Tag Archives: attraction

“We broke up because of sexual incompatibility.”

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"Vivace" by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

Sexual attraction is one of the key reasons people start dating. As individuals get to know each other, character flaws or incompatibility may start to get in the way of a harmonious relationship. Such conflict often carries itself into the bedroom, but it usually doesn’t start there.

The loss of sexual attraction may be one of the ultimate reasons for breakups. But most of the time both breakups and the the loss of sexual attraction result from underlying relationship dynamics, which have caused a sense of distance, monotony, or contempt in the relationship.

1. Distance: When couples walk on eggshells, spend no time with each other, or stop taking care of themselves either physically or emotionally, intimacy vanishes.

2. Monotony: When partners stop treating each other as attractive and special they often end up feeling like brother and sister—without desire for one another. When a couple stops making the effort to create a romantic atmosphere, the relationship becomes pedestrian.

3. Contempt: When partners criticize each other or one acts superior, the toxicity of contempt destroys love and passion. How can you feel open and confident with someone who treats you with contempt?

Sex as a window into the relationship

A couple’s sexual relationship is a window into their general relationship. Generally, one partner’s sexual disinterest or dysfunction is a symptom of the entire relationship not just the individual. Note that even in a marriage where sex has stopped, the way in which celibacy develops reveals the emotional dynamics occurring within the relationship. For example, one partner may be needy emotionally, while the other has become sexually distant, or one has become so critical or irritable that the other withdraws physically.

How does a couple rekindle desire and passion in a marriage that has grown cold?

Igniting passion is the inverse of extinguishing it. Couples need to

1. Spend some enjoyable time with each other, which means they must take care of themselves to enhance the vitality they bring to the relationship,

2. Treat each other as desirable and special, and

3. Be accepting of one another, avoiding criticism and contempt without having to hide their true thoughts and feelings.

Differentiation

“Differentiation” enables a person to break the negative patterns, which destroy passion and intimacy over the long-term. The more differentiated partners are, the more potential they have for sustaining long-term passion and intimacy.

Differentiation means having the ability to calmly withstand the tension of anxiety—anxiety caused by disagreement, vulnerability, or embarrassment. Handling anxiety without being reactive—withdrawing suddenly, lashing out angrily, or falling apart—is crucial in developing and sustaining emotional and sexual intimacy.

To sustain passion, then, couples need to move from gridlock to compassionate dialogue when issues are worth discussing. They need to actively have the intention to see the best in the other person, and to bring the best of themselves forward, particularly when the going gets rough.

Differentiation permits people to maintain their own course when lovers, friends, and family pressure them to agree and conform. Well-differentiated people can agree without feeling like they’re “losing themselves,” and can disagree without feeling alienated and embittered.

When partners can develop differentiation, then sexuality holds the potential for expressing profound intimacy and love.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “You never kiss me anymore.”


Read “Intimacy: ‘I want more intimacy and to feel closer to you.’”


Read “Positive Bonding Patterns: ‘We never fight, but we don’t talk anymore and there’s no more passion.’”

When Facebook erodes real-life relationships:
“I’m only checking in with friends and seeing what they’re up to.”

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"Passion — Eclipse 500" by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

Like any technological medium, Facebook and other social media can enrich your life, waste your time, or cause damage, even though you are not doing anything illegal, unethical, or immoral.

Facebook time is increasingly contributing to the erosion of real-life loving relationships. Here are two primary ways in which such technological devotion can insidiously take a toll on existing relationships with loved ones:

1. Facebook Overload

There is nothing wrong with keeping in touch with friends and enjoying the entertainment value of Facebook and other social media. Friendship, camaraderie, community, entertainment, and laughter are very healthy human pursuits. For some people, who might be shy, housebound, or isolated from friends, social media provides a wonderful opportunity to communicate with friends and to participate in community. Many people enjoy getting in touch with a variety of people they might not otherwise stay in touch with, sharing photos and status updates.

Yet, for some people, such pastime easily turns into a compulsive addiction. When you start to crave getting online and impulsively logging on without any specific goal, you may find yourself wasting a lot of time.

You only need to ask yourself how honestly proud, pleased, or fulfilled you feel after spending time on Facebook to know whether you are squandering your time. Sometimes you DO feel good about the time spent — that you’ve had some laughs, made some connections with people, found out about a great event, or seen some interesting videos. But other times you might feel empty and dazed as though you’ve been flipping channels between bad TV stations for the past hour.

