I was feeling melancholy. Sad. I’d had a disappointment or two, and I was also disappointed in myself. I was exhausted. It showed. And there was something unnameable, a kind of causeless grief. I was just letting it wash over me.
My partner asked me what was wrong. I wasn’t sure how to answer. It didn’t feel like something was wrong exactly. She asked me how she could help. I replied simply that I didn’t need helping.
Then she paused for a moment and asked me something that caught me completely off-guard…
“How would you like me to be with you right now?”
I couldn’t help but smile, and she caught it, returned it.
“Just like this. Thank you.”
One question changed everything
In an instant she flipped the script – from judging me as somehow broken and needing fixing – to expressing a genuine desire to enter my world. It was like plunging into a cool, calm, refreshing pool. Her simple curiosity, her conscious choice to withdraw her judgement, her willingness and ability to just be with me… it meant a lot to me, and I told her so.
“You’ve taught me” she responded without missing a beat. It’s true. I’m reminded how if we can discern and articulate what we actually want (no small task), and if we have willing and capable people in our life, we can indeed teach them how to care for us.
The question “How would you like me to be with you right now?” has become part of our relationship vocabulary, and part of our relational awareness. It reminds us that our presence can be given (and received) as a gift, and that there are various ways we can be with each other, various ways to be there for each other.
The question also prompts a question we must then ask ourselves: “How do I want my partner to be with me right now?” Exploring the answer to that question opens up new doors of self-inquiry, and gently puts the responsibility for getting our needs met squarely where it belongs.
Follow me on social media for sex and relationship tips, tools, and insights – Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
My partner and I sometimes try out different activities for fun and to nurture our feeling of novelty, challenge, intimacy, and excitement. A while back we went to an acro yoga date night and then signed up for salsa dance classes.
The first salsa class was fun. We learned some basics, and although it felt awkward and stiff, it was also new and exciting. The second class was awful. We barely had a grasp on what we’d learned in the first class, and now we had a bunch of new stuff to learn too. There was a general feeling of frustration and failure in the room.
In the third class, something fascinating happened. For a few moments at a time I stopped counting my steps, I stopped thinking so hard about doing it right, and suddenly I said to my partner “This feels like… dancing!”
If you’ve ever wanted a better relationship, but had difficulty applying new tools and insights, please read on…
Learning to dance is like learning better ways of relating
Teaching salsa dance must be really hard. Dance is visceral, organic, poetic. It comes naturally from somewhere inside. And yet, if we want to learn a particular dance style there are formal structures to learn, and an initial lack of capability and skill to confront. Before we learn to dance salsa in a way that actually feels like dancing, we have to learn the steps in a non-dancing way, and this feels painfully clumsy.
As I considered the problems of teaching and learning dance I had a sudden insight into my own work as a couples counsellor: My experience of trying to learn salsa dance is similar to my clients’ experience of trying to apply new tools and insights.
“This isn’t what I came for”
I took salsa lessons because I wanted to learn how to dance salsa, but by the second lesson I felt the impulse to quit. Why? Because it didn’t feel like dancing. I came for dancing, but this wasn’t dancing (just like couples come for relief from relationship difficulty only to discover that they are tasked with doing something that feels like the opposite of relief)!
By the third class it started to feel like dancing, but I had to push through some very awkward steps to get there, steps I hadn’t anticipated and that tested my strength of perseverance. I had to use new muscles and new parts of my brain (just like the couples who call me for help).
I think my client couples often struggle for the same basic reason. They come to me to make their relationship better. I give them something to work with, but at first it’s frustrating. They’re quickly confronted with a disappointing realization: “This is hard. This isn’t what I had in mind. I’m frustrated. I don’t get it!”
For instance, if someone comes to couples therapy because they are desperate to get their partner’s validation or approval, they might have to first confront their own lack of self-respect.
A relationship is a lot like dancing, in fact the metaphor is so close that it almost dissolves into literal truth: it’s not too much of a stretch to say that a relationship IS dancing. When a relationship flows it feels organic, natural, sublime; we move together effortlessly with a tremendous sense of grace and presence. But to learn new ways of doing relationship is like learning salsa dancing; at first it feels like the opposite of what we came for. We want to dance, and instead we’re stuck in a sack-race in the dark.
