that can help wives understand how husbands feel.

I’d suggest showing her those posts! (And if you’re a woman reading this, those posts will help you understand his perspective, too!)

 Ladies, most of us misunderstand our sex drives.

Because we may not have a physical need for sex in the same way as our husbands do, we assume that we just aren’t into it. We figure that he is somehow a lesser being because he needs it so much, rather than being able to concentrate on the really important things of life that have to get done (all the things that go into running a house; all the things that go into parenting). We care for everyone else; he’s just interested in getting his own needs met, and it’s all just a big hassle.

I get it. I know a lot of women feel that way.

But let me tell  you something: All you have to do to experience amazing passion is to STOP waiting for your body to be in the mood and to START telling your body that it’s time to be in the mood!

Want Great Sex? STOP waiting for your body to be in the mood & TELL your body it's in the mood!CLICK TO TWEET

YOU hold the key to your libido. YOU can actually ramp up your libido by thinking of sex differently! YOU can make sex awesome in your marriage, if you decide to take that mental leap.

And it honestly is worth it.

If you can’t see how that can happen, I’d invite you to check out my Boost Your Libido course. This 10-video online course takes you step-by-step through the different aspects of libido for women, and even after the first lesson you’ll see some real changes!

You don’t want your husband to be able to write that letter, not when you were made for so much more! So if you’re having real difficulty ever picturing how sex can be intimate, check out the course. You really can get on the road to a better sex life–and to much more intimacy in your marriage!

13 Dumb Things Smart People Believe About Marriage

Lots of people believe a lot of dumb things about marriage!

Recently I asked on Facebook, “what are some dumb things people believe about marriage?”, and tons of you replied! (Thank you so much! It makes it much easier to write my posts when you all give me the ideas!  ). Think of this post, then, as a collaborative effort between all of you and me.

I was going to make it a top 10 Tuesday post, but I had so many answers I decided to enlarge it to 13 dumb things! So here we go:

13 Dumb Things Smart People Believe about Marriage:

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1. Marriage is a lot of hard work

We hear tons of pessimistic statements about marriage out there that talk about it as if it’s always going to be one hard slog that you have to get used to. But that’s not necessarily true. One woman said:

I’ve been married 12 years, and people don’t believe me when I say it’s one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. I definitely don’t fit the “marriage is hard” crowd. Of course we fight and argue, but so did I with my sisters growing up, but do you ever hear “being a sibling is so hard. It takes a lot of work.” No, you don’t. Don’t let what others say keep you from wanting to get married. It’s mostly fun!

What I found is that marriage WAS hard work at the beginning, because you had to get used to new habits. But once those habits become natural, it can stop being hard work. That doesn’t mean that for everyone marriage feels fun and easy; some people are married to those with difficult personalities. But on the whole, if we each put in effort to learn new habits, marriage can be amazing!

2. Marriage shouldn’t be any work

While lots of people believe that marriage will always be work, some believe it shouldn’t feel like work, or else it’s not real love. One woman wrote:

People believe that the honey moon never ends. My niece thinks is should always be gifts flowers no arguments and telling her how great she is, she refuses to believe that is a fantastic lie.

The key to marriage eventually feeling easy is learning how to think of the other person until it becomes natural. Here’s how one woman summed it up:

I’ve been married 21 years. It’s not hard…life is so much better and so much easier being married than it was being single (and I thought single life was good). With that said …no taking for granted. Say thank you, please, I love you. Ask yourself what can you do to make your spouse’s life better today…and do it.

Exactly! And that shouldn’t feel like work. If simply doing kind things for your spouse feels like work, the issue is not with marriage. The issue is with selfishness. (Now, if you have a big problem you’re working through, that’s different. But on the whole, thinking of someone else shouldn’t be work!)

3. Marriage is all downhill from here

This was a common response! One woman wrote:

Some seem to believe that every marriage is brutal work, full of selfishness, bickering and serious sex issues.

Yep. Not only is marriage a ton of work, but it’s also miserable.

People believe that the longer you’re married the more problems you have or the farther apart you’ll be. Friends have asked me if we have a lot of arguments yet. I said we didn’t, and their reply is, “Just wait! That time will come!”

