• “I didn’t see your pain and how you needed me. I was too lost, afraid, angry, preoccupied. I just shut down.”
• “I didn’t know what to do. I got all caught up in feeling stupid and worrying about doing the wrong thing.”
Think of the five elements in Ted’s apology to Vera. He says he cares about her pain; he tells her that her hurt is warranted; he owns up to his hurtful actions; he expresses shame for his behavior; and he reassures her that he will help her to heal. Which one of Ted’s actions would be the hardest for you to pull off?
How do you think your acknowledgment might make the injured party feel? How might it help them?
4. Now turn to dealing with a specific injury in your current relationship. You can do this on your own or while your partner listens and tries to understand. If this sharing seems difficult, start with a relatively small recent hurt. Then if you wish, you can do the exercise again with a more significant hurt. Try to make it as specific as possible. Big, vague hurts are difficult to address. Perhaps you went through a difficult period when there were lots of hurt feelings. Was there one moment when that hurt crystallized? What was the trigger for the pain? What was the primary feeling? What decision did you make about the relationship, and what moves did you make to protect yourself?
“It was that time when I was just starting all those new courses and was so unsure of myself,” Mary tells Jim. “One evening after supper, I gathered up my courage and asked you what you thought about all my struggles and what I had done so far. I really hoped that you’d say that you recognized how far I’d come and tell me that you believed in me. But you didn’t seem to hear me, and I felt dismissed somehow. I didn’t show you how sad I felt. How much I needed your encouragement. So I decided to just create my dream on my own. I keep that whole part of my life separate now, separate from us.”
5. See if you can now tell your partner what you hoped for in that hurtful incident, and how it felt to not get that response. You might also share what it feels like right now to take the risk and express what you longed for. As you do this, try to avoid indicting your partner for causing you pain. That will only sabotage the conversation. As the listening partner, try to hear your lover’s vulnerability and share what this evokes in you. Usually, when we really listen to someone we love express a need for us, we respond with caring.
6. If you are the partner who has hurt your lover, see if you can help your partner understand why you responded the way you did at the moment of injury. You may have to dig deep and “discover” for yourself how this response evolved. Think of this as a step in making your actions more predictable to your partner. See if you can help your partner feel safe enough to reveal his or her vulnerable feelings to you so that you will have a complete picture of what the incident meant in terms of attachment needs.
7. As the partner who did the hurting, can you now recognize your partner’s experience, own how you inflicted pain, and, the big A word, apologize? This is hard to do. It takes courage to admit that we are disappointed in our own behavior; it is humbling to confess that we have been insensitive or uncaring. Perhaps we can only apologize when we allow ourselves to be moved by our loved ones’ hurts and fears. If we can do this with sincerity, we are giving our loved ones a great gift.
8. As the injured partner, can you accept the apology? If you can, it puts the two of you on a new footing. Trust can begin to grow again. You can comfortably seek reassurance when echoes of this injury occur in the future, knowing that your partner will try to respond sensitively. And your apologizing partner now can offer the love that went astray in the original event.
9. Finally, sum up this conversation with your partner in a short story about the painful event, the impact it had on your relationship, and how you both recovered and intend to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
If you can’t imagine doing this Play and Practice, you can experiment by simply sharing with your partner how strange or difficult a forgiving conversation seems to you. Another way to begin is to agree on an injury that needs healing and write out in a few sentences how the conversation might sound if it followed the steps outlined above. Then share this with each other.
Understanding attachment injuries and knowing that you can find and offer forgiveness if you need to gives you incredible power to create a resilient, lasting bond. There is no injury-proof relationship. But you can dance together with more verve and panache if you know you can recover when you step on each other’s toes.
Conversation 6: Bonding Through Sex and Touch
“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”
— Tom Robbins
Passion comes easily in the early days of a relationship. Almost every word, glance, and touch vibrates with lust. It’s nature’s way of drawing us together. But after the first captivating rush of desire, what’s the place of sex in a relationship? Besides pulling us in, can sex also help to keep us together, to build a lasting relationship? Emphatically, yes. In fact, good sex is a potent bonding experience. The passion of infatuation is just the hors d’oeuvre. Loving sex in a long-term relationship is the entrée.
