Sexual Intimacy
COMMUNICATION
You may feel like you communicate just fine normally, but communication during sexual intimacy is a whole other ballgame! Even the slightest request may be interpreted as criticism. The way you deal with something you don’t like at all may never even get addressed because you feel there is no way it can come across as friendly or loving. How are you showing up for your sexual encounter? Maybe you experience physical pain with what you are doing. (If so, stop whatever is causing you pain immediately. Forcing it could make matters much worse.) At some point, a new position won’t cut the stagnation either. How are you viewing sex that gets in your own way of having a marvelous sexual relationship? Do you feel your partner gives you equal attention? Affairs are born of all kinds of poor self-regulation (how you manage yourself emotionally). Do you know your own vulnerabilities? What if you want to create a different relationship structure or agreement? How do you do that? Why is it so hard to re-start a sexual relationship after a baby is born? What can you expect as you grow older? Whatever your questions are, they are good questions. No one’s 5th-grade sex education class, word of mouth gossip, or blind hit and miss strategy gets anyone very far! —especially as your sexual connection is a moving target over the course of an entire marriage, and your developmental stages will require much more of you.
Whether you are marriage partners or business partners (or both!), communication goes wrong when you lose connection with your partner. So how do you reconnect? You’ve heard of the communication skills of listening plenty before….blah-blah-blah—yes listening is important for sure, but with Transition By Design, you’ll learn how to connect with your partner confidently again with advanced skills and results that go way beyond listening. Envision smoothly and calmly dialing into those advanced skills and ending up knowing, appreciating your partner more deeply. NOW you’ll have the option of clarifying a joint empathy for what’s really important, and a problem-solving ability that escaped you so many times before!
What can you do as an individual? Even as just an individual, there is a lot you can do about deciding how you will show up as your best self, to influence your relationship in a positive direction. In the process, what else is in it for you? You’ll dramatically increase your own confidence in relationships going forward!
Connection and Advanced Communication Skills are not just for the lucky few!
BREACH OF TRUST
Believing a relationship problem will go away on its own or providing premature and shallow apologies doesn’t go very far in re-establishing trust, especially in the face of marital indiscretion, or a betrayal by a business partner. How can you stabilize a relationship in crisis when you don’t really know what happened to get you there? Or you no longer can trust what was really real in your relationship? Transition By Design can help you realize a clear path forward. Imagine having difficult conversations confidently in a productive way, while actually still being able to be supportive of your partner’s efforts in re-building that trust—yes, accountability included! No trust No relationship. Trust is that fundamental to relationships. Imagine making real and meaningful repairs with a multi-faceted process that supports the repair going forward and getting to know your partner all the more deeply for it. Don’t give up too soon. Often, partners are breaking up just as they can be on the verge of really making up. Give your Transition By Design work a shot and ALL your relationships will benefit.
Life is kind of funny that way: you’ll have more opportunities to learn those lessons if you don’t learn them now. (Actually, it’s not funny at all, reliving the same pain with the next significant relationship, like Ground Hog Day.)
SEXUAL INTIMACY ISSUES
Desire Discrepancy is only one example of your sexual encounters being a moving target over the course of an entire marriage. Do you feel like your spouse has become just a roommate? Or that you, yourself, have become mired in sameness and just go through the motions? There are stages of development in every couple’s relationship which, when stuck, create an invisible barrier against couples having the intimacy they wish. Eventually, you are bound to discover that you are different from each other, and that all the wishing in the world won’t change the other, and that really, you can only change yourself. Envision navigating those differences while expanding your relationship physically and emotionally! Willingness, Libido, Pain, Arousal, Orgasm, and Relationship Satisfaction, any or all, can be addressed. There are solution options for virtually any issue. You and your partner will be central in discovering them. And guess what? The whole range of differences are what NORMAL people experience in their long-term partnerships! Imagine the renewed inspiration that enlightened non-judgment and refreshing perspectives can provide each of you!
Magnificent sex isn’t born; it evolves with the Differentiation Stage and the advanced skills of the couple.
Attending to Sexual Intimacy Issues Alone or With Your Partner
Individual Couples Work
There may be things that are just too explosive to test out saying with your partner in the room. You may feel like you really need to sort yourself out before any joint sessions are even possible. Maybe you are willing to engage in joint sessions but need the additional private space to work through your reactions, doubts, or defensiveness. The worst kind of doubt is that nagging realization that you doubt yourself. This is a space where you can safely work on coming out into the open with toxic secrets that are a cancer to your marriage. Defining yourself, getting clear on what your own truth is, and then practicing the courage to express it with care is a very good reason to have an individual process, with or without a joint process.
With Your Partner
There is nothing more effective in actually changing a relationship than to practice how you want to show up with each other—with each other. You will hear each other work through their own stuff, which can profoundly help you develop an empathy for what your partner is going through. You’re here because you’ve lost connection with your partner and have no idea of what the deeper causes are. If you want to be a team, and especially if you have any willingness, goodwill, and common goals, a joint process is definitely for you. The healing happens right there, right then, in those moments of releasing old perspectives, beliefs, and assumptions about each other. Generally, I recommend starting with joint work and there will be some individual sessions sprinkled in there anyway.
What I Can Help You With
Communication Issues
Sexual Intimacy
Cultural/Ethnic Diversity
LGBTQ+
Partner Infidelity
Non-Traditional Relationship
Trust Problems
Stagnation
Early Years of Marriage
After the Baby Is Born
Sex Issues as You Grow Older
Differentiation/Self-Defining
Contact Me
Ask a question or send your available times for a callback to mail@transitionbydesign.com
Please leave all voice messages here: (785) 235-2500