Welcome to “Love and Sex Today.” I am Dr. Doug Weiss today’s topic is “Never Argue About Sex Again.” This is a hot topic, because so many couples struggle with arguing about sex. This goes on for years and decades inside of a marriage and it doesn’t have to. Today I am going to help you so that you never have to argue about sex again. We want you to be at peace and in harmony sexually. You will want to share this post, because you want all your friends to have a great sex life.

Today’s topic is coming from my book, “Intimacy: A 100-Day Guide to Lasting Relationships.” This is a fantastic book on how to have a great marriage, and there is a chapter on sexual agreement, which is what we are going to discuss today. Another great book of mine for improving your sex life is, “5 Sex Languages.” This is an amazing book with some of the key ingredients we’re going to talk about today as well.

I sit in my office week after week, helping relationships repair and one of the issues we deal with is sex. I want you to just think a moment, how would your life be different if you knew when sex was going to happen? If you knew the frequency of sex you were going to have, and you were okay with that and your spouse was okay with that and there was peace about it? How would you like to be free from the games of going to bed early to avoid him or her? Or staying up and watching television or being on the computer for hours so that you can avoid sex? How would you like to avoid the manipulation that goes on inside of so many marriages about sex? That’s not fun at all. I have couples every week deal with this.

We call this blog series “Love and Sex Today.” We want you to have a great love life. We want you to have a great sex life. We want you to have a great life. That’s why we do this every single day, so you can have a quality of life that’s better than the day before.

Let’s talk about how to not argue about sex. One thing you can do is set up a sexual agreement. A sexual agreement is where a couple maturely says, “Hey, I knew when we walked down the aisle, we were going to have sex thousands of times.” Now, think about that, that’s just the way it is. If you’re marrying in your twenties, even if you’re marrying in your forties, you’re going to probably have sex a good thousand times. Why do we want to argue about this? You don’t want to create systems where you have to do x, y, and z to make sex happen. Or, you need to be a good boy or a good girl and if you’re not, then you’re not going to get your treat today. I can tell you systems set up so much resentment, anger, hurt, misunderstanding, and miscommunication.

You will be much better sexual adults to be mature and say, “Listen, you and I are going to have sex a lot. Let’s start putting this together in a way that makes sense for our lifestyle, stage of life, age, health, and really celebrate having sexuality.” A sexual agreement has three components to it. Let me walk through this with you as I would if I was at a marriage conference, training thousands, or if I’m in my office training one couple. It’s the very same process, very simple, but profound.

The first thing you want to do, and this may be the challenge—establish your frequency. How often do you want to have sex? Look at what’s realistic. Maybe you have small kids or kids in school. Maybe you have to take them to soccer and piano and karate lessons, and one of you sings in the choir or you have a painting class or a yoga class. Maybe you have a lot of things going on. Think about that as well. Some people want to have more sex, that’s fantastic. Some people need figure out what’s realistic and then talk about real numbers. Maybe when the man says, “Hey twice a week is fine for me,” and she’s says, “Oh I want four.” Well if she wants four and you want two, you could either negotiate to three and both live reasonably with that negotiation, or rotate her week of four, and his week of two, however you want to do it. This is your sex agreement. It’s no one else’s. This will be unique to you. The number may even be unknown depending on the system. It can be as much as you want, depending on how you set this up. But you need to establish this.

One thing that is really important is that you both ask for sex. In “5 Sex Languages,” I give you a whole chapter on asking and what that really is about. Depending on your personal sex language, how you ask is really, really important. Both of you should be asking back and forth. Maybe you’re thinking, “Dr. Weiss, I never say no.” Yes, but you never ask. So the other person never feels pursued. How lonely is that? Both of you should be asking equally and this is not based on your personality. This is based on what’s equitable. Both of you asking for sex is really important. If you’re not an asker, grow up in that area. Ask.

Once you establish your frequency, create a system to manage it. Let me share ideas other couples have had that have been successful. Some couples just pick days, like Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Those are good days for us, let’s work that. He’ll initiate on Tuesday, she’ll initiate on Thursday, and he will pick up Saturday. They just do that every week and they’re good with it. It makes sense, they make time for it, they’re rested. They don’t do their intense aerobic work out that day and they’re ready for sex and they’re going to have a good time. Okay, for some people that’d be really boring or too stringent and that’s okay. Everyone’s different.

So you may need to come up with something different. Maybe you split the week in half. He gets half the week—Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. She gets Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. After doing it three times a week, anybody can ask on Wednesday. That’s all reasonable. Some people still want more spontaneity, that’s fine. You can rotate weeks of who gets to ask. Once it’s your week, you would ask at the frequency level you’ve agreed to. If you’ve agreed to three, you would ask three times. And asking really means asking. It’s not asking them to rub your back or your head or your feet. It’s saying, “I would like to make love to you.” It’s really asking. She would ask on her week and he would ask on his week. So maybe he gets week one and three of the month and she gets week two and four. Some people like to rotate it back and forth, but both people need to be in peace about it. Both negotiate their number. Both negotiate how they want to ask each other, how often, and how they’re going to structure that system. They create their agreement system to manage their sexuality. You have to manage everything in life. You have to manage self-care, your workouts, your money, the children’s schedule, and your intimate life.

Everything in life has some management aspect. Maybe you think you shouldn’t have to talk about sex, it should just happen. Well, if you have two people who believe that and it’s already working, don’t mess with it. That’s fantastic. You’re intuitively having a sexual agreement. Most people need to communicate that and some people even put it in writing so they understand each other. They put it in their phone or their calendar to make sure that sex is happening at their frequency.

The last part of a sexual agreement is important, because some people still play games and are sexually immature. You want to stop that. What you do is you set up a consequence. For example, “If I don’t ask you for sex when I’m supposed to, or if I say no to you without a medical reason, I’ll wash your car, or I’ll give you an hour massage.” Or, “I will not have my coffee for three days, or I will make dinner for you, whatever it may be.” It doesn’t really matter what the consequences are, as long as it’s enough to say, “Hmm, I would rather have sex than do X.” This removes a lot of the manipulation that goes on with sex, and all the emotion of it. I really recommend getting the “5 Sex Languages” book, because I teach you your spouse’s sex language. Educate yourselves in this area, so you can set the mood, and make sex amazing for you and your partner.

Set up your sexual agreement. Establish your frequency with each other. Establish the management of it, and set up personal consequences if you fail to follow through. I can tell you, I have helped thousands of couples set up sex agreements and they have brought all kinds of peace and stability to the area of sex in their marriage. You deserve that in your marriage, but you’re going to have to do the work.

Please go to LoveAndSexToday.com, subscribe there, and get a free chapter of one of my books. Write us a review in iTunes and one of you will be selected for a priceless private conversation with yours truly, Dr. Doug Weiss and we will have fun engaging on whatever topic you want to engage on to improve an area of your life. As always, have great love and great sex today.