Here’s another exercise that can improve your relationship. It’ll clear out all those labels and stories you’ve attached to your partner and help you see him or her as they are. It’s called Feeling While Touching.

1.      Get within arm’s reach of your partner.

2.      One person should go at a time. One person initiating the contact and the other being contacted.

3.      One touches the other. Move the touch around.

4.      Both stay focused on the sensation of the touch.

5.      It’s best if you don’t talk. This way you can focus. Smiling helps. Crying is allowed. A slow pace works better.

6.      Start anywhere, stay in the moment.

7.      If either of you stops paying attention or gets caught up in thoughts, go back to where you were when you stopped.

8.      When, you are done, switch, and let your partner do the touching.

Take sex off the table when you are doing Feeling While Touching. In theory, sex is a good place to get in touch with your partner. In practice, it’s where many disconnect from each other. Once you are done with the exercise, though, if you want to have sex, then go for it. I won’t stop you. You are well prepared.

Click here to go to the entire Relationships series.

I have an object in my office, nailed to the wall, it looks like this:

 

“What is this object?” I ask.

Most people would say it’s a fly.

“OK, why do I have a fly nailed to my wall?”

“It must be a joke,” most say. “Fly on the Wall, get it?”

“Is it really a fly?”

“No, it’s not really a fly. It’s a brass object made to look like one.”

If I take the brass object made to look like a fly down, put it on a table, and open it up, it looks like this:

 

“Now, what is this object?”

It becomes evident that it’s actually an ashtray. But, most people struggle with this awareness because they had already categorized the object as a fly.

“Why would a person have an ashtray?”

“They’d need an ashtray if they smoked, but I guess you don’t, or you used to, so now you don’t need an ashtray, so you put it up on the wall as a joke.”

They’re right, it is a joke. It’s also an object lesson I use sometimes to point out the difference between the thing in itself and the labels and stories we attach to them.

We are very quick to attach labels and stories, not only to brass objects, but to everything else, including people, including ourselves. But, because we are so quick, we are often wrong, or incomplete.

In the last few posts, we’ve been looking at some powerful myths and psychological processes that get in the way of seeing our partners the way they are. It pays to not be so attached to labels and stories. It’s important to always go back to the thing in itself and to be open to seeing it in a new way.

Click here to go to the entire Relationships series.

If there ever was a good place for wantonness, it would be in marriage, yet I hear time and time again about how boring marital sex can be.

You’re supposed to be able to be yourself with your partner and free to take risks to try something new. He’s in bed with you when you fart in your sleep, for crying out loud. She washes your underwear. You don’t have anything left to hide.

And yet, when it comes to sex, many couples go on doing the same things, time after time, afraid to ask for what they want, afraid to experiment.

There’s a reason for it, though.

You get dependent on your partner. You grow to rely on your partner for identity, affirmation, comfort, and direction. Remember what I’ve been saying about differentiation? Over our childhood we grew more independent of the people taking care of us. For many people, this reaches a peak in early adulthood when they get a job, get an apartment, and stop calling their mother so often. They look outside the family and hook up with someone whom their father may not approve. This looks like the height of independence. Then they get married and treat their spouse as if he or she were their mother. This is a setback that screws up sex because you can’t have good sex with your mother.

It’s easier to have hot sex with a stranger; you may never see that person again. You can grunt and groan, take risks, propose gymnastic positions, make insatiable demands, debase yourself, be as slutty as you want because there’s nothing to lose. She won’t need to talk about it, he won’t worry who you’d do that with next. And yet, sex with a stranger proves hollow, it’s a pale imitation of the real thing.

Having sex with your spouse brings your conflicts about love, intimacy, carnality, and spirituality right to the surface with the person you might be dependent on. Passionate marriage requires that you are OK with that, it requires that you become an adult.

Click here to go to the entire Relationships series.

 

Whomever has more desire has less power.

This is the case no matter what you desire. If you go to a used car lot and find a car you desire, the moment you communicate that desire to the salesman, the price goes up. Whoever holds the object of desire gets to set the terms.

We see this in couples when one partner has more sexual desire than the other. Which is always. The one who has more desire always ends up doing the initiating, getting turned down, has to make concessions, has to buy dinner.

We see this when one partner likes a clean house more than the other. Which is always. The one who has more desire for a clean house ends up doing the cleaning.

When you desire, you end up taking risks; no matter what it is that you desire. You have to meet the terms of the person who holds your desires. Desire makes you vulnerable. Desire makes you weak. Desire creates the conditions under which you grow.

If we could behave like cavemen and bonk our women over the head and drag them by the hair whenever we want sex, then we would have no need for poetry, wine, music, finely tailored suits, or French cooking. We would have no need to get along, make compromises, or care about each other. There would be no need for civilization if the person who had the desire had the power.

It’s difficult when you are the person who has the desire. It means you have to grow. You may have to write poems, order a bottle of wine, learn to play music, get a suit, or learn to cook. It means you have to make compromises and care.

Some people would rather not have desire. They’d rather have power. Some people are in a marriage, not because they desire their partner, but because their partner desires them. This way they don’t have to pick, they don’t have to compromise, they don’t have to take risks.

People who are more differentiated, or adult, are more free to have desires.

If you take responsibility for yourself, if you can stand on your own two feet and are secure in your own self worth, then you have little to fear from desiring your partner. You can take risks because rejection is not an ultimate rejection. You can make compromises because your integrity is still intact. You can bargain because you have less to lose.

You don’t have to be a caveman and have power over your partner. You have power over yourself.

Click here to go to the entire Relationships series.