Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship (33 page)

Helen made her choice: Mercy sex was no longer acceptable. Tom had to do better than agree to marry her. She wanted to marry someone who really wanted her.

Helen let herself see what she already knew: Tom had never chosen her. He just didn’t want to give her up. His lack of choice had been there all along; she simply wouldn’t deal with it. Had Helen approached this from her reflected sense of self, she would have felt more humiliated. But Helen confronted herself from the best in her, and it had an entirely different impact: She didn’t feel humiliated. She felt free in a way she hadn’t expected.

Helen still went through lots of emotional ups and downs for several days, but she bounced back brighter than before. She told Tom, “I think I’ve figured out the solution to
‘I want to be wanted, but I need to be needed.’
You have to want
yourself
. You have to hold on to your self. No one else can do this for you.” That’s when Tom started to feel desperate.

Two-choice dilemmas exist because choices are finite in love relationships. In emotionally fused relationships, your choices
decrease
as your partner starts to develop a more solid flexible self.

Like many LDPs, Tom felt pressured. But everything was changing. Now this was happening because Helen was holding on to her Four Points of Balance. She saw how she sold herself out by not expecting to be wanted and chosen. Helen stopped pushing Tom because she could never get
wanted
by him that way. If she continued to push for sex or marriage, Tom wouldn’t be doing it because he really wanted to, if and when he did it.

Helen was no longer willing to spend the rest of her life begging for sex and begging to be wanted. She wasn’t willing to badger Tom for something he didn’t want to do. She’d let go of the relationship if need be, but she wasn’t willing to let go of herself. Helen stopped accepting sexual handouts. Sex stopped altogether.

Autonomy is a terribly important part of human sexual desire, and it plays out in complex ways. Choosing is an exercise of autonomy. When we feel we have no choice, desire often fades. But when we won’t choose, to avoid responsibility for shaping our lives, this kills desire as well. Tom talked about feeling pressured to make a decision, because Helen might call it quits.

I said, “You want to be wanted, but you don’t want to want.”

“I feel like you’re telling me to have sex with Helen, although I know you’re not.”

“If I told you to have sex with Helen, she wouldn’t get what she wants. You could just have sex with her without wanting her. Helen wants you to want her.”

Tom looked grim. “Normally I’d be screaming, ‘I feel pressured!’ Not that I’m not feeling it, but I don’t want to blow this relationship. If I don’t
get myself together, Helen will leave.” This was the first time Tom wanted something he thought was beyond him. He sounded desperate. I nodded. Tom mapped out that I understood his plight.

“Freedom is a bitch, isn’t it? Helen may leave if she doesn’t like the deal you offer. She can make that choice. If you could abolish freedom, you wouldn’t have this problem.”

Tom laughed. “It’s times like these that make me favor benevolent dictatorships!”

“Unfortunately, we are not a species where one partner decides and the other just goes along. It’s taken millions of years to create the conundrums you’re facing, and I don’t think you’re going to beat the system.”

Tom looked at Helen. “I don’t want to screw this up.”

Then Tom turned to me. “I want you to walk me though this. I’m not good at this, and I want this relationship to be different.” It was a genuine plea for help.

“You
want
that?”

Tom realized what I was asking. He wasn’t saying he wanted Helen or the relationship, he was stipulating his own wanting. Slowly and deliberately Tom said, “Yes. I
want
that!”

“So, what do I do?” Tom asked.

“You don’t have to give yourself up, or do whatever Helen wants—in fact, you need to do the exact opposite. Stop operating like you’re giving yourself up. Have the courage to choose what’s most important to you. Just be straight with Helen. That’s what a friend would do.”

Together, Tom and I outlined things he could do to arrive at some clarity about himself and his relationship with Helen. This required self-confrontation and lots of self-soothing.

I helped Tom develop
accurate
self-confrontations. Inaccurate self-confrontations offer little benefit. For example, Tom said he was going to confront himself about possibly being angry with women in general, since
he had such a bad relationship with his mother. I suggested he confront himself more specifically about things he could be more certain about. For example, that he was playing out the
If you love me, you’ll give up what you want and do what I want
dynamic from his childhood. The question wasn’t whether or not this was going on, it was what would he do about it?

The other certainty was that Tom’s indecision interfered with Helen pursuing what she wanted. Rather than confront himself about his
intent
, Tom could confront himself about his
impact
.

Needless to say, anyone finds this kind of self-examination difficult and painful. Sometimes Tom became agitated when he allowed himself to think. He asked about better ways of calming himself down and maintaining an even keel. We broke things into simple points to keep his efforts to quiet himself focused:

•
Give your dilemma meaning
. This is humankind’s number one self-soothing strategy. Tom could tolerate a lot more pain by focusing on trying to change his life, instead of seeing it as something Helen was doing to him. Approaching this as his opportunity to be different than his mother helped him have Meaningful Endurance.

•
If you can’t regulate your emotions, control your behavior
. When you start to lose your emotional balance, get your neocortex back in gear. Stop talking. Focus on your breathing. Catch your breath and slow your heart rate. Lower your volume and unclench your teeth. When you say, “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but …” take your own advice.

