The Man's guide to the best sex ever.

Teenage guys dream about sex the way little girls dream about having big weddings. They imagine it as often and as vividly as they can. Gross, I know. But most guys are just wired that way.

Photo courtesy of Thanh Tran at Flickr.com

We're designed to want sex the way many girls are designed to want to be cherished and loved. 

So then why do so many guys grow up, get married and struggle with unfulfilling sex lives?

What am I doing wrong here?

Young guys don't close their eyes at night and picture themselves having unimaginative, unfulfilling sex. They imagine great passion (and if they've been looking at porn, they also picture a bunch of stuff that women don't really want to do). Then they get married and not only is their sex life not what they pictured, but sex quickly becomes a sore subject. 

As time goes on, the topic of sex gains more and more baggage until eventually he and favorite girl can't even talk about it. Then he's left thinking, "What happened? How did the incredible sex life I imagined turn into this?" 

Lots of guys try to place the blame on their wives. They hurl shameful accusations like "You've changed.", "What happened to the girl I fell in love with?" or "You're not providing for my needs." They become bitter and resentful. And out of that pain come horrible things like affairs and divorces. 

The consequences are pretty severe, but what most guys don't realize is that they're suffering from a deadly belief about sex that is killing the mood with their wives. And what's even more important is that they're completely blind to the understanding that will unlock the best sex of their lives. 

Well there's your problem.

Sex is a taboo subject with most families, which is really dangerous because it leaves young men and women to fill in the blanks. They have to come up with their own answers when it comes to really important subjects like what's the purpose of sex?

Left to his own devices, any young man would look at the world around him and come to one conclusion. He'd come to believe that sex is love. In the same way that people say, "If there's smoke, there's fire." Men believe that if there's sex, there's love.

Guys will learn this lesson from a number of different areas of life. TV shows and movies, parade sex as the gateway to love. Physical relationships during teenage years trick young people into believing that the physical pleasure of a sexual relationship is necessary for love to take hold.

The deadly danger of this belief is that sex isn't love. Sex and love are two different things. When you believe that the sex is a prerequisite of love, it makes it nearly impossible to feel loved and accepted when your wife isn't in the mood. I know this because it's how I believed for a long time. 

My bad.

When I was a kid, I learned that sex = love from relationships in my early teenage years. When I first became physically active I felt accepted, appreciated and... well, loved. Or at least I called the feeling love. 

When I got married, my belief about sex and love was the first conflict of my married life. While Allison and I were on our honeymoon, I pretty much had one expectation - that we would do it a lot. So naturally I brought it up during breakfast the first day. 

When Allison wasn't interested in that moment, I was crushed. I suddenly became overwhelmed with fear and anxiety. As the weeks and months went on, that overwhelmed feeling became more and more commonplace. Anytime she wasn't in the mood, I became petrified with fear that she didn't really love me. And as that fear grew, it eventually started coming out sideways. I would become moody, irritable, and disconnected. 

And it effected our sex life as well. While I was busy living in fear, I robbed my marriage of the freedom the have healthy, productive, fulfilling sex, I was so tied up in finding security through sex that I wasn't able to enjoy it half as much as I should have.

After a few years of anxious fear, some great marriage counseling, and lots of conversations with my very committed wife I've learned a lot about the relationship between sex and love

Oh, okay. I get it now.

The truth is, sex and love are not the same thing. And sex is not a prerequisite of love. love is a prerequisite of sex. And sex the king among many great results of healthy love. As you and your wife pursue intimacy through talking, praying together, serving one another, and serving others together, you'll find that mind blowing sex becomes the obvious response to the incredible connection that you'll develop.

Obviously you can have sex without love. And maybe you'll even meet someone who is naturally really good in bed. But it doesn't matter. Ultimately, loveless sex can't hold a candle to what is unleashed when two people share a deep love. Once you've learned to trust and communicate, the door to unparalleled sex are opened, and you're free to go through. It may not look how you imagined it when you were a kid. But that's actually a good thing, because the sex you'll be having is unimaginably better.

What have you done to grow intimacy and trust in your relationship that you'd recommend to other people? Please leave your answer in the comment section below. And join the conversation that's already going on when you 'like' me on Facebook.