Release the Brake

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Want the simplest way to think about aaall the factors that play into great sex? 

It’s called the Dual Control Model and Emily Nagoski is your researcher/author if you want to read more. Check out her, “Come As You Are.” This is probably my #1 recommended book to clients struggling to experience intimacy as mutually satisfying.

I’m going to give a suuuper brief summary that you can put to immediate use!

Our sexual circuitry is basically wired like a car: sexy cues and safety/relaxation = “accelerators,” and turn-offs and stress = “brakes.” 

Because of our culture and socialization, in general it’s more likely that female bodies are like standard cars, with a shifter and handbrake, and males are typically more like an automatic. 

Main take-away: you aren’t going anywhere if you smash the gas pedal down while the handbrake is engaged. 

When new clients start counseling work with me to try to get their sex life back on track (or on a track really for the first time), it's not uncommon that one or more partners is feeling really bitter and resentful. Frequently, I find that this person feeling sooo rigid and unhappy has been having their accelerator repeatedly rammed on while the handbrake has been left engaged. 

I can imagine that revving sound and it seems to match the emotional vibration quite well.

When things have gotten to this point in a relationship, we usually have to do what's called 'softening' in psychotherapy, or support clients to tune into their vulnerability and softer emotions beneath the anger and contempt. It's a big part of my job at first to do what Sue Johnson calls, "catching the bullet" for partners; if someone throws out some nasty, caustic language, I ask for permission to reframe and add some gentle tenderness and highlight the soft feelings at the root, almost like a translator, so the other partner/s can begin to HEAR the message beneath the pain. 

Harsh criticism and resentment definitely act as brakes in this equation, by the way. Unless it's consensual and in the context of safe sexual play like BDSM, then it can actually hit the accelerator. But that's for another blog post. 

Examples of “brakes” can be anything from bad breath to seeing a huge pile of laundry to kiddos knocking at the door, and even unresolved fights to early life Traumas that haven’t been processed and fully healed. Sometimes in couples counseling, we'll discover a forgotten sexual trauma from early life and suddenly all of the little brakes that seemed "crazy" or "weird" to clients make sense. 

What are your brakes and accelerators? When do you think they got fine tuned? How about your partner/s? 

Where I see a lot of relationships working harder not smarter to rev things up in their intimate life is that they do a great, creative job of adding accelerators, but forget the brakes! And people forget that every car’s brakes have a different sensitivity; that’s why talking about what makes us go and what shuts us down is essential for good sex—no one is exactly alike. Context is key!

Don’t let all your brilliant work with accelerators go to waste because there’s a handbrake on! 

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Tips for removing brakes:

  • Make a list of your brakes and accelerators and share honestly with your partner. You may need to make some repairs if you learn that some of your go-to moves have actually been landing on the brakes! Invite some self-compassion. Maya Angelou: "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."

  • Book a hotel room or go somewhere that’s not your home, especially if it’s a messy season in the house. If you can't afford it, try a different room or the shower. Hell, change the direction you're laying in bed. With your amygdala, which is on the lookout for things like newness, danger, sparkles, there's kind of a "just right" amount of stimulation for everyone where you can feel safe and turned-on.

  • Get a babysitter or a family member to watch the kids! As your little ones get older, you can also make family agreements around "private time," just make sure to plan for emergencies!

  • If you have a new baby, it's natural for mom's body to keep her at higher alert for danger, so you may need to work a little harder to create a safe-feeling environment, or just hold off a bit longer if worry about a little one is getting in the way of experiencing each other how you'd like. Breathe out; you will have sex again.

  • Do counseling work together to heal any old wounds that feel unfinished. I recommend someone who focuses on attachment bonds and understands how to work with Trauma.

  • As we age, physical arousal can precede desire, so adding in some masturbation prior to a sexy rendezvous can ease off the brake! Look at foreplay not like an appetizer, but the real deal.

  • Make better friends with your body! “Do I look fat?” is one of the most common brake-hitting thoughts clients tell me about. See an individual counselor if you need help! I also highly recommend reading/listening to Kristin Neff on self-compassion. If you're saying things to yourself inside that you wouldn't say to a good friend, make an intention to change that.

  • Stress and relational distress can be held in your body, sometimes without your full realization. Many folks hold this tension in their pelvic floor, for instance, which accounts for a lot of undiagnosed chronic pelvic pain in sex. Working on self-care and grounding techniques invariably translates to positive gains in the bedroom!

  • Adopt a breathing practice, even if it's 5 minutes a day where you're just breathing and noticing what's happening in your body. A brake that a lot of people don't realize is when you kind of start holding your breath and not really breathing out. If you practice breathing mindfully, it'll make it easier to keep it up in your next intimate experience.

  • Intentionally remove "pressure" to perform that you can. Communicate overtly that the goal is just to get naked and be close; if erections and/or orgasms happen, great, and if not, also great. Abandon simultaneous-mutual-orgasm as the gold standard end all be all goal. I like to invite clients to imagine a garden; you till the soil, add the seeds and water, remove the weeds and bugs, and see what grows. You aren't sweating bullets screaming, "GROW, DAMNIT!" at the earth, just soaking in the sun and seeing what blooms!

Now go and do with each other what the spring does to the cherry trees.

Love, 
MJ

Seek the Middle Ground

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Reading Anaïs Nin, I came across this: "The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery." 

There's a refreshing fearlessness around this both/and accounting that I think bonding science could learn to better model. In the Western world, it's taking us a long time to add "true and false simultaneously" and "neither true nor false" to our default True/False way of thinking. 

