How to approach sex with realistic expectations

(CNN) — Nearly every day I meet couples in long-term relationships who lament about missing the early days of great sex — when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, when sex was new and exciting, bold and bawdy.

“What happened?” they ask each other and me. “How do we start having great sex again?”

For some, the search for “great” sex is a reason to cheat, open up a marriage or even divorce. But before taking any drastic steps in the pursuit of great sex, I always implore couples to reframe their “sexpectations” and go for “good-enough sex” instead.

This term, which sex therapists Michael Metz and Barry McCarthy originally coined , encourages couples to pursue positive, realistic meaning in their intimate lives. In other words, just because you can’t go back to the early days