But we don’t typically think of sex in this way. We’ve been conditioned by our culture and a myriad of relationship gurus to regard passion as more of a passing sensation, less as a durable force. We are told that the sexual fires that burned so brightly at the start of love inevitably burn down, just as our relationships, once filled with excitement, inexorably turn into prosaic friendships.
Moreover, we’ve been taught to see sex as an end in itself. Slaking desire, preferably with a big orgasm, is the goal. We emphasize the mechanics of sex, the positions, techniques, and toys that can heighten our physical bliss. Sex is all about immediate physical satisfaction, we believe.
In fact, secure bonding and fully satisfying sexuality go hand in hand; they cue off and enhance each other. Emotional connection creates great sex, and great sex creates deeper emotional connection. When partners are emotionally accessible, responsive, and engaged, sex becomes intimate play, a safe adventure. Secure partners feel free and confident to surrender to sensation in each other’s arms, explore and fulfill their sexual needs, and share their deepest joys, longings, and vulnerabilities. Then, lovemaking is truly making love.
Just how important is satisfying sex in sustaining a love relationship? Good sex, it turns out, is integral though not paramount to happy relationships. Sex educators Barry and Emily McCarthy of American University in Washington, D.C., have surveyed the research in this area. Contented spouses, they conclude, attribute only 15 to 20 percent of their happiness to a pleasing sex life, but unhappy mates ascribe 50 to 70 percent of their distress to sexual problems. Satisfied partners see sex as just one of many sources of pleasure and intimacy, while despondent partners home in on sex and often view it as the chief source of trouble.
Why is sex such a huge issue for dissatisfied partners? Because typically it’s the first thing affected when a relationship falters. It’s not the true problem, though. Think of sexual distress as the relationship version of the “canary in the mine.” What’s really happening is that a couple is losing connection; the partners don’t feel emotionally safe with each other. That in turn leads to slackening desire and less satisfying sex, which leads to less sex and more hurt feelings, which leads to still looser emotional connection, and around it goes. In shorthand: no safe bond, no sex; no sex, no bond.
It’s easy to understand. As Harry Harlow noted in his book Learning to Love, primates are set apart from other animals by affectionate face-to-face sex during which “the most vulnerable surfaces of the body are openly exposed in compromising positions.” We simply are not wired to be wary or afraid and turned on at the same time.
The safety of our emotional connection defines our relationship in bed as well as out. Depending on how comfortable we are with closeness and how safe we feel about needing our loved one, we will have different goals in bed. I call these three k
inds of sex Sealed-Off Sex, Solace Sex, and Synchrony Sex.
SEALED-OFF SEX
In Sealed-Off Sex, the goal is to reduce sexual tension, achieve orgasm, and feel good about our sexual prowess. It happens with those who have never learned to trust and don’t want to open up, or who are feeling unsafe with their partners. The focus is on sensation and performance. The bond with the other person is secondary. This kind of impersonal sex is toxic in a love relationship. The partner feels used and objectified rather than valued as a person.
As her lover, Kyle, listens, Marie tells me, “I am a blow-up Barbie for him. Our sex is so empty. It takes me to the end of alone.” “I guess it can be like that,” Kyle agrees. “But we used to be closer in bed. Since all the fighting started, I have given up on us. I stop feeling, and sex becomes mechanical. Then I see you as ‘the woman.’ It’s safer that way. At least I know how to do sex. Closeness is harder. If I see you as ‘Marie,’ and think of all our problems, I just get upset. So, I focus on the sex thing. It makes me feel better, at least for a moment or so.”
