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Do You Even Know What You’re Fighting About?

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If you’ve ever gotten into a fight with a partner over something seemingly silly, you might have been very confused about why it was such a big deal. And yet, it may have been one of the biggest blow ups of your relationship.

The truth is that sometimes a fight is about much more than not picking up dirty laundry or taking out the garbage.

Jeanie was so upset with her husband. He had always been difficult to feel physically connected to. He had always had a subtle pulling back when she would reach out to touch him, but it had gotten worse in the past few months. She brought him into therapy fearing that they were on the brink of a divorce if not an affair.  Jeanie’s husband, Frank was a sweet, mild mannered man with some anger issues that had been a problem in a previous marriage and were still somewhat an issue with Jeanie.

Why he was pulling away

The bigger problem was that she felt him pulling away from her touch and she was certain this meant he didn’t love her any more.  After a few sessions, it became clear what the problem really was about.  Frank was terrified of losing her to death.  He had witnessed his mother’s death at the age of four; she died mid-sentence while she was talking on the telephone on her bed in front of him.  Then, at 15 he held a girl in his arms as she died from a drug overdose.

When he tapped into this in session the fear and pain he felt was palpable.  Recently he had lost his father to a lingering cancer that left his father comatose for months.  The little boy inside of Frank felt that if he just didn’t allow himself close, then death could be avoided.  Thus, he found himself pulling further and further away from Jeanie.  The pain and shock of his early losses still dictated his emotional and intimate life.

Frank is not any different than the rest of us.  We behave in unconscious ways that dictate how we interact with each other, what we feel and what upsets us.  We go about our lives as if it were a logical, rational process and the choices and actions we take made some kind of sense.

Our brains can trick us into believe one thing when another is true

That’s where “rationalization” comes in to play.  Frank had convinced himself that Jeanie’s return to smoking cigarettes had caused him to withdraw from her.  But actually, her smoking had started in response to his pulling away.  But that’s how our brains work to trick us into thinking that what we do makes sense.

Emotions make no obvious, logical sense.  Emotions are always laden with the memories of times when we felt similar things at some time in the past and are linked together through a complex network of memories that links them to the earliest memories we have.  When Frank connected to his sense of pain about his father’s death it took him directly to the death of his mother, which he had experienced so traumatically, at four.

And, the time of his father’s death, he went back into the emotional state of the four year old.  He was no longer the 30 something man that seemed to be sitting before me, he was emotionally and mentally four.

This is what happens all the time in our conflicts with our partners.  We get angry with them for something they did or didn’t do and we think it’s all about what they did or didn’t do.  As irrational as it seems, our upset it NEVER about what they did or didn’t do! Now, it certainly triggered our upset, but our upset it not really about that.

How childhood can affect our adult relationships

Let me give you an example.  Sara and her husband Tom have been married for about eight years.  They have struggled with understanding each other from the beginning. Tom came from a very chaotic neglectful and physically abusive childhood, and Sara from a set of very over controlling parents who never considered her needs or wishes.

One afternoon Sara was toasting the meringue topping of a pie in the oven.  As she was doing so she was taking care of something in the other room when she forgot about the meringue until she could smell it starting to brown, perhaps too much.

What happened next…

Sara then ran into the kitchen yelling her fear of burning it. Tom jumped up and ran to her aide.  She tried to pull out the shelf without an oven mitt, Tom handed her one.  She of course needed two to pull the pie out of the oven.  She yelled, “What am I supposed to do with that? I need two to get it out!” and promptly went over to get another one.

Tom became angry and yelled back at her, “I was only trying to help!”

To which she replied, “How can I possibly get it out with only one hand?”

The fight ensued and both felt justified in their position.  Later, Sara was able to say that she could see from the look on his face that he was in a time warp that put him back in the presence of his abusive father who was constantly telling him to do things that he had no idea how to do when he was under five years old.  Tearfully, Tom was able to verbalize that reality to her later, as they talked about it on the couch when they had both calmed down.

Take time to really listen

In both the cases of Sara and Tom and Jeanie and Frank, their conflict and hurt feelings had nothing to do with what it looked like was going on.  On the surface, the logical rational side of things, there is no way to see the pain and upset that was hiding beneath the surface.

