Great Sex Doesn't Guarantee You A Great Relationship (Sorry!)

By David Soto Jr.

Of all the insecurities I have, love making is not one of them.

Now that I think about it, maybe it is. But, it’s one of the things that I’m the least insecure about. I fancy myself a good lover. I mean there are a few women out there that would disagree but hey, 80/20 right?

So, why make this self-proclamation that I am good in bed? Because it doesn’t mean shit. That’s why!

In fact, it may have made my life worse. For decades I have equated great sex with my soulmate. Do you know how many soulmates I have had? It’s romanticized in books and movies. The couples hot passionate love lead to a long happy life together? I even put this bullshit in my novel. “They’re passion is one of the things that kept them together.”

What a crock of shit.

Here is a common cycle that has happened in my life over and over and over again: I meet a girl, we have sex, the sex is great, we fall in love, I reveal the real me, the real me is fucked up, she leaves. Sometimes, I left to preempt her leaving.

It’s time for me to realize that I’m 42 and single and something that I am doing is not working. (You have to understand that I have an unpublished article written entitled something to the effect of, “Why nothing matters if you are a good lover.” Seriously, this was just a few months ago. When am I going to be wise enough to stop being stupid?).

There is a lot potential for heartache with falling in love with someone before you see the real them.

When a couple quickly jumps into bed, and the sex is good, they can’t see their partner for who they are. They may or may not be in love, but they are definitely infatuated. As the infatuation fades what’s left standing there is the actual person they are in love with. A person they hardly know and may not even like.

Sometimes, even though newness of it is gone, the sex may still be pretty good. Couples end up getting into fights realizing they aren’t happy with their partner for who they truly are but then they have some great sex (makeup sex!) and forget about it all for a while.

Maybe the passion doesn’t go away. There will come a time it’s no longer a priority. There is work and the kids and one’s own personal shit to work through. Eventually, we’ll have to deal with the person who is there in between the bouts of passion. Passion will get you the kids but not what’s going make a happy family or what’s going to make us good parents. “My daddy is an asshole but mommy says he’s dynamite in the sack, so I guess it’s ok.”

Another thing is, sometimes only one of the two, fall in love. Many many times I have gotten into a physical relationship with a woman where this happened. Typically, we got physical on the first or second date. The sex would be good, and our dates turned more into sexual meetings. Ugh, fine, booty calls! Eventually, she would develop feelings and hope that it would turn into a real relationship.

It never did. I never really liked the person who wanted the relationship. I did, however, like the person with whom I was having sex. What an asshole. I have kept women hanging on by a thread for years at a time. The longest was for six years. She, by the way, also thought that passion was an indicator of a good relationship, so she passed up many potential mates over the years because there wasn’t passion between them as there was between us. Karma is a bitch, though, and one day the reverse happened to me. The experience has kept me in check ever since. (I go into full detail about her in an upcoming book entitled The Second Time I Lost My Virginity and Other Love Stories.)

So what is the solution?

I’m afraid to say it that it’s not to have sex. Specifically, sex with a stranger. Now, a lot of people are into sex with strangers. If that’s you, I’m not judging. It is fun. But for me, I am looking to have a happy, healthy, long-term relationship with someone, sex with a stranger is will not get me closer to my goal. It never has.

What constitutes a stranger? If you have gone on four dates with a person, guess what? You’re dating a stranger. You don’ know them yet. I used to take pride in the fact that I could quickly seduce a woman. Now I see that this is where I was fucking up. I was, as my mother put it when I separated with my wife over 20 years ago, thinking with the wrong head.

Facebook friends don’t count either. I recently thought I was making a right decision by getting into a sexual relationship with someone I had known for years. We were friends in real life at one time, but in six years, we had only seen each other once. The only friendship we had was over the internet. When we finally met up, the honeymoon quickly came to an end, and we realized that we couldn’t stand each other.

People say “take it to the next level” for a reason. The next level is sex. The level before that is FRIENDS. Be friends first. I hate it when people say they married their best friend. Yuck! It just sounds so cliche and gross, but there is a reason you keep hearing it over and over again.

If a couple is in a relationship based on sex, what happens when they can no longer have sex? It could be an accident, a medical condition or if you’re lucky old age. You better hope that you are in a relationship with someone who is your friend because in this situation, being good in bed doesn’t mean shit.

David is a health and wellness coach, author, and speaker. He helps people achieve their goals by teaching them to think differently and get "primitive." He is a contributor to Task & Purpose and The Good Men Project as well as his own blog www.theprimitiveyou.com. He is also the author of several published books found on Amazon.com. Currently, he is working on his first novel which you can read for free, as he writes it, at www.DavidSotoWrites.com.