Everyone has a dream of getting married to his/her princess/Prince charming and fantasize a great, passionate and exhilarating sex life.  These are reinforced by the media, movies and romantic novels they read. But what is the truth? Is The first night experience as fairy tale phenomena as often seen in Bollywood movies? You try to tell yourself, I love this person so much so, the sex will be great for sure. Is it really so?  

The truth is totally different. First night experience is no way near the one depicted in movies. Both the bride and groom are thoroughly exhausted with the stress and very tired. The groom these days (as I come across daily) is very anxious to prove his masculinity as is often advised by friends (who themselves are a total novice in sexual health themselves) lest the bride may think he is impotent, what a tough exam. So he is scared and comes to me for some special pill or course to impress their wives. I politely tell them that even if they can't perform on the first time, they will surely get another chance the next night but there are other more smart people selling a "package for honeymoon". The situation with the bride is no better. She is scared as well because she had heard that, it will be painful, it will bleed etc, so it is no way near the scene expected. No wonder they fail to establish a successful intercourse in many cases, people may panic and there are more failures next time. This may start a vicious cycle, leading to all kinds of sex problems.

What happens if there is successful intercourse? 

Is the further life is full of romantic love and good sex? People are often misled by a common belief when a couple love each other, their sex life is good. But it is far from reality. About 20% or more married couples have a no sex marriage (it doesn't mean a total abstinence but sex occurs less than 10 times in a year) and another 15-20 % have low sex marriage (when sex occurred less than 25 times in a year). People believe that such an eventuality is found in married couples only because they get bored. But again it is not true. One third to half of non married couples living together for more than 2 years have no sex relationship. How does this situation arise, when you are with a new partner, you get good and intense spontaneous arousal and sex becomes a pleasure. You expect the same each time every day. Sex becomes a measure of performance, a tool to satisfy the partner (mostly the female) and a number of times they can have sex each night whereas it should be a means to have shared pleasure and increase intimacy to become one team. People become anxious, may panic at some point of time if even a single attempt is not as expected. Any adverse comment by the female cements the belief that there is a serious problem. Inevitably, it is followed by a fear of performance and failure. Males start avoiding sex lest they feel embarrassed. The avoidance converts to all physical and emotional distancing and may be associated with fault finding, aggressive postures and criticisms. The more you avoid, the harder it becomes to break the cycle. You need to have realistic expectations worthy of a normal human being, not like a jumbo performer as in a porn movie. Sexual experiences are variable and if 2/3 to even half the times, it feels good, you should consider yourself lucky to be enjoying good sex life. You need to have motivation for maintaining intimacy, keep up non-demand pleasuring and add erotic scenarios. 

There are 4 components of normal sexual functioning:

1. Desire: Positive anticipation and belief that you deserve sexual pleasure

2. Arousal: Being receptive and responsive touching and genital stimulation 

3. Orgasm: Letting go, leave all inhibitions and allow arousal to culminate to orgasm

4. Satisfaction: Feeling emotionally and physically bonded after the sexual experience 

The biggest self trap for getting caught in sexual problems is not accepting failures as normal part of sex life. We expect every experience to be very passionate and perfect which should consist of orgasm to the female, often multiple times if you want to prove yourself. The sex is orgasm centric, not pleasure oriented. Single failure with your wife (worse if you are with someone else) may trigger anxiety, and panic, raising self-doubts. Any comment by partner worsens the situation. Most of the people react to this situation with anger and aggression, trying to find fault with her or withdraw. They start avoiding sex, reject any advances by her and make an excuse. Avoidance is the biggest issue, you should face it as a close team and try and indulge in more intimacy, non-demand pleasure, create erotic scenarios and accept failures as normal part of sexuality.