Without taking the time to truly listen with empathy to what is happening inside the other person, neither Sara nor Jeanie would have had a clue as to what was really going on with their partner.

To get to the place of being able to provide that kind of listening for each other takes work and an ability to step out of our own skin long enough to see things from the others’ prospective.  That is not always easy, often it’s downright scary. But it’s always worth it.

Think Cheaters Are Always the Bad Guys? You May Be Wrong…

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It’s all over the media, Maury Pauvich,  Joey Bosco’s “Cheater” series,  the front page of the New York Times with the story of Elliot Spitzer, and of course, Bill Clinton.  Now, in our culture, there is nothing worse than a cheater, is there?

We hate them for being unfaithful to their wives, husbands, girlfriends, or boyfriends, for breaking their contract to be faithful.  We love country and western songs of retaliation for cheaters. (e.g. Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats”) In Texas, not so long ago, it was legal to shoot your wife if you found her having sex with someone else.

Cheaters are considered the worst kind of bad guy. Our hearts go out to the poor victims of a cheater’s actions.  It makes for great drama involving our anger, rage and sense of self-righteousness.

Why cheating is so disturbing

The whole concept of “cheating” is something I find intriguing.  If you have a relationship with someone, don’t you want them to want to only be with you?  Of course you do!

That’s why it breaks our hearts when they chose to do otherwise.  But if they want to be with someone else, well, we don’t really have the relationship we thought we did do we? That, to me is the place for the pain.

Cheating is a symptom of a relationship that is not complete.  I think this is what “Dr. Laura” was trying to say about Elliott Spitzer’s wife, not that she was responsible for his cheating, but that, hey, something had to be amiss in the relationship for this to be taking place.

When someone “cheats” they are seen as the “bad guy” and the poor hapless “victim” is the object of our compassion, while the “cheater”, well, he’s just “bad”.

We have these marriage contracts and unwritten contracts with our partners that we will be “faithful” to them and our rage is incited when they “break the contract”.  We don’t stop and wonder, “Oh, what is going on here that my partner wants to be with someone else?”  No, we think, “That jerk!” (or whatever expletive we choose)

Has someone been wronged?

Our focus is on someone having been “wronged”, “done dirty” and leaving the “victim” to be perceived of as the “helpless victim” of this “bad person” who cheated on them.

When someone is having sex with someone other than his or her partner. Well then, they don’t really consider that person their partner do they?  What has happened is that the partnership is null and void at that point.  So in reality, there can be no “cheating” when there was no partnership in place anyway.

When I realized my husband was having sex with someone else my heart was broken.  But I did not and do not think of him as a “cheater.”  Our relationship was in shambles at that point and he was acting out on the pain he was in by finding someone else.  My heart was broken because the reality of his choosing to have sex with someone else meant that he no longer considered me his partner.  It meant he had given up on us. This is what broke my heart.

What the marriage contract really about

Our contract as a couple is not to ‘be faithful no matter what” or even to remain together no matter what.  Our contract as a couple is to work on being a couple, together.  When that stops happening, then the relationship is in trouble.  The contract is being re-negotiated constantly.

When we settle for a less than intimate connection with our partner we are agreeing to the reality that we are not really in true partnership, and that the possibility exists that our partner may choose to move into an intimate relationship with someone else.

Partnerships, off all sorts, require constant re-negotiation and re-commitment.  When there is a break in the intimate connection of a partnership we are responsible for working toward re-connecting.  If we spend weeks, months, years out of connection with our partner and then find that they have had sex with someone else we have no right to blame them.

I am not saying that having sex outside of a committed relationship is honorable or even “excusable.”  What I am saying is that there is not a “bad guy” and that both parties bear some of the responsibility for what is occurring in the relationship; even the cheating.

Different relationships, different reactions

Christine and Lew had been married for 8 years; they had a lovely 6-year-old daughter and lived in a nice home in Plano.  Lew came to therapy because he had been discovered having had an affair with someone he had met on a business trip.  By the time it had been discovered, Lew had already broken off the relationship with the woman because he had, on his own, realized he didn’t want her, he wanted his wife.

