Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship (39 page)

Couples usually need to become better balanced, not more attached. To the degree you and your partner manage your own anxiety, you can productively meet the self-confrontations and decisions required to resolve sexual desire problems. The more you prop each other up while making life-shaping decisions, the more likely your decisions and interactions will be misguided.

Attachment is about security. When you really look at it, attachment is about
not
wanting,
not
feeling vulnerable,
not
hungering. The ideal is to be satiated, like an infant sucking at a breast. Some people don’t want to
want
because they know it causes pain all too well. Approaching adulthood through the lens of their childhood needs speaks to them (but not to the best in them) because it rationalizes not wanting to want. This framework makes it more difficult to move forward.

Though it’s not safe to
want
until you can quiet your own heart, couples do this all the time. It is the triumph of the human spirit, Four Points of Balance in action, and co-evolution all in one.

Sue and Joe had another series of difficult interactions in bed. Afterward, Joe said he was starting to doubt the future of their marriage. He
revealed he had sexual fantasies about a co-worker. This threw Sue into a resounding emotional crash. Two weeks later, she was still going on about how Joe had hurt her. He had shaken her faith in their marriage. She would never feel secure with him again. She would never forgive him. Men just can’t be trusted. Sue worked him over good.

Joe complained he was prisoner of Sue’s “database.” Sue maintained a mental catalogue of Joe’s transgressions. It went back to when they first met. New entries were made daily, but old “wounds” were never purged. Sue’s “database” gave her the high ground in any argument. If she were wrong in the current situation, she would bring up the past and get upset all over again.

Why didn’t Joe and Sue just accept and forgive each other’s bad behavior, instead of bringing things to a fever pitch? Joe and Sue wondered the same thing. They did try, but failed dismally. It was more than they could pull off. They lacked the necessary Four Points of Balance. You can’t forgive or accept if you can’t:

• Maintain a solid flexible self. (Instead you need your partner to be continually wrong and perpetually asking for forgiveness.)

• Have a quiet mind and calm heart. (You never get over your “emotional wounds.”)

• Make grounded responses. (You’re at your partner’s throat when he points out your transgressions.)

• Endure meaningful pain. (You hold grudges and see your partner as the enemy.)

Poorly differentiated people can’t practice acceptance and forgiveness because they lack these Four Points of Balance. There is nothing wrong with partners trying to accept and forgive each other. Try it, and if it works, your problem is over. If you can’t, or it doesn’t accomplish what you thought, buckle down and use the approach you’re learning here.

Preaching acceptance and accommodation to poorly balanced couples isn’t helpful, because they take their inability to do it as further proof of their inadequacy. Poorly balanced people fervently want forgiveness and acceptance
from their partner
. They believe in borrowed functioning—at least when they’re on the receiving end. Acceptance and forgiveness by your partner briefly improves your functioning, but it doesn’t last and further demoralizes you.

So where does “acceptance” come in? Acceptance—and the capacity to accept—comes
after
conflict, not before it or in the middle of it. Acceptance is not a solution to conflict; it follows the resolution of conflict. Acceptance involves your prefrontal neocortex telling your limbic brain to be quiet, and this involves your Four Points of Balance.

People who are dependent on a reflected sense of self have difficulty getting over things, because they lose their identity when their feelings change. They can’t accept and forgive, because the worst in them controls their functioning. But sometimes the best in us refuses to accept and forgive, too.
Refusal
to accept is an important early stage in the co-evolutionary processes of emotionally fused couples. Sue and Joe were up against more than Sue’s anxieties.

Think of relationships as having two distinct cycles. One is the comfort/safety cycle, where your relationship remains familiar and anxiety is low. The other is the growth cycle, where your relationship changes and anxiety is higher.
¹³⁸

All living things must balance stability and growth. This includes people and relationships. Without both, things fall apart.

When you’re in the comfort/safety cycle, you stick with the same routine, your reflected sense of self is supported, and your anxiety is low because things are generally calm. Things feel warm and cozy between you and your partner, and there’s lots of mutual reinforcement. In the comfort cycle, you don’t want for much. It’s where people who don’t want to want hide out. They have little desire because they have what
they want, and they don’t want what they don’t have. They restrict their lives to what exists within the comfort cycle.

Things are different in the growth cycle. It feels unstable because you are changing. Your self gets stretched to incorporate new facets of identity, new behaviors, and new ways of being. You feel like you don’t know who you are. You’re not sure you like the “new you.” You’re not sure how you and your partner will fit together in the future. You may want your partner’s reassurance and soothing, but he has neither to offer. He’s going through his own personal upheaval and struggles, and may be fully preoccupied maintaining his own precarious emotional balance.

This was completely antithetical to Sue’s experience with relationships. What she learned could be summarized as
In an emergency, prop up the person driving the bus, because if she gets crazy we’re all in trouble
. Because she’d done this with her mother, Sue wanted Joe to do this for her—in the name of love.

When Joe and Sue came to see me, Joe was leaving the comfort cycle. He was finally starting to confront himself about their lousy sex life. Sue could sense things were changing because Joe wasn’t succumbing to her typical maneuvers. She felt she was losing control of the system, so she suggested they go for therapy.

Sue and Joe’s pattern is not unusual. Sue promoted therapy to resolve their marital and sexual problems. In truth, however, her goal was to get Joe back into the comfort cycle. Sue planned to talk about her fears, enlist the therapist’s aid in getting Joe more empathetically attuned, and extract commitments from Joe to make her feel more secure. She thought therapy would cool off their situation.