Get ready to be challenged
After that third salsa class I thought that if I were teaching salsa I would try to prepare my students for the frustration, the awkwardness, the disappointment that they were sure to encounter. I would explain to them that before they had the experience that they came for, the experience of actually dancing salsa, they would have to struggle through a difficult stage of doing some awkward non-dancing. I would explain that it might feel embarrassing and stilted, that they might want to quit, but also that if they stick it out, they will eventually get some satisfaction. In simple terms – it takes work, it’s difficult, and it might get worse before it gets better. But if you can tolerate the discomfort there’s a reward.
Couples in therapy need the same kind of attitude. If you want to learn to relate more gracefully, more beautifully, more naturally, you will necessarily be confronted with a period of agonizing awkwardness. This is perfectly natural and unavoidable.
Many people erroneously assume that the trouble and pain they experience in their relationship is due to something being broken or “wrong.” Actually, the trouble is inevitable and the pain has a purpose. It motivates us to push ourselves into a new level of relationship maturity. It’s called growing up.
It would sound crazy to say that someone who’s never learned salsa dancing is a bad salsa dancer, and yet that’s exactly how we judge ourselves (or our partner) when it comes to our own relationships. But if we approach our relationship difficulties as motivating forces that task us with learning new steps, then our troubles gain purpose and we make progress.
Follow me on social media for sex and relationship tips, tools, and insights – Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
Many people want to make changes in their relationship, including their sex lives, but want to make the change privately, to get it “right” and THEN bring their polished new self to the other, or to the bedroom. This feels a lot safer than stumbling into uncharted territory with a partner, especially when conflict, mistrust, resentment or other difficulties have become the norm.
In the following story we’ll see how a couple struggling to achieve deeper sexual expression discovered that trying new things in the moment, though messy, provided opportunities for change that hadn’t been available through planning or negotiation. By courageously pushing through an awkward situation they both managed to get a taste of something they wanted, and even though it wasn’t perfect it became a valuable starting point, opening new doors for personal growth within the relationship.
Sexual surrender / Sexual power
Sex had become a major point of contention for Susan and Marcus, and I had been working with them on this and other related issues for about a year. In these sessions Susan had revealed her desire to experience deep sexual surrender. In his own fantasies, Marcus saw himself in a sexually powerful role, as an erotic healer embodying strength and wisdom.
These two self-images of sexual surrender and sexual power appeared to be quite compatible, and yet this couple had been unable to find their way together, unable to collaboratively manifest these potentially synergistic visions.
Today Susan was working with me alone. She was exploring the idea of sexual empowerment. She wanted to take fuller responsibility for her own sexuality and arousal, to retrieve the sexual power that she believed she had abdicated throughout her life.
Susan had always had an expectation that “the man” should initiate sex, and she was frustrated that Marcus was not fulfilling this function to her liking. She was, however, beginning to examine her part in this, and was becoming curious about how she might change the sexual dynamic between them by changing her own attitudes and behaviours.
Conflict, surrender, and arousal
In our session, Susan described a recent incident when she and Marcus had been fighting. She had ended up exhausted, fully spent in body, mind, and spirit. As she collapsed, figuratively and literally, Marcus told her that he was suddenly feeling very turned on. Susan could see him getting hard through his pants. She felt disturbed by his arousal. Why was it turning him on to see her so wrung out and emotionally spent?
I asked Susan to look back and describe to me in detail her state of being at the time. This was difficult for her. She struggled to make sense of the confusing feelings. She reported that it had been uncomfortable to reach that point of exhaustion through conflict, and yet there was a sense of relief at having no more fight left in her, of not having to try any more, of the struggle being over.
“Sounds like you’re describing a type of surrender,” I offered. There was a pause as Susan considered my words.
We went on to explore how her experience that day matched both her own and Marcus’s fantasies. In her fantasy, Susan certainly had not imagined her surrender being a product of a day-long fight, but nonetheless it was clear that the surrender was real, and that Marcus had responded true to his own fantasy; once Susan had reached a place of surrender, Marcus felt his own power surge.
I suggested that power and surrender might spontaneously arise in relationship to each other, unbidden, in certain situations.