Kyle shuts down emotionally because he doesn’t know how to do “closeness.” But others, especially if they’ve felt betrayed by past lovers, stay emotionally aloof by habit or by choice. They prefer sex in which arousal and orgasm are ends in themselves. They are more likely to have sexual encounters that are short, often lasting no longer than a night. And they hold back from any actions that could invite emotional engagement, such as reciprocal touching and kissing, according to research by psychologist Jeff Simpson of the University of Minnesota and his colleagues. The porn star Ron Jeremy, who might be considered a sexual performer extraordinaire, advocates partner swapping to alleviate sexual boredom, but his rule is “absolutely no cuddling.” Emotional connection, the door to real eroticism, is kept shut. However, without doubt, the poster boy for performance-oriented sex is James Bond. In four decades, he’s run through a host of women who are virtually always potential enemies and not to be trusted. Only once has he been in love, simultaneously emotionally and sexually involved. (Bond marries the woman and, conveniently, she is killed off on their wedding day.)
Sealed-Off Sex seems to be practiced mostly by men. This may be due to the hormone testosterone, which fires up sexual drive, or it may be pure cultural conditioning. Men are taught early on that displaying too much emotion is wimpy. Not knowing where to draw the line, they often avoid emotion altogether. Sealed-Off Sex might also be the result of men’s sexual wiring. Who was it who said, “Men are like microwaves, but women are slow cookers”? A man can move through arousal to orgasm in seconds with minimal communication. A woman takes longer to become aroused, and it is harder for her to stay focused on simple sensation. She needs her partner to coordinate movements and responses with her. She needs communication and connection for good sex.
For both men and women, emotional disengagement closes off the richer dimension of sexuality. Young people who stay emotionally distant have more sexual partners, but they don’t enjoy sex as much as those who are comfortable getting close to others, finds Omri Gillath, a psychologist at the University of Kansas. In this kind of sex, there is excitement, but the passion is short-lived. The experience is one-dimensional, and so continual novelty, in the form of new partners or new techniques, is necessary if the turn-on is to continue. More and more sensation is the name of the game.
SOLACE SEX
Solace Sex occurs when we are seeking reassurance that we are valued and desired; the sex act is just a tagalong. The goal is to alleviate our attachment fears. There is more emotional involvement than in Sealed-Off Sex, but the main emotion directing the sexual dance is anxiety. Gillath’s research demonstrates that the more anxious we are about depending on others, the more we tend to prefer cuddling and affection to intercourse. Mandy tells me, “Sex with Frank is okay. But to be truthful, it’s the cuddling I really want. And the reassurance. It’s like sex is a test, and if he desires me, then I feel safe. Of course, if he ever isn’t horny, then I take it real personally and get scared.” When sex is an antianxiety pill, it cannot be truly erotic.
Solace Sex can help keep a relationship stable for a while, but it can also feed into raw spots and negative cycles. When anything goes wrong in the mutual-desire department, there is instant hurt and negativity. If this kind of sex is the norm in a relationship, partners can get caught in obsessively trying to perform to please or in being so demanding that it turns off sexual desire. When physical intimacy becomes all about tamping down attachment fears, it can drive lovers apart.
So Cory tells his wife, Amanda, “Well, what is wrong with lots of lovemaking? I bet lots of people make love every morning and every night. And lots of women have two or three orgasms each time.” Amanda looks at me, and our faces register instant exhaustion and dismay. Cory sees this and turns away. He looks sad and defeated. “Yes, well. It’s not really about the sex in the end, is it?” he says. “The only time I am really sure you love me, the only time I feel really safe with you, is when I have you in my arms or when we are making love and I am really turning you on and you are responding to me with your body. Then I know you love me and want me. When I think about it, I know that these demands for sex are too much. The more I push you into it, the less you like it. Truth is, I am so obsessed with losing you. Since our breakup last year, I am just scared all the time, so making love is like my security blanket.” Amanda moves her chair closer and puts her arms around him. Cory rests in her arms for a little and then says, in a voice full of wonder, “Hey, you’re holding me! You don’t think less of me, saying that?” Amanda kisses him on the cheek. When Cory realizes that he can reach out for intimate touch and the comfort of being held, Cory and Amanda’s relationship changes for the better and so does their sex life.
