Successful Marriage: Connecting Emotionally during Sex

A successful marriage includes time for connecting. There are many ways to connect with your partner, such as spending time together, laughing and having fun, affection, talking, being emotionally vulnerable with your partner, sexual contact, and any other way that makes you feel close. In this article, I’ll focus on sexual contact as one way for partners to connect. Sexual contact includes different things for different couples. For some, it includes intercourse and for other couples, it does not. The important thing is that both partners are in agreement about what sexual contact is.
For some couples, sexual contact is mostly a physical experience to express sexual feelings, to release tension, and/or to feel good. For others, it includes an emotional connection. If your sexual experiences with your partner are primarily physical, I’m writing to invite you to consider exploring this emotional dimension of your relationship. Emotional connection means showing your partner your emotions and, in a loving relationship, your partner responds with caring; perhaps with words, or a gaze, or a touch. Emotional connection is a form of intimacy between partners. Consider the secret, and not so secret, desires of adults: to belong, to be loved, to be wanted, to be appreciated, and to be accepted for who we are. Having these desires met by your partner can be a very intimate experience. Yet, at the same time we crave it, intimacy is scary. We may purposely, or unconsciously, do things to avoid intimacy: we may look away from our partner’s gaze, we may fantasize about someone else during sex, we may keep our eyes closed, we may keep emotion separate from sex, we may want sex with someone we hardly know, and we may avoid sexual contact.
The interactions between couples outside the bedroom definitely effect what happens inside the bedroom. There are some qualities of a relationship that tend to make sex more emotionally satisfying: equality, understanding, trust, communication, and caring.
Another aspect of emotional closeness which may make sexual contact more satisfying is mindfulness. Mindfulness means we allow ourselves to be in the present moment. We notice and can experience all of our senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell). We are thinking about what we are experiencing right here and right now. It also provides the chance to be so focused that we lose track of time. When we are with our partner in this way during sexual contact we take in all that we are experiencing through our bodies and other senses right here and right now. Other thoughts, preoccupations, memories, expectations, and awareness of time are put aside. Who we truly are in our heart is allowed to arise and be noticed by the one we love. Who are partner is in his/her heart is allowed to arise and be noticed by us. Noticed, experienced, and taken in. Perhaps you have experienced this intimacy with another human being when you looked into their eyes and could see their soul, or when your heart felt as if it was reaching out of your body and connecting with your partner’s heart, or when your bodies were as close to one another as is physically possible and it felt as if your souls were joined. Sounds like romance? Sex within marriage can also give us this opportunity. When we are emotionally connected and mindful with our partner during sexual contact, this intimacy is available to us.
When couples have an emotional connection during sexual contact, this can bond couples. It is one type of glue that holds couples together. A bond of any type greatly helps couples weather the inevitable conflicts of the relationship. You become more able to tolerate the ups and downs because you know that right alongside the anger and hurt you sometimes feel is the love between you. The love you’ve given and received during moments of bonding with your spouse. Connecting sexually and emotionally can be part of a successful marriage.