•
Don’t take your partner’s behavior (or lack of response) personally
. Use this to let go of your reflected sense of self. Don’t make things harder for yourself than they have to be.

This helped Tom for several weeks. But there were times this simply wasn’t enough. At times in conversation he felt cornered. He couldn’t
shake this feeling while they talked, no matter how he tried. So we developed more self-soothing tips for when he was really losing his grip:

•
Self-soothing may require breaking contact with your partner
. Tom made it clear this was “time out” for self-repair and not to avoid Helen. To demonstrate good intent, he offered to schedule time to reconnect.

•
Stop your negative mental tapes
. Tom had to deliberately stop his ruminating thought-patterns. Focusing on the thoughts in his mind, and ceasing to dodge them, really helped.

•
Use time apart effectively
. Take care and replenish yourself: Exercise, read something you like, do something productive. Friends, hobbies, and outside interests can calm and refuel you (depending on how you use them). Commiserating about marital problems with friends isn’t really time apart from your spouse.

These self-soothing tips helped Tom function better when he was with Helen, and when they were apart. Self-soothing doesn’t take a single form. You can make different self-soothing responses, depending on your functioning at that moment.

When Tom had a better grip on himself, he could calm himself down in the middle of talking with Helen. He didn’t blow out of the room or ignore her while they talked. When this wasn’t possible, Tom’s fall-back solution was taking a time-out, which he used to prepare for reentering the conversation. Avoiding a situation is a terrible form of self-soothing.

Tom got better at
wanting
without losing himself in the process. We examined his thoughts and feelings when he really confronted himself. Tom ran into a deep, crushing sense of personal emptiness. He was willing to tolerate this in the hope that he didn’t have to live like this.
Wanting
makes you get up and do difficult things.

Human desire is incredible: Our self mobilizes itself by allowing itself
to want. What we want eventually involves becoming more than we are. Rather than being driven by discomforts and deprivations, our sense of unfulfilled destiny drives us forward.

Tom went through some acute self-confrontations. Then he took Helen out to dinner in a quiet restaurant, and they had one of their most important conversations. “I’m astonished I could do to you what my mother did to me, and be completely oblivious to it at the same time. I find that hard to deal with. I thought my issue was that I didn’t want you to manipulate me. I never saw how manipulative I’ve been.

“I also have to tell you that I honestly can’t say I want to get married. You deserve a clear answer, and so this is it. I’m still not clear about what I want to do, but I don’t expect you to wait any longer. I know you want to get married, so I figure we’re splitting up. I want you to know, I don’t see you as giving up on me. Do what’s best for you. You’ve given me more time than I deserve.” Tom was torn, but doing what he thought was right. He wanted Helen to stay. But he was determined to treat her like a friend. Needless to say, this greatly impacted Helen.

Sex was fantastic that night. The difference was dramatic. Tom had desire. Helen felt wanted. They made love like old friends who unexpectedly ran into each other.

Tom and Helen had sex several times a week for more than a month. Then things cooled off to once or twice a week, which became their new norm. They spent more time together enjoying each other, including conversations about what this sex meant. Through his self-confrontations Tom became less afraid of Helen controlling him. He was less fearful of being manipulated through his caring for her.

Three months later Tom asked Helen to legally marry him. Helen took time to confront herself: Was she settling for someone who really didn’t want her? Was Tom capable of really wanting anyone? Was she saying yes simply because he asked her?

This triggered a crisis for Tom. He crashed when he didn’t get an immediate positive answer. Suddenly, he
wanted
more than he could handle. The thought of Helen saying no put him in a nose-dive. He started worrying this was Helen’s turn to play
If you love me you will …

Looking back, Helen said that if she’d had any doubts about marrying
Tom, they vanished when she saw how he handled himself. Tom didn’t say, “
If you love me, you’ll marry me.”
Instead he said, “Helen, you have to do what you really want.”

This was the antithesis of his mother’s response. Tom brought an entirely new meaning to his desire. It was
I care about you
. This epitomized the growth in Tom’s Four Points of Balance. It came from a clearer sense of himself, and better ability to handle his own anxiety, stay non-reactive, and hang in to get what he
wanted
. Tom wanted this badly enough to hold on to himself while Helen decided.

The processes of marriage were at work in Tom and Helen’s relationship long before their wedding. In prehistory, the people-growing machinery started up when two people decided they were a couple. It’s no different today. You could say the process of marriage helped Tom and Helen get legally married, because Helen told him, “Yes!”

By the time Tom and Helen had their wedding, they had been married for some time. They epitomize the way legally married couples become more married. It’s not as simple as vow-renewal ceremonies. Tom and Helen’s wedding declared their choice. It wasn’t about making their relationship “official.”
¹³²

Every couple learns marriage is the triumph of hope over experience by going through emotional gridlock.

Research indicates that couples who nearly split up but stay together are glad they stayed together ten years later because things got better. You’ve seen why this happens: Marriage is the best marital therapy, perfected on billions of people over millions of years. I encourage you to stick with the process. Don’t abandon your efforts prematurely. We construct ourselves through
wanting
and making choices. In this co-evolutionary process, we are the artist
and
the final product.

IDEAS TO PONDER