Leading with surrender
Susan had long lamented that she wanted to feel Marcus’s sexual power. She wanted to feel his strength so that she could relax. What Susan hadn’t considered was that her surrender might come first, before Marcus demonstrated his own sexual leadership and authority. She also hadn’t considered that it would feel so raw, so real. Susan had already decided that it was time to take a new kind of responsibility for her part in the sexual dynamic, but she had imagined that this would feel only good, that it would feel clear, simple, and empowering; not at all like it had felt on that day.
I wasn’t surprised that the surrender she craved came in such a surprising and unwelcome way, not because I knew something about Susan that she did not, but because I have become accustomed to witnessing unforeseen, paradoxical, and challenging manifestations of desire. The road we take to meet our own sexuality is long and winding; we can not always see what is around the next bend.
Saying yes opened a door
Reflecting on the experience during therapy, Susan remarked that she had, in a noticeable moment, surprisingly, chosen to say yes to the opportunity for sex. Marcus had then confidently directed Susan to the bedroom. He had her undressed by the time they were through the door.
Despite the conflict between them, which would typically shut her down for days, Susan had noticed herself appreciating Marcus taking the lead. She had often complained of his passivity in the past, and even though these certainly weren’t the circumstances she preferred, she was able to say yes to sex in this moment, without feeling like she was betraying herself or doing something she didn’t want to do.
I suggested that even though the circumstances under which the power/surrender dynamic arose on that day of fighting were not ideal, they had perhaps been necessary.
“You had to become completely spent – physically and emotionally – before you could surrender. That’s just the plain truth of it. And Marcus had to behold you in this state before he could fully access his sexual power. This isn’t exactly how either of you had idealized the experience in your minds, and yet in some ways you were having a version of the thing you wanted. This could be an access point, a door opening. Work with it and it might not always feel so raw and uncomfortable.”
Refining, not rejecting raw experiences
New experiences, especially in the highly charged realm of sexuality, often first emerge clumsily in raw form. If we reject these raw forms, we may lose a valuable opportunity. If we’re willing to work with these raw forms, we might refine them.
Susan was struggling to accept the legitimacy of this type of surrender, and so I offered that she might give herself permission to accept, explore, and potentially enjoy surrender exactly as it presented itself, with the knowledge that she could bring increasingly more consciousness, intention, skillfulness, and choice to the experience.
Many of us want to get everything worked out internally, cleanly, and completely before we dare reveal ourselves, especially sexually. But this isn’t how it actually works. The sexual arena is a messy place. It isn’t just where we express the very best, fully formed perfected versions of ourselves; it’s also where we break down, try new things, fail, and continue to refine and redefine ourselves.
You might want to believe you’re on a single, united journey together, but that would not be entirely true. You can be sure that they have their own journey to make; sometimes your partner’s journey will interlock seamlessly with your own, sometimes it will diverge, causing unrest and friction.
Their journey, one way or another, will eventually take them from you. There is no other way. If not by choice or circumstance, time will catch up and death will come between you. Contemplate this truth. Remind yourself often, even until it breaks you. Then maybe you grieve for the loss to come, and learn to hold on lightly to what you have, for it is not yours to keep.
Your partner’s journey includes their own discoveries and challenges, their own hard decisions, sacrifices, dilemmas, and predicaments. Your partner’s journey will have them facing their own heart-break, their own dark nights of the soul.
Parts of their journey will need to be faced alone
Some of your partner’s journey will inevitably need to be faced alone, no matter how much you love them, how much you need them, how much you want to protect, rescue, or soothe them. The same, of course, is true in reverse.
We are here to accompany each other. To witness each other. To support and challenge each other. We are here to know ourselves in the context of one another, in proximity to each other, but a part of ourselves remains always distinct, no matter how strong the urge to merge.
Much of the art of relationship is about how we honour our partner’s journey even as we honour our own, how we navigate the borders and boundaries that keep us as two even as we move as one. Your relationship asks this of you – Can you recognize the unbreakable sovereignty of both you and your partner even as you dance in the longing for some kind of permanent “we”?
Follow me for sex and relationship tips, tools, and insights – Facebook | Instagram
