Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship (8 page)

From this perspective, the old argument about whether sex is for reproduction or pleasure or love looks terribly misguided.
Sex is for
self-development
. Developing and maintaining your self shapes your (and your partner’s) sexual desire as much as hormones, horniness, lust, infatuation, craving for closeness and bonding, and the urge to distribute your genes. The ebb and flow of your sexual desire is greatly controlled by the battles of selfhood that inevitably surface in love relationships.

Love relationships still harness our sense of self, propelling us to grow. Importantly, challenge and conflict hammer our more primitive reflected sense of self into a more advanced solid flexible self, bringing forth the best in us. Unfortunately, the worst in us shows up as well.

Love relationships are part of Darwinian natural selection and evolution. They helped your ancestors evolve a brain capable of compassion, generosity, and mutuality (and cruelty). You can experience this in your relationship. When you’re struggling with the fact that the low desire partner controls sex, remember these problems gave rise to humankind’s steadfast refusal to submit to tyranny and nurtured our capacity to truly love.

Your two most basic drives, your twin desires for autonomy
and
connection, permeate your sexual desire. We want to feel we belong to ourselves
and
have profound connection with our partner. The mark of a solid flexible self is being able to do both. Sexual desire problems develop your ability to do this, but the process is neither easy nor comfortable.

Sexual desire problems are co-constructed dilemmas, but I’m not referring to mutual fault. There is no fault. Sexual desire problems make us grow. They are one of many co-constructed “people-growing processes” of marriage. So instead of feeling abnormal, take your place among countless generations who preceded you. Pay your dues. There’s a good chance you’ll experience one of the greatest and simplest sexual pleasures: being self-aware, in the presence of another self-aware person, aware of (but not prisoner to) the fact that she is aware of you. That’s an important part of my Crucible® Approach to resolving sexual desire problems.

Crucible® Therapy harnesses the natural growth processes that permeate love relationships to resolve sexual desire problems (and lots of other things). Events and situations in committed relationships inevitably come together in ways that push you to the limits of your abilities—and beyond. They take you outside your comfort zone. Sexual desire problems are just one example. Crucible Therapy helps you use these difficult-but-predictable developments to grow and become capable of handling your problems. A crucible is a difficult challenge or trial, arising from a confluence of factors that test and change you. That’s why I named my approach as I did.

A crucible is also a metal or porcelain container that can withstand extreme heat and not react to what’s placed in it. Crucibles are used to refine metals or hold powerful chemical reactions. This describes Crucible Therapy, too. Marriage’s people-growing processes turn up the heat of their own accord. When you and your partner are in the midst of them, things can get pretty heated. This often happens with desire problems. Crucible Therapy helps you use these situations, including emotional meltdowns, to change and grow.

The “rules” of world ecology are built into our ecosystem. They preexist of their own accord. When not subject to our preferences and prejudices, they reflect a greater wisdom. When we don’t respect the rules, living things start dying, species become extinct, and ultimately we jeopardize our own survival. Hopefully we will learn this before it’s too late.

Similarly, it’s in your best interests to understand how love relationships really operate. The rules of love relationships pre-exist of their own accord: Your sexual desire, interaction patterns, and sense of self are inseparably entwined. They are as much determined by millions of years of evolution as by things you experienced during childhood or things that happen during sex. The way your brain is wired comes from prehistoric times, recent generations of your family, and your particular life experiences.
⁵⁵

Understanding your sexual desire means understanding the natural
ecology of love relationships. The rules of love relationships often differ from what you want to believe. Throughout history, laws have surfaced giving men legal control of their wives’ bodies. These laws document how patriarchal societies attempt to overcome the way sexual desire operates in emotionally committed relationships. Today, the man is the LDP in half the cases I see. But the rule still holds true: The low desire partner always controls sex.

My approach will help you get it right: It embraces a unique view of love, sexual desire, and relationships. It is an
ecological
approach. An ecological approach says that the rules of love relationships already exist in your marriage. When you live according to how things work, rather than how you want them to be, relationships become more productive and gratifying.

Ignore the rules of love relationships at your own peril. These rules exist within even the most destructive relationships—the reason they’re so destructive is because no one heeds them or acts accordingly. You are more likely to stay together, and be happy that you did, if you heed the rules of how relationships really work.

