methods to success?

My husband and I had a sex problem, which was that we didn’t have any sex life to speak of. We still loved each other, still really liked each other, and had a lot of fun together in all other ways, just no sex. That was a problem for both of us, equally. Neither of us liked the idea of having a non-existent sex life for the rest of our married lives. He was 33 at the time, and I was 34.

We talked it through, together and with a therapist, and we had become sexually de-coupled. We no longer thought of each other as the primary outlet for our sexuality. For me, my sex life had gone dormant and needed to be reawakened. For my husband, his sexuality had got diverted into masturbation (while watching porn), which he did frequently. This meant that on the occasions that I felt more sexual, chances were that my husband didn’t want/need to have sex because he had already fairly recently masturbated. This is a short way of saying something that took us a long time to conclude for ourselves. We needed a reboot.

He decided that he wanted to quit masturbating, or else to reduce significantly, and I was supportive of that idea too, for the reasons above. Our first attempt ended just with that ambition, though. I was excluded from his sex life (which was masturbation) and so it stood to reason that I was also excluded from his attempts to quit. I didn’t even feel able to ask how it was going. I wasn’t even an onlooker.

Our second attempt was more successful, because we both took responsibility and we tried not to make a bit deal of it. I made him a really nice tooled leather bracelet, we opened a nice bottle of wine, and a little bit ceremonially, I put the bracelet on him and he promised (to try) not to masturbate again. That was it.

Our deal was the following. Masturbation is an addiction like any other – the addiction in this case is to the dopamine rush of ejaculation. We knew it wouldn’t work out straight away. But when he masturbated, which did happen, he took off the bracelet, and then we had to “reset” by me giving him the bracelet again and him promising to try not to masturbate. The first time it was weirdly formal, but after that it was just something that we did. Whenver it happened, we always hugged and I told him that it was fine, and that I loved him. Even though he wanted to quit and even though it was him as much as me in the driving seat, it was still a bit humbling for him to let me know his will power has broken, so it was really important that this was a caring moment for us both. Even though the masturbation didn’t immediately stop, it really helped us both to feel sexually closer to each other.

We would recommend this technique (we adapted it from an idea from our therapist) to anyone whose trying to quite masturbation in a relationship. It really helped tackle our problem. Down the line, we introduced two new elements. Firstly, when my husband handed me the bracelet to be put back on again, I would give him a forfeit, like “Do that load of ironing” before I’d put it on, or “massage my neck”. Although I chose the forfeits, the overall idea was his because he wanted to do something for the family after doing something that (he felt) was selfish. The second element was a way of reminding him. If he masturbated, as wella s the forfeit he had to go barefoot at home for the next 12 hours. I didn’t get behind that idea at first, but it was important to him to do a little act of “remembering” which was longer lasting than the forfeit.

So, how did it work. To start with, very well indeed, then a bit of a relapse, but now he hardly ever masturbates. So much so that I’m often quite surprised if he comes to me every six weeks with the bracelet in his hand. Our sex life, meanwhile has sky-rocketed. We can really connect now that masturbation is out of the way, and I no longer feel that we have a secret “third thing” in our relationship.