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Actually, in the surveys I did for The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, I found that in the sex department, at least, the best years in marriage are 16-24. They’re long after the honeymoon years; long after the kids are all sleeping through the night. It’s after you’ve spent a decade and a half with this man, and you’re able to be super vulnerable. And that’s when things often start to really work!

Invest at the beginning of marriage, and then marriage will feel easier, not harder, with time.CLICK TO TWEET

4. There’s only one correct way to divide up the chores and the work

We are all different personalities, with different giftings. We all have different callings on our lives. And so it’s hardly surprising that families will look different.

However, we have this idea that marriage should only be done one way. Maybe all wives should be stay at home moms–and stay at home moms should also do all of the housework. Maybe people believe that all wives should work. Or maybe we believe that the husband must always earn the majority of the income, or that housework must always be split 50/50.

When we try to chase after a certain model of marriage rather than trying to figure out what our particular partnership will look like, we inevitably feel resentment, because we’re trying to fit into a mold that perhaps wasn’t meant for us.

5. Women must empower men to make all the decisions

That’s another huge belief that kept popping up! People believe that submission in marriage means that his desires matter while hers don’t (Hint: the belief that her feelings don’t matter will doom a marriage). 

I came into marriage having been taught to submit in every way to my husband. I was so paranoid of getting out of my place that I didn’t even want to give him my opinion on which restaurant to choose when we went out to eat. It didn’t take long for me to discover he didn’t want a cheerfully smiling puppet. He wanted a WOMAN and teammate!

And what happens if women do disregard their feelings and only care about men’s? It’s like this attitude:

Whatever your husbands asks for ( sexually or any other way ), he shall get it. So I’ve seen many marriages falling apart because of this “commandment”.

The key to loving someone is wanting the best for them. What is best is that people learn to compromise and to love. If someone is learning that their feelings are the only ones that matter, then they will not be loving. They can easily become cruel. A great marriage needs two people who learn to love and cherish each other. If we make our life about primarily doing whatever a spouse wants, without consideration of the impact of that on others or on the kingdom, that’s not loving. That’s idolatry. 

6. Men need mostly respect while women need mostly love

Similarly, this one was mentioned a number of times. The truth is that you cannot have respect without love, and you cannot have love without respect, and for most people, they are interchangeable. 

You cannot have respect without love, or love without respect. Most people find them interchangeable.CLICK TO TWEET

There’s a more fundamental problem with this belief system, though, in that it can make women responsible for how men feel and act. If he is angry, it’s because she’s not respecting him. If he is weak, it’s because she’s not respecting him. And if he does anything wrong that requires confrontation–well, she can’t do that because that wouldn’t be respectful.

As I explained in 10 signs that you’re respecting your husband too much, there is such a thing as “tough love”. If someone is acting badly, you can enact boundaries and still be loving, because it is not loving to enable someone to continue in sin. However, there is no equivalent of “tough respect”. So while a husband can deal with a wife who is damaging the marriage, a woman has no way of dealing with a husband who is damaging the marriage. And that’s not safe.

How about this? Let’s both love and respect each other. That will give us a great marriage!

7. Marriage will change him into a good person

Marriage does not make everything better; marriage actually exacerbates any problems that are already there, because now the person doesn’t have to impress you anymore. And as you live day in and day out together, the little things will start to add up.

Marriage will not suddenly make a guy quit porn, get a job, handle finances well, stop drinking so much, or stop playing video games so much. It will likely make him do all of those things more.

8. The success of my marriage is all about finding the right person

As someone said:

That there is one “soul mate” for everyone and when the easy peasy love bubble wears off, they use it as an excuse and find their next “soul mate” and say they must have been mistaken.

Unhappiness does not mean that you’ve married the wrong person. It just means that you have to figure out how to love each other better and communicate better. If we have this idea that one person can make me happy, then it’s easy to believe that you just haven’t found that person yet.

Here’s a better attitude:

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9. As long as you marry a Christian, the marriage will be fine

That being said, both of you being Christian is not a panacea for all problems. One woman said the biggest myth is this:

People believe that ‘compatibility’ is a myth, and as long as you’re both Christian everything will be hunky-dory. Yeah, if you’re 100% committed to making a long term relationship work with someone who it will be a constant struggle to live with it *is* possible, but why would you choose that from the start? Maybe I’m underselling myself but if our baseline wasn’t *easy* I don’t know how we would have gotten through the tough times.

