YouTube ideas:

 

The desire discrepancy. One partner is high and the other is low. How do you bridge the gap?

 

Performance anxiety. Understanding it from the male perspective and from hers.

 

You can’t fail at sex.

 

Trust equals lust for women.

 

Foreplay begins before you ever enter the bedroom. It’s about clearing the figurative path to the bed. What is coming between you that keeps you from unleashing your sexual potential?

 

Dr. Sarah Hunter Murray’s research:

 

The complexities of women’s desire for sex vs men. In married life, men are just as complex.

• Men like to feel wanted too. They want to hear that their partner is attracted to them.

• They want to have their partner reach out for physical connection first. Holding hands, laying her head on his shoulder, scratch his back etc.

• Decreased desire because of age, stress, obligations etc.

• Men also want to a little more playfulness. A sneak kiss, a knowing glance, more flirting, a smack on the butt (women hold a lot of power in this regard)

• Men also want to talk about sex in regards to what their partner wants and needs. They want to hear what his wife’s thoughts are about these things

• Men are not just visual. Their desire for sexy is really a bid for emotional connection. It’s actually a really vulnerable experience to ask for sex.

• Sexual rejection is very detrimental to a man.

 

Becoming your own whole self is the best thing you can do for physical intimacy with your partner.

 

6/11/20

Notes on JFF podcast

“Get over yourself” when perfectionism undermines your development, relationships and peace of mind.

If we are going to develop into full-fledged adults psychologically, then we need to tolerate that our flaws come with us as part of being a human being.

Trying to resist this fact, that we are imperfect, then we will destroy any chance of having real intimacy with other people and having peace with ourselves and with our relationships.

Perfectionism is actually a wonderful disguise of not risking exposure. That means that we as a perfectionistic person, are always trying to define ourselves through everyone else’s lens. We get our sense of self by qualifying ourselves against another. It is a constant state of trying to put others in a one down position so that you don’t have to risk being exposed or in a one down position.This includes wanting to please everyone around you and not doing whatever it is you want to do for yourself.

When you use someone to manage your sense of self, you will dislike that person. In this dynamic, each person is colluding with the other. They are both depending on each other. And once again, we see, that dependency breeds contempt.

Many times, compassion is the antidote to this broken cyclic relationship. Compassion for yourself. And compassion for your partner.

Practicing compassion for self and others is actually self development at its core.

Peace comes not through perfection, but through integrity.

Self acceptance is at the core to solving perfectionism. When you know that who you are is Intrinsically worthy you can tolerate being knowable because you have nothing to hide.

If we behave in our every day lives as a decent person and avoid colluding with other people to prop ourselves up, the desire that our spouse feels towards us will feel legitimate and will help foster a proper sense of self.

 

6/16/20

Motherhood and sexuality

 

I hear women say all the time that at the end of the day they have been touched and prodded so much that to think about being intimate with their husband is just more touch and prodding that is being taken from them. What I hear is that this woman is having a hard time receiving. What if you change the frame of thinking to what you can give your husband to what can you receive from him that will fill you both up? this is not about being a selfless martyr mother who just gives and gives and gives. It is about being the whole woman who has more to give than just mothering or sacrificing herself at the feet of everyone around her. this shift in thinking will probably require a shift in both yourself and your partner. Meaning that, if you are not having good sex, then you probably will not feel taken care of. So it is worth exploring with your partner what it means to have good sex. You have to address what you have been co-creating as a couple.

 

6/18/20

 

Help! I want to change my spouse podcast.

 

Jennifer says some things that strikes me. She says sometimes we use our victimhood as an excuse to justify our aggression. Essentially we become a victim perpetrator. If our spouses were to complain about us in their head, what would their list of grievances be? If you go into any issue with the position that the other person needs to change, you are really only reinforcing that you are right and they are wrong. You need to get clear on how you played a role in what is making you feel like something needs to change in your marriage. Then you need to confront what it is that you need to change to no longer play that role and then take a clear position on that. It will be uncomfortable. Your spouse would kick against the pricks. People don’t like change. It will stretch you! Many times when there is conflict in marriage, you may have one person who is ready to be clear on their position and their role and the other person is not. Jennifer gives great advice here and she says that if one person is willing to stand their ground and is clear on their role in the conflict, the other partner is really given a choice to stand their ground in their emotional immaturity or to rise up to their partner’s level. Working on yourself an honest way will impact your marriage and will pressure both of you. She says to stay in it and deal with your own developmental challenges instead of choosing to be resentful that your partner is not choosing to conform to your will immediately. As you stay the course, many times, your partner will rise to you. But if you resent them it will grow into contempt and this will be a marriage killer.

