Love & Sex Answers

Today's #1 Love & Sex Resource

You are here: Home / Archives for wendystrgar

Are You Getting What You Need?

By

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need…”

That Rolling Stones refrain is playing in my head repeatedly of late and it seems clear that this is as true a love song as I have ever known.  Although I would never have thought it in my earlier years, what I know of love that has staying power is that it is actually rarely about what you want.

Growing up and cultivating sustainable love is mostly about learning how to accept what you get, turn it into what you want, or at least embrace it as what you need.

I learned this at work the other day, when a customer called to reorder some products.  An articulate and well studied cancer survivor, she told me things about my own products that I never knew.

Taking What You Need

When I asked her if she received my newsletters, she said, yes, but there wasn’t much there for her.  She had done this work. I like to believe that my messages make a difference for everyone, but the truth is that people take what they need and it might not be what is most important for you.

The song continued repeating as I struggled with finding peace in my relationship with my father.  A difficult man, a pain filled childhood, and years of resentment and hatred all come together at every meeting.

In the past the feelings were justified responses to not getting the compassionate witnessing and loving attention that we all crave.  This time the pain is about bearing witness to my own struggle to transform my inner relationship to my past and to him.

Hatred and resentment rarely impact the object of our feelings, instead they keep us stuck in the same habitual patterns that we have come to know as relationship for years.  I will never get what I want from that relationship, but I am starting to know how to look for what I need.

Seeing the Relationship You Have as the One You Need

This song has been a love song in my marriage for decades.   Learning how to see the relationship that we have as the one we need instead of resenting the shortcomings of the one that we wanted is a life time effort.

It is easy to be confused and to want to refuse the love that a partner can give, if it doesn’t look or feel the way that we want it to.  This happens most frequently in my marriage when I am deep in my own battles with my own demons.

Accept Your Weaknesses; Recognize Your Strengths

When we are most lost to ourselves and unable to accept our weaknesses or recognize our strengths, all of the places where our closest relationships fall short become unbearable.   It is so painful to recognize the moments when we are incapable of loving that blaming the other is a ready survival mechanism.

Often the response is so habitual that we don’t even have the time to choose a different response.  But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need… They had it right, it is worth trying to get what you need.

Do You Have Both Feet in Your Relationship?

By

Although I don’t remember the exact day that I pulled the one foot that I had out the door back into my marriage, today, celebrating 24 years of marriage, I can’t remember the last time that it occurred to me that I would ever leave.

It seems like I should remember when that change took place as it so profoundly changed the very fabric of what we were doing together, but like most things in life that are daily, we don’t see them as they are happening. They are clear as we look back.

The Not So Fairy Tale Marriage

We never had a fairy tale marriage, and in fact anyone who claims to have one is probably either not really present or honest. Our love for each other was uneven and the common issues of attraction and initiation- who wanted who, first and more, plagued our ability to connect for years.

The classic, “I am not in the mood” or “I am tired” responses create a cycle of defensive and offensive reactions that is almost like a pre-patterned dance. It’s a scenario that many couples just don’t have enough language to find their way out of.

In hindsight, I know now, that there is no winning side to that argument, but whichever side is your familiar view can color your lens so completely that the other side seems like a holiday. The shame of rejection is really no better than the guilt of turning away.

The pain is equal. I have read that the rejecting partner is the more powerful of the two, but having been on both sides, I don’t think its true- both sides make you unable to connect and leave you feeling equally powerless in having the relationship that you really want.

Choosing The Relationship

Two things transpired in my marriage to lift this issue and allow us to experience sexual desire with out the burden of fear and unmet longing. The first one was choosing my relationship without reservation. Being in my marriage with both feet in the door,

I had a lot more balance and flexibility that gave me more room and ease in dealing with the issues that kept me distant and disconnected. When I gave myself permission to truly stay, to not be looking for the reasons to leave, it changed my relationship to both the issues and my husband.

Finding True Forgiveness

True forgiveness is when you have no memory of how it was before. The past loses its grip on your memory and suddenly there is room for a new way of relating. It’s an odd phenomenon because it isn’t an experience that you can will to happen, it is something that happens to you, seemingly without you- when you have an open heart and a true intent to find what there is to stay for.

Choosing to stay in a relationship is tied to the belief in the power of forgiveness to change life completely. It is the singular pathway we have at our disposal to make things new between people. Having an excellent memory and needing to be right are not helpful in developing this quality in your life.

