I recently received a call from a former couple that I worked with. They said, “Can we come back in for a few sessions? We need a tune-up!”
Relationships require a certain level of maintenance. Just like a car requires standard maintenance a few times a year, well, your relationship does too.
Unfortunately, so many couples misconstrue this reality.
Have you ever had thoughts like this?
Here is a list of mistaken beliefs that many couples think when it comes to relationship maintenance and nurturing:
If we have to work at it, then something is wrong.
I shouldn’t have to tell him what I need, he should just know!
Sex should just happen, we shouldn’t have to talk about it.
She should know I love her, why should I have to say it all the time?
Isn’t it obvious that I appreciate what he does?
Why do I have to thank him for picking up the kids? He’s supposed to do that.
We’ve been together 30 years, isn’t it clear that I’m not going anywhere?
We have sex at least once a week, clearly she’s satisfied.
Yes, I work late a lot but he understands. If he was unhappy, he’d tell me.
Do you see the pattern here?
These simple statements show us a series of common thoughts that can become relationship poison.
Let me show you what lurks beneath them.
There are 3 Components of Love that help couples connect and build a healthy foundation. In this blog, “What to do if You’re Falling Out Of Love”, we talk in-depth about Sternberg’s theory.
Current research tells us that a predictor for divorce is not infidelity, lack of romance, financial stress, or co-parenting differences.
It’s a lack of love.
Relationship Maintenance At Every Stage
Whether you’ve been together five years or 50, whether you’re a new family or empty nesters, your relationship is the vehicle that you ride together through life.
If you’re not regularly maintaining it, well, you become a hazard to your family and to yourselves.
It’s so easy to let life get in the way of your relationship focus but as the authors have written in the book, A General Theory of Love, “If somebody must jettison a part of life, time with a mate should be last on the list…”
Dropping your time with your partner should be last on your list.
Try This “Tuning In” Exercise
One of the exercises I like to give couples in therapy is called the Relationship Check-In.
In this exercise, you’ll take turns sharing:
Set aside 20 minutes each week to check in with your partner.
Put away all electronics and find a private space in your home.
Try to check-in before either partner gets too tired (not too late).
Start by naming something that you appreciate about your partner.
Name something you might be struggling with in the relationship and name what you might need more or less of from your partner.
Tell your partner that you love them if that feels right for you. Hug.
In this exercise, no topic is off-limits.
It’s a great exercise in staying connected, holding space for both positive and negative experiences and clearly communicating what you each desire.
It’s also important to stick to the 20 minutes.
If check-ins become 2-hour marathons, no one will want to participate.
If a difficult topic is raised, it’s helpful to know that:
The partner with the complaint has the time and space to share it
The time to focus on a difficult topic is boundaried and softened by positive feelings.
When couples commit to this exercise, they almost always report feeling closer, more connected, in communication and generally happy with each other. Is it time for a relationship tune-up?
Fun Ways to Nurture Your Love
In addition to regular check-ins, it’s also helpful to be kind and offer loving gestures when the opportunity arises.
Small things like cooking your partner’s favorite meal, bringing her a cup of coffee in bed, washing his car for him or going out on regular date nights go a long way to demonstrate caring.
There are so many ways to attend to and maintain your love. Maintaining what you have together isn’t a sign of dysfunction. It’s a sign that you care so much.
What are all the ways you attend to your relationship?
I see many couples in the practice because of infidelity, affairs, cheating and/or betrayal.
In these deeply painful experiences, couples not only struggle with the most fundamental concept of commitment but also with attempting to maintain their love during their crisis.
When Ashley Madison was hacked in 2016, an interview on NPR revealed that affairs occur in at least 20% of all marriages yet other reports state affairs occur in at least 60% of all marriages.
Most couples have no map, no fallback plan, no direction on where to go once the affair is discovered or revealed.
“NPR revealed that affairs occur in at least 20% of all marriages yet other reports state affairs occur in at least 60% of all marriages.”
If you’ve experienced infidelity or betrayal, the pain endured by both of you can feel insurmountable.
Restoring commitment in its most fundamental sense can feel nearly impossible for you.
Yet, with attention, intention, effort, and patience, I’ve seen couples move from near divorce to complete healing.
