Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship (53 page)

Paul went through his own transformation. He realized he was angry most of the time. It was an automatic response to almost everything in his life. Everything that disturbed Paul triggered a flood of anger. Seeing this pervasive response frightened him. All the years Kate had complained about his anger took on new meaning. Heretofore, Paul had stored this in his brain under the heading of
Kate’s a crazy bitch
. Now Paul started worrying,
What the hell is the matter with me?

Paul buckled down and started approaching his anger as his brain’s de
facto response to anxiety and stress. When he was emotionally overloaded (which didn’t take much), out came his anger. The new Paul got less caught up in his thoughts and feelings when he got angry. He realized his emotions were out of control, and that the important thing was to pull himself together and get control of himself. Period. If he couldn’t do that, intellectually understanding why a particular stimulus triggered him was useless. Rather than
express
his feelings, Paul needed to learn to
tolerate
them.

As with other clients, Paul gradually became better able to control his anger when he lost his grip on himself by applying his Four Points of Balance. He also got angry less often. His marriage became more stable and his alliance with Kate grew more resilient. Both Paul and Kate were better able to tolerate their own emotions without falling apart, to handle their feelings when they did fall apart, and to tolerate it when the other fell apart.

In one session Paul said, “Remember I told you I didn’t remember my childhood? Now that I’m more aware of my anger, I remember my father had thunderous fits of rage. I sort of always knew it, but I didn’t let myself know it. I’m aware now that I didn’t want to know it. It’s like I stored it under the wrong heading. It was right out in front of me, but I couldn’t see it.

“In my memory my father worked long hours. That was the story in my family. My father worked long hours, he was an important executive, and we were supposed to understand the stress he was under. This was the explanation for everything. But he’d go into rages, and we would be standing there in shock. We hid this because your slightest indication he was acting like an asshole would make you his target. One time I watched my dad beat my brother up because he spoke back. It was like it was happening to me—to both of us at the same time. When my mother made excuses for my father, I was so frustrated and angry I thought I would explode.

“In retrospect, my picture of my childhood was the family line: ‘Dad works for the family and we need to appreciate how hard he works. Yes, he has a problem with anger, but that’s understandable given the stress he is under.’ It really freaks me out that my family said about my Dad the same thing you said about my anger. But it’s creepy how this gets used so differently. My family said this to
excuse
my dad’s anger, and you’re using it to help me
control
my anger.”

Paul and Kate made enough progress to make having sex appropriate and useful. They were more likely to succeed when they did. They had already accomplished the most difficult parts first:
Developing a resilient collaborative alliance and using physical contact in whole new ways
. They got to this place by exercising their Four Points of Balance. They were more willing to look at themselves, even if they didn’t look good. They had less anxiety about letting themselves be held and seen. They didn’t have shouting matches anymore. They had difficult—necessary—discussions they’d avoided in the past.

Your ability to have tender loving sex is linked to your Four Points of Balance. You have to hold on to your self to be
deeply
engaged with your partner. You have to confront yourself about who you are (sexually and otherwise) and decide whether or not that’s okay. It can be hard to be known to this degree, especially in that way. It’s harder to validate your eroticism with a long-term partner than a one-night stand. This makes tender loving sex with your spouse all the more worth doing.

Think of this in terms of the Four Points of Balance: Tender loving sex challenges, broadens, and solidifies your solid flexible self. Letting your self entwine with your partner, both emotionally and physically, challenges your grip on yourself, your self-worth, and your sense of personal agency. Any fears of engulfment or loss of autonomy you have get pushed to the surface.

Tender loving sex stretches your ability to quiet your mind and calm your heart. It’s a big step to turn off your radar, drop your guard, trust yourself, relax—and then let your partner see you and be with you. This level of being known can be unnerving. Don’t give in to your urge to back off when your anxiety starts to rise.