But he knew there were things wrong in the relationship that needed to change and that his having the affair was a symptom of the problems.  Christine came to therapy a few times, but she was so hurt and angry she could not address the problems between them.  She considered that Lew had broken their marital vows and that she had no responsibility in what occurred.

She refused to look at the marriage, insisting that the problem was all with Lew.  She saw herself as a hapless victim of this cheater and that was all there was to the story.  I don’t know what happened to them because with Christine unwilling to continue in therapy, Lew stopped attending.

Contrast this to Jayme and Ryan who have now reconciled after a year of exploring what went wrong with their idyllic marriage.  They both came to recognize that things they did contributed to the environment of disconnection that led up to Jayme going outside of their relationship for intimacy she felt was lacking in her marriage.  She still loved her husband, and didn’t want a divorce, but was feeling a desperately needy.

Her having chosen to remain home with their new child over Ryan’s protests had resulted in Ryan being angry and critical of Jayme.  With all the chemicals of having just had a child going through her system, combined with an immature reaction to his rejection of her led to her reaching out to another man for comfort.  Ryan, hurt and angry, divorced her quickly after discovering the “betrayal”.

But through months of therapy, he was able to resolve his anger by recognizing that he had responsibility in what happened, too.  Jayme, struggles with her shame about what happened, but realizes, too, that she was in a terrible place and made bad choices.  Both have begun to forgive each other, and themselves, for  the behavior that led to the affair.

“Cheating” is only a symptom of a relationship with problems.  Even if the “cheating” is a result of a sexual addiction; the addiction is the problem, not really the cheating.  Addictions are caused by a need, a wound; pain that needs to be resolved by the person and an addicted person cannot express or experience true intimacy.

The partner of someone with a sexual addiction has accepted a relationship with someone who is emotionally unavailable.

If you are concerned your partner is “’cheating” then you have to acknowledge you would not be having that fear if the relationship were right.  Stop ruminating about the cheating and start working on the relationship.

The Secret Cure For A Dwindling Sex Life

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One Christmas a girlfriend of mine handed out packages to our little group of friends.  One by one my friends opened their packages containing beautiful flannel pajamas from Neiman’s with high-healed shoes all over them.

But my package didn’t contain pajamas. Mine contained a book and some toiletries.  Embarrassed, my friend said, “Well, I know you sleep naked, so I had to think of something else!”  I just laughed.

This particular woman has had marital difficulties as long as I have known her.  Somehow she and her husband managed to have a child; I don’t really know how they did I considering they almost never have sex.  The other women have modest sex lives, I’m sure.

Sleeping naked has many rewards

What I know for sure is that they don’t have as rewarding and active a sex life as they could if they are wearing pajamas to bed!

Wearing your birthday suit to bed offers many rewards.  Not the least of which is that it makes sex a lot more likely to happen.  Here is my list of the advantages of sleeping naked with your partner:

  1. Increased oxytocin.  Oxytocin is a hormone released with skin-to-skin contact.  Touching skin-to-skin from head to toe all night long provides us with a steady stream of this beneficial hormone.  Some of the benefits of oxytocin are: increased sense of well-being; decreased heart rate; and reduction of stress hormones, increased sense of trust, and…. Drum roll…. Sexual arousal!
  2. Getting into “the mood” for sex is hard for women. We tend to stay in our heads and worry about being tired, or that the kids will hear, or whatever we are stressing about that day.  This does not put us in the mood for sexual contact; in fact it tends to make us feel more alone and isolated. Many women will simply answer “Not tonight, dear” if asked if they want to have sex just because they have too much going on in their heads.  Getting skin-to-skin stimulates sexual feelings no matter whom you are or what is going on in your head.
  3. One of the strongest detriments for having sex is a sense of disconnect between the couple.  When we feel disconnected from our partner, we lose a sense of desire for them.  This is why good communication that involves respect and empathy helps us to feel more sexual toward each other. Sleep naked breaks down those psychological barriers.
  4. Sleeping skin-to-skin increases our sense of bonding.  Think about it, when you are first dating you can’t keep your hands off each other can you? When you have a baby you can’t keep your hands off of them either.  Bonding increases with skin-to-skin contact.