Couples may seek therapy at different stages of this journey.
Here are some examples of when partners contact us:
One partner suspects the other is cheating. Rather than sit alone with his concerns, he’ll use therapy as a means to explore what to do and how to handle it.
One partner is on the brink of having an affair or actively having one. She’ll use therapy to try to gain clarity about her conflicted feelings.
A betrayed partner discovers an affair and experiences a crisis of emotions. Feeling total devastation and loss, she’ll immediately seek out couple’s therapy for guidance.
A betrayed partner cannot get past a previous affair discovery. It may be years later and the couple struggles to move on. They may schedule for themselves to see how they can “get past” what happened.
Transparency, Accountability and Time
Initially, it will be important for couples to practice transparency and accountability.
If you are the betrayed partner, you hold a whirlwind of emotions that must be expressed.
Critical to healing, you’ll need to express your anxiety, anger, fear, disappointment, shock and overall devastation.
It’s natural for you to ask questions about the affair, remain suspicious for a period of time, and to question everything.
If you are the involved partner, you must hold yourself accountable for the decision to step outside the relationship, even if you feel justified in doing so.
You may have your own separate emotional experience that can also include fear, sadness, desperation, relief and concern.
It’s natural for you to avoid answering questions but you cannot avoid all questions.
Most importantly, you’ll both need to value time.
Time will help you move out of a crisis state, develop insight into your relationship and possibly envision a future together.
“Time helps couples move out of a crisis state, develop insight into their relationship and envision a future together”
Is it Possible to Experience Intimacy During a Crisis?
In therapy, as couples move through these phases, they learn how to practice the behaviors associated with “loving” while healing from an affair.
Amongst the many skills learned, couples practice communication, empathy, vulnerability, transparency, care for the welfare of the other, honesty, trust-building, and forgiveness.
Learning these skills isn’t a guarantee that you will stay together.
For some couples, the best decision, while difficult, is separation.
Before you move into those big decisions alone, please consider seeking therapy.
Therapy provides a space for couples to explore the healthiest way for them to heal.
Therapy shows couples how to practice “loving”, whether they choose to stay together or to separate.
Research tells us that couples will wait five years before they seek out relationship help.
The Silent Divide
For many affair couples, they unknowingly experienced a silent divide, a slow and steady series of actions and inactions that laid the groundwork for the affair(s) to occur.
Remember, commitment isn’t a one-time act. It’s a series of behaviors that nurture your relationship over its lifespan.
This happens on the days when life feels ordinary, mundane and fine, as well as when you struggle to be in each other’s company.
With so many tools/resources at your disposal, from articles and books, podcasts and courses, and/or therapy, it’s easier than ever to stay attuned, connect and practice loving every day.
What resources do you use to practice “loving”, consistently, even when your relationship feels hard?
Flooded with hormones, we see our partner through a blind set of eyes. They can do no wrong. They light us up from within. They’re everything we’ve ever wanted. “Soulmates”.
We tend to see ourselves in our partner. Sometimes, they bear the characteristics that we aspire towards. Other times, they seem like a mirror image of us. What better experience than to partner with ourselves for life?
In some relationships, partners never seem to have conflict. They’ll say “we don’t fight” and seem to agree all the time.
That type of union makes it difficult for partners to evolve. It can also lead to something called enmeshment, where each partner seems to blend into the other with no distinct “I”.
Other couples confront a different reality. They “suddenly” discover that one partner seems polar opposite to the other. This can wreak havoc on a couple’s self-concept. Partners wonder how they EVER got together to begin with. What were they each thinking?
Welcome to the world of differentiation.
Some couples fail to achieve it. Other couples struggle to accept it.
What is healthy differentiation and why do we need it for healthy love?
What is Healthy Differentiation?
In 1997, Dr. David Schnarch wrote a groundbreaking book called Passionate Marriage in which he claims that differentiation is essential for healthy relationships.
By his definition, “differentiation is the process by which we become more uniquely ourselves by maintaining ourselves in relationship with those we love ”.
He adds that differentiation is essential to reducing blame, repairing conflict, tolerating intimacy and creating a hot, loving sex life.