Successful Marriage: Together Out of Love, Not Insecurity

What do some couples have that other couples don’t? Successful couples are together out of love. They enjoy being with each other. They genuinely like spending time with their spouse. They may do some activities together that they both enjoy. They may feel safe and secure when their spouse is around. They may look forward to being intimate and sexual with each other. They may like talking and listening to one another.
Most relationships start in Romantic Love. In this first stage, couples come together because they are in love and because they love being with this person. Yet, even then, they were together because of how the other made them feel. This new boyfriend or girlfriend made them feel loved, cherished, desired, elated, and ecstatic. Other feelings were alleviated or disappeared: loneliness, isolation, feeling unloved, unwanted, or afraid. In this stage, we are not only in love with our new partner, we are in love with how we feel.
As I’ve written about before, Romantic Love fades and all relationships move into the next stage. Imago Relationship Therapy calls the next stage the Power Struggle. Here, the high of being in love has worn off. The couple has their first fight or begins to feel some of those difficult feelings again: loneliness, isolation, unloved, unwanted, and/or afraid. Each person’s old defenses come back and each person may react by blaming, shaming or criticizing or with silence or withdrawal. Couples who choose to explore what these conflicts are about move into the next several stages: Re-Commitment, Doing the Work, Awakening, and Real Love. These are couples who stay together because of love.
Other couples remain in the Power Struggle. These couples are together, in part, to alleviate their own insecurities. Even though the relationship they’re in is incredibly difficult at times, this feels preferable to feelings connected to insecurity: fear, loneliness, isolation, powerlessness, and shame. This can show up in a number of ways. Perhaps your spouse provides financially, so you remain to avoid the fear of being poor and deprived. Perhaps your partner cares for you by keeping the house or preparing the meals, so you remain to avoid having to learn to do these things for yourself. Perhaps your concerned that family or friends or your community would frown on divorce, so you stay in the marriage to avoid feeling ashamed. Perhaps you feel physically safe living with someone, so you stay to avoid living alone and fearing for your safety. Perhaps you like having a sexual partner, so you stay to avoid having no rewarding sexual outlet or to avoid dating again. Perhaps your spouse brings you social status, so you stay to avoid isolation or anonymity.
Are you in your relationship, in part, to avoid feeling these things? If you ended the relationship would you feel ashamed, lonely, afraid, or uncared for? If you entered couples therapy and were willing to explore these conflicts with your spouse, would you feel scared of, vulnerable in front of, and/or angry with your spouse?
As the gifted therapist Chloe Madanes wrote, “The couple has to make the shift from wanting to be together because it helps each partner with their difficulties to wanting to be together because they enjoy one another.” Couples therapy helps couples shift from being together out of their own insecurities to being together out of love. Couples therapy is a chance to explore what you are concerned or insecure about. Many couples find that just saying out loud what their concern is alleviates its intensity. It just doesn’t sound as bad as they told themselves it would be. Plus, by saying it aloud, the concern comes into your conscious awareness where it can be effectively dealt with. Each person then moves to finding a way to take care of themselves or rely on others, not only the spouse, to get this concern met. This process, together with another important feature of Imago Relationship Therapy: increasing fun and appreciation, shifts couples to being together because they genuinely like begin with one another. Enjoying one another is an important feature of a successful marriage.

Open to Love: Freeing Yourself From Being Protected, yet Isolated

Let me tell you a story I heard from a gifted Imago therapist and trainer named Maya Kollman. The story is about a woman who loves walking on the beach. The woman’s bare feet sink into the warm sand with each step. Without shoes, she feels free and natural. The woman walks like this every day, until she steps on a sharp shell and cuts her foot. The woman is surprised. Her foot is bleeding and it hurts. The next time she walks on the beach, she wears flip-flops to protect her feet from shells. After several days, the side of her foot brushes against a beached jellyfish. The woman’s foot stings and itches. So, the next time she walks on the beach the woman wears sneakers. This works for several days, until the woman stubs her toe on the rocks of the jetty. Frustrated, the woman decides to wear boots for her walks on the sand. She has been hurt so many times and she has finally found a way to keep her feet safe. However, the woman has become so concerned with protecting her feet that she has lost the wonderful experience of feeling the sand beneath her feet and between her toes. She misses feeling the texture, coarse and dry or silky and cool, and she misses feeling the connection to nature.

As we walk through life, both joy and hurt are part of the journey. Yet, it is our natural reaction to pull away from the things that hurt us, whether they are physical or emotional. Although it is extremely scary to be vulnerable to these hurts, the alternative is even worse: isolation. While others can’t hurt us when we isolate ourselves, we also cannot receive love and caring. This is a profound conundrum. Our hearts are protected, but they are also closed to love. And what greater pleasure is there on this journey than to love and be loved? As M. Scott Peck says, to love is to be fully invested in the spiritual growth of another. How divine to love and to be loved in this way! It is exquisite.