Be Respectful To One Another

The other important agreement we made was to stop saying anything mean or disrespectful to each other. Couples often have subtle sarcasm, jokes that aren’t really jokes that pepper a conversation and slowly but surely eat away at the positive feelings between them.

Taking note of how often we might say things to our partner that we would never utter to a friend or even a stranger might surprise you. Becoming conscious of the words we use in our daily relating is the door to making a partnership safe.

With practice, the hurtful ways we communicated were planted over by the two of us actively trying to stay. Over time, even the negative unspoken thoughts we were trying not to say were replaced with small kindnesses. Connection happens by itself when we feel safe.

A Whole New Life

Then seemingly suddenly, we began exploring our intimate life with a whole new curiosity and openness. Our sex life became the glue to hold the rest of the more challenging places together. The safer I felt in the relationship, the more risks I could take in the bedroom.

The more our physical love flourished, the more that our relationship thrived. There are still times when one of us, might not feel in the mood when the other does, but now it doesn’t mean anything more than what it is, bad timing.

Although it took us years to get here, sharing the kind of deep intimacy which is the reward for all the communication work that you put into years together is an extraordinary blessing. There is nothing like the “take your breath away” power of loving someone who loves you back, with their eyes wide open. There is no place in life that is more satisfying, healing and transforming.

The People You Love – Giving The Benefit Of The Doubt Even When It Feels Like The Last Thing You Want To Do

By

Here’s a new years resolution that anyone can keep.  Give the people you love, starting with yourself, the benefit of the doubt. 

Generally speaking and almost without exception most of us are doing the best that we can at any given moment.  We are being as loving as we can be, as kind as we can be, as generous as we can be, even though our best might not make it, even and especially in our own eyes. 

The People We Love Sometimes Bring Out the Worst in Us

This was brought home to me in a deep and personal way as I spent the holidays with my original family.  Although the visit did not include any storming out or other traumatic arguments that suggested the end of the relationship, the very lack of them and what was left over made the reality of the relationship clear. 

It was a bittersweet departure, with this realization of what was left between us, and our agreement to not try to be understood or provoke a healing in all the old wounds.  

My fifteen year old son commented that my mother did not bring out the best in me.  He loves his newfound wisdom and I could not argue the point. 

Sometimes the love we can express doesn’t bring out the best in us, and although we may wish to be kinder and more loving the reality of the past and all the baggage that is visceral in us allows only the benefit of the doubt to protect us. 

Seeing the Limits of Our Capacity to Love

It is a humbling realization.  To see the limits of one’s own capacity to love so clearly and still try to come to a place of loving oneself.  This is actually our only choice and in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. in his speech “Where do we go from here?” 

He calls this creative redemptive love “ultimately the only answer we have as a human family.”  This redemptive love, which is far from the way we idealize loving relationships, is what we are given to build family and community with.  It has to be enough. 

When Love Brings Out the Best in Us

With many people in my life, loving them brings out the best in me.  I am inspired by my ability to give generously of my time and resources.  It is comforting and easy for me to accept even my weaknesses when I am with these heart connections. 

Needing to Give the Benefit of the Doubt

I don’t have to think about giving the benefit of the doubt so much in these relationships because they make me feel strong and, on good days, confident. 

But what this new year taught me is that until I can embrace the relationships where I am weakest, and meaner than I want to believe,  I can’t fully embrace the rich heart connections because all those parts of me live in me and can’t be neatly separated by the quality of the relationship. 

In fact the more complex the relationship the more likely that the benefit of the doubt is the only thing that can sustain us living on this little blue planet spinning in space. 

Wired to Connect: Why Technology Keeps You From Really Connecting With Your Loved Ones

By

Sustainable love, the kind that we use as a compass to keep us connected to a vital, healthy and happy relationships are now being recognized as skills that might just save our species.

Hardwired to be social

We finally have the scientific equipment to verify what we have always known: our drive to be social, to be connected to each other, is actually hardwired. Our need for connection and drive towards empathy is not a result of environmental influences but rather a function built into the brain itself.

Daniel Goleman, PhD, a New York Times science writer and bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence, has taken his research to a whole new level and has published Social Intelligence.

