Today I’m going to talk about sex, so if that bothers you, skip this post.
Sex is probably the biggest issue in relationships. Either one person or the other has had some sort of traumatizing sexual experience or one or both people are paralyzed (which is the case in our relationship) or one person can’t have children or you have kids (which creates its own set of problems) or maybe its just regular intimacy issues where one person needs a lot more time to get into it than the other. Most relationships I hear about regularly has at least one of these problems and I think in most cases it gets to a point where its hard to even kiss because one person (at least) is worried about the prospect of sex and the pain that comes with it - physical or emotional.
For us, Justin is a paraplegic, and I am an incomplete paraplegic. We both have feeling that is super patchy around the sexual organs, Justin even more so. He has been injured for 10 years, myself for nearly seven and both of us have trouble with intimacy that were exasperated by our injuries. Point is, even making out sucks.
We have tried many methods to become intimate and passionate, but most were fruitless. For example, in the yogic tradition, sex is planned and sacred, tantric style, preparing the mind and body before contact with the partner. Problem is, anytime Justin or I thought about sex, the anxiety made it impossible to prepare in such a seemingly luxurious way. Surprise attack then? No, because Justin is a paraplegic and has to do bladder care before sex. Spontaneity is out. Cuddling and seeing what happens? It never happens! Or nearly never in the way we wanted it to. We could talk and process and cuddle then make love in a very “aware” sort of way, but neither of us felt any glimmer of “raw passion”. Basically sex had become like work - we knew we had issues to deal with, and before bed after a nice day seemed like a bad time to pick a scab.
Both of us decided the other day that for our relationship to move to the next level, we have to face the sex issue. Justin especially was afraid to open this “Pandora’s box” of emotions and pain because he works full time and is doing his MBA, but he agreed. Of course, as soon as we made this intention, everything got more difficult: fears of intimacy made it very difficult to even connect on a personal level - it felt like we were cats checking each other out. So we decided to confront this face on and have a sex meeting.
This made both of us so anxious that Justin felt entirely tied up emotionally and I went completely into the “psychiatrist” mode I go into when I’m afraid to feel. But we made it. We drew a card from my goddess deck and wrote down what the thought of sex makes us feel. We practiced giving and receiving reiki energy to understand how easily we give or receive. (Justin gives easily, I receive easily - good way to get stuck!) We tried kissing a bit and then we laid down some ground rules including:
1. No silliness surrounding sex
2. No pretending you are enjoying it when you aren’t
3. Pace is set by the slowest person
4. Every bit of the process must be enjoyed
In bed we barely cuddled that night. I finally felt my emotions and ended up crying a bunch - Justin was friend from the effort it took to stay open. The next day we woke up a little bit… out of it. Justin went to work and I wandered around the house. That night we were going to have a romantic night… I bought massage bars. When the night arrived, we had dinner and did some intellectual connecting, then Justin gave me a massage. I was in about the same place he was the night before, so that was where it ended.
The next day (yesterday) we discovered a secret. Timing. Not knowing when the time is right, but timing ourselves. We did not feel like being intimate, but we new that if we were normal people and it was new years day, we would have troubles keeping our hands off each other. So we decided we would kiss for 10 minutes, and then we could work on something else from the plethora of things we enjoy doing together. As soon as we set the timer, both of us felt like the pressure was off, to the point where we pressed snooze twice! (I’m sharing information, not details!) We decided that this worked great, because if that 10 minute alarm went off and we weren’t feeling it, at least we gave it a shot!
Thinking about it after, this would work well for most daunting tasks… cleaning the kitchen, writing a paper, working out… but none are quite as fun!