This is a huge shift if you’re indoctrinated with the modern mantra, “Work on your relationship!” In many ways you
can’t
work on your relationship, any more than you can work on the environment. You can support the environment doing what it does naturally, instead of interfering with it. But you can’t improve the way it functions as an elegant, interdependent whole. If you understand and respect how love relationships operate (relationship ecology) and how people operate (individual ecology), your life will be healthier and happier.
⁵⁶

It’s easier to resolve sexual desire problems if you see how they involve your brain, mind, body, and relationship. There’s a lot more involved than doing what comes naturally. Resolving sexual desire problems can create powerful personal development that ripples through your life.

We’ve laid a scientific basis for what I’m telling you: Sexual desire problems are a normal and healthy midpoint in the evolution of a
relationship and the people in it. They don’t necessarily mean something is going wrong. Sexual desire problems replay epic sagas of human evolution. Now it’s your turn to go through it. Don’t waste your time perfecting your sexual techniques.

Nature is clever: The relationship in which you seek refuge pushes you to develop a more solid self, like pushing toothpaste out of a tube by progressively winding the other end. The love relationship you thought would make you feel safe and secure pounds your fragile reflected sense of self into something solid and lasting.

It sounds weird to think of sexual desire problems as naturally occurring growth processes, but that’s how I’ve come to see them. That’s the way my clients come to see them too. Like Doreen and Adam, many folks come to look upon their desire problem as one of the best things that ever happened to them. If you handle your opportunity wisely, there’s a good chance you’ll end up feeling that way, too.

Adam said, “I don’t like Doreen thinking I owe her sex. She makes me feel like my body doesn’t belong to me. She doesn’t see me as a separate person. She doesn’t respect my boundaries. She’s constantly telling me what to do, down to the clothes I wear. I don’t belong to her, I belong to me.”

Doreen retorted, “When we first got together you liked us belonging to each other. I know you felt supported and encouraged by me, and I felt important and needed in your life. Now the idea of belonging to each other makes you furious. I think you have a problem with commitment. It comes out by you withholding sex.”

Doreen looked at me and said, “Why does something so natural have to be so complex and difficult?” Her tone sounded like she was saying,
Adam is making this difficult! He’s the problem
.

Adam scowled, clearly feeling criticized. Doreen barked,
“Can’t I even ask a question!”
Adam’s head snapped back as though he’d just been slapped.

“Things shouldn’t be this difficult,” Doreen repeated. “Sex and desire
are natural functions. They’re built in. If we love each other, we should have sexual desire for each other.” She turned to Adam. “Maybe you don’t love me at all!” The tension in the room rose.

To head off the looming disaster, I steered our attention in a different direction. I said to Doreen. “I’ve learned that the exact opposite of what you believe is true. If you love each other and stay together, you can count on sexual desire problems.”

“Why do you say that?” she challenged. “Are you saying there’s a flaw built into long-term relationships?”

“No, I mean the exact opposite. You can count on sexual desire problems if you love each other and stay together, because long-term emotionally committed relationships are that
perfect
.”

“
Perfect?”
Doreen said. “How could relationships be perfect if they have sexual desire problems! Adam and I don’t have sex. Our relationship is falling apart. We’re talking about splitting up. He doesn’t love me anymore. He says I pressure him for sex all the time. I feel unattractive. I have a hard time accepting what you’re saying, Doctor. You make it sound like it’s okay to have sexual desire problems, like it’s normal.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“How could that be true? If every couple has sexual desire problems, we’d all be divorced.”

“You mean people wouldn’t go through the kinds of problems you’re having?”

“Right! It would be easier to just find a new partner who wanted to have sex. I’ve certainly thought about that option.”

“But have you done that yet?”

“No.”

“So you endured the tensions, you didn’t take the easy way out, and you hung in there.”

“Yes.”

“Why’d you do that?”

Doreen stopped and thought for several seconds. Then she spoke slowly and thoughtfully. “Because my relationship with Adam is important to me.”

“Then you operated differently than your own picture of people. Your
sexual desire problem hasn’t ended your relationship—yet. You can use it to help the two of you grow as individuals and as a couple. It comes down to how you go about solving your desire problem. I can show you how to do that if you like.”

Doreen looked at me and nodded. She was demonstrating an important and often unappreciated aspect of love relationships: they push the best in us to stand up.

IDEAS TO PONDER

Your brain, body, mind, and relationship are one whole system in which sexual desire plays a key role. Problems with sexual desire and struggles of selfhood go hand in hand in love relationships.

Developing and maintaining a solid sense of self greatly shapes your sexual desire. Your reflected sense of self and solid self often outweigh horniness, hormones, or your desire for intimacy and attachment.