Relationship Mistakes Archives - Relationship & Sexuality Counselling Specialists

Couple Communication: Finding the Gifts in your Messiness

June 24, 2019 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

We often call couples communication the finer art of the shit fight.

This is because it can get messy at the speed of light!

Part of the skill in couple communication is in learning how to get better at staying out of the messiness.

Another important part is getting better at dealing with the messiness once you’re there.

Problems in communication are usually seen as the No.1 issue in relationships.

If effective communication in an intimate relationship was easy, everybody would be doing it. But if it isn’t don’t beat yourself up. Graeme and I have been doing it with awareness for years now and we still get caught up in domestics at times!

Couples talk is particularly difficult because communication here isn’t just an exchange of information and ideas. It’s the one place we can’t avoid the messiness of feelings, emotions and deep human need.

Not to mention that we’re communicating with someone who is extremely important to us. Someone that we don’t want to lose by messing things up. We probably carry fear too, about going back into places where we’ve been hurt in the past. Or where we’ve hurt our partner.

What’s really going on when communication gets messy?

Mostly what happens in moments of painful communication is that we make what is happening wrong. We put up walls around the discomfort that occurs inside of us.

Messiness might look like ‘something being wrong’, yet despite appearances, it’s actually part of your relationship growth cycle. Much relationship conflict comes from making the messiness wrong. And from losing connection with yourself as you try to avoid the uncomfortable feelings that result.

When you lose this connection, your partner becomes the enemy and you drop into strategies of defensiveness and protection. You seek control, rather than connection and understanding.

“Almost 90% of all human communication comes from the (usually unconscious) need to control.”
Saying What’s Real, 7 Keys To Authentic Communication, Susan Campbell, PhD

Exploiting the truth

In our human messiness, our logical minds try to help out by rationalising our behaviour. We exploit elements of the truth to get us off the hook of hurt. Speaking from our unfelt emotion, we go to elaborate efforts to justify our position. We also get very convoluted and irrational in our story-telling.

This is because our logical minds are compartmentalised, and their separate parts come up with different points of view. They can do this at the same time, even with totally opposing ideas! We then argue as if they all make sense. We take something that’s 10% true and elaborate it with 90% bullshit to make ourselves feel ‘right’ (ie safe). Graeme and I call this ‘going down the rabbit hole’.

Going down the rabbit hole

All this story-telling creates ‘mind-generated’ feelings that are mostly irrelevant to the feeling that was originally triggered. We’ve known couples who’d get into near-relationship-ending fights over the simplest of issues. This is because each person held tightly to their chosen 10% truth/90% bullshit story.

Get curious about the messiness in your Couple Communication

Rather than getting caught up in the messiness of your 90% bullshit and trying to understand it, try something different. See if you can identify the strongest negative point you’re trying to make (it’s usually about your partner).

This is where the gold is in your Couple Communication.

You can tell it by the sharp increase in emotion, the increased volume in your voice. It might be the knife twist in your gut or the desire to commit some kind of physical violence.

When you’ve identified it, counter-intuitive though it may appear, simply notice the response in your body that it creates. You might notice you’re tensing your shoulders, contracting in fear or wanting to attack, pull away, or go blank.

Getting grounded

Take a breath in and slowly let it out again, feel your feet, get grounded in your body. Taking this deep breath helps to soften your reaction. Your body will intuitively begin to feel safe, allowing you to thoughtfully respond rather than react. Any emotional discomfort will then pass more quickly because you’re not resisting it or escalating it.

This will help you intuitively identify your 10% truth in the situation. Ask yourself what you’re avoiding in yourself by pushing this point? Most likely, you’ll see that it usually involves owning something imperfect and vulnerable about yourself that you want to hide.

At this point it seems easier to own it than to face going further down the rabbit hole. This is the gift of the messiness, it helps you get real if you know where to look.

Deflating your partner’s 90%

Take a risk if you sense that your partner is getting lost in their mind’s 90% bullshit and trying to hook you into their drama. Identify and own YOUR part in the 10% truth, because it will be there.

This truth is why the two of you unconsciously chose to be in relationship with each other so take the risk and show up here. Doing so will change the fabric of your relationship. Telling the truth, no matter how challenging it might appear from the outside, will reward you with an inner strength that is worth the risk.