Tender loving sex requires grounded responding to your partner’s reactivity. You get no guarantee your partner’s response will be
“Yes! LET’S DO IT!!”
If he gets nervous or threatened, he’s likely to overreact, get angry, put you down, and/or become condescending, dismissive, or belligerent. Tender loving sex involves your Four Points of Balance, whether you’re having sex or fighting about it.

Tender loving sex requires meaningful endurance and tolerating discomfort for growth. (I don’t mean painful intercourse.) Sometimes this means going through difficult discussions or disappointing sexual encounters to get to a better place. If you’re not used to tender loving sex—particularly with your spouse—you may be awkward or nervous or even a little scared.

It takes courage to experiment with tender loving sex. You might be great at raunchy sex, but lack the courage to let someone hold you while you make love. The deeper your connection goes, the more likely any lingering unresolved issues will get triggered. Profound tender loving sex requires
self
-validated intimacy rather than validation from your partner. (That’s why people dependent on their partner’s validation don’t deeply engage in it.)

Tender loving sex requires personal integrity, sometimes more than you may have. Once you realize the Four Points of Balance underlie all forms of personal integrity, it’s easier to see how tender loving sex is part of the people-growing machinery of marriage.

Besides increasing desire, heating up your sex life, and improving your relationship and your disposition (as if this wasn’t enough!), tender loving sex can do good things for your brain. Using your body this way creates the seven important conditions that facilitate brain change, just like
hugging till relaxed, heads on pillows, feeling while touching
, and resolving ticklishness:

1. A strong and resilient collaborative alliance.

2. Moderate levels of stress and emotional arousal, alternating with calm.

3. Intense and profound intersubjective moments of meeting.

4. Information and experiences gathered across multiple dimensions of cognition, emotion, sensation, and behavior.

5. Activity in brain neural networks involved in processing and regulating thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviors.

6. New conceptual knowledge integrating emotional and bodily experiences.

7. Organizing experiences in ways that foster continued growth and integration.

If you have sexual desire problems, developing your capacity for tender loving sex may be your solution. Here are two specific ways you can do this:

Usually when they had sex, Kate followed Paul’s lead. Paul liked having sex before they went to sleep. They always had sex lying down in bed, usually under the covers. Even when Kate opened her eyes, there wasn’t much to see. The room was dark and silent. Paul’s eyes were usually closed. They never looked at each other. In fact, they rarely kissed and hardly talked. Instead of the splash of waves or wind in the trees, like she had heard during her adolescent sexual escapades, Kate listened to the clock ticking the minutes away as Paul groped her and she tried to get aroused. They usually did it missionary-style. To Paul, doggy-style was pretty daring. This was a far cry from the eyes-open sex Kate dreamed about.
¹⁹⁹

Kate told me about a sexy dream she had. Without knowing it, she was envisioning eyes-open sex. Eyes-open sex creates a powerful intersubjective experience. It’s possible to have sex with your eyes open during which you’re staring at your partner while shielding your thoughts. However, the eyes-open sex Kate dreamed about involved actively taking someone in, letting him map her mind, and create an intersubjective state in which she knew him and she let herself being known, as he did the same.

You can use eyes-open sex even more effectively once you understand it involves learning about yourself in the process of letting yourself be known.
Effectively
doesn’t mean without difficulty; eyes-open sex challenges your Four Points of Balance.
Effectively
means (a) understanding why and how eyes-open sex feels great or uncomfortable to you, and (b) using this knowledge to focus your attention when you deliberately have eyes-open sex again. You’ll increase your pleasure, decrease your discomfort, and raise your Four Points of Balance more efficiently.

You can even have eyes-open sex without actually touching your
partner. Just reach down and pleasure yourself while looking your partner in the eye! You’d be giving a clear picture of who you are, as well as challenging yourself, soothing yourself, not overreacting, and taking a
big
step toward sexual maturity.