You will have sex more often.  Being close and naked makes it a lot easier to move into being sexual together.

Before you protest too much…

Okay, okay, I know what you are going to say, “I can’t sleep without clothes on!” Anytime you change a routine it takes time to adjust.  Your body is just used to your sleeping with clothing touching its skin.  It will get used to being naked, eventually.

My entire life I had slept on my side curled up in the fetal position.  There are pictures of me like this as a child.  Yet when I had shoulder surgery I could not sleep that way. I was forced to learn to sleep on my back.  It was hard the first couple of nights, but I got used to it. You’ll get used to sleeping naked, too.

Now the other argument I hear is that you’d be too cold.  Well, if you are cold, get an electric blanket!

Excuses, excuses

All of these seem like excuses to me. If you don’t want to have sex more often that’s a sign of needing help.  We are programmed through biology to want to be sexual. If something is interfering with that desire you need to check it out.

Make sure there is not something physical going on (it could be hormones).  Then get yourself to a psychologist to find out what is blocking your desire.  It could be problems in the marriage or it could be problems from your past, but it’s not natural to not want to be sexual with your partner.

The benefits of sleeping nude

Even Dr. Oz stated he is a proponent of couples sleeping naked.  A month or two ago he appeared on Oprah and told the world that if you want to increase your sex life, thereby increasing your overall health, you should sleep naked.

Having more sex has many health benefits and increases the chances of your marriage lasting. Okay, I am not talking marathon sex here; I am also not talking having sex five times a day, once or twice a day can do wonders. Having sex at least once a day increases our general health and well-being.

Spending half an hour a day in the most enjoyable and healthy exercise you can partake you will live longer, feel more satisfied with your life, and be healthier. Not to mention it will do increase the odds of your marriage living as long as you do!

How To Move Beyond Childhood Abuse And Have Healthier Relationships As An Adult

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Jim looked at Shannon with a cacophony of feelings; love, lust, appreciation and fear and wanted desperately to reach for her.

Shannon could sense his looking at her, in spite of her back being turned to him as she washed the dishes.  Her spine tensed and she felt afraid and then angry.

Jim felt her energy shift and could feel the coldness she projected out at him. He stood frozen in his tracks uncertain as to what to do.

He knew she loved him, and that she wanted to please him.  He also knew she would succumb to him if he asserted himself, but she would be angry with him for days.  He went back to clearing off the table and securing their doors for the night.

How it all began

“Jim and Shannon” are a composite of couples I have worked with over the years. Shannon is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and had yet to understand all the ways it impacts her relationship with Jim.

Shannon thinks Jim is too focused on sex and, unspoken she really believes he only loves her for what she does for him sexually.  She feels shame that he can’t love her for who she is, but doesn’t really think anyone would.

Jim spent his life craving touch. His mother knew that she shouldn’t “coddle him”; her mother taught her well that boys need to be “toughened up”.  She let him console himself when he fell and discouraged his affection toward her.

When Jim became a teenager he discovered the joy of touching girls, and the rush of hormones that came with that touch.  Touch then, for Jim, became inseparable from sex.

When he met Shannon he thought he had found a woman who was very open and comfortable with sexuality.  She never denied him anything he wanted and he felt loved for once in his life.

Ramifications of abuse

Now, as he stood in the kitchen wanting her so badly, he didn’t understand why she no longer seemed to be able to love him as she once had.  He felt guilty for wanting her and confused at her rejection of him.  His anger and resentment built every time she rejected him.

Shannon had started therapy and she told Jim her therapist said she should not have sex with him until she wanted, and to assert her own needs rather than always succumbing to his.

Shannon’s sexual abuse had taught her to please men, but not herself. The disgust and pain she felt at the thought of sex convinced her she could just as well live without it.

It made her angry that Jim continually pushed her to do something he knew was painful and not fun for her. It reinforced her belief that he could only love her if she gave in to his sexual needs.  She felt resentful and angry at his insensitivity, a belief her therapist reinforced in each weekly session.

