Ask Dan and Jennifer » sexual intimacy

How To Achieve Emotional And Sexual Intimacy In Your Relationship

Nick Arrizza MD — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:15:05 +0000

To know and experience each other fully is the most effective way to keep the bonds of understanding, love and empathy alive and strong. This is the glue that keeps a relationship intact. Without it, it will eventually fall apart.

So what do I mean by emotional and/or sexual intimacy and how can one nurture such experiences?

Intimacy is not necessarily sex

Well, intimacy is often colloquially thought of as simply "having sex" by some. This is not what I mean here.

By intimacy I am referring to one’s ability to be open to one’s own inner feelings and then be able to share such experiences with one’s partner freely and without fear of any kind.

You see intimacy is about letting yourself be fully known to yourself and to your partner.

Unfortunately this is easier said than done for many individuals because most have been conditioned to suppress, hide, denigrate, or make unconscious much of one’s inner emotional life.

That is largely because the societal norms which continue to be perpetuated see feelings and emotions as dangerous, untrustworthy, illogical, painful, impulsive, etc.

Well, this is a sad state of affairs because emotions and feelings are what make you and me human beings.

What happens when we shut down

So by shutting down this part of one’s life experience one is essentially making one’s self less than a whole human being. That means that while in a relationship you are not fully present as your complete self.

Of course at some level your partner will eventually recognize this and feel like he/she is not fulfilled because he/she is not having a relationship with a whole human being.

It’s at times like this that individuals start feeling dissatisfied with their relationship and hence start looking elsewhere for happiness. No wonder so many relationships end for this reason.

The ability to nurture a bond of intimacy starts only when each individual starts to take personal responsibility for allowing their inner emotional life to emerge. First to themselves and then to their partner.

As I said earlier this self revelation can be a scary one for many because allowing this emotional life to emerge often means allowing unresolved emotional pain to come to the surface of one’s experience. This can make an individual feel inadequate, guilty, sad, depressed, anxious, angry, hurt, tired, etc.

The tendency might be to attempt to numb the emotional pain through drugs, alcohol, sex, work, and other distractions. Again this leads to individuals simply acting out a stale relationship with little depth and or awareness of self or other.

Sooner or later this will declare itself as unsatisfying and each partner will be on the look out for something else.

Nurturing intimacy

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Sex, What’s That? I’m Married!

Melody Brooke — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:43:28 +0000

Have you ever wondered why sex seems to disappear when you get married? Is it complacency? Is it laziness?

Sex, What’s That? I’m Married!

by Melody Brooke, MA, LPC, LMFT

It’s not a joke; most married men I know claim to have less sex than they did when they were single. This seems to be confirmed by the Durex Survey (2001), since couples living together claim to have sex 146 times per year, while married couples make love only 98 times per year. Yet going from roughly three times a week to two hardly seems to justify the statement. But why is it that simply being married reduces the number of times we choose to enjoy each other’s bodies?

After working with couples for over the past nearly 20 years, and going through my own set of divorces, I have come to the conclusion that marital dissatisfaction and a lack of sexual intimacy go hand in hand. Men feel it as a lack of sex; women feel it as a lack of emotional connectivity. But both feel it as something lacking in the relationship. Men tend to blame their wives for being disinterested or lacking in sexual drive, and women tend to blame their husbands for not having a good emotional I.Q. Yet both are unhappy. Hmm. The thing that seems to be consistent is that they each blame each other.

Blame is an old survival mechanism left over from our years as cavemen. We needed to know who was to blame for things in order to survive our harsh environment. This is not something we need to hang on to in our modern society. The assignment of blame acts as a tool to focus our actions and provides us with clear understanding of what to do next. But it also distances us from those we love. Our old brain, our mammalian primitive brain stem tells us that the one we blame is threatening our survival. This does not make us want to make love to them. It makes us want to protect ourselves, in other words, distance ourselves from that person.

Blaming each other and feeling like a victim of the other’s behavior, in my experience tends to lead to divorce. Yet somehow, this is the behavior of choice. What might happen if both partners actually took ownership of the situation and decided that they are both responsible for the lack of sexual and emotional intimacy?

If we can understand that our old brain is in gear when we are in a blaming stance, then maybe we could make a different choice. When we can recognize that we are blaming our partner for something, be it lack of sex or lack of emotional connection, it would behoove us to take ownership of our own part in the problem. We may not be sure what it is; but rest assured you have as much a part in the problem as your mate.

The alternative is to begin to explore what is in the way of the thing that you want. Let your partner know that you want things to be different and that you recognize that you have not made it easy for the two of you to have what you want. Simply admitting that you recognize that you have a part in the problem will take your partner out of defensive mode and improve your communication.

This is hard for people who…

BANNED for Talking About Sex?

Dan and Jennifer — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 17:05:39 +0000

As Easter approaches, I’m left wondering what’s become of our nation and of Christianity…

What are we coming to when we show blood and guts sprayed all over the TV, even on the Family Channel and Cartoon Network, but it’s wrong to even talk about sex. God forbid, someone shows a breast – we all remember the Janet Jackson incident. What should have been a funny blooper ended up being turned into a complete scandal.

When did sex become evil and wrong? When did war and violence become the norm? It seems that we’ve become so desensitized that no one gives it a second thought.

This Easter, I’m asking you to do just that. Think about it. Question it. Ask yourself why things are the way they are. Is it possible that we are holding on to beliefs that no longer serve us? Is it possible that we are following blindly in our parents’ footsteps without ever questioning the different motivations and circumstances between the generations?

It’s no wonder that our society is so dysfunctional when it comes to sex and relationships, and why our children are killing themselves in record numbers. When we value violence more than love, happiness, and joy – this is what we get. I’m definitely not talk about more censorship or taking away more freedoms. We’ve done enough of that already!

What I’m talking about is taking personal responsibility for our society today. It’s time to question everything and then do something about it.

So just exactly why am I going off on this topic when it really has little to do with dating and relationships?

For the second time, AskDanAndJenifer.com was banned by an advertiser, Kontera Technologies – for none other than Adult Content. Now I don’t know about you, but when I think of adult content, I think of Playboy TV and the like. But Wait! We have no nudity, no graphic language, and pornographic material at all on our website – Period! Check it our for yourself.

When we questioned Kontera about their decision, here’s what they said.

"Your site deals a lot with sexual relations, even that there is no nudity or graphic language, it is still considered as mature content with us."

"Sexual Relations" (you have to say it in a whisper so that no one will hear you). They couldn’t even say "sex". Kontera turned us down because we TALK about sex! That’s their choice and I’m happy that we live in a time where they can make that decision freely, but do they really think their clients are not grown ups with the ability to discern what they’re reading? And Heaven forbid (yes, that pun is intended), our children actually stumble across a web site that talks openly and honestly about sex. They may even grow up knowing how to make informed decisions about sex rather than learning everything from their buddies and worse yet their first boyfriend or girlfriend.

My real concern is that this decision by Kontera represents a much bigger problem. Their views about sex are reflective of our society as a whole. Where are we going as a society when I can talk about war and violence all day long and show gruesome pictures of this violence on my website with no ramifications what so ever?

But… When we start talking openly and honestly about sex and giving honest advice to people who have questions about dating, relationships, love, and sex, suddenly we’re put into the same category as child pornography and hard core porn? There’s something seriously wrong with that.

Our children grow up knowing more about combat strategies and murder than they do about their own bodies.

This is the real problem. It’s time to take the stigma away from sex and start talking about it openly and honestly for what it is – a completely normal and healthy part of our lives.