For more and better sex, cut the rejection …

It’s hard enough not to personalize rejection, but sexual rejection is by nature deeply personal.

When you want to have sex with somebody who’s not interested, it can hurt to the core … especially when they choose to have sex with somebody else. And the pain may be more prevalent with married people than single.

When you’re married, it’s about more than sex. You’ve already committed to one person, the very one who’s rejecting you. As a single person, let’s be honest, you may have been more hungry for sex than intimacy; and you’re free to eat elsewhere.

When we’ve shared our most private physical parts (or tried to) with somebody who just looks the other way, it can feel like we just got sucker punched. After all, before we laid ourselves out there (maybe emotionally as well), we thought we had some reason to believe that the other party was game. And even if we were more interested in meeting a physical need than an emotional one, we feel rejected. It’s personal; and it’s painful.

It’s not about the color of your shirt or your taste in wallpaper. Hey, you could change those.

Your sexual desires are biological; and your sexuality is rooted in beliefs, often the ones you took on as a child without even realizing it. Therein lies the key.

For the same reasons that sexual rejection seems very personal, it’s not. Somebody else’s desire is also biological … that is to say, it’s more about their biology than yours. And their behaviors and preferences are also more about them than you. As specific to you as they might feel, it’s unreasonable to personalize them.

And, yes, I realize that if you take this to heart, you might feel less desirable as well as less rejected. If you can’t personalize rejection, it’s tough to justify personalizing desire.

You mustn’t rely on somebody else to make you feel desirable, though. Just make sure that you believe you’re desirable, and the rest will take care of itself. If you know you eat too much, eat less. If you need more exercise, get your jogging shoes on. If you’re awkward because you lack knowledge, study up.

There is nothing more attractive than being comfortable in your own skin … and that can transcend personal preferences!

That’s right — people can surprise themselves by being attracted to somebody outside of the “ideal” they’ve conjured up. That ideal could be based on some false notion they overheard as a child or saw on one page of a magazine in a locker room.

Maybe you heard the expression tall, dark and handsome — and you decided that was the goal. Or maybe you decided, because you had blue eyes, they were most desirable.

Let’s not ignore what’s real, though. Generally, men tend to be sexually attracted to women who appear fertile or ready. But keep in mind that, ultimately, men and women are both looking for more than physical. They want a loving relationship with a trusted companion.

And while women are anxious to please, especially before marrying you to have your babies (it’s a biological thing) — they want intimacy, they have always wanted it. So, they might need to warm up to you, physically and emotionally, before wanting sex. They might even want to talk about their day! They’re always thinking, and they might need a chance to get some of it out to quiet their minds.

Understanding the differences in gender, and understanding and reassessing beliefs and preferences, helps to prevent rejection — besides helping us not to personalize it.

Without rejection, you don’t just have sex more often. You have better sex!