The truth in you will help your partner to reconnect with what is true in themselves, if they can hear it.

Taking a breath and getting grounded helps you get present with what you’re saying and hearing.

It helps you realise that there is nothing you really need to prove, protect, defend or hide.

When you get this, you’ll find that love arises, making it easier for you to each change what you’re saying into something useful. And to listen more clearly.

This creates greater intimacy and closeness rather than misunderstanding, pain and separation in your relationship. It allows you to see your messy couple communication as a potential gift rather than a threat.

This blog is an excerpt from our book Coming Together: Solving the Mystery of Intimate Relationship, to see it click the link.

If you would like any personal support in your Couple Communication email us here.

Men: Improving Your Strike Rate

April 19, 2018 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

Guys, could you do with more quality sex in your life?

If your answer is yes, improving your strike rate happens by avoiding the following bedroom blunders that will instantly shoot your desire in the foot. They’ll not only make the rejection you expect more likely, they’ll put sex on the back burner for your woman too.

It’s not because she doesn’t want you.

It’s because she’s made differently (as you might have noticed…)

We’ll show you what to do instead to hugely improve your strike rate in the bedroom (without the need for ball tampering…)

Common Bedroom blunders:

Believing she doesn’t want you.

There will be times that this is true, this is just life and don’t take it personally. It’s that she’s stressed out, busy, tired, worrying about the kids or her friend or her ageing parents etc. Underneath all this she’s likely to want sex as much as you do and it’s important to remember it, as it makes it easier to correct No. 2.

2. Expecting her to make the first move.

Sure, she will sometimes be hot to trot and put the moves on you, but mostly she’ll be waiting for you to approach her. It’s just the way she’s made, she wants to be wanted as it validates her desirability and gives her confidence to step into her sexual power (just like you do really). So instead of waiting, step up and make the move.

3. Using a language that will push her away.

Men tend to think about sex itself as the goal, and along the way they get connected with their woman. She will come to sex wanting to feel connected with you. So, let your language reflect that you see this about her clearly. Instead of asking for sex make it personal, let her know you want ‘her’ not just sex.

4. Being covert to avoid rejection

Because being rejected is so painful many men will allude to getting sex by making hints or jokes instead of asking for it outright. They’ll say something like “the kids are in bed early tonight so I’m in with a chance, am I?” Make your approach direct. Look her in the eye and ask straight up with a smile.

5. Wanting to fix her

It’s been said before, but we’ll say it again. Women mostly want you to just listen rather than to be fixed, so when she talks just listen. Don’t offer a solution unless she asks for one.

6. Not taking care of yourself

You might have noticed the guy with the beer gut and bald spot who still thinks he’s God’s gift to women, yet a woman who looks like Elle McPherson can be riddled with self doubt?

Don’t just take it for granted that you’re attractive, make the effort to at least have clean teeth, fresh breath, and a clean body. Take an interest in your physical wellbeing and keep as fit and healthy as you can.

7. Wanting to take

Men do this when they’re not connected to their hearts in sex. We don’t mean loving to your partner but being connected to your own heart, inside your body. To do this slow down, breathe deeply, put your attention on your body and what you’re feeling, especially around your heart. Doing this will help you make sex about sharing rather than taking, as women can smell this in a man and will pull back (unless she’s in the mood to ‘be taken’, then ravish her with all you’ve got). Remember her pleasure is as important as yours (as your pleasure is as important as hers). Take your time and go on a journey together, rather than just rush to the destination.

8. Neglecting non-sexual touch

It’s hard for a woman to stay present in her body, trying to do everything she’ll disappear into her head and not be aware of the sensual part of her. Feel your desire in your own body, don’t be afraid of it. This is why women love bad boys who carry lots of sexual energy front and centre- they make them feel. You don’t need to be like that, just let yourself feel your desire, relax into it by breathing deeply, then touch her from this place in you. Do so without the goal of immediate sex. Give her a kiss, a melting hug, stroke slowly along the back of her neck, shoulders or lower back to help her get into her body. Look into her eyes and caress her face for a moment, give her a kiss or a smile. Caress the sides of her breasts or hips, don’t go for her nipples, butt or her genitals, as this will shut her down if she’s not warmed up. Leave her wanting more. This is why women love bad guys- they make them feel.

