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I wrote an article yesterday for the February issue of Natural Awakenings, a free publication in the Charlotte area that covers Healthy Living. I wrote about desire since it’s been a hot topic as of late.
As I was looking for a quote by David Schnarch (something along the line of “if you don’t desire sex, it’s probably because the sex you’re having isn’t very desirable” – I think he wrote that in Passionate Marriage), I came across an interview he did. I bookmarked it so I could come back to it later. I try to ingest as much Schnarch as I can. Which reminds me, I really have to get his new book, Intimacy & Desire.
Tonight as I was reading the interview, I was reminded again how much I appreciate his approach to relationships. I thought I’d share this specific answer with you because it pretty much sums up my whole article. Read more…
When struggling to make sense of anxieties and tensions in your intimate relationships, look to your first family – your mother, father and siblings.
The degree to which we can be clear with our first family about who we are, what we believe, and where we stand on important issues will strongly influence the level of “independence” or emotional maturity that we bring to other relationships. – Harriet Goldhor Lerner, Ph.D.
Your first family is your context for learning about the world and about relationships. Often we don’t realize how thoroughly we have been shaped by our families until we leave home and experience a different world — perhaps realizing for the first time that some families exist, and even thrive, by attending to very different beliefs and values about what a family “should be.”
How we hold the ties to our first family has a big impact on how we hold the ties to our intimate partners. If the best way of dealing with your parents has been to distance yourself from them, either physically or emotionally (or both), you will probably tend to also distance yourself in intimate relationships. If you never learned to respectfully disagree with your first family (while still maintaining your Self), then it can be difficult to do it later with a partner.
If you’re having difficulty handling the inevitable anxieties of an intimate relationship, perhaps it will help you to think through a few questions:
How does my family engage in physical and emotional intimacy?
What patterns from my first family have I adopted or rejected?
Where unhelpful patterns are showing up in my current relationships?
How can I move toward a healthier way of handling anxiety and intimacy?
Much of what makes long-term relationships fulfilling is their sense of predictability. We’re no longer staring at the phone hoping *he* or *she* will call, and we’re not anxious about having a date for Valentine’ Day. We’re done worrying and wondering. Done stressing about impressing.
A good marriage is not smooth, and marriage is not reducible to a set of skills. People have difficulty with intimacy because they’re supposed to. It’s not something to be “solved” and avoided. Problems with sex and intimacy are important to go through because this process changes us. These are the drive wheels and grind stones of intimate relationships. The solution isn’t going back to the passion of early relationships because that’s sex between strangers; it’s about going forward to new passion and intimacy as adults. If we use relationships properly they make us grow into adults, capable of intense intimacy, eroticism, and passion-having sex with our hearts and minds, and not just with our genitals.
Steve and I try to have at least one date night a month. We spend a lot of time together as a family, and a lot of time together as a couple in the evenings after the kids go to bed, but it is so refreshing when we hire a babysitter, make plans, and venture out of the house.
And like Michelle Obama notes in this video, our kids notice that we make time for each other and it gives them a sense of security – as well as a good example.
Richard Gregory, a prominent British neuropsychologist, estimates that visual perception is more than ninety percent memory and less than ten percent sensory nerve signals.
This makes a lot of sense in sexology. So much of what turns us on and turns us off is not as much about what we are actually seeing — but about the feelings (memories) we associate with those things.
This is empowering — We can change our perception of sex by creating more healthy and happy memories.
David Schnarch, author of Passionate Marriage (one of my favorite books about couples and sex) notes that the reason so many people don’t desire sex is that the sex they’re having isn’t very desirable — on a physical, emotional and/or a spiritual level. They aren’t creating enough meaningful memories to make sex desirable.
And maybe that is why there’s a difference between “looking at” someone and really “seeing them.” We can look at someone or something and become sexually interested, but it’s a different thing to “see” someone and desire them sexually.
Could this be the secret to keeping sex alive in long-term relationships? Perhaps the visual turn-ons aren’t as hot or strong as they used to be, but the history (the accumulation of memories) is what can make sex meaningful, and therefore desirable.
Our culture focuses on how we look to others, but satisfying sex comes from how we are seen by others.
I get so irritated every time I hear or read someone listing all of the terrible things that are likely to happen to you if you have pre-marital sex. Federally funded abstinence-only-until-marriage programs must teach that “sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”
I interact with people with sexual problems on a daily basis. Here are just a few of the potential “harmful psychological and physical effects” of abstinence:
Vaginismus – the body’s unconscious response to a perceived threat (read: a penis). The vaginal muscles constrict to prevent penetration. Vaginismus results in unconsumated marriages, painful sex, and relationship problems. (Interesting note: Most women with vaginismus were raised in religious/conservative homes.)
Belief that “Men need sex” and “Women need emotions” - Do you see how this mindset creates a double-bind? Women feel that it would be odd or wrong for them to enjoy sex, but yet feel like they must do it in order to satisfy their husband. A lot of “wait for sex” texts reinforce this unhelpful (and wrong) way of understanding men, women, sex, and emotions.
Rapid Ejaculation – a lot of men who delay sexual relationships become so used to their masturbatory habits that they find it difficult to transition to having intercourse. They carry the shame and guilt from their “lustful” abstinent years into their relationship.
Please note that I am not saying that pre-marital sex does not have the potential for negative consequences. It absolutely does … have the potential … to cause “harmful psychological and physical effects.” But so does abstinence.
Much has been written about the chemistry between Barack and Michelle, and there are countless pictures of them embracing, but this is one of my favorite photos of them. I love the symbolism of Barack leaning on Michelle.
I am so glad there is some serious PDA going on in the White House (and I don’t mean Barack’s Blackberry!)
I get so irritated every time I hear or read someone listing all of the terrible things that are likely to happen to you if you have pre-marital sex. Federally funded abstinence-only-until-marriage programs must teach that “sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”
