The 5 Pillars of Passion

We are told that safety is an antidote to passion and excitement in a marriage. And it's true - if familiarity is the only thing we have going down between us - then there will likely not be any other type of going down going on. Ever.

On the other hand, long term couples can find themselves bereft of trust over time. From little discrepancies to big lies. Breaking our word to one another, even in the tiniest of ways, will erode trust eventually. And without trust, it it is very difficult for a human nervous system to let go and receive pleasure. 

It's important to be honest about how you do this with your partner. 

Commonly, we say we will do something and then we don't do it. This can be as irksome as saying we'll text and then we don't, or as relationship shattering as committing to monogamy and then breaking it with a one night stand. The point here is, the trust in your relationship can be shattered overnight, or it can be broken down consistently. This type of relational behaviour hurts. And nobody has good sex with someone if they're heart feel broken or feeling abandoned.

Once upon a time you felt delight in one another, and this spread out to feeling delight in life itself.

There are so many things that squash this kind of passion out of a relationship. But, take heart. It is really quite simple to bring this kind of feel good back. We simply need to make sure we don't forget to occasionally give the "muse" of our partnership some attention.

A great practice - to lead your relationship by it's heart's desires. (One person can lead on this or you can co-lead.) 

Firstly - what even are the heart's desires of your partnership? Take the time to write them down. You can both write out what you'd like to happen, and most importantly, how you'd like the relationship to feel. Or, you can take on the vantage point of the relationship itself. If you WERE the relationship, what do you want and how would you like to feel on a daily basis?

Once you know what these are, it can be very easy to start to create more of what you want. Think of this exercise like setting the mood. Do you want some romance? Some freedom to breathe? Some physical touch? Sensual pleasures shared? Do you want to connect in an intellectual way and feel challenged and inspired by oneanother? 

When we know what we want for the relationship, generally speaking ideas about how to create it come forth very easily. And these ideas are often simple. "We vow to spend 5 minutes a day on the sofa without any distraction holding and stroking oneanother's faces/hands/bodies etc because we want to FEEL connected beyond words."

Counter-intuitive perhaps? 

One of the most well-known and powerful books out there on relationships and keeping the passion alive is Esther Perel's "Mating in Captivity". 

In it, she describes how the curating of distance and separation in your long term partnership is one very reliable way to generate turn on and excitement within it.

This bears out in my own experience too. And for many of my clients.

Because codependence is quite natural and, I would argue, even healthy in the right dose. Far too many of us try to "make it alone" and I don't think that is a good way for a human to live. But when codependence truly sets in? Like the twin flame idea that two people are one half each of the same soul? Ew. I have to admit even the idea of that makes me want to throw up in my mouth just a little bit. 

I have a life. I love and adore my husband. But I love him even more when I can spend the occasional weekend alone binge reading the Booker Prize short list. Or clothes shopping in London and maybe getting an eyebrow wax. Or... you get my point. When I have my own life, I automatically circle back to closeness with my partner. And we both feel sexier when we live like this.

As I mentioned, my clients often feel the same. I remember one woman in particular who talked about how she went to watch her husband address an audience in his professional capacity. It wasn't a particularly sexy profession. No great performance necessary. Just the very act of seeing him as a separate entity to her. Up there giving a speech as a completely separate person. Afterwards, they had some of the best sex of their lives.

So give it a try. Let your partner go feral for a couple of days. Go see them as they work. Put your phone down and pay attention - observe them as they fix the car or put the children to bed.

Could there be a more widely misunderstood (or more oft abused) concept than that of polarity?

I'll be honest. I get truly sick of it too. All that "codes to feminine energy" and "standing in masculine power" stuff can make me roll my eyes at the best of times. It's like - do we WANT to return to the dark ages or create family dynamics along the lines of the Church of the Latter Day Saints? I mean - is that what all this feminism was FOR?!

The truth is though - I write and work within these terms of "Masculine and Feminine" a lot. And the reason is pretty simple. There is nothing, literally nothing, that brings the fire in so intensely, or so immediately, as when my husband and I get the polarity dialled between us.

I have often said to clients this one  thing - that when my husband of 25 years and I share a sex practice, then we are basically having passion in our sex. And if we do not share a sex practice - then we are basically not having much passion in our sex.

This is a truth not many people want to hear, because it sounds like work. But it is true nevertheless.

One of the reasons for this is that the more we actually use our genitals and fire up our physical sex hormones, the more they will fire up of their own accord. So there's nothing like having sex regularly to ensure that continue wanting to have sex regularly. We literally turn on our physiology by spending some time every day in these kinds of practices.

One of the joys of having a whole bag of sex practices up my sleeve, is that I get to teach people what works in this arena. And believe me it works. I recently heard from a client, post-menopausal, whose sex life was really nonexistent. The amazing thing is, she didn't even bring her partner in to coach with me. She simply got herself a self-pleasure practice and went really deep with it over several months. And the result was that she was able to let me know that her and her husband ended up having such incredible sex as a result of this, that they ended up staying overnight at a house party and she struggled not to scream the place down when they retired to their room for the night. 

This was so moving and so incredible to me.

Because, the truth is that there is a lot wrong with our world right now. 

 There is so much pain and disenfranchisement. Relationships are expected to thrive within circumstances that are so innately unconducive to their thriving. Debt. Work loss. Wars. Pandemics. Mental health issues. All of it.

So to think that we can, in a few simple ways like I outline above, take our sex from zero to hero. From nothing to sex so loud it would offend polite society. In our 60s?

It gives me hope in humanity, it really does.