For relationships to be healthy, it requires you to attend to your individuality as you move through the world in a state of togetherness. It means being two distinct people attempting to create an interdependent relationship.
Why is Differentiation Important?
When partners can clearly and distinctly define themselves while in partnership, they create a more honest, transparent, authentic relationship. No masks. No facades. This in turn helps eliminate relationship habits that can become toxic, such as the expectation for mindreading, wrong assumptions and chronic resentment.
When couples can achieve this, it gives them an extraordinary gift; for each partner to love and to be loved, exactly for who they are.
Differentiation and Intimacy
Dr. Schnarch identifies different types of intimacy. Consider which type of intimacy you might practice in your own relationship. We’ll use Dr. Scharch’s language.
According to Scharch, you engage in other-validated intimacy if you expect that your partner will accept you, empathize, validate you and reciprocate disclosure after you’ve shared something personal about yourself. Your self-worth depends on the reaction of your partner.
Self-validated intimacy is when you can disclose your thoughts and feelings while maintaining your own self-worth, regardless of how your partner responds. You hold no expectation of acceptance or reciprocity for what you’ve shared.
Would acceptance and reciprocity be “nice”? Maybe. Unfortunately, “nice” can keep a relationship flat, dull and static.
He argues that intimacy can occur in the latter form, even if the disclosure isn’t accepted, validated or empathized with; even if only one partner discloses. Self-validated intimacy requires you to support yourself while letting yourself be known to your partner. It reduces unhealthy dependency and enmeshment.
Let’s just sit with that for a moment. What you just read may feel counter to everything you thought you knew about relationships.
Intimacy and Vulnerability
Differentiation requires vulnerability tolerance. As a couple’s and sex therapy practice, my team and I frequently use that term when referring to the work we do with our clients.
No one enjoys feeling vulnerable. Most would describe the experience as feeling naked, exposed and unprotected from harm. Yet vulnerability is an experience partners need to step into from time to time to establish real intimacy.
One of my favorite quotes on intimacy and vulnerability is from Dr. Schnarch. He says:
“I don’t expect you to agree with me; you weren’t put on the face of the earth to validate and reinforce me. But I want to know you love me – and you can’t really do that if you don’t know me. I don’t want your rejection – but I must face that possibility if I’m ever going to feel accepted or secure with you. It’s time to show myself to you and confront my separateness and mortality. One day when we are no longer together on this earth, I want to know you knew me.”
Self-disclosure and tolerance for vulnerability become easier when our sense of worth becomes less dependent on our partner’s moods and reactions.
The more we can reveal of ourselves, the more interesting our relationships become. We increase the possibility of making real contact, real authentic connection with our partners.
This achievement allows couples to retain a sense of intimacy even when in conflict. It permits partners to have differences of opinion, to have a voice, to express themselves.
Integrating Healthy Differentiation into Your Relationship
If you’re not sure what all of this means for you, let me simplify it: establishing an intimate connection with your partner starts with having a strong, healthy connection with yourself.
If you allow your self-worth to hinge on the words and actions of others, you have not yet learned how to support yourself or possibly love yourself. It’s difficult to give and receive love with another person if you haven’t yet learned how to fully accept and love who you are.
Even folks who appear to be fiercely independent may struggle to genuinely connect with anyone else because underneath their outward presentation, sits fragility.
Consider a radical act of self-confrontation. Focus on yourself and not on your partner. Ask yourself if you can metaphorically stand up on your own two feet. Can you hold yourself up? Can you hold yourself up in more vulnerable situations with your partner? Can your partner do the same? How well do you tolerate your partner’s differences? How much room is there for difference within the partnership?
How might differentiation help you become a healthier, more enlivened couple?
In couples and sex therapy, one of the best suggestions I give some couples who struggle with sex is to not have sex. Seems counterintuitive, right?
After all, how are couples supposed to work on their sex life or create better sex if they stop having it?
I suggest abstaining as a temporary measure. It helps alleviate the pressure of sex. Think about it. When sex isn’t happening or if it’s happening awkwardly, it can occupy a lot of your mental space and emotional energy.
If you’re the seeker, you might constantly look for sexual signs or windows of opportunity, the right way to approach your partner without annoying them, or to get a “yes”.