9. Avoiding your truth

Challenge yourself to be honest about yourself and what you feel, rather than avoid difficult conversations and disappear into the office or the garage. Your woman can feel this strength and alignment in you and will be attracted to it (even if it may piss her off at times!). One of the things you need to be honest with ourself about is the fact that you’re not entitled to sex, nor can you expect your partner to give it to you. Sex is something you co create the conditions for it to happen in, taking this approach makes you more creative and frees up resistance in your partner.

10. Fearing being rejected.

Men propose, women dispose. The way to deal with rejection is being willing to feel it. This might sound like a recipe for self-flagellation but it’s actually the opposite. The more you fear and resist rejection (which is a physical and emotional pain) the more intensely you feel it. Ironically, if you’re willing there is no wall for the rejection to cut through and hurt. Any rejection you do feel can be actively breathed through your body to release it. It sounds weird but it works. The more you practice this the less pressure your woman will feel from you allowing her to find her own desire and step closer.

See which ones might be true for you, take them out of your sexual repertoire and notice your sex life significantly (if not amazingly) improve!

And if you’d like any further assistance putting these tools into use call Annette & Graeme on 1800 TANTRA or email here for a chat.

Owning Your Shadow

June 7, 2017 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

Owning your shadow is the most powerful thing you can do for your relationship…

When we first fall in love it seems we are perfect for each other. As time goes by you see the cracks beneath the surface where they seem not so perfect for you, but in fact they still are. It just means its time to start owning your shadow.

Because even though at a conscious level we choose someone to be in relationship with, the attributes that live our unconscious mind even more powerfully choose someone for us who is most able to activate our shadows.

Our shadows are the parts of us we hide from ourselves. They’re the parts of us that we have decided are unacceptable and we need to hide them or we won’t be loved.

They can be negative traits or even positive ones. We hid the positive ones because they were unacceptable to our family, culture or religion of origin.

But what we hold in shadow leaves us feeling incomplete, always lost and looking for what is missing.

We can look for it by our neediness and in our addictions- to each other, to love, sex and the list goes on. But the answer isn’t there, it’s in us.

Our partners show us our shadows by unconsciously triggering us into feeling them.

They do this by pissing us off. When our partners are pissing us off they’re actually giving us a gift.

We find it by looking at ourselves rather than pointing the finger and trying to change them. For pointing the finger and trying to ‘fix’ our partners or our relationship is where most relationships start to fall over. Over time when our partners are no longer willing to accommodate us, or us them, is when relationships end. We miss the gifts they offer us along the way, gifts that will take us deeper into connection rather than push us away.

How do we recognize our shadows?

When your partner pisses you off drop your righteous ego and instead of focussing on their behaviour, what they’re doing wrong and how they should fix it to stop you from hurting instead look at your own feeling for the answer. This feeling will be one we’ve tried to shut down in ourselves and accessing it will take our relationship much further than blaming our significant other. This doesn’t mean we have to accept any and all behaviour our partners give us, far from it. It just allows us to sort it from a clear, untriggered place.

Owning Your Shadow Practice:

(a) Centre and ground yourself with your ABC and think of something your partner, (or even ex-partner, parent, anyone) does that pisses you off or hurts you the most. Take the time to really flesh out this experience in your mind- how are they looking, what are they saying/doing and find the feelings that always come along with it.

(b) Detach the image of your partner from your mind and focus on your own feeling instead.

(d) Trust this feeling has a message for you and go into it to see what lies inside it- notice whether there is there a word, an image or another feeling you can identify

(e) Ask yourself what is this calling forth in you? Keep going deeper until you find the original pain point in you.

(f) You’ve got it when you see it is really nothing about your partner at all but something in you.

(g) Ask yourself what does this need to be healed in you- just acknowledgement, something you need to express, a new belief or behaviour to choose? What support do you need to do so? Can you imagine it in your mind’s eye and give it to yourself? (Your mind cannot tell the difference).

(h) The next time you observe this behaviour in your partner notice how you can choose to respond differently and create a better outcome in the same situation.

With major triggers that have a lot of emotion or layers in them we may need to do this process a few times to get it all.

How do you know when a shadow has been fully seen and owned?

