Thoughts on relationship healing and connection with a parnter

This may not be easy, but you have to love her, do things for her, without expecting anything in return.

It may take a while, but when it sinks in to her that you really do something for her because you love her, and not because you're expecting something in return, then she will be able to more freely give of herself to you.

Love is a two way street, and eventually she needs to return the affection, and not necessarily in sex as such. But that two-way love sharing appears to be damaged at this point. She wants to feel you pay attention to her, and do things for her because you love her, but right now she thinks you are only doing those things to get sex. You're feeling you need her affections and displays that she genuinely desires you, loves you, and wants to please you. So you're feeling deprived of that.

You're both depriving each other of what each other wants. In either case, it will take one of you giving without expecting anything in return for a period of time to get back to a state of shared love instead of feeling used. Since you can't control what she decides to do, and discussing it may have little affect, it may be that you consign yourself for however long it takes to give, give, and give in the hopes that at some point she begins to feel you really do love her by doing things to her and for her simply because you love her, and from no other motivations. Once that sinks in, and I have no idea how many months that might take, she may feel freer to open up and fulfill your need. It all depends on what you are willing to do to make this relationship work. But, it may take a while, especially since you just reinforced to her that you were only doing those things in hopes of getting sex.

I had to go through some of that myself, so I know how hard that is on the guys end of things. But it did eventually give her the space to gain some balance in her outlook as well, and things are much better on that front than they used to be. We don't have sex real frequently, but she is usually willing and wants to on a regular basis, which I count as a blessing given she reacted more like your wife several years ago, and I felt I had to plead and beg, and she did it, if she did it, reluctantly.

That maybe you are under the impression that you love and adore this woman, but perhaps she rightly perceives that your vision may be sufficiently clouded by your own neediness that you don't really see or appreciate her for who she actually is and therefore don't truly love her. I think it is possible to worship someone without actually loving them, because true love requires that you are able to understand the person for their true self rather than projecting your own desires onto them. I know that when my own partner seems enraptured by me in a physical sense, it's often when I feel most detached because it can really seem as though he is off in his own fantasy world, completely oblivious to what I am really like and to what I am feeling, experiencing, and needing in the moment. It can be kind of cute when men get delirious over a woman and her beauty, but it's kind of like the cuteness of a puppy that acts happy to see you because it knows you have a biscuit in your pocket; you know the display of rapture and affection is actually self-interested. I really don't know, but maybe one of your challenges in this is to love your wife for who she *actually is,* rather than for who you wish or imagine her to be, or what you want from her, or what feelings she stirs in you. It's hard, because I think she's been your drug of choice, and it's hard to see that any other way. But I guarantee that although you may have a hard time figuring out who you are aside from her, she knows *exactly* who and what she is aside from you. How do you feel about that? The next time you're in a situation of trying to extract some affection out of her, are you able to experiment with shifting your focus to trying to discover what it is that she is thinking, feeling, and wanting most in that moment, not as a way to get your own agenda, nor even as a way of finding out what she wants and doing it, but simply as a way of establishing an understanding and connection?

As an aside, I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to push your own agenda, to a point. But I think for a true connection to happen it does usually need to be let go of for a time.

The porn incident really seems to have done a number on you. It seemed like you were making headway before that. Go inside, learn to self regulate, leave her alone, stay far from porn, reset the Context.

You've gotta meet somewhere. Meeting is not the same as bargaining. When two people meet, its because of mutual curiosity. Don't settle for bargains: If I'm nice to her, I deserve some. This will only make her more closed off, as you noticed.

With so many years of accumulated residue, it can be hard to reset to neutral. Eventhough my relationship is young, I watch the phenomenon of accumulated associations and residues, and can see how wrong moves anywhere can lead to very destructive patterns. We must be impeccable, always.