If you’re the avoidant partner, you might wonder “what’s wrong with me?”, seek ways to discourage physical contact or feel anxious about whether your partner will ask again tonight.
Loss of libido, a sense of rejection, different levels of sexual desire, sexual dysfunction or different sexual needs can make you feel mentally and emotionally consumed, put stress on your relationship and an unconscious pressure on both of you.
When I suggest abstention, it alleviates that pressure. There’s no more figuring out what to do. As you adjust to this new arrangement, I slowly introduce new, evidence-based ways for you to physically re-engage that likely carry far better results.
The Impact of Your Troubled Sex Life
Your sex life holds its own peaks and valleys. This is normal and natural in long-term relationships. But when you have prolonged periods of time where you either can’t meet each other’s sexual needs or you stop having sex altogether, physical engagement can feel awkward and stressful.
When I ask you to take sex off the table, we make room for you to heal your erotic and emotional wounds first. Problematic sex impacts how you relate to each other. Whether you’re feeling constantly pressured or rejected, the intimacy dance between you can cause emotional injury for everyone.
Sometimes these emotional injuries shut down the avoidant partner’s sexual system. Their body learns that sex feels emotionally unsafe so, over time, their libido takes a nosedive.
Ironically, the seeking partner’s sexual system can often shut down just as the avoidant partner’s system starts to wake up! Chronic rejection inevitably leads to resentment which is a sexual turnoff.
After healing your erotic and emotional injuries in couples’ and sex therapy, you understand each other better. Mutual understanding helps you see the good in each other again. You’ll communicate more effectively and connect more.
Sometimes, this is enough to get the sexy wheels turning. But not always.
So what’s a couple to do when they reignite emotional connection but not sexual connection? I help couples reconnect physically through a step-by-step proven exercise.
A Powerful and Proven Exercise
When couples tune into and attend to their sensuality, they lay the ground for their sexuality to emerge in a powerful and connective way.
Known as a Sensate Focus exercise, it requires different levels of physical touch. It combines mindfulness and present-centered awareness with some specific steps, rules, limits.
This slow progression of touch builds a sense of safety and trust in each partner again. It also helps you break unhealthy touch habits and creates pleasurable touch experiences.
The power of sensate focus is in its ability to keep you focused on touch in a deliberate, purposeful and conscious way. This skill often gets lost in long-term love. Over the years, sex can become routine and often mindless. Sensate focus helps you break old patterns and establish new, more pleasurable ones.
Unlike traditional, goal-oriented sex, sensate focus helps you enjoy the pleasure of the sexual journey by staying tuned into your senses. After all, good, fully-embodied sex is a sensual experience.
Rules for a Successful Sensate Focus Experience
Before you embark on your sensate focus journey, there are a few rules to understand.
Rule #1: Suspend judgment
Let go of any expectations for this exercise. Treat this entirely as an experiment and stay curious as to what it produces for you without judging your experience. Learn from it.
Rule #2: Mark your calendars
Mark your calendars together. Initially allow for 30 minutes of sensate time for each recipient. Try to choose times when you can relax and rest and where you can have privacy without distractions. However, make sure to also choose a time where you will stay awake.
Rule #3: Clothing Decision
While the goal is to maximize skin-to-skin contact, clothing is optional. If you choose to wear clothes, choose your least restrictive clothing. As you move through the exercises, your clothing preferences may change. Keep your room at a comfortable temperature.
Rule #4: Focus on sensuality, not sexuality
The purpose of sensate focus is to strengthen present-centered awareness, mindfulness and sensate awareness through touch. This means that even if you get turned on, you will not act on your sexual impulses.
The Sensate Focus Exercise
Below are the steps to follow for your sensate focus exercise.
Step 1: Non-Genital Touching
Decide who will be the Toucher and who will be the Receiver.
The receiver will focus on the sensation of being touched, without judgment. They will allow the toucher to explore their body freely. The receiver should not direct the touch but will allow the toucher to have his/her own exploratory experience.
The receiver can and should communicate if the toucher creates physical discomfort for the receiver. At that point, the toucher should change the type of touch they are practicing.
The toucher will explore the receiver’s body by focusing on texture, shape and temperature. They will also explore different forms of pressure on the body.
