My girlfriend and I need help keeping the special stuff special

[Gavin.33]

Dear Scarleteen,

My name is Gavin, and I've been with my girlfriend for nearly 6 months. Recently, things have gotten a lot more intimate and heated sexually. That has been an issue though, because we really don't want to be moving too fast, or allow special stuff like oral and manual sex to become normal. We both really want this relationship to last as long as possible, and we feel that commonly enjoying these acts could weaken the loving and caring part of it our relationship. Both of us, myself especially, are gonna start trying hard to resist these intimate actions. We also want to try and avoid allowing ourselves to be in private situations as much. So my question is, what can both of us or either of us do to make it easier to save the special things for special occasions? If there are any more details that might help you answer, please ask.

[Karyn]

Hi Gavin.

We have a piece on the main site that might be helpful for you: Whoa, There! How to Slow Down When You're Moving Too Fast

It focuses more on how to slow down when people are feeling nervous or uncomfortable, but there's some good stuff in there that could be useful in your situation too.

On top of that, can I ask why you're feeling that being sexual with each other too often will cause things to become less special? Plenty of people, after all, have sex on a regular basis - even daily sometimes! - and don't feel that it diminishes their enjoyment of sex or their enjoyment of the other parts of their relationship. Could you talk a little bit more about why you feel that having sex too often might take away from the other aspects of your relationship?

[Gavin.33]

Thank you for responding and recommending a good looking article, Karyn. Anyways, both my girlfriend and I feel that if we were to preform these sexual acts on a regular bases, as with many things done in routine and repetition, we'd begun to feel much more familiar with them. Don't get me wrong, they'd still remain very pleasurable and enjoyable, but I belive that they'd possibly loose some of that pleasure and enjoyment. Not to mention, it could also cause the initial feeling of newness and wonderment to wear out faster than I'd like it to. Now on to why it'd affect the rest of our relationship.

Being high-school students with not as much freedoms as we'd prefer, certain aspects of our relationship don't quite develop as fast as others. For example, we don't have the independence to spend time together whenever we want. So when we do get an opportunity for some alone time, we typically jump straight to the more intimate stuff, and skip all of the more mellow stuff, like talking about our future, or just enjoying one another's presence. This topic is tough for me to explain, but essentially, I feel that of we allow sex to become too big a part of our relationship, other aspects will be ignored or even forgotten. And this could lead to issues with things like communication and comprising to help protect our relationship. Hopefully this made enough sense and answered your questions.

[Sam W]

Hi Gavin,

I think the fear that sex will pull focus from other parts of the relationship is one that many people experience. Since it sounds like you two are aware of that worry, one option is to talk with one another about how to balance the time you spend being sexual with other activities together.

You might also find this piece helpful. It talks about all the different ways that people can be intimate with each other, and how many of those options are non-sexual: Intimacy: The Whys, Hows, How-Nots, and So-Nots