Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship (25 page)

Communal genitals only exist because we’re able to map out our partner’s mind. We read each other’s expectations and attitudes. After a while, you get the feeling your mate believes he jointly owns you, if not out of entitlement then out of need. Here’s where your Four Points of Balance come in. The weaker they are, the quicker you get this feeling. And since your partner’s Four Points of Balance are probably similarly undeveloped,
the more likely she will manifest this usury attitude. Whether it starts with her or your wobbly sense of self, the weaker your Four Points of Balance (Solid Flexible Self, Quiet Mind–Calm Heart, Grounded Responding, Meaningful Endurance), the more monogamy triggers feeling of tyranny and loss of autonomy in one or both of you. This creates low desire, even in people who really love sex. Battles of selfhood far outweigh hormonal drive in determining your sexual desire.

When I describe communal genitals, you might picture someone who is selfish, immature, and a high-desire slob. He complains about his physical needs not being met and acts like his wife’s vagina belongs to him. Even if she isn’t interested, he wants to use her body to bring himself to orgasm.

But, like many HDPs, Karen didn’t fit this mold. She wanted to be with Julian. It was Julian who introduced the “all you want is my body” mind-set. Julian had no idea he was doing this. He was terribly insecure since he learned of Karen’s affair. He thought a monogamy agreement would make him feel more secure. But this agreement put pressure on him to have sex with her.

Mother Nature generates increasingly sophisticated adaptations of the most primitive parts of your brain. It happened by countless couples confronting these kinds of mind-boggling dynamics, day after day, for millions of years. Your forebears developed a prefrontal neocortex in self-defense.

Sometimes it’s the worst in us that wants monogamy (just like the worst in you could want an open marriage). That’s why the first chapter of my book
Passionate Marriage
is entitled “Nobody’s Ready for Marriage; Marriage Makes You Ready for Marriage.” I wrote that people invariably marry for “wrong reasons” because the right reasons don’t exist yet. The purpose of marriage is to make you capable of good reasons to be married. The worst in us sometimes wants monogamy because the weakness of our Four Points of Balance drives us into and out of relationships.

Sometimes we demand exclusivity because we fear our partner will find someone “better.” We want protection from our own feelings of being unattractive, unworthy, and undesirable. Sometimes we want “commitment” to calm our fears of getting old and less appealing, or to make it safe to get fat and sloppy. Sometimes we want our partner to promise to be there forever—
before
he finds out too much about us. We want to hold him to his blind choice, because we don’t figure he’d pick us once he knew us.

It’s important to say that highly differentiated people often want monogamy too. However, they want monogamy for different reasons. And their monogamy operates differently.

Monogamy turns sexual desire problems into gridlock because there aren’t alternative sources for sex. And if you lack in Four Points of Balance, you handle this poorly. Monogamy reinforces the “togetherness pressure” that exists between emotionally fused couples. You’re also more likely to reach gridlock over other issues in your relationship. And since emotional gridlock (from any source) increases desire disparity, you’re particularly prone to desire problems.

Lots of couples start out this way and remain so throughout their relationship. Karen and Julian started with this typical pattern, but at some point Karen’s response “flipped” into another common scenario: Instead of making her more needy and solicitous for sex, her reflected sense of self made her refuse sex altogether. When she stopped pursuing Julian, she was saying,
Keep your damn sex!
Karen was fed up with humbling herself, and now she wanted to one-up him. Some of the best in her was standing up and saying,
I’m not going along with this anymore!
But a lot of it said,
I’m not going along with this, but I’m not leaving either. If you want a war, buddy, you got one. And it’s going to be one long, cold war
.

How do you reduce this emotional fusion? Not with an affair or an “open relationship.” Hold on to your Four Points of Balance. Stay clear about what’s really important to you. Quiet your mind, calm your heart,
and soothe your own anger. Keep your responses measured and grounded. Don’t act impulsively or vindictively. Stronger Four Points of Balance increases your capacity for healthy desire and diminishes neediness and emotional dependency. Reducing emotional fusion, and rescuing desire from annihilation, always involves a leap of faith: Confront yourself about what you’re really doing—to yourself and to your partner.

In prehistoric times, there were the first man and the first woman to figure out that the other was deliberately tampering with his or her reflected sense of self in order to inflict pain. They probably put up with this for a while, thinking the other didn’t understand how hurtful he or she was being. They preferred to think the other was insensitive or emotionally blind. But mapping your partner’s mind and realizing his or her behavior is deliberate usually creates a turning point. It did for Karen and Julian.

Julian and Karen’s fateful conversation started in my office with Julian’s familiar,
“How could you have an affair?”
Karen would typically respond, “THAT’S BULLSHIT! You’re just saying that to back me off.” However, this time it didn’t come out as an accusation. She said it flatly, like she finally accepted a matter of fact. “You won’t deal with sex.”

“You won’t deal with your affair.” Julian was testing to see if he could still hook her.

“Bullshit, Julian. You won’t deal with sex.”

I motioned to Karen. “You’re not listening to yourself.”

Julian used my comment to swipe at her. “She doesn’t listen to me either, Doc.”

I continued speaking to Karen. “Why won’t you pay attention to what you’re telling Julian? You’re saying he’s using the fact that you had an affair to avoid confronting himself about his own difficulties.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, you allow him to do that as long as you avoid dealing with your affair. You’re saying he’s trying to back you off by throwing your affair at you. So why don’t you take that weapon away from him?”

“You mean confront myself about my affair?”

“Yes.”

There’s something about realizing your partner deliberately tampers with your reflected sense of self that makes a person willing to make a move. Things reach critical mass right then and there. Maybe your reflected sense of self is just so pissed. Maybe it feels imperative to free yourself from your partner’s grasp. But, for one reason or another, many of us mobilize to do things we wouldn’t otherwise do.