How to untangle the mess

How do you untangle a mess like this?  Neither fully understands the other’s pain. Both are completely focused on their own needs and their own wounds.  Hearing their story there are few of us that could not feel empathy for each of them; yet they don’t have it for each other.

While sorting out their wounds and re-discovering each other is not simple; the underlying process is really quite simple.  Both “Jim’ and “Shannon” are wounded in complementary and remarkably similar ways.

Both have had their sexuality interfered with through their early childhood experiences. Both were taught erroneous things about their value as human beings and the meaning of the sexual act.

To survive, Shannon had to adapt to her environment by pretending that her needs don’t matter.  So did Jim.

But their needs persisted.  Meeting each other’s needs early in their relationship fit right in with their childhood patterns; but continued to require their ignoring their childhood needs.

This leaves both of them feeling like a victim to the other.  Both fight in self-protective stances to get their needs met by the person they perceive of as the perpetrator of their pain.

Shannon’s well meaning therapist empathized with the horror of Shannon’s abuse and worked to protect Shannon from further pain by encouraging Shannon to avoid sex with her husband.

This attempt to rescue Shannon from her pain resulted in Jim being stuck in a situation that mimicked his mother’s rejection and perpetuated his touch deprivation.

Hearts are broken and marriages fail in this process of trying to rescue a survivor wife from a husband who, naturally, wants an active sex life.

The alternative?

Help both partners understand the dynamic between them.  Teach each partner to experience and practice compassion for the other, as well as themselves. Help them to feel their fear of each other and to accept that fear as a part of the natural development of intimacy, not something to be avoided or disowned.

Encourage them to allow their own feelings to flow in the presence of the other and teach the other to accept and support each other’s pain, sorrow, and joy.

Encourage them to touch each other often in non-sexual ways. Encourage them to learn what healthy sexuality really is: a chance to experience each other fully and joyfully.  The process may be painful and difficult; but the result is the ability to love and be loved.

When Swinger Sex Goes Horribly Wrong…

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Threesomes and swinging are on most male fantasy lists, but what happens when it goes horribly wrong?

Over the course of my three marriages I have been encouraged by husbands to engage in a variety of interesting (and some downright bizarre) possible sexual behaviors.  Of course, I tended to marry sex addicts, so the range of possibilities stretched a lot further than my sensibilities.

Along the way, I’ve been “encouraged” to participate in all kinds of things that became problems later on.  Some of these were physically not a good idea, and I won’t go into that!

My first husband liked fantasies.  I am quite creative so I was able to come up with all kinds of fun and innocent stories to keep him excited.  I became good at playing the part and keeping things spicy – nothing dangerous or problematic there.  But then eventually with some of the stories, he liked the idea of making them happen.  These included other people.

While I can appreciate the desire to add spice and variety to the bedroom, I’ve discovered through my own (and others) experiences, there are some kinds of behaviors that are a set up for disaster.  When you open the door and invite another person into the intimate connection with your partner you are inviting in trouble.

Now, in theory, I will conjecture that there are couples secure enough with each other where they can have flings with other people and not do any perceivable damage to their relationship.  I’ve just never seen it happen that way personally…

Dan and Jennifer’s comments:

While this is one experience, Dan and I have seen many successful open/swinging relationships… Even though we don’t agree with with everything in this article, we wanted to publish it to show what can happen when you get into swinging for the wrong reasons.

It is critical to be honest with yourself and you partner. Never allow another person to ‘push’ you into something that you’re not comfortable with. For a swinging relationship to be successful, it has to be something that both partners want, not just grudgingly agree to.

What tends to happen is that one member of the couple is more motivated than the other to pursue the “Swinger” lifestyle.  For whatever reason, having one sexual partner for the rest of their life is not appealing, but they like having a life partner.

Therefore that partner encourages the other to participate in this “exciting” adventure of “Swinging”.  Then both partners agree to it using certain ground rules.

Unfortunately, most of us are driven by feelings and impulses that have little to do with rational thought.  So then here we are, for whatever reason, in a three or four-some with our significant other being sexual, or maybe we are just swapping.  Either way, we have added unpredictable dimensions into the intimate setting of our sexual and personal relationship with our partner.