I agree! And our idea of what a “Christian” is can be warped, too. If someone isn’t demonstrating the fruits of the Spirit, even if they can quote Scripture, they likely aren’t a good spouse. Yes, choose a believer–but make sure that believer is someone who is easy to be with because you both care for and are kind to one another. 

10. My husband can make me happy

No, he can’t. He can be a huge part of the happiness in your life, but he can’t be responsible for your feelings. And if you make him responsible for your happiness, it’s even less likely that you’ll find that happiness.

I wrote more about this one here: My husband can’t make me happy.

11. The kids are more important than the marriage

Here’s an interesting one that people don’t necessarily believe, but tons of people practice. People may say that they believe that the marriage comes first, but in practice, many spouses only get the leftover energy or the leftover affection or the leftover conversation.

Yes, kids need you, and they are exhausting. But a child’s biggest need is for his or her parents to love each other. Give that child stability and they will thrive. So the best gift you can give your child is the parents’ awesome marriage!

Once you're parents your marriage matters MORE, not LESS, because now other people are counting on you!CLICK TO TWEET

12. Don’t go to bed mad!

The Bible does say we aren’t to let the sun go down on your anger. But if you’re up at 2:00 a.m. fighting, the sun has already gone down. Maybe it’s better to get some sleep so you have a clear head in the morning!

I used to believe this. It took me many years to realise that sometimes my husband needs to go into his cave (metaphorically speaking) for his anger/hurt/frustration to subside and only then can we work through whatever particular issue we are having at that time.

Decide that this issue isn’t bigger than your marriage, and certainly make a commitment to revisit it. But not everything has to be solved before you go to sleep!

13. Divorce is never, ever an option

Yes, marriage is sacred. But God does not love the marriage more than the people in the marriage. And sometimes marriages do have to end.

Some things are unforgivable and a total deal breaker. Sometimes you must leave to save yourself.

More on when divorce may be necessary here.

But I want to end on a lighthearted note, with this one.

What dumb things do we often believe about marriage?

That your wife won’t throw cold water on you in the shower. Love being married. Never a dull moment.

I hope that’s what you find, too!

If Your Girl is Bored, Change These 6 Things

All right, I know I said no more relationship stuff for a while so we could recover from that big relationship series binge, but I'm sitting here after missing my flight (I should be somewhere over the Pacific right now), going through some of the past month or so's posts, and I see I also said I'd try to get some posts up regarding earlier comments, and... well...

Back in early August, Anonymous commented on the post on how to prevent cheating, saying:

“Could you write about what you mentioned, the whole making a girl feel TOO secure?”

Okay - here's one more on relationships for now. Just think of it as an expansion pack to the relationship series!

Having a girl start feeling too secure with you is a BIG problem in any kind of relationship. Big.

It's the reason why girls start treating guys disrespectfully 9 times out of 10.

And, it's the reason why a girl is bored in her relationship 10 times out of 10.

That's right - not just most of the time on that last. But, EVERY time!

But wait, you say - Walt Disney taught me to make women feel safe and secure! Isn't that what they want?

Actually... no. Everyone takes away the message of, "Protect her and make her feel safe!" from the movies most of the time... and they get it all wrong.

Because there's something else happening in those movies too - another reason why girls swoon for Prince Charming, and it isn't his trust fund.

But everybody misses that part... and everybody ends up with his own bored girl as a result.

Well, here's how to get yourself back in line with what women actually want.

ONCE UPON A TIME

If you've ever spent time suffering as a nice guy, you've doubtless heard women bemoaning their poor fortune at always ending up with bad boys instead of knights in shining armor.

The same idea strikes every single nice guy who's ever lived: "I will save HER!"

And off into the sunset he rides, trying to sweep her off her feet... as boring-ly as he possibly can.

You don't hear Prince Charming tell Cinderella in a timid voice, "Cindy, I really like you."

You don't see Simba blushing and pawing at the dirt and bashfully confessing to Nala that he's had a crush on her since they were lion cubs.

You don't catch Prince Phillip texting Sleeping Beauty that it'd be really nice if they could grab an ice cream sometime.

No!

These guys in Disney stories DO give security to women... but they don't do it like a pushover nice guy.

They're doing something else.

