How Cybersex Can Help Your Relationship
Many people think cybersex is inherently bad. But many couples have found ways to use tech and the internet to improve their relationships.
Cybersex, which means using technology for sexual interaction or gratification, often gets a bad rap. When it’s in the news, it’s dangerous. People are using it in inappropriate ways. It’s killing intimacy and dividing us, forcing us into isolation and creating a nation of loneliness and social misfits.
But cybersex isn’t going anywhere. We love our devices. So how can we use them to enhance our sex life and relationship in healthy ways? Sex and tech — it’s the wave of the future…
Couples have actually found many creative ways to use technology and the internet to improve their sex lives.
How Can Cybersex Help Couples?
Maybe you have to travel for work. Or perhaps you and your partner are living separately and find you can only be physically intimate a few days a month. Maybe your relationship is still new enough that cohabitation hasn’t even come up yet.
If you have to be separated, technology and an internet connection can make the miles disappear. Video calls or audio-only calls can make virtual sex keep you connected and intimate whenever possible. Make cybersex dates with your partner at least once a week. Plan them, mark them on your calendar, and make space for them in your busy lives. Video chatting technology has come a long way and can help you both stay connected even when you are apart for long periods of time or over long distances.
What Does a Cybersex Date Look Like?
You and your partner have scheduled a cybersex date and you are looking forward to the night. Treat it like any other kind of date. Remind each other through text and emails that it’s coming. Let yourself feel the anticipation and excitement. Take a shower, do your hair, put on sexy lingerie or fetish gear (whatever you’re into). Have your favorite toys and lube nearby. Light some candles. Turn down the lights. Put on some sexy music. And start your video call.
While it may feel awkward at first, let yourselves go with the flow. Tell your partner what you’d like to do to them. You might even direct them to touch themselves in certain ways, imagining that it’s your hands doing the touching. Use your voice to express how you’re feeling, in words or sounds.
The beauty of video is that your partner can see your facial expressions and you can adjust the camera angle to show other parts of your body.
Don’t forget to stay connected after the erotic interaction ends. Talk about the experience or just bask in each other’s cyber presence for a while longer. This helps deepen and ground the intimacy you have just shared and strengthens your bond.
I’m presenting a therapist training in Washington, DC, on the topic, “Cybersex and Therapy for Couples,” May 15–18, 2019. If you regularly work with couples, then you’ll want to get some training in this area, since our use of technology in every aspect of our lives will only continue to improve.
This course is part of the new, in-depth certification program that teaches clinicians of all types how to integrate sex therapy and couples therapy, to better help their individual and couples clients have better sex and healthier relationships. Earn your CSCT (Certified Sex and Couples Therapist) credential today. The CEs you get with this course can also be used toward your AASECT CST (Certified Sex Therapist) credential. Register here.