The problem is with memory. We build associations from past events and in our memory of them cannot see each other anew. She has muscle memory of you and what the context of your touch is that don't allow her to experience you anew. It's like a force-field, a field of information that has a certain frequency that you are both attuned to. There are other frequencies available but the elctromagnetic charge of your interactions is governed right now by a field that has been reinforced over years and years.

It seems to me that it would be impossible to "clear the slate" or "reorient" to a new field if both people were not on board. Maybe the next step would be to have a conversation with her about both of your levels of happiness operating in that field. Clearly she's often irritated and feels hassled, which can't be fun for her. And her response has been to resonate more with her own solitude, her own indipendence. Can you start to have a dialogue with her not about sex but about what a healthy and happy form of union would look like for you both, one that didn't involve sexual demand or retreat? It's like you have to revision your whole relationship. "Before you can be reborn, you must be reconceived." That takes two people. You're just treading water until you find the angle that will get her interested in mutually working not towards a partnership of relative harmony based on best coping methods, but on actual interest in one another.

It's a charge. What you're feeling is an accumulated electromagnetic charge. She's just balancing out the intensity of your charge. It's like you both need to be swiped down and cleaned off in your energetic field. Brush off the static. Get down to the core, the place where there is love. Where love is, there is no memory and no expectation. There is a waiting watching and wondering what will unfold. The stillpoint where everything juicy and good emerges.

May you both find that neutral, that dynamic stillness, where the charge can be cleaned and reset.

It seems like some of the ideas are getting blurred in the dialog.

I really like the terms "peak orgasm" and "valley orgasm" because they make the underlying energy issues clearer than other phrases do.

I've experienced non-ejaculatory peak orgasms before. As near as I can tell, the hormonal cycles after this are very similar to the hormonal cycles after an ejaculatory orgasm.

If this is the case, then the critical factor isn't whether somebody ejaculated, it is whether it was a peak or valley orgasm.

Another critical factor is whether the person's focus is on what they are getting or on what they are giving.

As near as I can tell, the practices described in the book Peace Between the Sheets depend on constantly avoiding peak orgasms, and constantly focusing on an unconditional giving dynamic. As soon as you have a peak orgasm or start focusing on getting, you will loose your balance and life will become more problematic.

Even if somebody is focusing on valley orgasms, if they are focusing on getting, rather than giving, valley orgasms, then it still won't bring them the happiness and well-being they are seeking. This is because they will still be entangled on the old programming and old hormone cycles. To escape these traps requires focusing on both unconditionally deeply giving and on avoiding peak orgasms.

So it seems to me to talk about non-ejaculatory sex is a red herring that can easily confuse the issues because it obscures whether they are having valley or peak orgasms, and obscures whether their intent is on getting or giving.

I think this is why all the reading on tantric sex never made sense to me - they were confusing these issues and I could sense the confusion, but didn't understand it then.

So now it seems very simple - find a path that leads to staying in a giving perspective while you share sexual energy in a very relaxed way. To oversimplify this, avoid having peak orgasms while focusing on unconditionally deeply giving in a way the leads to valley orgasms for the other person.

The tricky part is that usually the simplest things are the hardest to accomplish

I think the hardest part is to learn to stay in the giving mode. The more I look, the more I'm amazed at how many getting dynamics are masquerading as some kind of giving, and this is confusing a lot of people. It is real easy to construct a maze of delusions, rationalizations, and illusions to maintain the posture of giving while the underlying dynamic is actually on getting. It is real hard to unravel all this, let go of your self interest, and make a habit of giving.

When people have been working with the practices in Peace Between the Sheets, likely a lot of the failures had to do with the fact that they weren't consistently unconditionally deeply giving towards the other person even though they thought they were.

Our culture is so focused on getting that it takes a deep commitment to a practice of giving to step out of the getting dynamics, and even then, if you aren't fully honest with yourself, the getting dynamics will suck you back in.

This is why I get concerned when I hear talk about avoiding ejaculation instead of talk about focusing on unconditionally deeply giving, avoiding peak orgasms, and self honesty.