Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship (44 page)

You’re not destined for one if you count on mammalian bonding to keep the two of you together. Alliances based on lust, romantic love, and attachment are short-lived. Collaborative alliances based on loyalty and integrity last longer. But loyalty in the face of adversity requires a fairly sophisticated “self.”
Wanting
your marriage, and keeping it together by maintaining a collaborative alliance, is another way we humans evolve. So if you want a marriage based on a resilient collaborative alliance, you better get your Four Points of Balance involved, and keep your prefrontal neocortex in gear.

Mind-mapping plays a huge role in collaborative alliances. Collaborative alliances involve:

• Being honest even when it’s personally disadvantageous or difficult.

• Not tampering with or withholding information to manipulate your partner.

• Confronting yourself, and letting your partner mind-map you and read you accurately.

As I said, collaborative alliances require working on mutual goals, even when they are anxiety-provoking or personally disadvantageous. When you misrepresent yourself, you’ve dropped your alliance. When you mask your mind from accurately being mapped, you’ve done it again. Some of us couldn’t carry a collaborative alliance if it was given to us wrapped up in a box.

People drop their alliance for many reasons. Some do it because they aren’t personally invested or they have limited capacity to invest in other people to begin with. Others drop the alliance because they want to get even. Some feel
entitled
to crash their alliance once things start going downhill. When you’re struggling with “selfhood” issues like “who do you belong to,” alliances usually evaporate. If you don’t have much of a solid flexible self, collaborative alliances come and go as circumstance and convenience dictate.

Collaborative alliances frequently get dropped in the midst of emotional gridlock and two-choice dilemmas. At the first sign of trouble, Juanita bailed out. Every time she and Larry started having sex, she demanded his patience and acceptance. If he showed the slightest negative personal reaction or frustration, she ended the encounter.

Marriage is the Olympic training camp for collaborative alliances. Only your solid flexible sense of self can maintain a collaborative alliance when things get tough. In a collaborative alliance, the first person you confront is yourself. It’s your primary responsibility. Self-confrontation is critical to maintaining a collaborative alliance, because that’s how you check to see if you’re doing your part. Resilient collaborative alliances require staying clear about your goals and values. Soothing your own heart keeps you from overreacting when your partner drops his alliance with you. You don’t bail out, and you don’t get all bent out of shape when he does. Your Four Points of Balance, the basis of human resilience, let you re-establish a collaborative alliance and move on. This is how collaborative alliances are sustained in the face of anxiety. If you want a collaborative alliance with your partner, here are eight key points to keep in mind:

#1.First and foremost,
collaborative alliances focus on what needs to be done
. Listening to your partner and speaking up for yourself are
important in a collaborative alliance. But at the end of the day, collaborative alliances don’t float on feelings, particularly when they’re not backed up with behavior.

#2.
Re-establishing a collaborative alliance with your partner is more important than the fact that your alliance crashed
. Relationship repair is the most important thing. Keeping your marriage going is more important than your fears that your marriage is sinking.

#3.
Pay attention to when
you
drop your alliance
. The more super-sensitive we are to others dropping their alliance with us, the more oblivious we may be to ourselves doing it. The first, hardest, and most important step in rebuilding a collaborative alliance involves being aware and acknowledging when you drop your side of it. Getting clear how
you
(not your partner) repeatedly drop your alliance improves things quickly. (It often echoes your prior life history, so you can anticipate where you’re prone to do this.)

#4.
How you feel isn’t the main issue
. Getting nervous doesn’t entitle you to drop your end of things. The key issue in collaborative alliances is living up to your responsibilities. The fact that your feelings are understandable, given your circumstances, doesn’t change your responsibility to hold on to your self and do what’s right.

#5.
In a collaborative alliance your responsibilities are unilateral, not mutual or reciprocal
. A collaborative alliance involves unilaterally keeping up your end of the deal when your partner has temporarily dropped his (or hers). Your partner’s bad behavior doesn’t excuse your own. Rather than leaving your responsibilities unfulfilled and letting the lowest common denominator run your relationship, confront your partner about dropping his part of the bargain
after
you are sure you have fulfilled yours.

#6.
Collaborative alliances don’t always feel good
. Sometimes collaborative alliances require confronting, challenging, and refusing to accommodate. This can be hard. Likewise a collaborative alliance does
not
mean always making your partner feel good about himself, or validated or accepted, or safe and secure. Collaborative alliances are defined by function, rather than feeling. (
Collusive
alliances revolve around making people feel particular ways.)

#7.
Collaborative alliances never involve blinding yourself
about your partner, or yourself, or what’s going on between you. In a collaborative alliance everyone keeps their eyes open and their minds alert. Mind-mapping plays an important role. Don’t shield your mind from being read accurately. (Asking someone to overlook your shortcomings, and offering to overlook his or hers, is a collusive alliance.)

#8.
Collaborative alliances test your integrity
. Ultimately, people keep their end of good-faith bargains to maintain their own integrity. It’s always easier to drop your alliance and “look out for yourself” in the narrow sense. But as you become better differentiated, you do what you know to be right, in order to be at peace with your self in your own mind. An alliance formed of convenience may look collaborative, but when things get difficult it will fall apart.