The first step is you being able to see it.
The second is that you feel like it controls you.
The next step is being able to see it with some detachment and less emotionality.
When it’s fully shifting you might experience an inner feeling of a letting go, or ‘shift in yourself.
Sometimes you can ‘see’ in imaginary veil clearing before your eyes as you move out of illusion into greater clarity.
You can sit in ease in situations that in the past would have triggered intense emotion.
You feel open to the other person in the situation yet without attachment to any ‘stuff’- yours or theirs.
You can see your shadow and have a really good laugh at yourself.
You can play out owning your shadow in your sex lives, (with a consenting lover) eg. the bad boy/bad girl, the naïve innocent, the powerful dominant etc.

If you need support in seeing and owning your shadow contact Annette or Graeme via email or PH 1800 TANTRA.

Vulnerability: Curse or Blessing?

April 17, 2017 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

Vulnerability: The Blessing And The Curse of Intimacy

We’re caught in the trap of desiring intimacy but resisting vulnerability with all kinds of mind games and psychological protection. In the end we think it is easier to learn the skill of vulnerability…

We’ve been told that vulnerability is a scary, dangerous place. In fact, vulnerability is simply deep openness. It’s beautiful. In fact, it’s how we actually create intimacy. Without it we can share each other’s company, do things together and share common interests. But without it we stay on the surface of each other, and of ourselves. We repeat- vulnerability is the deep level of openness and availability that will make your relationship work. Being vulnerable means we’ve let our psyche’s emotional walls down, allowing ourselves to be seen- both by others and by ourselves. It can happen in moments of joy, such as at the birth of your child, being fully loved by another, being given a moment of grace when you feel most undeserving, as much as in moments of fear. In fact, it’s in the openness and space created by vulnerability that love can enter, we have to make space for it. Love can enter by itself and magically create a connection yet if you’re willing to make vulnerability a practice you will experience a much higher level of Big Love in your relationship, and in your life.

Vulnerability is always scary but any danger comes from our lack of understanding and inability in dealing with it. When we think of vulnerability we’re conditioned to think of something being wrong, that we’re literally in danger. Vulnerability has warning signs around it saying ‘don’t go there, don’t go there’. From here we make the logical choice to try and defend ourselves or attack that which is making us feel vulnerable. When we do this we miss out on the love, connection, healing and self-understanding that lies on the other side of our vulnerability.

The key in Vulnerability

Is if you can make the paradoxical choice to make your vulnerability ok and welcome it in our need to defend ourselves drops away.

When we make vulnerability ok, choosing to feel it, allow it, even welcome it in, we are in a very powerful place.

We’ve been taught that vulnerability is about exposing or opening ourselves up to another person, or to something outside of ourselves. We call this vulnerability without. In vulnerability without our focus is on opening ourselves outwards where we leave ourselves vulnerable to attack or rejection, especially if we are looking for something from the person we’re opening to. It is emotionally risky because in doing so we expose the mask of our most unfamiliar, helpless and wounded self.

From here we either:

Contract in our feelings, creating an experience of intense emotional and even physical pain
Go into a story to justify our fear or woundedness, whether it is true or not
Become desperate for the person we’re exposed to to validate or comfort us
Pick up on any potential threat in what our partner says or does and react, whether the threat is real, or our projection
Go on the offensive, attacking the other to stay safe in ourselves
Close down as soon as possible and put our defences back up

Many a relationship has been destroyed by attacks that come from the discomfort of this kind of vulnerability.

Vulnerability Within

on the other hand is opening in to ourselves, holding on to ourselves rather than to another. It is about literally opening inwards rather than opening out. This vulnerability within ourselves becomes a place of strength, going beyond our weakness to where we no longer feel the need to hide or protect ourselves. We find we are not weak and helpless but vast and powerful. We’re less dependent on our partner’s response. We’re totally emotionally open and available to ourselves and to our partners, even to love itself. We surrender to ourselves, our mind sinks into our heart. We’re freer and more connected to our essence.

We don’t say these things lightly

When we say vulnerability within ourselves leads us into experiences of more love than we ever dreamed possible we’re very serious. As a society we are becoming more physically comfortable, smarter and more in control of our ego selves and our world. We have an ever increasing number of ways to escape feeling discomfort. The byproduct of this shift is more loneliness and depression and missing out on the gifts Big Love can bring. We’re creating more external success but our question is, does this replace the value of Big Love itself? Experiencing Big Love, love beyond description is one of the benefits of facing our vulnerability.

