Some Sweet As information and resources on the subjects of Relationships and Sex.
Relationships can be successful, and sex is an important aspect of many relationships. It’s perfectly okay to talk about these topics. Support is available, and there are various resources to help you navigate these areas.
Your doctor and their team are available to provide support. Additionally, there are other professionals who specialise in relationships and sexual health who can offer guidance. It’s important to acknowledge that these topics can be personal and challenging to discuss.
There are a myriad of books, blogs, and articles that you can read to learn more about relationships and sex, but it is best to have some guidance of where to look. Courses are also available if you prefer a more structured approach. Therapy is another option, either on its own or in combination with other resources.
The key is to seek support when you feel you need it, as it can make a significant difference in your relationship and sexual well-being.
Relationships:
Tools for success
Fact. Most of us are not issued with a good set of tools for relationship success. Your best course is to commit to seek information, take action and persevere to learn and grow. It can be done, and success is absolutely possible to achieve, but you need some tools (and some support and encouragement).
Three most essential characteristics for relationship success
Embracing Differences: Understand that differences are natural and are part of growth in a good relationship. Viewing differences as opportunities to learn more about yourself and your partner leads to personal and relationship growth. It’s not necessary to agree on everything or share all the same interests. What truly matters is how you communicate and navigate these differences together.
Enhanced Self-Awareness and Emotional Regulation: Increasing your self-awareness and ability to regulate your emotions during conflicts, is vital. Being able to understand your feelings and reactions and express them constructively can help prevent conflicts from escalating and strengthen the connection between you and your partner.
Taking Responsibility: Taking responsibility for your role in dealing with differences is crucial for a healthy relationship. This involves being accountable for understanding how your past informs your present behaviour, acknowledging your role in disagreements, and actively working towards increased self-awareness and empathy for the impact of your behaviour on your partner .
Key concepts that play a role in who we are in relationships
We are heavily influenced by our environment and the media, which shape our expectations of what perfect relationships should be like. When we encounter differences and difficulties, it’s normal to feel powerless and confused. What defines a successful relationship for some may not align with your own experience. Ultimately, you and your partner determine the course of your relationship.
Humans are inherently wired for connection, starting from a very young age. However, our methods of connecting and asking for our needs to be met may not always be helpful. Our adult relationships may be the first space in which we can be safe to learn how to behave in a way so we actually make it easier for both of us to get our needs met.
Our brains undergo a lengthy development process compared to other species, and our past experiences significantly influence our present behaviour. Much of our behaviour is not conscious but rather automatic or reactive. While we may sometimes understand the reasons behind our actions, at other times, different factors may take control.
Long-term relationships are significant in our lives, but they can also be the most challenging. Sustaining a healthy relationship requires effort, and both partners must be committed to doing some exploration into new behaviour.
Our nervous system is shaped during our early years, influencing our perceptions and behaviors in adult relationships, sometimes in ways that are not helpful.
Investing in long-term relationships is worthwhile, as data has shown that we do better overall when we are in long-term relationships. However, we cannot change our partners’ behaviour. Instead, focusing on personal growth and taking responsibility for oneself can lay a solid foundation for understanding yourself, helping your partner understand you, and nurturing the relationship!
Approaching your relationship with curiosity rather than judgment and listening instead of correcting can deepen understanding and compassion, thereby enhancing the relationship.
Change is inevitable, and what you and your partner want and need will evolve over time. Successful relationships embrace change and growth.
Working towards a successful relationship involves caring for both you and your partner’s physical and emotional health so you can show up as the partner you aspire to be. You are individuals developing yourselves and working together as a team towards attaining the relationship you deserve to have. This requires attention, understanding, and effort to thrive.
Sex:
Fact. Good sex cannot save a relationship but bad sex can destroy a good relationship.
Sexual difficulties need to be addressed. Talk to your healthcare provider about it so they can give you some advice and point you in the right direction.
Why sex is good for you and your relationship
Positive functions of sex in a long-term relationship include experiencing shared pleasure, which contributes to reinforcing and deepening intimacy between partners. Additionally, engaging in sexual activity can help reduce tension and stress, energizing the bond between partners. It also plays a role in fostering feelings of desirability and can provide a source of physical and emotional energy.
Key concepts of sex in a relationship
In a relationship, the concepts surrounding sex are multifaceted, requiring both partners to assume individual and collective responsibility. It’s crucial to prioritise comfort and pleasure, ensuring that both partners feel at ease and enjoy the experience. This focus helps reduce performance anxiety, allowing for a more fulfilling and relaxed sexual encounter.
Choosing a sexual style that reinforces desire is also essential. This means finding a balance between intimacy, pleasure, eroticism, and satisfaction that resonates with both partners. It’s important to recognise that both men and women value a range of experiences, including affectionate gestures, sensual interactions, playful moments, erotic encounters, and intercourse itself.
If factors such as a medical condition, medication, or life stage are affecting your ability to enjoy sex, it’s important to explore alternative approaches to improve your sexual experiences. Seeking help and advice from healthcare providers or specialists can offer valuable insights and strategies to address these challenges and enhance sexual satisfaction for both you and your partner. It’s crucial not to hesitate in seeking support and having open conversations about these issues.
Making sense of Attachment theory – feeling safe enough to be confident to connect deeply as well as explore confidently
I like to explain Attachment theory as way of understanding human behaviour – starting from way, way, way back.
Long ago Freud said that human babies need food. Give them more than that and they will never become independent! Those were the days when parents of children who were hospitalised, were not allowed to stay over with their sick children. The days when we still had very little understanding of how our brains have developed, through evolution, to need extremely close and reciprocated interaction between adult caregivers and human babies.
