This morning I initiated love-making with Tim.
It was quick and easy for both of us, which was lovely.
He said to me afterwards, as he often does, “I love you”.
Sweet, right?
Not to me! I reluctantly said “I love you, too”, but in my head I’m like, “Whatever, I know. But HOW WAS THE SEX???”
I think he says “I love you” to demonstrate that he’s feeling emotionally connected. But I always feel like there is something incomplete about the experience unless he says something specific about what he enjoyed or felt in that particular session.
This is something I really want as part of our sexual relationship and yet it is so difficult. I really want to hear it, but it takes a reasonable effort for me to give it or ask for it. And from what I sense, to Tim this feels more like a mammoth effort.
For many many years our inability to give and receive sexual feedback drastically hindered the passion in our sexual intimacy.
Tim and I pretty much grew up together, from the age of 16 and have only had sex with each other. We even waited for our wedding night, like good little Christians, only to find, upon our arrival that neither of us knew what to do to make it happen! This was kinda disappointing to me, but to Tim, it triggered his emotional wound of incompetence in a big way, and he immediately took a step back from the sexual arena. I was keen to keep experimenting and trying stuff, and while we managed to sort things out the following night, he told me soon afterwards to back off and not to expect much from him sexually.
This triggered my emotional wound of feeling worthless and undesirable. And so, while we continued to have sex irregularly throughout the first 9 years of our marriage, it was a fairly lack-lustre experience. During our early sexual encounters my way of giving feedback was too blunt for Tim and continued to trigger his wound and put him off further. As my wound was triggered further and my resentment grew about the lack of passion in our relationship, my feedback began to border upon ridicule. His feedback (other than “back-off”) was non-existent. Even when I prompted him, “Do you like this?”, “Do you prefer it like this?”, “Would you rather not use a condom?”, etc, he had no preference to voice whatsoever.
I became more and more frustrated with his lack of enthusiasm and took on a masculine state in our sexual relationship, where I would try to “show him” that I wanted more passion by being more rough with the way I moved him around. I saw his desire for preparation and clean-up as a personal rejection, showing a lack of masculinity in him. It was not until very recently that I was able to see this as masculine logic and directness showing up.
As you may see, there are two issues interacting to create this problem for us:
The good news is, these are the same issues that interact to create all of our problems in marriage and once we learn to identify them, we can resolve any conflict in our relationship.
The Two Causes of Conflict in Relationships
Seeing the underlying pain causing Tim’s behaviour allowed me to view him with compassion and love in a way I never had before. Accepting that as a man, his brain works differently to mine allowed me to stop making him wrong about that and accept the gifts he brought to the relationship.
Understanding that Camilla wasn’t trying to make me feel incompetent – she was just dropping hints about what she wanted me to do to have her feel desirable – allowed me to drop the notion that she was my enemy.
We’ve developed our programs to address these issues sequentially in order to enable you to resolve these problems and achieve new depths of love and passion.
Resolving long-term relationship issues
The Relationship Workshop primarily addresses the area of masculine/feminine misunderstandings and role reversal. This is a group workshop and the group environment allows each of you to really understand how the same issues concerning masculine and feminine states affect ALL couples. It is often easier to see the issues as they play out in someone else’s relationship first.
The Heart-to-Heart series goes deep into each partner’s emotional wound, allowing you space to gain insight and to heal. It allows your partner to understand your pain on a new level, bringing compassion, instead of division and freedom rather than reactivity.
Relationship Mentoring brings insights into both sources of conflict together to work on the real issues that are disrupting your relationship. Real guidance in real time allows you to reorient and choose love, rather than conflict in real life.
So don’t stay where you are in your relationship – it’s time to take the next step towards feeling wildly in love!
2 Mistakes Couples Make that cause them to Fall Out of Love
Download the free PDF and start feeling more in love right now!
Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash
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