If we stop buying into the fear stories of vulnerability we find it is a feeling like ‘come and get me world, do your worst because here I am, with no more walls and nothing more that can hurt me!’

What makes vulnerability uncomfortable is merely our resistance to it. The more willingly we embrace the power of vulnerability within the easier and more rewarding intimacy becomes.

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change” Brene Brown

Understand that if you only experience pain and not freedom in your vulnerability you have probably remained contracted in your feelings rather than fully dropping though them into the essence of you that lives underneath your pain and your story.

Holding on to yourself

is choosing to stay present with yourself and your feeling body whilst you show up, no matter what you feel. In this way intimate communicating becomes an act of self acceptance, validation and love, a way of maintaining your sense of self and becoming intimate and available in your relationship at the same time. This is the magic of intimacy.

In his wonderful book Passionate Marriage David Schnarch, Phd states that “Intimacy hinges on validating yourself rather than trusting your partner to make you feel safe.”

Making vulnerability OK and practicing taking your vulnerability within takes both courage and practice. Choose respectful places to practice your vulnerability in, places where you can hold onto yourself if it is unseen or rejected. Ask permission of the person you’re sharing with if they’re open to your sharing. You can start outside your relationship if with your partner feels too big, or start with subjects with manageable levels of vulnerability for both of you.

Vulnerability Practice:

When you are next sitting down with your partner (or a friend), practice your ABC, look them in the eye and notice what comes to you as something about yourself that would be challenging for you to share. Ask their permission first and choose to share it, using ‘I’ language. Share whatever it is without looking for any particular response. The importance is not what you are sharing but the opening you’re creating in yourself by sharing it. Hold onto yourself and validate yourself for going there. Don’t need your partner to do it for you, if they do see it as a beautiful bonus.

The magic in all of this is that because you are taking this risk in showing with your walls down and your partner is more than likely to feel drawn towards you rather than to reject us as you fear, for your exposure of your essence creates attraction. And if they do happen to reject you, you are ok because you are connected fully to yourself so there is no abandonment and little pain.

‘I’ language

Go to any personal development workshop and you will most likely be invited to speak in ‘I’ language. This happens for good reason. Our culture has a habit of saying ‘you’ when we really mean ‘I’ or ‘me’ that subtly disconnects us from feeling our own experience fully. Saying “I” also lets the other person hear us more easily as we are clearly talking about our own experience.
Make it a habit to practice ‘I’ language when talking about your own experience.

Your partner’s response: Remember your partner’s response is about them not you, just as your response is about you not them.

What we are responsible for is about us. Remembering this makes it easier to hold to ourselves when sharing.

Supporting someone in being vulnerable: If someone asks you to hear them share something vulnerable there is much you can do to support them:

Bring all of who you are into the moment:
Clear your mind
Connect with your body
Breathe into your heart
Gently focus your eyes on them
Be in silence
Don’t try to understand them at an intellectual level, let their words penetrate you, feel their heart
Feel what is behind their words
Meet them in who they are being
Validate them
Share what their sharing may have touched in you, which is a beautiful way of validating their offering.

“The way you become divine is to become wholly human”. Bishop Shelby Spong

If you would like to learn how to practice vulnerability within join us for one of our upcoming events here

Overcontrolling In Bed?

March 9, 2017 By Annette & Graeme Leave a Comment

Are You Overcontrolling In Bed?

And is it limiting your sex life?

Sexual pleasure is about freedom, expansion and surrendering control. Ultimately it is about moving beyond the control of the mind into the freedom of just being. When it’s not happening for us in sex we can get into the habit of overcontrolling in bed ie. micromanaging our experience. You know, where we’re trying to make it happen by taking long enough, getting rid of our thoughts, holding our body in the right way, getting our lovers to do A-Z in the right order for the right length of time in the right way…we can have a whole ritual of what needs to happen before we think we can go there. The trouble is all of this puts us in the opposite place to where pleasure happens- in our analytical minds judging what is or is not happening. What we’re looking for doesn’t live there. Controlling our lover in this way doesn’t allow them to connect with their own place of freedom either, further limiting the potential of your sexual space.