Don’t assume you have a collaborative alliance with your partner. Normal couples with desire problems (and/or sexual dysfunctions) often don’t. Even if this didn’t cause your desire problem, it usually is the result. If you realize you’re dropping your alliance with your partner, there’s actually cause for optimism: Things don’t have to stay that way—
if
you strengthen your Four Points of Balance.

When couples say they have issues about “trust,” they’re really struggling with repeated breakdown or absence of a collaborative alliance. I’ve never found calling it a trust issue helps much, because this involves having faith in your partner’s efforts. Things go better when approached as a lack of collaborative alliance. It shifts the focus from belief to performance.

Collaborative alliances provide the necessary framework for the activities I promised to share with you. You need to create a collaborative alliance
in tangible physical form by you and your partner using your bodies. This means creating physical interactions that embody your collaborative alliance. You need to do this repeatedly and in different ways. I’m going to show you three ways do this in and out of bed. They are ways to use your body to change your mind, and quite possibly change your brain. This may be why they are so effective.

Keep a broad perspective as you learn about these tools. Don’t simply focus on physical technique. Your goal is to focus your attention on a large number of important dimensions at once, creating a rich and meaningful multi-layered experience.

Your first major tool is
hugging till relaxed
.
¹⁶⁹
Hugging till relaxed is elegant and simple. It has sophisticated uses, but its basics are easy. Here’s all you do:

1. Stand on your own two feet.

2. Put your arms around your partner.

3. Focus on yourself.

4. Quiet yourself down.
Way
down.

With practice, anyone can take
hugging till relaxed
to profound levels. It doesn’t require nudity or genital contact. You’re probably better off doing it with your clothes on at first.
¹⁷⁰
(Take your shoes off.) If you’re emotionally estranged and not ready for full-blown sex, even if you don’t want to arouse your partner or make her feel good,
hugging till relaxed
gets you started working with something physical. It’s about centering yourself, physically and emotionally, while you and your partner have your arms around each other. It’s simple enough to be worth a try, and it helps a wide range of desire problems and sexual dysfunctions.

Notice I didn’t describe this as holding each other. That’s a whole other mind-set that adds another degree of complexity. Allowing your partner to hold you, and holding your partner, triggers issues for most couples. I suggest you think about this as putting your arms around your
partner, and holding on to your self. It points you in the right direction for what you need to do: Apply your Four Points of Balance as you stand there with your partner.

Initially,
hugging till relaxed
involves relaxing your body and mind by focusing on your body while you’re in broad physical contact with your partner. Getting physically comfortable with your partner takes a while, both in a given encounter and over the course of time. Things can feel uncomfortable and awkward at first. It can take a month of frequent practice of five to ten minutes to get over this. Repetition is important.
¹⁷¹
If you’re willing to endure meaningful discomfort for growth,
hugging till relaxed
eventually feels like you’re melting into warm butter—but not losing yourself in the process.

You can use
hugging till relaxed
many different ways. At first, it is a mindfulness activity, a way of centering yourself, quieting your mind, and getting control of your emotions—while you’re close to your partner. You could be great at meditating quietly by yourself, and still lose yourself when dealing with your mate. Holding on to your self (remaining mindful) becomes increasingly difficult as you become physical and emotionally engaged with your partner.
Hugging till relaxed
gives you a chance to practice this in real time, instead of just talking or thinking about it.

Hugging till relaxed
lets emotionally and physically alienated couples re-establish comfortable physical contact, which their normal (brief) sexual pattern does not permit. You need time to cool things down inside you, and with your partner.
Hugging till relaxed
is a great way to do it.

Sooner or later (for many couples it’s sooner),
hugging till relaxed
heats things up. The issues in your relationship will surface in your hugging. Who has difficulty letting herself be held? Who’s leaning on whom? Who’s making whom adapt? What happens when one loses her balance? Who wants to let go first? How is this communicated? What does the other do? Who initiates more of the time? The issues and dynamics are incredible.

This is your chance to work out these emotion-laden issues, physically and emotionally, as they arise (and to think and talk about them afterward). If dealing with issues like this is usually a disaster, here’s your real-time opportunity to hold on to your self and handle this better. If
you normally drop your collaborative alliance with your partner when something upsetting occurs, practice maintaining it here. I explain how to do this below.

You may need to stop hugging for a moment to straighten things out with your partner. This taps your ability to speak up for yourself and gives you practice taking feedback you might normally reject or feel is hurtful. If you hold on to your self, maintain your alliance with your partner, and validate yourself to say or hear something new, you should be able to return to
hugging till relaxed
and re-establish a mindful emotionally quiet and physically stable connection.

Hugging till relaxed
can increase your Four Points of Balance. It’s a tangible way to teach yourself how to stand on your own two feet, physically and emotionally, while you’re close to your partner. You can use it to calm yourself down when you and your partner are both nervous. It improves your ability to quiet and calm yourself down without having to pull away from your partner. This last point is important. You can quiet yourself when your partner floods with anxiety. You don’t have to move away from her, or calm her down to calm your own emotions. This is critical if you have sex and intimacy problems, because couples pass anxiety back and forth like a virus.

You have to learn to settle yourself down, even when (and especially when) your partner is unsettled, uncomfortable, or upset. That’s where your Four Points of Balance come in.