Aloha Eve,
I've been married for several years - my husband and I have an excellent relationship - we love each other dearly and we both find each other very physically attractive. We are best friends and spend as much time together as we can. When we first met, we had fantastic sex. We then went through a rough period for about 9 months where our relationship was rocky. During this time, he was verbally abusive to me, I started dreading sex because I was hurt, felt unloved and disrespected and he'd pressure me into it even though I didn't want to. We eventually worked out the verbal abuse thing and for the last 2 years, he has been a wonderful loving husband, yet I still dread sex, which he wants all the time. I've been trying really hard to give it to him every other day, although I'm not an enthusiastic participant.
My husband and I are so very much in love, and yet I know this sex issue is going to build up and damage us very soon. He wants me to want it and be into it. I want to want that too, but something about the way he approaches me just turns me off. Sometimes I think it might be a control/power issue. Can you please help me?
Thanks!
Aloha!
We humans are a bit complex. In addition to our rational adult self, we also have a whole host of other sub-personalities-like our inner child, inner teenager, inner critic, …and we have sexual sub-personalities, as well. Imagine for a moment we are like a school bus and our rational self is the driver and our sub personalities are in the seats behind us giving us their two-cents on which way our lives should turn. When we are mentally healthy, we can listen to the input of our sub-personalities, but still remain in the driver's seat as we make decisions. When we are mentally unstable (which can be in any given moment due to sleep, food, etc), we let the sub-personalities drive the bus.
While your rational self has made peace with your husband, there is likely a sub-personality that was deeply hurt (or re-injured, triggering old pain from something else). In my experience, ongoing resentment and hurt has to do with unexpressed or unheard feelings. Since you and your husband have made peace, my sense is that this isn't so much stuff you need to express to your husband as stuff your rational self needs to listen to from your injured sub-personality, and heal. There may be things left unsaid between you and your husband, but the issue sounds to be more internal than external. When your sub-personalities don't feel heard, they self-sabotage. Then you find that “you cut off your nose to spite your face.”
I recommend that you do some journaling with yourself and dialog between your rational self and your sub-personalities and find out what is going on. Lucia Capacchione has a great book called “The Power of Your Other Hand” that explains how you can dialog between your rational self (with a pen in your dominant hand) and your sub-personality (with a pen in your non-dominant hand). It may be that a sub-personality is mad at you (rather than at your husband) for choices you have made and thus doesn't feel safe. Allow your sub-personality to express to you what it is angry about, how it is hurt, what it is afraid of, what part it plays in your situation, what it wants and what it appreciates about you, your marriage, husband and sex. Then, just like you would with an external person, go about problem solving and coming to agreement so that you are on the same team with creating a dynamic and healthy sexual relationship with your husband.
Here is the good news, in addition to your injured sub-personality, you also have a sexual self that still finds your husband attractive and who enjoys sharing intimate time with him. Your sexual self didn't go away, she just got sent to the very back seat of the bus. Your job is to invite her into the driver's seat when opportunities for intimacy arrive. If you don't like the way your husband approaches you, try approaching him and thus beating him to the punch.
I am quite certain that you can restore the sexual health in your relationship as you learn to manage your internal power struggle between different aspects of yourself.
With Aloha,
Eve
Intellectual Foreplay Question: Who is in your “driver's seat”?
Love Tip: Power and Control issues are not usually between us and another person, they are between one aspect of ourselves and another-between our head and our heart, our ego and our spirit. As we learn to heal our internal relationships, our external ones heal, as well.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Dreading Sex?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hey there. A spouse/lover who is dreading sex, huh? Interesting topic in my mind. My issue has to do with overall intimacy, not so much sex. Why is it that my husband is not as passionate as he used to be? Don't you need more than sex...liek passion? I have expressed over and over how important touching and KISSING is to me and to relationships yet it does not get better. So - we have a "sex" life, and that is it. Not the passion I want. Two questions: Why do we as individuals feel the need to seek what we do not get from our spouse from someone else who will give us what we need? Is it our egos to fill the void of lack of attention? Also, How after numerous conversations with your spouse about these lack of intimacy issues, it does not change...what do I do?
Aloha,
Well, the lack of intimacy, romance, and foreplay is an age-old problem. So, while it may not make it any better, you are certainly not alone in this challenge.
I honestly think that men and women are just wired so differently that it is more of a “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” problem than anything else. This is where the “golden rule” fails us. When it comes to intimacy, we need to “do unto others as they want us to do unto them.”
For instance, when it comes to nurturing non-sexual touch like a massage, I like a firm, strong touch. However, my partner likes light touch. So when we touch each other the way we want to be touched (if I touch him firmly and he touches me lightly) neither of us is touched the way we like.
When it comes to sexuality, it is my belief that most men would be quite content if a woman went straight to direct genital touching and getting right to business, while most women would prefer non-sexual touch and kissing first—putting them in the mood first both physically and emotionally.
Consequently, men tend to do as they would like done, as do women, disregarding the preferences of the other. The same is true with communicating love; some need to hear “I love you” and others only need to feel it. We need to communicate love the way our partner wants to hear it.
So, what to do about it? While it is good that you have expressed your needs, we also want to be aware of how we express our needs. While you may have already tried this, encouraging him by telling him what you love rather than what you don’t love can be more effective. Try, “I love it when you…”, rather than “you never…” or “I’ve told you 100 times, I want to be kissed…” People tend to respond to compliments far more than complaints. And, unfortunately, at some point, you may simply not be able to get your partner to change his ways. If so, and you want to stay with him, you will instead have to work on accepting him as he is and see if you can find a way to make it work for you.
Pay attention also to what you are saying in your head when in the throes of an intimate moment. What YOU are thinking can make a HUGE difference on your enjoyment of the moment. If you are thinking, “Here he goes again…” you will feel very differently than if you think, “I love that he is so attracted to me…”. We can sabotage the moment for ourselves even worse than our partner does by carrying on a complaint session in our own heads. It is hard to feel sexual or sensual when you are mentally complaining.
The simple answer to why we stray is that we are unskilled at either getting our needs met, accepting what is or getting out of a relationship, so we look else where to find what we want.
Unfortunately, our lack of skill will eventually rear its head in the next relationship, as well. See if you can create what you are looking for in the relationship you are in.
I wish you the best.
With Aloha,
Eve
Post a Comment