It was Harlow who observed primate behaviour and then did experiments on monkeys to examine if primate babies indeed need food only in order to survive. He removed the baby monkeys from their mums and placed them with only a wire figure with a milk bottle fixed to it. The babies who fed from these artificial mothers drank the milk, but appeared anxious and fearful to venture away from their source of food. If they were removed from this wired mother and placed back with groups of peers before a 90 period, they could eventually (it took some time) adjust and re-integrate with their group. If they were only placed with a group after 90 days of being just with a wire mother, they were almost impossible to re-adjust with their peer group.
He then added a second type of wired mother – one with a plastic face-like attachment and a cloth wrapped around her wired “body”, but with no milk. The little monkeys who had these two kinds of “mothers” would suck milk from the bottle in the just wire “mother”, but would cling to the cloth “mother” and touch her face. They would be much less anxious and would easily venture away from her and explore their environment with confidence! They were also much easier to re-integrate with their peer groups – with confidence.
The conclusion was postulated – perhaps primates need more than just food to feel optimally safe and confident enough to explore their environment. Connecting securely leaves them able to confidently explore independently.
Bowlby examined this phenomenon amongst human babies who had been removed from their parents. Over the next plus minus 60 years, several researchers spent time observing human care-givers with their infants, closely paying attention to the process of the infants making their needs known, the adults deciphering the signals of the infants and responding – meeting their needs, keeping the infants safe. Researchers (Sroufe) also did longitudinal studies (the same infants observed as toddlers, as pre-teens, teens, young adults and then as parents of their own children) over a period of 40 years, to track how relating to caregivers as infants impact on their behaviour in all of their later life stages.
These are the core concepts:
We survive because our nervous systems sense danger or safety and spur us to turn towards safety.
Trouble is – since we have been walking on only two legs, women give birth really too soon (we should stay in the womb for quite some time longer so we have more mature nervous systems and capabilities by the time we are born).
Because we are so helpless at birth and for really long after (compare us to other mammals), human babies are extremely dependent on their adult care-givers because they are totally helpless and have very little skills to keep themselves safe or communicate their needs!
Human babies need extremely attuned (tuned in) caregivers who are dependably focussed on deciphering the baby’s signals and meeting their needs.
Human babies need food, comfort, playfulness, to be delighted in, structure, predictability, shared experiences, help with emotional regulation (validation, understanding and acceptance of their emotions), encouragement, and to be taught competencies. We simply cannot do that for ourselves as children – for many, many years! We need our caregivers to help us a lot with this – until we can.
How we learn to relate to others whilst growing up, is how we relate to others eventually as adults!
Only when we feel safe, do we feel confident to explore with curiosity – as infants, youngsters, teens and eventually as adults.
When we feel safe, our nervous systems focus on being curious, exploring, growing, and eventually functioning optimally in our adult relationships and communities.
We feel unsafe when our caregivers are unpredictable, undependable, neglectful, absents or dangerous.
When we feel unsafe, our nervous systems develop to stay focussed on shutting down, blocking out perceived threats, disorganised thoughts, emotions and behaviour.
When we grow up not having dependable caregivers, we do not go to others for help – we find it extremely difficult to trust, with reason. As infants, youngsters, teens and eventually as adults.
The good news: As an adult, you can do something radically different now that you are becoming aware of this information. You can change your own ”wiring” / Attachment style. You can also change the way you parent (even if your children are already adults themselves.) That is the power of having some understanding of this!
The routes to changing how you feel safe is:
Increased self-awareness (read, learn, get information)
A securely attached important other
Psychological therapy in a good therapeutic relationship
I write this with a sense of endearment. I wish we had known all of this much earlier, but I am very thankful that we do know this about being human.
In this video I give some context of why it is helpful te see a psychologist.
The way we live as humans have become extremely complex and this often causes people to get stuck or struggle. With some new perspectives, a Psychologist can help you understand yourself better and help you get unstuck, grow and function better.
People develop CPTSD when life events make them feel emotionally or physically unsafe and, at the time, they have limited skills to get themselves back to emotional and physical safety. When you watch this video, you may recognise some of your own experiences and understand better about how your mind has been wired.
CPTSD is a set of symptoms which develops after multiple incidents of feeling especially emotionally unsafe.
There is hope! Because we now understand this phenomenon so much better, several types of therapy can help people resolve traumatic memories and re-wire the client’s mind.
If you sometimes suddenly feel anxious, sad or angry or suddenly act out, over-eat or withdraw and you have no clear idea about what exactly triggered you to feel or behave this way – this video is for you.
It explains how old events, of which memories have been stored, can still have an impact on your current feelings and behaviour.
With thanks to my friend Wilme who asked me to write for her website. I am honored to do so. Take from it what you will. My partner who loves words and tells bad ‘Dad Jokes’ says I am writing a thlog – a therapy log.
Thoughts on therapy and life.
‘Ring the bell that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack; a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’ I love those words. They are from a Leonard Cohen song called Anthem. I related to them so much I found a picture I liked in an Op Shop and put the words around it, then I hung it on my counselling room wall and other people related to it in different ways. One man liked the mountain in the picture because it reminded him of home. Another (a committed Christian) liked the font I used to print the words because it had ‘t’s that looked like crosses. That surprised me. Nobody appeared to read it as I did, but that didn’t matter. They took what they needed from it and whenever I looked at it, I felt calm and capable because it reminded me to be kind to myself. And what I know is, that when I am kind to myself, then I am much more able to be kind to others.