 

You tube idea:

 

The idea of self development. What is your superpower? The story about Julia saying what my superpower was.

 

If you don’t develop your own sense of self, you will depend and even demand from your spouse or family to define it for you. It will pressure your relationships that are negative for yourself and others.

 

The analogy of the giving tree. At the end of the book, the mother figure it’s a stump. And the son is depressed and alone because he used her up and she literally had nothing else to give.

 

Being the sacrificial lamb for your family is not virtuous. It sets up a broken system of sending the wrong message to our children of what a mother is and what a mother does. It serves no one. Young motherhood, or mothering of young children, is a self sacrificing phase of life. But it is not to be what is the dynamic for the rest of your life. There is a self sacrifice and nurturing young children that is virtuous and necessary. But to carry that over into an essentially codependent relationship with your children and family, it does not serve the family as a whole. It is so important to develop aspects of yourself while your children are young even in small ways. Listening to or reading a book instead of watching TV to relax. Taking a bath and letting someone else load the dishwasher. Do you something for yourself or you will lose yourself. If you sacrifice your development for the sake of another’s development, that is a recipe for lifelong resentment.

 

Human beings want to belong to things. We want to belong to others and have the satisfaction of being a part of a working system. We also want to belong to ourselves. That is to say, we want to feel secure in ourselves. There is a satisfying and appropriate tension in the balance between belonging to a group and belonging to yourself. What that looks like for you may be different than what it looks like for someone else. Being true to who you are does not mean abandoning ship from your responsibilities. What it looks like is stepping in to the time and season that you find yourself in with your full heart knowing that life ebbs and flows. For me, the way I was able to navigate this was creation. When I felt like I was losing myself and young motherhood anytime I took on a project that use my creative side, I felt like it was striking a balance between being a working part of a beautiful system and feeling autonomous. If we stop developing, we will resent the system that took us out of our self development. do you have to belong to yourself before you can ever belong to a group in a healthy way. The idea of losing yourself to finding yourself please beautifully here. You need to lose your ego in order to find yourself. Meaning, you do not have to be everything to everyone. If you let the idea of being everything to everyone go, you will find yourself. Let your ego go!

 

You have to be able to ask yourself “what do I want?“ you may not find the right answer but asking the question will help you figure out where you need to develop. What do you want your relationship with yourself to look like?

 

I AM THE KIND OF PERSON WHO...

 

The key to this really is developing while you figure out the answer to the hard questions. You do not have to know the answer to what do I want out of my life in order to move towards your goal. I think that almost every time, we will discover what it is we want as we are developing ourselves. Light and knowledge will be given to us as we strive for more light and knowledge.

 

What is my dream, even if I think that it is not possible? What do I love? What am I passionate about? What do I naturally do to escape or unwind? Just start somewhere! Something small that you have always wanted to do. Buy a bike and ride it. Sign up for a 5k / 10k /half marathon race. Buy that stupid diamond painting kit. Get a calligraphy how to book. (!!!!!)Sign up for a paint class. Do something that fosters a seed of desire within you. make something beautiful. Slow down and notice the beauty in creation. The creation of our father in heaven. The beauty and the earth around us. The beauty of the people around us. The beauty in the capacity that humans have to create. The beauty of your own body. The beauty of your relationship. The beauty of you.

 

Self development really is the salvation of your relationship.

 

Find joy in who you are. The God-given gifts that you have been given and stop comparing them against other peoples God-given gifts. If you are married to an energetic bubbly person and you judge yourself against them when you came to this earth as a thoughtful quiet powerful person, you will never find joy in being bubbly and outgoing. It will drain you. in the chronicles of Narnia, as long is frequently telling the children, “that is her story or their story, not yours.“ trust that God is in their story. He is in your story. If you let your ego go and let God work through you, he will make you into what you need to become as you act on little nudges of the spirit to move into self development. So development is not selfish! Creating is what our creator would want for you.

