Has your partner evolved sexually? How to cope

I first met David at a conference where he was making a presentation on the religious view of sexual pleasure. He was clear and stern: pleasure is acceptable in a heterosexual marriage, nothing less; he castigated those who had sex outside marriage, whether premarital or otherwise and condemned masturbation and homosexuality. That was 10 years of age.

Last year David came to the Sexology Clinic. I was anxious, thinking that I could have written something in my column that brushed him the wrong way and he had decided to sort it face to face.

“Please take this as a medical consultation, nothing to do with the discussions we had in the conference those many years ago,” he explained, “I am gay, and I am tired of living a lie; I need your advice as I take the next big move on my life.”

David had decided to break the news of his sexual orientation to his wife of 20 years and their two children. He had recently got into a relationship with another man. He was ready to divorce if his family did not accept his new life. If they accepted him, he wanted to maintain both relationships.

David’s story reminded me of Ivy. She was brought up in a family where sex was a taboo subject. She held strong values that bordered on sex being evil and dangerous. She believed that girls of her age that put on skimpily and hugged men were cultural deviants. But that was only until she joined a university in the city. Her friends did everything that she previously abhorred. In her own words, she later accepted that those practices were not evil after all. She got into multiple relationships and at some point, conceived. She realised that her family would never understand her new way of thinking and to safeguard their well-being, decided to abort.

“I did not want my family to face the stigma from fellow villagers, it was better to abort for their wellbeing since they are taken to be role models in the community,” she explains.

And so, this brings me to the fundamental principle for those living in long-term relationships. Be aware that the values that your partner had when you first met are not stagnant and neither is yours. Expect values to keep changing. This does not mean that you are the cause of your partner’s new view of life, possibly it is just how their life is evolving.

Professional engagements, for example, do change people. As a professional, there are customers, clients, supporters and colleagues that you are continuously interacting with. Sometimes they make you start to view life differently. You start to question the values that you have held in your life.

In some cases, it is the education that you have gone through. You are exposed to theories, research and sometimes the evidence contradicts your values and you start to see things differently. This makes you question your own beliefs.

Be aware that religion also changes. Even within the same religion, one congregation can be quite different from the other. What you believed in your earlier years get transformed as your religious beliefs get questioned even within your own congregation and can make you become conservative or even liberal on matters of sex. 

Then there are many geopolitical changes in the environment that come with time. Media, including social media shapes opinions. Science and technology challenge our long-held beliefs. Global changes such as the current movements around diversity also change the way we think.

These many forces in life shape our thoughts and behaviours. We are unlikely to maintain what we believed 10 years ago. Your partner who hated beer starts to drink. Then there are those who believed in monogamy, and start thinking of another relationship. Some had strong views on homosexuality, and soften up. In the bedroom, you may find your partner becoming more explorative sexually while in other cases the exact opposite may happen including someone keeping off sex when you thought they should demand for it more; it all depends on the direction the change is taking.

If you want your relationship to survive the turmoil, you must be keen to learn how your partner is changing and be part of that change by either following suit or influencing the direction the change takes. If you do not and continue living in the past, expect disappointments. You may have heard people lament that “this is not the man I married,” or that “this woman used to be good but has been influenced by badly behaved friends.” What they are simply saying is that they have failed to cope with the changes that the person is going through.