It recently occurred to me how frequently I'm left with this vague sense of whiplash from listening between the Gottman camp's, "You aren't close enough!" and Perel's "There's not enough mystery!"

It's BOTH. It's a balance. It's our favorite answer in psychology: "It depends!"

But there really does seem to be a nice middle path where you can keep things sexy and preserve enough mystery without being anxiously fused at the hip. I said, 'nice,' not "easy." 

Esther Perel does articulate the sort of balance that I'm aiming for in Mating in Captivity: "For [erotically intelligent couples], love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning. They know that they have years in which to deepen their connection, to experiment, to regress, and even to fail. They see their relationship as something alive and ongoing, not a fait accompli. It's a story that they are writing together, one with many chapters, and neither partner knows how it will end. There's always a place they haven't gone yet, always something about the other still to be discovered." 

My beloved both/and is right there! 'BOTH security AND adventure.' 

Only when delving into the philosophy of love relationships, I notice that friends and colleagues in monogamous relationships struggle to see how you can have security if you risk certain adventures, and poly/open friends tend to be more confounded with how you can have enough adventure if you secure things too tightly in certain places. 

Depending on your wiring and a zillion other factors that make you uniquely and beautifully you, striking this balance isn't necessarily an easy process. It seriously helps to find partners who prefer similar contexts in terms of what makes you reel relationally safe and subsequently adventurous! 

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Okay, I realize that I promised you easy-to-use tips! This one just needed a set-up. So, how can we put this to use in our love relationships *today*? 

I call it 'The 70/30,' but maybe someone famous has already thought of something similar and there's an official name. If you know know of one, DM me please! 

Here's the framework: 70% of the time sex is aimed at mutual pleasure, and the remaining 30% of the time is: 15% mind-blowing for one partner and 15% mind-blowing for the other. 

If you're more than two partners, you can still apply this! I've even worked with a seriously egalitarian couple who preferred 50-50: 50% mutual and 25% for each. See what works for you!

It seems simple, but focusing on what you bring to a sexual relationship and not just what you're getting from it can really turn things up; when we put in solid effort to make 15% of sex JUST what our partners crave, it makes the 70% better, and also 'our own 15%.'

This is a simplistic breakdown for the purpose of making it easy to put to use because I tend to work with couples feeling a lot of distress about the amount of time that's passed since they've been intimate and/or felt good about it. It seems to work best when the approach is less accounting-based and more gentle, like: "More times than not over the last few months, the majority of our sex has been mutually satisfying, and there have also been times when each of us has felt special and totally rocked."

I will say, if you're already prone to compulsivity and fixating on numbers and frequency, this may not be the best technique for you!

Where I would direct you first to kind of start building a foundation if you're, for instance, quietly notating days on the calendar to count how many times per month you have sex (or don't), would definitely be Sue Johnson's Three Kinds of Sex

If you or your partner/s notice that one or all of you are getting kind of hung up on the amount of times you have sex, it might be a good idea to zoom out a little and see what it is you're going to intimacy for, and what you and your partner are actually experiencing. 

Hint: this requires talking. I recommend face-to-face. Find a counselor if it feels too scary! We're good at catching bullets and helping things go nice and slow. 

Again, in the spirit of this post, it's all about balance. 

If you're not having synchrony sex 100% of the time, that definitely doesn't make you sexually incompetent. In my experience working with relationships, there can be a lot to learn from (and a lot of fun in!) 'solace' and 'sealed-off' sex. There are seasons for everything! 

Sustainable desire is possible. Whether you're two or more! Open, monogamous, and everyone in between. We just have to seek that middle ground with dedicated, loving intention.

Love,
MJ

"It's the little things."

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If you're looking to transform a love relationship, bonding science suggests your best bet is honing in on little moments every day and making subtle additions: extend your goodbye kiss by a few seconds, hug until your bodies are relaxed when you return home at the end of the day, hold hands at the grocery store...

'Little' things are anything but little when it comes to bonding mammals in love. And to quote Richard Carlson, "You are what you practice most."

Think about your daily and evening routine. If it helps, physically write out a timeline. And I mean super detailed; e.g., 6am: we hear our alarm, 6:10am partner a gets up and makes coffee, then partner b gives kids first wake-up call, etc. Whatever happens between the time you wake and go to sleep. 

Now, identify where there are times that you're physically in the same space together. And, you know, not actively getting puked on by little ones or required to attend to something for safety. 

Together, make some agreements about moments you can capitalize on to add in some felt closeness and connection. For instance, if you're both in the kitchen doing different things, consciously add in a hug/kiss, or even something as simple as a hand on the small of a back. 

I know one couple who started to feel closer just by adding in a massive high-five passing in the hallway while wrangling a pack of children. 

Even if it's only 1 minute out of your whole day, x365 that's a solid 6 hours. The Gottman Institute found that lasting relationships that experience at least ~6 hours per week of quality connecting time, or what Stan Tatkin, founder of the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT), would call "Couple Bubble." Relationships I work with in counseling frequently end up scheduling "weekly couple bubble time." 

Keys: it's got to be one-on-one, uninterrupted, and speak everyone's love languages. #GetASitter

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It can also be useful when plotting out your routine to identify large windows of time when you're not together, and brainstorm ways to add in little experiences of connection; e.g., 5 minute phone call during lunch, blow a kiss with FaceTime between meetings, Snapchat. Technology continues to make this simpler and easier. 

Another benefit of focusing on little things daily for those with kiddos: you're modeling a healthy relationship grown with affection and closeness.

Give it a test run over the weekend!

Love, 
MJ