Notice the difference between the texture of your partner’s cheeks versus their hands. Notice what it’s like to offer a quick, steccato type of touch versus touch that is elongated. Notice how touch with your full palm differs from fingertip touch.
Only touch non-genital areas. That means that breasts, penis’s, vaginas, buttocks’ and kissing are off limits!
It’s recommended that, if sexual arousal occurs, neither partner attempts to satisfy the arousal. This would shift the focus away from sensuality toward sexuality and probably keep you in your same dysfunctional touch patterns.
Be sure to change roles and reciprocate. Do not compare experiences as they will be different.
Step 2: Genital Touching
Kissing and penetration are not included here.
Even though we’re introducing genital touch, the goal is to explore each other’s bodies through touch. Allow your focus to stay on the sensation of touching and being touched.
All of the same rules apply. The toucher should stay focused on the sensory experience beneath her/his hands. Move slowly and/or quickly; move deliberately. Trace and run your fingers and hands along your partner’s body, including their genitals.
In this scenario, the receiver now has permission to put their hand over the toucher’s hand and move with them if they so choose. Do not lead the toucher. Instead, follow their movement. The receiver can practice communicating what they might want through their hand, perhaps with a gentle squeeze. The toucher can decide whether or not to abide.
It’s important that the toucher not make the genitals their sole focus. The touch should still maintain a whole-body curiosity.
Again, switch roles without comparison.
Step 3: Mutual Touching
Kissing and penetration are not included here.
With greater sensory awareness, partners can now play with mutual touch, including genitals. If you’re becoming sexual instead of sensual, simply spend less time touching the genital areas and stay focused on other parts of the body. Attune to texture, shape and temperature.
An add-on to mutual touching is exploration with your mouths. That doesn’t mean jumping into oral sex. It means exploring your partner’s whole body with your lips and tongue. It means tasting them and feeling their body from an oral sensory perspective. Remember to stay focused on your sensory experience, not your sexual experience.
Step 4: Kissing and Sensual Penetration
Following the same principles from your previous steps, you can now include touch through kissing and penetration from a sensory perspective.
Approach the experience from a sensual lens. Imagine what kissing and penetration look and feel like from a sensory experience. Notice the warmth and the wetness. Allow your fingers, hands, lips and mouth to guide you.
Begin with a non-genital focus and gradually bring the genitals into contact. Allow for genital touching and rubbing without penetration.
If both partners seek penetration, move slowly and intentionally into this form of touch. Allow yourselves to fluctuate in movement, including stillness, as penetration occurs.
Step 4 invites both partners to touch and receive, simultaneously. It’s important to stay relaxed and pleasure-focused as the body increases in it’s arousal, intensity and possible orgasm.
Some couples like to linger in each step for several dates before moving onto the next step. Take each step at your own pace, practicing mutual respect, curiosity and openness.
The Benefits of Sensate Focus
Sensate focus has so many profound benefits. In addition to helping couples slow down and tune in, it strengthens your ability to be both sensual and sexual, allowing them to overlap but without confusing the two.
Let’s face it. We live in the age of instant gratification. Got a headache? Take a pill. Feeling lonely? Hop on Facebook. Need the book now? Instantly download it to your e-reader.
Good partnered sex doesn’t work “in an instant”. It doesn’t have to be slow. But it does need to be mindful. It requires your fullest attention. It needs you to shift your focus to pleasure.
In our fast-paced world, if you’ve forgotten how to be mindful with your lover, sensate focus provides you with the path for deeper, more meaningful and satisfying sex.
Your sex life doesn’t sit in a vacuum. In a long-term relationship, good sex is dependent on many things. If there is any part of you that thinks sex should “just happen” – organically, naturally, fluidly, spontaneously, at will – well, you will be sadly disappointed.
I wish it was that simple. Can sex happen that way? Absolutely… sometimes. Which means that at other times, it takes conscious work. My question for you is – Are you willing to do the work?
Life Obstacles
When you create a life together, you grow beyond the role of lovers. You become life partners. You might be business partners. You may even opt to become parents. And, you wear many hats in between. But somewhere in your journey, you begin to separate your sexuality. It’s as if it becomes a separate entity, disconnected from all of the roles you play.