So, how do we live with this paradox? We must open our hearts by carefully choosing a person who feels safe. If this person is your spouse, how wonderful! It is important to realize, though, that the person who feels safe may not be your spouse at first. This may surprise you, especially coming from a marriage counselor. However, if your marriage has a history of many hurts that have not yet been talked about and worked through, your partner may not feel like a safe person. You might feel safer being open with your therapist or a trusted friend. This first experience will teach you what it feels like to be open. Through this experiment, you can come to know in your heart that you can be open, survive it, and even relish it. After that, you can begin to open your heart to your spouse.

It is important to recognize that there will be hurt sometimes, even with someone who is safe and even with your spouse. This is because the other person is human, too, makes mistakes and has faults of his or her own. He or she may unintentionally do or say something hurtful. When this happens, and it will, allow yourself to feel the hurt and to talk about it with him or her. Part of a close relationship is being able to discuss everything that happens between you. If you both feel heard and understood, talking about a hurt can move the relationship or marriage even closer. Only then, with openness and vulnerability, can love grow in your marriage. As humans, we need one another. We need to love and to be loved. By opening yourself to love, you will feel the divine joy that you deserve.

The Things We Do For Love

What do you do to get others to like you? How about to get others to love you? We all want to feel loved, so we do certain things, or act certain ways, to try to ensure that. And, even as you are doing these things to be liked or loved, do you have doubts about the way others feel about you? If someone says ‘no’, rejects something you’ve offered, or gets angry with you, do you worry that they don’t, or won’t, like you? Feeling worried about this is common. And, because we’re reluctant to admit it, most of us don’t talk about it and wind up feeling isolated on top of feeling worried!
Many of us find that we do things just to increase our chances of being liked by others. This is a habit that often develops in early childhood. As children, we quickly figured out what to do or say in order to get our parents’ praise and attention and to avoid their anger and disapproval. For example, if, as a child, you could tell that your parents liked it when you were talkative and humorous, you may act that way now to get love and attention. If your parents prepared food to comfort you, you may have learned how to cook to comfort others. If your parents praised you when you were polite and compliant or when you acted tough, you may find that those behaviors dominate your demeanor now. If your parents disliked your crying, you may have learned to swallow your tears and rarely cry. If your parents disliked seeing you exuberant and bouncing, you may have learned to keep your body still.
What you learned in childhood about how to get love is still likely to be the way you seek love as an adult. And while these behaviors may not be getting you the deep love you need, you keep doing them because that’s all you know how to do. They can be extreme or moderate. You may dominate every conversation or keep quiet as a mouse. Perhaps you sexualize most relationships or avoid your sexuality altogether. Maybe you cry all the time or maybe you’ve only cried a few times your whole life. Maybe you always feel angry or you avoid anger and confrontation. Maybe you control everyone or you allow others to control you. Maybe you buy gifts and are always ‘doing’ for others or maybe you think only of yourself. If you have ever been a client in therapy, you may even have noticed yourself doing, or trying to do, these same behaviors with your therapist. As a therapist, I can help you see which behaviors are not getting you the love you need.
All these behaviors, and more, are okay at times. It is when these behaviors are used solely as a means to be liked or loved that they can be unfulfilling. And when you use these behaviors to get others to like and love you, you are reenacting your relationship with your parents. This actually limits your chances of being liked and loved by others because they are not your parents. The people who you have relationships with now, like and dislike different things from your parents. Yet, you continue acting the same way you did with your parents. This is because, when you are afraid you are not getting the love you need, your unconscious treats everyone as if they are your parent(s). And, boy, is this true with how you behave with your spouse when this same fear shows up!
Doing these old behaviors also limits your chances of being loved in the present because when you act this way, you are not who you really are. So, if you don’t get the love you want by doing or being what others want, and if the behaviors you learned in childhood are unfulfilling now, how do you get love? You get love by being yourself. You feel loved and cherished when you show someone your true self and they react by continuing to care about you. Although this may sound simple, it can be quite daunting. Think back; have you ever avoided doing or saying what you really think out of fear that you would get a negative reaction? What might it be like to be yourself with someone you can verbalize your true desires, fears, opinions, and hurts to? With a safe person, you can experiment with new behaviors rather than using the same behaviors from your past. When you do something different with a safe person, you can see what the outcome really is, which is often different from what you feared it would be. A good therapist can provide this accepting relationship and a place to try new, more fulfilling behaviors. With your therapist, you will be cared for even when you say what is really on your mind. You will still be accepted and cared for even when you do the opposite of what you’ve been doing for years. This is a healing relationship where your true self can show up. Your marriage can also be a healing relationship when you use the Imago dialogue. When working with couples, I teach partners to become this safe person for each other. Couples come to show each other their true selves. Working through any challenges that arise, they arrive in Real Love where they are loved for who they really are.
Test what you’ve always wondered; if I say what I truly think and feel will this person still like me? Learn to find the love you want by learning to be your true self.