Over time the comfort cycle changes, festering discontent. Perpetually trying to keep things the same, and avoiding anything that makes us
nervous, is a recipe for boring sex, superficial intimacy, and a rigid, sterile relationship. Your dependency makes you desperate to preserve your marriage’s sameness, while you mask your overpowering urge to escape it.

The comfort/safety cycle gradually becomes the avoidance cycle. Dissatisfactions grow although you hide them from each other. Your self gets lost in repeatedly selling yourself out to accommodate and keep things peaceful. Your attempts to feel safe and secure eventually drive you into the growth cycle, because the comfort cycle stops being comfortable.

Balancing stability and growth in relationships is like balancing autonomy and attachment needs. One doesn’t work without the other. No marriage can exist in the comfort/safety cycle forever (and keep sex and intimacy alive). No marriage and no person can remain in the growth cycle forever, either. You need time to consolidate your gains, do the laundry, put food in the refrigerator, and relax with a familiar partner who is a new stranger in some ways. The question is, where do you strike the balance?

The answer depends on your Four Points of Balance. The stronger your Four Points of Balance, the more willing and able you are to enter the growth cycle when it is time. But the more you depend on a reflected sense of self and can’t regulate your anxiety, the more you cling to the comfort cycle, and the more anxiety-provoking the growth cycle seems. So, the weaker your Four Points of Balance, the more you need to be pushed into the growth cycle. That’s exactly what your relationship is designed to do. Remember, your marriage operates differently depending on your Four Points of Balance.

Shifting your relationship from the comfort cycle to the growth cycle is another form of co-evolution. When well-balanced couples enter the growth cycle, they soothe themselves and soothe each other. (However, self-soothing is the meat of the process, and soothing each other is the gravy.) The reason they’re a well-balanced couple is because they are well-balanced individuals. Poorly balanced partners can’t soothe themselves or each other when they hit the growth cycle.

A watershed experience occurs when you stop giving in to your (and your partner’s) anxieties, fears, and insecurities, and you do what the best in you dictates. This requires validating and soothing yourself. This transition point is a step in personal development, which in turn triggers more of the same. This process has occurred since your earliest ancestors and has become part of the people-growing machinery of marriage.

When people won’t enter the growth cycle this frequently results in dissolution of the relationship. Your Four Points of Balance determine how long you can keep the comfort cycle from collapsing like a black hole. Most of us can keep this going for four years to seven years. During this time the lust, infatuation, and attachment phases in your brain run their course, and emotional gridlock, two-choice dilemmas, and borrowed functioning build up.

The most poorly balanced couples bite the dust first. If partners suppress their functioning and live within each other’s limitations, a couple can survive for decades. Sexual desire and intimacy (and their kids) are casualties of their collusion. Adultery is common in overly long comfort cycles. In many cases, your choices are to grow up (meaning enter the growth cycle) or divorce. The 50 percent divorce rate over the last century reflects what many of us choose.

Sue wasn’t interested in co-evolution. She wanted to keep herself comfortable, even if that meant creating a ruckus. From the outset of therapy Sue positioned herself as the victim, but she was on the attack. “If I don’t give Joe what he wants, he’ll leave. That’s blackmail. That’s extortion. It’s not fair. I’m not giving in to blackmail!”

It was my responsibility to take away Sue’s high ground. “The fact that he will leave if he doesn’t like the deal is not extortion; he’d be exercising his rights. Of the two of you,
you
are more the blackmailer and the extortionist.”

Sue was incensed and refused to deal with me. She turned to Joe.
“Are you giving me an ultimatum?”

Joe didn’t say anything.

I said, “I think you’re giving Joe an ultimatum right this moment.”

“What ultimatum am I giving him?”

“You’re saying to him,
I demand an answer right this moment. And if you don’t don’t give me one there will be hell to pay.”

Sue calmed down.

“I think you’re asking him several difficult questions, while making it sound like a simple answer is required. You’re asking him, ‘
Are you doing something serious here?’
And,
‘Are you drawing a line in the sand between you and me?’
You are also asking, ‘
Are you going to back down or not? Do you dare defy my wrath?’
On top of this, you’d like him to respond with a simple yes or no.”

Sue laughed. “How can you pull out all those meanings?”

I laughed. “How you can put
in
so many meanings? You are a marvelous communicator.”

Sue’s edginess evaporated. Joe watched her with a sharp eye because this was unusual. Sue gestured she wasn’t comfortable with him watching her, so Joe turned to me. “What should we do about ultimatums and blackmail?”

“Don’t give your partner ultimatums. And don’t let your partner back you into thinking you’re giving one.”

If the purpose of marriage is to make you feel secure, nobody bothered to tell Mother Nature. How come marriage didn’t evolve to default to people’s fears of abandonment? Marriage gives control to the person who wants to grow. Relationships only remain in the comfort cycle by consensus. One partner can drive it into the growth cycle. Attachment is not the core process guiding marriages and families. It is differentiation. This is why we, and our complex love relationships, have evolved the way we have.

Marriage (and therapy) bogs down when only one partner wants to grow,
if
it focuses on mobilizing the one who doesn’t want to change. The
one who wants change feels obligated to get their mate to go along. He acts as if changing the relationship requires permission or consensus.

We saw the same thing in our chapter on intimacy: the LDP (for intimacy) always controls the level of
other
-validated intimacy, which is why the HDP (for intimacy) tries to coerce her. But if the HDP holds on to himself and shifts to
self
-validated intimacy, the system gives control to the person who wants to change.