Your Sexuality
Remembering that your sexuality is part of you, part of your identity while you play all of those roles in life, is key to stoking the fire from within. Paying the bills, shopping for food, or giving your child a bath does not erase your sexuality.
The problem is that you become disassociated and disconnected. You disassociate from that part of yourself. You disconnect from the fact that you’re a sexual being. But, guess what? It’s there. It’s within you. It hasn’t left.
Relationship Problems
Conflict in your relationship can also cause a disconnect. Unresolved wounds, disagreements, absences, sexual incompatibilities, and more can make sex awkward, uncomfortable, and unwelcome. Working through relationship difficulties can lead to a better sex life but even that is not a guarantee.
A Day in My Office
Here are 10 typical scenarios I see in my office that leave couples with a lackluster sex life:
The couple feels stressed out by life
One partner wants more sex than the other
One or both partners have had affairs
The couple struggles with parenting challenges
The couple holds different marital expectations
One partner is depressed or anxious
One partner is a functional alcoholic
One or both partners have body image issues
One partner is struggling with a sexual dysfunction
One partner has a previous sexual trauma
Why is Sex So Complicated?
Well, because it just is. As you can see from this list, some issues tie directly to sex but not all of them. Yet, sex is impacted by all of them.
My therapeutic approach allows me to take on a holistic lens and bird’s-eye view when addressing your struggles; so that together, we can create the right solutions for your relationship and sex life.
But, it takes some work. As we work through the issues, obstacles, or disconnects that you feel, we also cultivate sex-positive energy, vibrancy, and excitement for your future sex life. Because it can be better. At some point, what feels like work actually starts to feel like fun!
Are you living in a sexless marriage? Perhaps you’re one of those couples that from the outside everything looks picture-perfect, but you carry a secret that no one knows about. You and your partner don’t touch each other, you don’t get intimate with each other, and you don’t have sex together.
Low sexual desire is the number one reason that couples seek out my services. This is not an uncommon issue for many people in long-term partnerships. In fact, my work with couples helps them navigate the dynamics in their sexless marriage.
How to Navigate Your Sexless Marriage
Your sexless marriage is not always just about sexual desire. It can be a combination of things.
First, before you can tackle your sex life, you and your partner have to resolve complications in your relationship. I’ve seen sex fall off the map due to other non-sexual relationship problems. In order for you to create a hot sex life, it helps to resolve the relationship problems first. This can be anything from betrayal, to parenting, money, the in-laws, career, stress or other issues.
Second, resolving your relationship problems doesn’t mean that sex magically starts happening – or that sex will be spontaneous and amazing. You may have to rebuild your sex life. You still have to work at it and that’s okay. Working directly on your sex life can feel fun, freeing and rewarding once you’ve conquered those non-related issues noted in number one.
Third, after months or years of a sexless marriage, you and/or your partner have probably shut your sexual systems down. This is where we tap into your sexuality as an individual so you can come together as a couple. Because sex and sexuality is really about your life force, your life energy, your vitality. That force starts with you.
How to Raise Your Sexual Energy
Let’s get vulnerable for a second. I want you to think to a time when you’ve had a really charged sexual experience. Can you remember all the sensations associated with this memory? If you hold that memory in your mind, you’ll remember that you radiated energy throughout your entire body. You were fully embodied in this life force, this vitality, that is almost indescribable.
So, how do you raise your sexual energy once it’s gone low? You have to tap into your own sexuality before you can tap into your sex life as a couple. It starts with this question:
What makes you (as an individual) feel most alive?
Maybe it’s going to the gym to get your body up and moving
Maybe it’s eating a luxurious meal that reaches all of your senses
Maybe it’s participating in a risky sport or adventure consistently
Maybe it’s reading an erotic novel to get sex on the brain
Maybe it’s wearing certain fabrics that feel sexy on your body
Maybe it’s touching yourself while showering to activate your arousal
Love and Live Sexy
I have worked with many couples who live in a sexless marriage. You don’t have to keep your sexless marriage a secret anymore. You can do something about it! Remember that – in addition to all the other roles you play in life – you are also a sexual being. I encourage you to use the suggestions above or come up with your own and try them.
If you’re looking for other ways to enhance your sex life, here’s where to start!