The Art of Gift Giving: The Platinum Rule

Do you remember hearing the Golden Rule when you were a child? The Golden Rule sets a terrific standard. It compels us to treat others as we would like to be treated. As wonderful as this concept is, it’s since been upgraded to the Platinum Rule. The Platinum Rule sets an even higher standard: treat others as they would like to be treated. Wow, what a difference! Instead of treating others as we would like to be treated, we recognize that the best way we can care for someone else is to treat them the way they would like! This tenet fits beautifully with Imago Relationship Therapy, where we are taught that each person has his or her unique way of seeing the world. One person cannot claim to know what is true for another person until the other person communicates it to him/her.
What do the Platinum Rule and Imago Relationship Therapy have to do with gift giving? Let me tell you. A few weeks ago, someone dear to me read aloud an article listing gift ideas for your Valentine. What struck me was this: how can we choose a gift for someone from a list written by someone else? It reminded me of the Golden Rule which encourages us to buy gifts that sound like a great idea to us, but that may or may not actually appeal to the recipient. Many people give gifts they’d secretly (or not so secretly) like to receive. While this sometimes results in the recipient liking the gift, this is not always the case.
The Platinum rule is light-years ahead when it comes to gift giving and relationships. When we apply the Platinum Rule and Imago to gift giving, we are encouraged to find out what the person likes before we buy for them. Along those same lines, this concept also dispels a myth about marriage: if my partner loves me, he or she will know what I like without my having to say it. This myth has been at the start of many arguments within relationships. I know because I’ve been there.
One way to learn what your partner likes is by doing the Reromanticizing exercise found in Harville Hendrix’s book, Getting The Love You Want. To perform this exercise, you and your partner each take a separate piece of paper and write a list of gifts or behaviors you would like to receive. Perhaps the gifts or behaviors are things your partner gave you or did for you at the beginning of your romance. Perhaps they are things he or she hasn’t purchased or done for you yet. Make each item on the list as specific as possible. Now, exchange lists and use them whenever you need to buy a gift or do something special for your partner. If there are items on your partner’s list that you are unwilling to purchase or do at this time, that’s okay. You can focus on the other items and talk in couples therapy about why that item is particularly challenging for you. (You may find that these difficult items are hints as to the ‘lost parts’ of yourself that your partner is encouraging you to grow.)
If you’d rather surprise your partner with his or her gift than use a list, how do you learn what it is he or she would truly like to receive? Be a detective throughout the year. Listen closely for your partner to say what he or she likes when you’re out at a store, reading the paper, or out with friends. Your partner may already be saying these things aloud. Even if it’s months away, you may decide to buy the gift now and save it for the holiday.
By following the Platinum Rule and the principles of Imago, you can take the stress and guesswork out of gift giving. The art of gift giving is so much more rewarding when we cherish the ways our partner is different from us. Bestow upon your partner a gift he or she truly wants to receive.