How to find our freedom from overcontrolling in bed:

Drop using any techniques that are about cranking your pleasure up for the moment.
Go underneath your desire to control and be willing to just feel what is there instead.
Feel what is there without judgment because this allows you to shift out of control.
Give yourself permission to be sexual. As silly as it sounds it works. We can have a whole lot of shame that keeps our body numb to pleasure and saying YES to this part of ourselves helps us burn it away. Keep saying “I give myself permission to be sexual and love it” until you feel a shift in your body.
You might just feel resistance at first, if you do this is a good thing because it means you’re in the right place. Keep going.
Let yourself feel desire in you, drop needing it to be about your lover. Bring it home to yourself as this is where your power lives.

Have a play with what will help you give yourself permission outside the bedroom as well.

Spend a little time naked at home.
Dance to some highly sexual music until you can embody it in yourself.
Buy a very erotic outfit and wear it in front of your mirror until you can feel yourself embodying inside you what it represents.
Take some risks: try some simple flirting with your lover (or someone else), make eyes at your lover, say sexy things, expose parts of your body for a moment, feel what is happening for you inside yourself as you do so and let it move through you.
Self pleasure in front of a mirror and acknowledge this part of yourself.
Gain control in a healthy way by consciously playing with your breath- short and fast, long and slow, all combinations.
If you want to be in control in sex set it up with your lover and get their permission to do it consciously, playing with your power can help free up where your power lies in shadow.

If you’re a soft, heart open, “spiritual” person and this sounds completely inappropriate or the opposite to what you’re looking for in our experience it isn’t. Sex has a very powerful shadow and to be fully in your heart and expanded into your higher self you need to learn to deal with it. And dealing with it in a healthy way is seeing and owning it. There is also a lot of energy in our sexuality, it’s our life force energy, so the more we consciously access it the more we have to transmute into love and light.

And having a good time whilst you’re doing it!

If you would like to find out more about finding freedom and greater pleasure in the bedroom email or call us on 1800 TANTRA

The No.1 Tip to Keep Your Woman Wanting You

February 21, 2017 By Annette & Graeme 4 Comments

Keep your woman wanting you by touching her.

Your woman needs to be touched.

Something that often stands out for us is the way guys are missing one of the most basic rules in lovemaking.

Well, it’s more than a rule really, it’s a necessity!

What is even more surprising is that sometimes women don’t know this rule either…

Women need to be touched everywhere else before their genitals for them to work fully!

This is especially true in relationship sex- what we call sex for the long run. Any woman’s body that is not touched in lovemaking will sooner or later completely shut down, leaving her lover scratching his head wondering what happened.

This leaves him sadly buying into the belief, likely to be endorsed by his mates that a loss of interest in sex is “normal” in a woman. It is not.

A woman’s body is made to be touched, it’s not only luscious to look at its yearning to be fully appreciated.

Her body, not just Female sexuality more than just lingerie her vagina, needs to be penetrated with attention.

Anything else leaves her uninterested in sex and sometimes uninterested in her partner. It will also leave her more over emotional, critical even bitter; or cold, withdrawn and unapproachable.

A lack of touch makes her more interested in being with her kids where some of these needs for physical and emotional (not sexual) intimacy get met.

The interesting thing is that these people aren’t lacking in intelligence.

They’re smart, caring, creative and competent so it’s not that they aren’t capable of touching it’s just that they literally don’t know the importance.

And they’re not alone.

Why DON’T men touch?

Of course many men do touch, we’re looking here at the ones who don’t yet.

Survival of the species

A guy’s primal drive in sex, as it is in his life, is to produce.

To get to his goal as fast and as efficiently as possible. His primal urge to “get there” can override everything else in his pathway, leading him to ignore anything he perceives as distracting along the way.

And at its most basic level a woman’s pleasure, or anything beyond the perceived openness of her vagina, is not required for man to achieve his primal objective.

This is not an excuse but it is part of the reason behind a guy’s blindness in bed.

We’ve moved on from sex being merely about the survival of the species.

We’re now capable of sustained physical pleasure, emotional closeness and intimacy in sex, closeness and intimacy that men, given the opportunity, will admit they crave as much as women.