 

You tube idea:

 

The Christian woman: is lust a sin?

 

Lust is embodied desire. Love is not lust. Care taking can kill desire and passion. Is your partner care taking you? Are you care taking your partner? What actions in your relationship are killing your desire? If caretaking kills desire and all you do is care take, there will be no desire. How can you become a more solid person in order to cultivate your own desires? Jim Rohn said sometime ago: I will take care of me for you not I will take care of you for me.

 

We need to be able to tolerate anxiety in favor of growth.

 

You tube idea:

 

Drawing desire out through the day.

 

Seinfeld episode good naked versus bad naked. Rabbi Shmuley’s take on modesty.

 

LDS women:

Alma 23-24 Weapons of rebellion towards God. Most of us are in rebellion by our own self contempt and limiting beliefs.

 

Perpetual vs solvable problems. John Gottman

 

You tube idea:

 

Jennifer Finlayson Fife says if you develop yourself, you develop your self-confidence. The better you understand your desires, the more you rely on your self and your perception of yourself versus relying on someone else’s perception of you. Richard Paul Evans says “treat yourself like someone you love“.

 

Explore the idea of locus of control. Define it and give examples and how to utilize this concept for self development.

 

The locus of control is with in us not outside of us. The more we take the reins and responsibility of our choices, actions and happenings of our lives, the more the locus of control becomes squarely centered upon ourselves. This is how growth is facilitated. It is nearly impossible to grow when you are dependent on others to take responsibility for it. If we are able to see our life and it’s unfairnesses as educative rather than punitive, then we will be able to fully embody the position of empowerment. That is to say, however unfair our lives may be, a loving God has placed us here to experience them so that we made progress through life and develop compassion, empathy, mental toughness and wisdom. He did not places us here to suffer for our sins or the sins of those who came before us. He sent us here to heal them. To heal our own mistakes and certainly to heal from the missteps and broken cycles of our progenitors.

 

Need fulfillment frame vs. intimacy frame:

 

Let me set the stage for what my friends are telling me. You are raised to be sexually pure. You meet someone who you would like to explore a relationship with. Your sexual attraction is high. You are both committed to being sexually pure and so being intimate is very appealing. You get married and the first year is wonderful and full of exploration and desire. And then the children, and the man wants sex all the time and the woman just feels like she is having one more person need some thing from her that she has to fulfill. This is not appealing for either party. It puts the sexual relationship in the frame of the wife accommodating her husband’s needs. This is what many men and women are taught but this is a frame that precludes intimacy. It drives resentment in both parties. How do we rectify this?. The intimacy frame is is you are not responsible for my sense of self But I want to be with you. I want to be sexual with you. I want an intimate relationship with you. “I just need ten minutes of your time” is a different meaning frame. Women don’t want that kind of relationship. They don’t want to be used to fill his sexual needs. As soon as a partner senses that they are there fill their need or service them, they will become resentful of all advances. These advances will the seen as manipulations to get sex. Stereotypically, women want to feel like their spouse wants to have sex with THEM, not just have an orgasm.

 

For a man, It’s safer to say: “I just need ten minutes, I did the dishes and took care of your needs, now take care of me and give me the second I’m entitled to” than to say, “I want to feel intimate with you and show myself fully to you and risk rejection.” For a woman, it’s safer to say, “I’m going to accommodate my husband’s needs and give him the sex he’s begging for because he’s a boorish man” than to say, “I’m going to show up for my husband and let my needs and desires be known and risk them being exposed and let myself be fully known and seen.”

 

If you approach sex like your spouse is the only one who can gratify your need, you will keep it in the frame of transactionality. Rather, you manage your sexuality and know it’s not your spouse’s responsibility.

 

You may have the husband of the year but if you haven’t woken up to the fact that you haven’t taken up an equal position in regards to desire in the bedroom, that it will always be a need fulfillment frame.

 

Asking my clients to have a conversation with their spouse along the lines of:

• how often would you want to have sex.

• What about the sex we are having would make you say that number?

Not taking these answers too much to heart is important and listening to your partner and letting them feel heard.