But before we explore what THAT is, I want to talk about security in general: what is it, why is it important, and why don't you just ditch it altogether if there's a risk of ending up in a situation where a girl is bored with you because of it?

SECURITY IN A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP

Sometime back, I formulated a model of relationships to be a sister model to the VAC (Value-Attainability-Compliance) model of attraction put forth by Sebastian Drake and Vin DiCarlo in the mid-2000s. My relationship model I called GISS, one letter standing for each of the four components, and it picked up in relationships where VAC broke down; anyway, the final component of GISS was one called "Security."

And too much of this thing called security can lead to girls being really, really, bored.

Shoot-yourself-in-the-head-bored, even.

But what is it, and why's it have that effect?

(note on GISS and security: the GISS model is something different from the four pillars of relationships Ricardus talks about in "How to Build a Relationship;" his focus there is more on the emotional and mental side of things, while the focus of GISS is more on the technical and mechanical components of a relationship)

"Security," as I'm defining it for our purposes here, is how certain or uncertain a woman feels about the stability of her relationship.

In other words, if she thinks you MIGHT JUST:

• Cheat on her
• Dump her
• Hurt her
• Do bad things to her

... on a moment's notice, security is very low.

Conversely, if she thinks you would NEVER do any of those things, then security is very high.

I've come to believe that a balanced amount of security is an unbreakable necessary component of relationships, and that the more out of balance it is, the more it leads to extreme (and bad) scenarios:

1. When security is too LOW, a girl is neurotic and crazy and on edge.
2. When security is too HIGH, a girl is bored and uninterested and unengaged.

Now, here's the thing about security:

It's on a pendulum, and when one person's security goes up, the other goes DOWN.

In fact, you could very easily make the argument that security is the component of relationships that underlies the book The Passion Trap, which Ricardus mentions so often here.

This is because the more secure one person feels, the less secure he or she begins acting toward the partner.

The most clingy girlfriends I've ever had were the ones who thought they were going to lose me at any moment.

So what's it mean if a girl is bored with you then?

Well, if it isn't already obvious... it means she feels like you're TOO SECURE.

WHY SLEEPING BEAUTY JOLTED AWAKE

... it wasn't because Prince Phillip brought her roses.

Rather, it was because he came dashing to her rescue, hacking his way through the brambles, climbing the mountain, and slaying the evil sorceress / dragon.

Sure, she felt like, "Here's a guy who can really keep me safe."

But she ALSO felt like, "Here's a guy who's a real MAN."

That's the part the nice guys keep leaving out.

If a woman's got to choose, she'll choose a man who's a man but won't make her safe over a man who can make her safe but isn't a man (so far as she's concerned).

And most guys, they're only good at one or the other.

They're nice guys (safe but not manly) or jerks (manly but not safe).

Prince Phillip, on the other hand, is BOTH.

Jerks (manly, unsafe men) give women that jolt of adrenaline that comes from being around a real man, but push women into neurosis with their lack of safety. Girls break up with jerks in fits of anger, vengeance, and mild insanity, trying to "get back" at them or show them they don't need them.

The consequences of being too low in security for too long.

Nice guys (safe, unmanly men), though, give women that warm fuzzy feeling of safety and reliability that comes from being around a guy who'll never leave them, but push women into boredom with their lack of grizzled manliness. Girls break up with nice guys in fits of boredom, indifference, and mild disgust, trying to "feel alive" again or "find themselves" or figure out what is they want - because they know it isn't the nice guys.

Where the heroes in Disney films rate - and indeed, the lead male role in most (female-targeted) romantic comedies - is as balanced: there's enough security that a girl feels kind of safe, but not so much that a girl is bored.

And, the guy's exciting. He's strong, he's powerful, he's attractive to women. He's everything a girl could want.

And he's what women have been trained by TV and the movies to want... ever since they learned how to pick up the remote control.

What that means for you is, if you've been focused primarily on providing more and more security in a relationship for your girl, and not on giving her the jolts of insecurity and danger and excitement that a powerful man provides, you've been getting it all wrong.

IF YOUR GIRL IS BORED, CHANGE THESE

Bored girl on your hands? Never fear - you're not a lost cause yet.

After all - this site is here.

Because while she may be shaking her head now, wondering how she ended up with such a boring, overly-secure guy, remember that this is essentially the dynamic from that book The Passion Trap - and it can flip, surprisingly easy.