Solace Sex often happens when partners are battling Demon Dialogues, and regular safe, comforting touch — the most basic bonding connection — is missing. “Sex used to be a place we could really come together,” laments Alec, whose ten-year relationship with Nan is falling apart. “But now she never wants to make love. I just feel rejected all the time. Sometimes I get enraged. Every time I think of how she doesn’t seem to care about making love with me, it hurts. She says I am too pushy, and she sleeps in the spare room. In fact, never mind sex, we don’t even touch each other anymore.”
When partners tell me that they cannot be considerate of and watch out for each other with everyday acts of caring, I worry. When they tell me that they are not making love, I am concerned. But when they tell me that they do not touch, I know they are really in trouble.
The approximately eighteen square feet of skin we carry as adults is the largest sense organ we have. Tender caressing and stroking of our skin and the emotions these actions evoke are, for most of us, the royal route into love relationships. Touch brings together two fundamental drives, sex and our need to be held and recognized by a special other. As the late anthropologist Ashley Montagu noted in his book Touching, skin-to-skin contact is the language of sex and the language of attachment. Touch arouses, and it also soothes and comforts.
We have a vital need from our earliest moments to the end of our days for touch, observes Tiffany Field, a developmental psychologist at the University of Massachusetts, who argues that North Americans are among the world’s least tactile people and suffer from “touch hunger.” In children, a lack of touch, of holding and caressing, seems to slow the growth of the brain and the development of emotional intelligence, that is, the ability to organize emotions.
Males may be particularly vulnerable to touch hunger. Field points out that right from birth, boys are held for shorter periods and caressed less often than are girls. As adults, men seem to be less responsive to tender touch than are women, but in the men I see, they crave it just as much as do the women. Men do not ask to be held, either because of cultural conditioning (real men don’t hug) or lack of skill (they don’t know how to ask). I think of this whenever my female clients complain that men are ob
sessed with sex. I would be, too, I say, if sex were the only place apart from the football field where I ever got touched or held.
“I just want Marjorie to reach for me and touch me,” Terry maintains. “I want to know she wants me to come close. I want to feel desired, wanted. And not just in a sexual way. It is more than that.” “No, you just want bang-bang and an orgasm,” Marjorie disagrees. “Maybe that is all I have known how to ask for,” he retorts. We cannot funnel all of our attachment needs for physical and emotional connection into the bedroom. When we try, our sex life disintegrates under the weight of those needs.
The best recipe for good sex is a secure relationship where a couple can connect through A.R.E. conversations and tender touch. Even sex therapists concur that the essential building block of a healthy sexual relationship is “non-demand pleasuring.” For this reason, I often suggest to couples that they abstain from making love for a few weeks. With intercourse forbidden, neither partner gets anxious or disappointed, and they can both concentrate instead on exploring all the sensations of touching. Getting used to asking for tender touch deepens a couple’s bond, and knowing one another’s bodies more intimately, what moves and pleases each other, becomes a precious part of a couple’s “only for you, only with you” connection.
SYNCHRONY SEX
Synchrony Sex is when emotional openness and responsiveness, tender touch, and erotic exploration all come together. This is the way sex is supposed to be. This is the sex that fulfills, satisfies, and connects. When partners have a secure emotional connection, physical intimacy can retain all of its initial ardor and creativity and then some. Lovers can be tender and playful one moment, fiery and erotic another. They can focus on achieving orgasms in one interlude and in the next on gently journeying to the place poet Leonard Cohen calls “a thousand kisses deep.”
I used the word synchrony first in Conversation 4 to describe partners’ emotional harmony. I expand it here to include physical harmony as well. Psychiatrist Dan Stern of Cornell Medical School also uses the word when he observes that secure lovers are attuned to each other, sensing each other’s inner state and intention and responding to each other’s shifting states of arousal, in the same way that an empathetic mother is attuned to her baby. The infant opens his eyes and squeals with delight; the mother coos back, pitching her voice to his excited squeal. The lover turns his head and sighs; the beloved smiles and strokes his flank following the rhythm of the sigh. This synchrony gives a “tacit sense of deep rapport” and is the essence of connection — emotional, physical, and sexual. Emotional safety shapes physical synchrony, and physical synchrony shapes emotional safety.
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love Page 17