However, it is possible to free yourself from your partner’s grasp
and
strengthen your relationship with yourself in the process. This was the point of my comment to Karen: When you confront yourself, your partner can no longer control you through your shortcomings. You have to do four things: Confront yourself and heed your own counsel, soothe your own heart, emotionally unhook from your partner, and stand up and face the music. These are your Four Points of Balance. This is the process of differentiation.

Karen thought for several seconds. “Okay Julian, you want me to confront myself about the affair? Well here goes. I had an affair. I lied to you … I broke my vow …”

Karen’s words slowed as she listened to herself as she spoke. She shifted from confessing sins to thinking about what she was saying. Her tone wasn’t defiant, it said,
I’m ready to finally deal with this and accept what comes of it. I’m afraid, but I am not doing this to myself anymore
. Julian sensed now was not the time to take a shot at her.

“You have no reason to ever trust me again … I have no integrity … I lost most of that trying to stay married to you … and the rest I threw away … I cheated on you … I know to you I’m no different than your mother.” There was no malice in Karen’s voice. She was being brutally honest but she wasn’t slamming him. She paused a moment to think of what else she needed to say.

“… I cheated on my vows … I’ve cheated myself … out of having some
integrity … cheated myself out of having someone who wants me … I … guess … I’m … just … a … cheater!” Karen convulsed into sobs.

Afterward, it wasn’t hard for Karen to understand her earlier state of mind. If Julian was going to withhold sex and affirmation, and make her “crawl,” she would go around him and find someone who wanted her. She didn’t think of it as finding someone to pump up her reflected sense of self, or of being so emotionally fused with Julian she’d be willing to throw herself away to get back at him. She told herself she needed someone to care about her. Setting up her first meeting with the guy from the Internet Karen thought,
I’m going to violate my marriage vows. I’m a liar and a deceiver. So is this guy. Whoever he is, I know I won’t leave Julian for him. I can never trust this guy because he’s doing the same thing as me
.

Karen was shocked to see how she was able to stop listening to herself. She ignored her own thoughts. She just clicked off her mind and went to sleep. Here she was ready to get divorced because Julian wouldn’t listen to her. She had an affair so some guy would give her some attention. And yet she didn’t listen to herself. She threw herself away to get someone to validate her.

Confronting herself about the affair and her Internet activities helped Karen begin to repair her integrity. She also refused to push Julian for sex any longer. She wasn’t willing to accept more “mercy sex.” Karen was anxious because there was no way to know how Julian would handle himself. But she operated in ways that have made human beings the wonderful creatures we are: Her desire for integrity caused her to stand up to her fears in ways that busted Julian’s monopoly on sex. She refused to have sex on his terms, and she wouldn’t settle for lousy sex either. This is how Karen balanced humankind’s two most powerful drives, her desire to preserve her marriage and her desire to preserve her self.

Karen’s monopoly-busting move made Julian anxious, even though she was ostensibly doing what he demanded (no affairs, no porno). What she was doing took guts, which made her more attractive to him—at the same time it frightened him. Now that she was worth keeping, he was more afraid of losing her. Now she was acting in ways many men would find attractive. He thought it wouldn’t be long after they divorced that other men would seek her out. Julian could have
escalated an argument, but with Karen acting more solid, he decided to confront himself instead.

Julian went through his own crucible over the next several weeks. Karen continued to confront herself about her affair, and the benefits to her were tangible. She looked better and seemed calmer and more solid. She didn’t push Julian to confront himself in kind. He knew she was watching to see what he would do, and she had taken away his excuse that she wasn’t confronting herself.

At our next session, Julian said to Karen, “I know you’re waiting to see if I’m going to address my part in our mess. I’ve been thinking about this for over a week, so here goes … I felt like you betrayed me. I’m still troubled by the pictures in my head of you having sex with someone else. Maybe my reflected sense of self will get over it. But what else can I expect if I don’t have sex with you and the sex we do have is pretty bad? I haven’t left you much choice. I guess, in a sense, I’ve been unfaithful, too. I don’t have much room to talk about unfaithfulness.” Karen nodded in appreciation but didn’t say anything.

“I’m ready to commit that I’ll work with Dr. Schnarch on my rapid orgasms and developing more desire. Can you commit to me that you won’t have any more affairs?”

Karen thought for a long moment and looked him square in the eye. “No, I can’t, Julian.”

Julian started to get reactive. “What do you mean?”

Karen stayed calm and steady. “I’m not going to have any more affairs. But I’m not going to promise that to you. It’s a commitment I’m making to
me
. I don’t want to feel like I have been feeling anymore.” Karen paused for a moment. “And I don’t want you promising me that you’re going to
work on the sex. I’m not running after you anymore to make you fulfill your commitments. So if you’re going to commit, commit to yourself. I’m not interested in promises, I’m only interested in what you’re going to
do
. I’m clear I want to have a sex life. If I’m celibate because I’m so angry with you, I still lose. You aren’t going to control me anymore by not having sex. I’m prepared to get divorced if need be.”

Karen was defining herself right in front of Julian. She was determined but not belligerent. It helped him keep his reactivity under control. Julian took a long deep breath and replied, “I haven’t been a man of my word until now. And you’re right, that’s really about my lack of commitment to myself. So I guess there’s no reason for you to trust me either, although I’ve complained about not being able to trust you. And you’ve stuck with me in a way my mother never did with any of her men. Maybe we can work together to earn each other’s trust.”

“I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Julian, but I’m not interested in earning your trust anymore. I want to earn my own trust.”

“I see,” said Julian, shocked and disappointed. “I can appreciate what you’re saying … although this isn’t what I imagined the path forward would look like.”