The first thing you need to focus on if you start running into the scenario where you've got too much security going on is mixing things up a little - you know: introduce a little uncertainty and excitement into the recipe you've been running off of.

Now, disclaimer: this is the part of the post where we start talking about introducing actual strategy into your relationship. A lot of people get upset about this, because they think they should just follow your emotions. But as you've seen both Ricardus and I mention on here time and again, that strategy only works when your emotions are right.

And you wouldn't be in a too-high-security position if they were.

That out of the way though, here are the 6 things you need to do if you want to move from nice, safe guy to Prince Phillip and get your Sleeping Beauty to jolt herself back to alertness (and attraction to you):

1. Kill the promises. Safe guys live on the backs of their promises. "I'll never leave you." "I'll love you forever." "I'll always be there for you." Every time you make a promise, you communicate that you're scrambling to please - and you become ever more secure (unless you start violating those promises, which lands you at the opposite end of the spectrum, also not good), and ever more boring.
2. Add some uncertainty. The opposite of a promise, admitting uncertainty is both a breath of fresh air ("Wow! He's NOT telling me what I want to hear just for the sake of keeping me happy!" she thinks) while at the same time communicating that you're a man who might actually not be there forever... unlike all the other men, who promise until their breaths run out. "Nothing in life is certain," you can tell her, "and I don't know if I'll always be able to give you what I can now. But I can tell you I'll try my hardest to always be honest with you."
3. Throw in a pinch of intrigue. What happens when most people first meet, start dating, or get into a relationship? Why... if you're like MOST guys, you go whole hog and tell the girl everything she could ever possibly want to know about you and more! And at that point... all the romance has gone out of you.
   My recommendation? Always keep a little back, a little more for her to discover, and always be working on SOMETHING she doesn't fully know about. Why? So you can share it with her later. Just think how she'll feel if she discovers something - even something little - that's neat and interesting about you 6 months into dating you that she didn't know before. And then she learns something ELSE a year in. And something further two years after that. She'll come to see you as a bottomless well of hidden and fascinating secrets- and you'll never cease to interest her.
4. NEVER mock your own prowess as a man. I've heard a few friends joke about this with their girlfriends: "Be careful, I might just go get another girl tonight!" By talking about this in a jokey way, these guys singlehandedly undermine their girlfriends' impression of their desirability to other women by playing it off as if the very idea of them finding another girl is laughable. Don't shoot yourself in the foot like this. I think these guys think they're reassuring their girlfriends with this... instead, they're just cratering their desirability and shooting their security and boring-factor sky high (unless she's very insecure or very mistrustful of you and actually thinks you might be serious).
5. Instead, be oblique about it. Gauge this one based on where she is with security. The more she needs security from you, the more you'll want to reassure her. But when a girl is bored with you, or close to it, you'll want to pique here interest by hinting that "anything is possible" so she doesn't know for SURE. For instance... she asks you if you've been with any other girls since the two of you started dating, and you say, "Babe... I would never do that," in a tone that sounds just slightly insincere. And now she wonders... (again, don't do this with girls who are feeling insecure; you'll drive them to neurosis. Only for girls who are a little bored or starting to feel in control of the relationship).
6. And... show a little disdain for the poor sops you see in movies. Here's the guy, chasing after some girl who's dating one string of losers after another, and he's doing everything he can to get her... egad! "This movie is driving me nuts," you might say to your girl, "I don't understand why this guy just doesn't go GET ANOTHER GIRL!" And she'll reply that she thinks it's sweet that he's so into her... and you'll reply that it's madness. And then ask her if she realistically thinks any of her nice guy guy-friends who are chasing after HER have any chance of landing her at any point in the future. She'll laugh... and then realize you're dead on.

These 6 things alone can and will strongly remedy any "bored girl" situations you end up with on your hands, though the longer you've been in that situation with her being bored, unless you have any major occurances that act to reshape her opinions of you, the longer it'll take to remedy.

But better yet, to save yourself a pound of cure (or, an inordinate amount of time altering your girl's set beliefs about you, her, and your relationship), do these from the start.

Of course, if you only do these, and don't do anything to increase her security too, then you'll be in danger of ending up in the realm of insecurity-induced neurosis, and that's a whole 'nother beast altogether!

See you again soon.

Chase