We’re all on a wild ride together. There’s no question about that. Every part of our life, from health, politics, cultural norms, climate, are in a state of crisis. Depression and anxiety are skyrocketing. I don’t know about you, but it sometimes feels like life is spinning out of control. When I sit down to write about sex, or speak to a group, or coach a client, this question, “why have sex?”, keeps bubbling up for me.
Even in the midst of this unprecedented time, the holiday season is once again upon us. If you’re fortunate enough to have one or more loved ones around you, you’re probably giving and receiving a gift or two. I’d like to share a few thoughts I have on gifting.
My partner and I ventured out to a vaccinated, tested and masked, indoor (and outdoor) kink conference last weekend at a San Francisco Bay Area Hotel. Allow me to introduce you to some of that experience.
It’s pretty easy these days to find out what’s going on people’s minds when it comes to sex coaching. Type it into a search engine and voila, you get back 7 questions about sex coaching, most commonly asked on the internet. I decided to answer those 7 questions here, because my bet is that you might have some of these questions yourself.
When we commit to live with an open heart, we do whatever it takes to keep it open. That looks different for every couple, but every couple has their unique path that leads them to an open-hearted love.
Most couples who come to me for intimacy and relationship coaching have one thing in common; they want to know how to get their partner to change. They’ve gotten so used to paying attention to their partner’s shortcomings, that they’ve forgotten, or chosen to ignore their own 50% of the relationship equation.
No matter who you are or how happy you are in your relationship you’re going to experience conflict. Experiencing conflict in your relationship is not sign of weakness, nor a lack of wisdom. It’s simply a polarized dialogue between two people holding opposing positions. How we navigate this dialogue is determined by how skillful we are at moving through conflict as a couple.
Play is a reset button for our over-stressed, news-saturated, time-pressured adult minds. Most couples I work with will readily admit that play is not something they experience on a regular basis. Life has gotten too busy. There’s barely enough time to be alone to talk, much less play.
One of my couples came to me feeling the fallout of a non-consensual incident that resulted in one of them feeling angry and the other confused. The man made the mistake of not asking his partner’s consent to try out something new in the bedroom. Rather than talking about it with his partner beforehand, he showed up in the bedroom with handcuffs, and proceeded to lock his partners arms behind her back. There was no conversation about using restraints and no mutual exploration on the subject of bondage beforehand. In effect, consent was not given, and because of that it didn’t go well, at all.
Confirmation bias. We all have it. We experience it every day in the news, in our politics, in our workplace, and most directly in our relationships, where partners can suffer the consequences of confirmation bias on a daily basis. When it comes to our relationship it makes sense then that our brains are far more skilled at noticing what’s wrong with our partner, than what’s right.
