by Adam Maurer, LPC, LMFT
Sexting in relationships really can make things better. Yep, that thing horny teenagers do can also improve your sex life, even for long-term, committed couples.
The term may be relatively new—it didn’t enter Merriam-Webster until 2012—but the concept is as old as cave paintings. And mixing messages, artwork and anticipation has fanned the flames of desire from ancient China to Victorian England.
These days, sexting is good for relationships because it takes that history to another level. It combines the art of expressing sexuality with technology to use pictures, videos, emojis and more to craft our erotic narratives.
Let’s look at how sexting can help your relationship and some sexting tips for couples to spice things up by becoming the Picassos of sending hot messages.
The Benefits of Sexting
Sexting in a marriage or committed relationship offers numerous benefits to couples that can work in tandem with couples counseling or not.
One of the greatest gifts of sexting is that it stops you from talking about scheduling, work and problems and starts a conversation about fantasy and sex. As you and your loved one work together to digitally paint your fantasies, you explore parts of yourselves together.
7 Reasons Why Sexting is Good for Your Relationship
- Sexting Fosters Intimacy and Trust: Sexting can enhance the sense of security and trust in relationships, particularly beneficial in long-distance or long-term relationships.
- Sexual Gratification: It often leads to sexual arousal and can act as a form of foreplay, enhancing physical intimacy.
- Improves Communication: Sexting can make it easier for some individuals to express their desires and feelings, which might be challenging to communicate verbally.
- Boosts Confidence: Engaging in sexting can empower people, boosting their self-esteem and body confidence.
- Revitalizes Relationships: It can reintroduce a sexual spark in long-term relationships, keeping things exciting and dynamic.
- Reduces Nervousness: Sexting can serve as an icebreaker, easing nervousness and lowering inhibitions for more intimate interactions.
- Increases Satisfaction: Regular sexting is correlated with higher satisfaction in one’s sex life.
Sexting Helps Build Anticipation
As a couple begins sexting each other, they might discover new, exciting things within their sexual templates to try out in reality. It is easy to think that we know everything there is about someone we’ve lived with for years, but exploration can offer us a glimpse of our partner in a new light.
“[Couples] can reconnect with the erotic dimension of their sexual relations,” Esther Perel, author of the bestselling “Mating in Captivity,” told The Huffington Post. “I have found sexting to be a very creative intervention for couples trying to rekindle their relationships.”
The back and forth exchange leads to anticipation and more self confidence. As you await your partner’s reply to your thoughtful text, your heart fills with excitement. And when that text is met with appreciation, you might find that suddenly you feel a little better about yourself.
Intimate Messages Can Improve Communication
Talking about your turn-ons and fantasies with your partner will help your communication in other areas of your relationship. If you’re going to learn your partner’s desires to build them into an erotic story, that takes listening skills.
And if you can be open about your fantasies, then you might find it a little easier to confront other issues in your relationship with honesty. A little healthy risk taking goes a long way in a supportive relationship.
Sexting Keeps Long-Term Relationships Spicy
An ongoing fantasy might take days to craft—and all that is foreplay in the erotic bank. In a long-term relationship it is easy to neglect your roles as lovers because other roles, like that of being parents or hard workers, are often demanding.
Sexting allows an ongoing erotic connection to be felt throughout the day and or week, so you can be both a parent and a sexual being.
Sexting is Foreplay for the Imagination
Some folks are few on words, but they can take a photo that entices and leaves the receiver wanting more. Filters, props, video, music, all of these elements can be combined along with the 26 letters of the alphabet to build your erotic fantasies.
The human imagination is a wonderful gift here, so fellas, a full-on dick pic might not be necessary right out of the gate. A picture that highlights the persona you’re developing could be of nothing more than a sly smile, or of a body part you feel is on point that day.
The imagination of the receiver will fill in the rest. Also, we can do things in our fantasies that we might not be able to do in reality, so sexting allows you to be wildly uninhibited.
Sexting Tips for Couples
If you’re thinking about ways to spice up your marriage, sexting might be one way to do it. But you should make several considerations before you simply start sending sexy messages out of the blue.
Talk Before You Start
Mutually agreeing to sexting is a good place to start. Set up a time to talk both about your desires and about what things you don’t want in your sexting. Knowing the boundaries allows for freedom to play in the uninhibited space.
In the talk before starting, set up expectations for things such as times it is OK and not OK to sext, what excites you most, what kind of pictures or videos might your partner enjoy, what do you do with the messages after the fantasy is complete, and how to best use sexting to amp yourselves up for sex.
Always Practice Safe Sexting
- Don’t sext on your work phone. You will want to consider having a separate phone for sexting, unless you’re cool with Phyllis from IT reading your lovely smut.
- Keep your kids away from the messages. If you toss your phone to kids to play a game when they are having a meltdown, you want to make sure your dirty texts are deleted.
- Better yet, use a different app for sexting than what you normally use to communicate, like KIK or WhatsApp. You can hide different apps within your phone and put your mind at ease.
- The beautiful thing about sexting on a separate app is you can have one conversation for everyday living and one thread that is just for your beautiful fantasy to shine.
Be Brave, Playful and Open
Many couples find it difficult to express their erotic desires to each other. That’s because a great deal of our erotic selves is made up of parts of us that don’t usually see the light of day. Other people might have told us to be ashamed of those parts of ourselves in a number of ways.
For example, someone who is a boss all day might want to be a total sub in their erotic time. Or perhaps, all the anxiety of the day can only be escaped by becoming a dominatrix in erotic play. Our roughest edges are usually part of our eroticism.
A long-term partnership remains in tact because couples choose to either ignore or embrace their partner’s flaws and visualize them as their best self. In turn that leads to positive personal growth for each person in the couple. So, it takes a great deal of bravery and self-acceptance to allow a longtime lover to see the depths of your erotic self.
Will my partner still love me if they see me step out of my usual role and try on this part of myself? If I am usually confident, can my partner see and cherish the secret part of me that gets turned on by being humiliated? It is a healthy risk to let your long-term partner know about your fantasies.
This is why playfulness and openness are important in sexting. They will help to coax out the best of your eroticism and help you build more trust in your relationship. If you can be honest about some of the most challenging elements of yourself with your partner, then you will be better able to be honest in other areas of your relationship.
Couples Counseling Can Help
If sex and eroticism are too hot a topic to talk about with your partner, couples counseling with a sex-positive therapist can help. With empathy, confidentiality and some book smarts, we can help you address challenges in expressing your sexuality.
If you and your partner would like some support in navigating sexting or any other relationship issues, you can contact us to make a counseling appointment.
To understand more about sexting, check out these resources I found while putting together this blog. Additionally, if you would like more resources about sexuality, you can read The Benefits of Getting Kinky and New Year, New Podcast to Listen To, which contains a list of sex-positive podcasts. Happy sexting, loves!