They just don’t know how to go about it, and the complexity of a woman’s body can be overwhelming.

Part of it is that men lack the quality information that can teach them.

Nowhere to learn from

Men have little opportunity to learn from others in their environment.

Open, honest conversations about sex and how it happens are as rare as hen’s teeth and mostly what we hear is disinformation about sex that perpetuates the stereotypes we labour under.

It’s one of the things we most love about our work- making these kinds of conversations possible.

Of course, pornography is the master of disinformation about sex- about truly satisfying sex at least.

Porn is great for titillation and getting us to the end point but terrible at showing us how to make the most of the bit in between.

Porn shows men penetrating women increasingly without any kind of touching beforehand and mistakenly portrays the women screaming in pleasure from the mere act of having a cock inside her.

Porn is teaching women too that she doesn’t need to be touched. A woman’s body doesn’t work that way.

Except on the occasions she is really hot with all systems firing and there’s usually reasons behind this other than just the immanent sex.

Cultural conditioning

Men grow up in the bullshit culture of how men should be big, strong and tough, not sensitive or ‘girly’, primed for fighting rather than loving, leaving them numb in their bodies and less sensitive to touch than they’re capable of.

Believe us guys, the more sensitive you become (without losing yourself) the more powerfully masculine you become where it counts- in the lingam (cock) and in the heart.

Men often grow up in an environment where touching, even non sexual touching wasn’t a normal part of daily life for them.

Such as hanging out on the couch together, having hugs, being held when they’re sad or even being kissed goodnight at bedtime.

It can be true for women as well. This kind of touch may even have been shamed.

Growing up with a lack of touch makes it difficult to know what it feels like and what its benefits are.

Performance based touch

When men do take the time to become good at touching a woman they’re unfortunately taught to “turn her on”.

As Leonard Cohen so powerfully sang “I didn’t know how to feel so I learned how to touch”.

A man can even believe he knows how to touch so well that his woman ‘should’ like it, no matter what.

This external touch can leave a woman feeling pressured to perform in order to validate his skill and feeling manipulated rather than fulfilled no matter how pleasure she has.

It limits the connection possible in truly intimate lovemaking.

Men also carry shame about their sexual needs and often have anger towards women who as they see it, don’t provide for their needs.

This leaves them resentful about having to “give” touch in return.

Men haven’t been taught how to take responsibility for their own sexual needs and having unsatisfying sexual relationships makes this worse.

Not knowing what is possible

And finally it’s just that most people don’t know what is possible in sex, beyond having a “genital sneeze” type orgasm.

In the rush for the mechanics the intimacy in sex is lost. In relationship sex in the absence of intimacy much of the pleasure is lost.

And why do women accept it?

A woman is primally driven to open and receive in sex.

This leaves her without a voice to ask for what it is that she needs for her own arousal and continues to happen despite the growth in women’s liberation elsewhere in life.

It leaves her lover in the dark operating on instinct leaving her to just “go along” and hope that it’s over soon.

Woman’s strength has been in her capacity to endure rather than her ability to speak up.

She knows intuitively there is more but she is at a loss in how to create it, and with today’s orgasm performance based sex so much the norm she can even doubt her instincts.

So how DO you touch a woman in sex?

Begin getting into your own body first so she can feel you.

By touching her outside the bedroom to help her get into her feeling body too- not groping, just relaxed touch without an agenda.

Then by asking her.

Ask questions to make sure you understand her fully.

Dropping any expectations of a result, just enjoy each moment.

Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback as you touch her, not from a place of insecurity but from caring- would you like it slower/faster/softer/firmer/to the right/left etc.

And keep asking. She will love you for it.

If she really doesn’t know, start with kissing her a lot.

Then follow the basic idea of imagining she has a bikini on and touching her everywhere else but under her bikini.

Particularly the back of her neck, her head and her hair, her breasts (all of them not just her nipples), over her heart, her lower back, buttocks and inner thighs. For more see Tantric Touch

Once you arrive at her genitals (or yoni as we like to call it which means sacred space) take the same approach- touch from the outside in- pubic mound, outer labia, perineum, inner labia, clitoris, entrance to her vagina, gspot and aspots (at cervix).

If she’s liking it do more of it, at the same speed or keep coming back to it.