Advances in neuroscience now allow us to observe brain activity while we are in the act of feeling. We can now witness that we are continuously forming brain to brain bridges- a two-way brain traffic system. In the same way that we can “catch” a cold from someone, we can “catch” their bad mood- or good mood.

The significance of the relationship indicates how deeply we are affected and will stimulate actual physical consequences: hormonal response that magnifies stress (cortisol) or induces happiness (oxytocin).

Take your vitamins

Positive interactions and being surrounded by loving people actually works like a vitamin for your entire being. Negative relationships and interactions don’t just make us angry; they make us ill. As in other brain functions, this one also reflects our amazing neuro-plasticity.

This is to say that our brains are continually building new connections. And, no matter how young or old, anyone’s personality can be affected by other people. We literally heal each other through our social connections.

Virtual reality

This news couldn’t come at a better time, as we continue to replace real interaction with techno-driven reality. Is it really dating when it is virtual? Are we connected to others when we only share words on a screen? More than any new technology, what we truly need is to develop a lifestyle which encourages deeper human connection.

Overwhelmed with digital connectivity, it is easy to become oblivious to the people surrounding us. How often have you witnessed someone at a check out stand absorbed in some deep conversation on a cell phone and entirely oblivious to the person in front of them.

Making real connections

Real intimate connections don’t happen on the phone, in a text message or on IM: they require a real-life presence where we pay full attention to the people we live with. Empathy grows in our brain through eye contact, voice recognition, and touch–all of the time-intensive ways of knowing another person well enough that we can’t objectify them.

Empathetic connections are the prime inhibitors of human cruelty. Scientists agree that the survival of our species depend on our ability to grow and develop this innate ability and a culture which encourages deep and true human connections.

So next time you’re feeling blue about the state of the world, turn off your electronic gadgetry and go for a walk, preferably holding hands with someone who loves you. Sustaining your love is not only good for you, but you may also be saving an endangered species!

Why Play is Crucial to the Game of Love

By

It is said that the game of love is everyone’s favorite game, and yet even with all the new technologies designed to help us connect, more and more people are opting out of the game, preferring to live alone, rather than to risk another bad relationship outcome.

This preference reflects a deep change in our collective human psyche, for it used to be that what lovers feared most was loneliness.  Now, being caught in a static or unsatisfying relationship is even more troubling.  Wanting to be together, to build a family, is no longer enough.

What Happened To The Game Of Love?

Just in the last couple of weeks, I have spoken with several people who have expressed this sentiment.  When I pressed the point and asked if they were to meet a compatible, kind and intelligent partner, would they truly feel like there wasn’t room in their life to accommodate them.

There was a brief pause, and then “I’m not sure” was as close as they would come to an opening.  Our modern age has made it is easier to be passionate and maintain passion about a pet or a favorite sports team, than a lover.  What has happened to the game of love?

Isn’t It The Play That Matters?

Memories of childhood games on late summer evenings remind me of what the game of love once meant to us.  As kids we understood that it was the play that mattered.  Winning and losing reflected their respective original meanings, which were “to desire” and “to be set free.”

Playing capture the flag in the dwindling light of the sky or a full neighborhood game of hide and seek was an apprenticeship in freedom.  Pretending was rich with excitement, as we all shared in the wonder of not knowing the outcome.  And yet we all knew that no victory was ever final, there was always tomorrow night.

Lovers in the past shared one secret; they knew that it wasn’t about winning or losing, it was the play that was essential.  Playing allows us to experience freedom from duty and necessity.  It is a primary condition of creativity and allows us the self-conscious delight of living out alternative realities.  It is what makes us so deeply human.

Playfulness Is Essential

Nowhere does this ring more true, than in our most intimate moments.  Adding playfulness to sexual desire invites new friends into the bedroom: imagination and fantasy.  Invite these allies to any passionate encounter with openness to play, a willingness to pretend, and the freedom to live in the wonder of not knowing the outcome.

Just Say Yes To The Game Of Love!

Saying yes to this game of love keeps life fresh and while it offers no guarantees of long-term winning, it does promise to share glimpses of what we all desire most of the magical influence of love.

Rewarding our instinct to love creates the self-confidence to transform a private secret to a public force with the power to renew life and transmute human defects into lovable qualities.  We are, after all, most lovable when we love.  Playing this game doesn’t guarantee a life without bruises or the happily ever after story that we all long for.

It will however teach you about all the many ways you can love, and love again…