2. Curiosity, Attractions, and Fantasies

It’s human nature to be curious about what’s happened to old friends and lovers and to be intrigued about people you find interesting or attractive. However, when you start nosing around on Facebook much beyond a one-time glance at people you find attractive, you may be taking that time and intention away from your real relationships and other activities that you may want to pursue to become the best person you can be.

Given the apparent confidentiality of being online, curiosity can slip into voyeurism. When you start repeatedly checking out particular individuals’ photos and entries, it’s easy to project your fantasies on them. After all, they generally post only their most attractive photos. When you don’t have an in-depth relationship with someone, you fill in the unknowns with whatever you most desire.

There’s usually nothing harmful in having momentary fantasies. Being attracted to others is normal and not necessarily damaging. What’s unhealthy and destructive is thinking obsessively about them. Ultimately, directing your energy toward your fantasy will come at the expense of your real relationships.

When you look at the photos and follow the profiles of those people you find attractive repeatedly, you can easily start having obsessive projections and fantasies about them. This can significantly erode the real-life relationship you have, even if your significant other is not aware of the direction of your attention. If much of your energy and focus is directed toward these fantasies, then the lack of attention, openness, love and passion in your real-world relationships will eventually destroy those real-time relationships.

If you’re not in relationship, obsessive fantasies can similarly prevent you from interacting face to face with people and learning how to develop live relationships with people.

Solutions

With self-awareness and a desire to choose the life you want to live and the type of relationships you want to have, you can monitor your habits and change them.

It is very simple to see how much time you spend on Facebook each week, and to think about what else you might have accomplished in that time. Then you can decide if you want to reduce that time spent online.

You can also check out your browser history over the past few months and see how you have been using Facebook and other social media and ask yourself if you are being obsessive about specific people or topics. Think about whether that time looking at others’ photos has inspired and enhanced your real-time relationships and your life, or whether you are eroding your relationships and demeaning yourself by developing a preference for engaging in fantasy over other choices you might make.

Life is a series of experiences and adjustments. To live the life you desire, it helps to look at the choices you’re making and tweak them to best serve the goals you set for yourself. It’s less painful to make those adjustments frequently, before your patterns of behavior wreak havoc on your life and relationships.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Text… phone call… email… ‘Oh…what were you saying?’”

Read “After multiple affairs, he promised he’d never cheat on me again. Can I trust him this time?”

Guest Author Dr. Jennifer Freed: “Well I’m not having a sexual affair!” The Emotional Affair.

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"Scott Joplin's Great Crush Collision" by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

Emotional Affairs occur when the primary relationship has become dead or cut off in some way. Often these affairs start up in compensation for some real intimacy at home.

Many big life events trigger these affairs as people feel more needy than usual. A death in the family, children coming or going, turning big marker ages 40, 50, 60, job reentry, school reentry, financial stress, illness etc……… can all be triggers for a change in the primary relationship and an opening for an emotional affair.



SIGNS OF AN EMOTIONAL AFFAIR

1- Your friendship has secrets
2- You confide in your friend more than to your spouse
3- You have more excitement to meet/talk with friend than spouse
4- You feel more your self and freer with friend
5- You take better care of yourself before contact with friend
6- You have sexual fantasies about friend
7- You hide the amount of contact you do have from spouse
8- You give your friend special gifts and treats
9- You get into fights with your spouse about your friend
10- You want exclusive time with your friend and you keep your spouse separate from your friend
11- When you think of getting away or taking a day off you think of doing it with your friend and not your spouse
12- You are defensive about your friend’s faults to your spouse and get extra heated about any criticism
13- You are feeling more and more distant from your spouse and don’t want to deal with it
14- You start talking more to your friend about your problems in your relationship
15- You are much kinder and more forgiving with your friend than your spouse
16- You find yourself telling more and more little lies to your partner

If you can say YES to more than 6 of these signs then odds are you are on the slippery slope to an EMOTIONAL AFFAIR. The best remedy is to fully acknowledge the lapse in your primary relationship and turn all attention to repairing the primary intimacy. Everyone needs close friends and close friends are not ever a threat to a truly intimate relationship.

Dr. Jennifer Freed, Psychotherapist and Educator in Santa Barbara, California, is the author of “Lessons from Stanley the Cat,” radio show host for “Freed Up,” on Voice America, & a professor.

Read “Attractions outside the Marriage.”