Most of us have sex with our eyes closed and the lights off. Why? Not because it’s more romantic. It’s because we fear we wouldn’t be loved if we were truly known. We break contact because we fear getting close enough to touch and map each other’s minds. People who can’t hold on to themselves don’t let themselves be seen.

Many people don’t. Out of 10,500 people who completed a survey on passionatemarriage.com, 23 percent never made eye contact during sex because they or their partner always kept their eyes closed. Another 14 percent never made eye contact even though both partners opened their eyes. Only 52 percent sometimes made eye contact during sex. (The remaining 10 percent never had sex.)

People who have eyes-open sex don’t have their eyes open every moment. (It is not a staring contest. You’re allowed to blink or close your eyes.) They also don’t always do it this way. Sometimes it’s fun to lie back, close your eyes, and let your partner put you into orbit. But when they close their eyes, they’re not avoiding their partner.

You can map out a person’s mind by the way he or she
does
you. It creates a special bond. That’s what tender loving sex is all about. But when your partner won’t even open his eyes or doesn’t want to see you, you know he isn’t interested in intimacy with any real depth. He probably isn’t interested in seeing himself either.

If this describes your situation, you can use eyes-open sex to get a better grip on your life. It will challenge who you are and make you nervous and prone to react. It will stretch you emotionally and help you grow. You may feel some initial awkwardness, but a little meaningful endurance will help you get over it. Eyes-open sex is a change in pace that prolongs sex, reduces anxiety, and increases emotional connection. It provides a place to take a breath and
relax
, instead of humping away
like rabbits. Over time, having sex with your eyes open will become your norm rather than an exception.

Eyes-open sex (like
hugging till relaxed
) can revitalize your relationship with unnerving speed. Your style of sex (like your hugging) is connected to what’s inside you. Changing how you have sex can change you.

Eyes-open sex broadens and deepens the meanings you can bring to sex. It’s pretty electric when eye contact becomes “I to I” contact—the meeting of two selves. Judging from my clients, this moment of meeting with someone you love increases your brain’s plasticity and facilitates positive change.

If you take the plunge and have eyes-open sex, keep this in mind: Couples’ experiences differ, but they always fit the people involved. Some find it a great turn-on; for others it’s a turn-off. Some find it profoundly meaningful and tender, while others find it disquieting, embarrassingly, or too revealing. Eyes-open sex is a collaborative alliance, and if you don’t have one, that’s going to show one way or another. Eyes-open sex invites your partner to look into your heart and soul and examine your relationship.

If you’re not used to this kind of thing, I suggest you start off with
heads on pillows
(
Chapter 11
). This will help you get an emotional connection from the outset. With this in place, eyes-open sex involves nothing more than “following the connection” established during foreplay and keeping that going through whatever else you do. When your partner sees interest in your eyes and feels your intent, that’s the start of
doing
him. Carry this into touching some (non-genital) part of your partner’s body.
Feeling while touching
can make a big improvement. Look into your partner, let him look into you, and pair this with your caress. It’s a lovely way to put the eye-gazing / mind-mapping circuitry in your brain to use.

When you’re on the receiving end of things, you can start off by focusing your attention on your point of physical contact to tune in to your partner’s touch. Focus “from the inside” by following the moving pattern of sensations with your mind. If you’re having difficulty, some people find it helpful to focus from “outside,” by watching their partner
touch them. If you’re easily distracted or your mind often drifts off during sex, just focus on maintaining protracted connection through the touch. You’ll get to the point where you can follow your partner’s touch “from inside” while making eye contact at the same time. Rather than diminishing your sensations, mapping his mind becomes another dimension of connection. Eventually your physical sensations and emotional connection combine in a grand symphony, rather than as a mix of chamber music and MTV. Being with your partner visually, emotionally, physically, sensorially, and cognitively become integrated parts of your total stimulation. This high-meaning, high-plasticity, somatosensory moment of meeting can do wonders for your sexual desire.