What’s predictable about it is that someone will end up hurt.  The “ground rules” will be broken and someone ends up feeling betrayed and hurt.  But, because the boundaries of the relationships fidelity were broken by the entire process of  “Swinging” already, the “acting out” partner feels like they have done nothing “wrong”.

Dan and Jennifer’s comments:

This is where we completely disagree. It is NOT guaranteed that someone will get hurt.

In a swinging relationship, the only time someone gets hurt is when one person breaks the rules or is dishonest, or is not open about their feelings. It’s critical to communicate openly and honestly about your feelings before, during, and after any sexual experience with another individual or couple.

We can’t say this enough! Swinging or Open Relationships are only for couples who are VERY secure in their relationship and have enough self confidence to prevent jealousy issues. Swinging is NOT a relationship fix…

After all, the injured partner already said it’s “okay” to have sex with other people.

Often this ends the relationship and on painful terms, at least for the partner whose ground rules were broken.

Linda and Mark had been dating for about four years, and they had a very active, passionate sex life.  Mark had encouraged Linda to try all kind of things that had been outside the range of her previous history, but because they pleased Mark, Linda enjoyed them.  Over time, Mark pushed the boundaries even further.  He wanted to experience having sex with two women at one time.

Linda admitted to being curious about what that would be like, so they found a willing partner.  For a while, they enjoyed this three-some with jubilance and it added a lot to their excitement for each other. When they were not having sex with her, they were fantasizing about having sex with her.  Before long, though, Linda found herself wanting time with the girl alone, without Mark.  She didn’t see the harm in it, after all, having sex with another woman was not breaking their marital vows was it?

Unfortunately, Mark did not feel that way when he found them together one night when he arrived home early from work.  Mark felt betrayed and could never look at Linda the same way again. Their relationship did not survive.

Dan and Jennifer’s comments:

Duh! Are we the only ones who see the problem here? Cheating is a breaking of trust. Having sex with another person without your partners agreement is cheating! Had she talked to Mark about her feelings, this situation could have been avoided all together.

So to us, this example represents an underlying communication issue. Linda did not feel comfortable sharing her feelings with Mark. That’s what broke them up – not the other girl…

Jane and Richard had been married for about three years when Richard started pushing Jane to go to “Swingers clubs” and see if there was a couple that they both agreed they’d like to engage in sex with.  Jane was uncertain, but she went and eventually did find a couple they agreed upon.  Richard loved this and told Jane how crazy he was about her and that he was really happy.

Richard bought Jane gifts and seemed to be happier than Jane had ever seen him. She felt good about her choices.  One night they went to a bar together, to meet yet another potential “Swinger” couple.  But this time only the woman was there.  Richard became flirtatious and “handsy” with the other woman.  He would pat Jane reassuringly occasionally.

Jane’s heart was broken.  From this point, she tried to pull back and change the “ground rules” for their relationship. Richard wouldn’t hear of it, and decided they should separate and re-evaluate their relationship.

Dan and Jennifer’s comments:

So why was Jane’s heart broken? What was she expecting – a night of poker? They were going to meet swingers…

Did she tell him how his made her feel at the time, or did she just get jealous and brood over it the whole evening?

If you’re ever in a situation that makes you feel uncomfortable – deal with right then. Letting an issue fester over night, or for days, can ruin your relationship because the jealousy monster takes over pretty quickly and likes to stay in control. Also, rather than backing away completely, perhaps Jane could have expressed her feelings in a non-threatening way and asked Richard to not do that again.

I feel that there’s more to this story than what we’re being told here.  It’s rarely one incident that  turns the tide…

Again – talk, talk, talk!!! Most of these issues could easily be avoided with a little honestly and open communication.

In both cases, the “Swinging” started out as something “fun and exciting” and ended up breaking hearts.  Why?

For one thing, the relationships we have are fragile gifts not to be toyed with in the way we sometimes have a tendency to do.  Our connections are more fragile than we think they are and our ability to let someone into our innermost layers is dependent on a lot of factors.

To learn more about the swinger lifestyle check out our Swinger Sex Channel for tons of great articles and videos.

To find swinger sex partners in your area, check out our favorite adult personals website.