Emotional Libido

Emotional infidelity can be as devastating as sexual infidelity to a relationship.

When our heart is not in it fully, but only partially ... any intimate relationship we are in will be compromised. 

We have all met those couples that parallel live.  Like the parallel sleepers that support a train track, they go through the motions and in the same direction every day, but never connect or dovetail into each other's journey, companions without connection.  These relationships become dull and boring when there is no intimacy, no passion and no fun.  Infidelities either emotional or physical are more often than not a byproduct.

To put all your eggs in one basket so to speak, that is to honestly share head (your thoughts), heart (your feelings) and body (your physical actions) with a trusted other, is the only way we can be fully known for who we are.

Way too often when I am working with couples trying to heal wounds inflicted by infidelities, both parties will need to review head, heart and body communication skills.   A sexual infidelity usually occurs with one person and the emotional infidelity by the other.  What comes first, the chicken or the egg? One doesn't exist without the other I have found.

The heart is where our passion is expressed and we all know that home is where the heart is.  However if we don't feel safe to really show the whole of our heart, our fears, past wounds and fragilities along with our twinkling love, triumphs and strengths we will never be truly known as a whole person.  It will feel like something is missing in the relationship, that's because it is.  We become strangers, parallel travelers always looking outside the relationship for heart stimulus, connection and joy.  We won't feel "at home" with our significant other.

Physical and emotional infidelities erode trust.  Without trust quality intimate relationships don't survive. 

How do I know?  

I have been married twice before and I put my hand up here and now, for being the party in both previous marriages who was emotionally unfaithful to both men.  My head and body were there, but my heart, not fully.  Not because I didn't love them or for lack of trying.  I was just too afraid and too wounded.   This is not an excuse for my behaviour, just an explanation.  It is what it is, and for that I am responsible.  What we go responsible for, we can choose to change.

I grew up in a tribe where there were many sexual infidelities and witnessed the devastation first hand that resulted.  So in my self righteous and naïve youth I decided I would never be party to that as an adult.  I have kept that promise to myself for over the years I refused to ever sleep knowingly with a married man, and whilst married I was never sexually unfaithful. 

But I was emotionally a bit slutty I must admit.  In my first marriage my hearts secret lover was booze and drugs.  I loved them more than my husband.  You guessed it, I am a recovering addict.

In my second marriage I shared my hearts most intimate moments with my therapist and female friends.  My second husband, I left him out, only giving him snippets, and he asked for no more.

I am reminded of the heroin addicts I have helped in recovery who saw firsthand the devastation of addiction via alcoholism in their families, like I saw the devastation of sexual infidelity.   The heroin addicts, like me so easily become self righteous and decide they will never abuse alcohol like the elders around them did.  They would be better than that. 

What do they say?  The apple never falls very far from the tree? 

I found the research statistics amazing when I was on the board of The Queensland Intravenous Aids Association that 92% of the injecting users we were supporting in their recovery had alcoholic parents.  Most wouldn't touch booze, not wanting to be like their parents, heroin was different in their minds.

I wasn't going to be sexually unfaithful like the heroin addict doesnt want to be an alcoholic.  But emotionally straying, well that was different and wasn't as damaging, well so I once thought.

Addiction is addiction and infidelity is infidelity. 

I often say to my clients in rehabs when the heroin addicts feel they are more of a pure addict, more elite than the alcoholics sitting next to them.

"We are no different to a room full of people at a weight loss clinic; it doesn't matter if it is cheesecake or chocolate that got you here addiction is addiction.  Recreational users don't end up here."

Regardless of whether it is emotional or physical, infidelity is infidelity it damages trust, privacy and long term intimacy.  When we share our sacred selves either with our body sexually or our heart emotionally with another outside of our intimate relationship and keep secrets from our lover about what we talk about, and hide what we truly feel, we are deceiving them.   Trust, sacred safety and privacy are damaged.

As we all have our own sexual rhythm or appetite, our heart too has its own drive to dance and express itself.  At different stages throughout the decades our sexual and emotional libido changes pace.  The older we get the more we tend to look for more quality connections sexually and emotionally as quantity without quality does become boring over time.  Yeah, yeah, been there done that!

In a respectful intimate sexual relationship the lovers ebb and flow with each other's libido and find a pace that suits both.  This takes brave and honest communication, patience and commitment for both parties to learn how to dovetail sexually in harmony.  For head, heart and body to work in unison for both people, this can at times be work.  Once you get the dance steps down though, it becomes fun and so enjoyable.

In a respectful intimate emotional relationship the lovers ebb and flow with each other's heart libido and find a communication pace that suits both.  This too takes brave and honest communication, patience and commitment from both parties and can be awkward and scary in the beginning.  Once both parties have found their unique rhythm that suits their needs as a couple the warmth and safety that emotional fidelity offers is like finding precious treasure.  We feel like we have come home and feel so rich, so blessed, so abundantly fortunate.  This is our birthright, to feel deep trust, safety and support no matter how wonderful or difficult we are with our lover.

It takes a lot of work and courage to let one person fully know us.  It's a lifetime job not for the fainthearted.  You need to firstly have your shit together.  I mean head, heart and body connection operational within yourself.  To be able to at least honestly admit to yourself in the mirror, who you are and who you are not and make peace with that is where we need to start.  If you keep disconnecting from yourself, you have no hope in maintaining head, heart and body connection with someone else.

What do I mean by disconnecting with self?  Bullshitting to yourself, kidding yourself that you care about yourself.   For example would you say to a child you loved; I love you and then overload them with booze or drugs?  You wouldn't punish them at the gym, deprive them of a healthy diet, work them 12 hours a day and expect them to enjoy your company would you?  For those who have been like me in the past that tell ourselves we are going to try harder and become better people its bullshit head talk if we dont follow up with action.  If later in the day when someone offers me instant gratification like champagne, a joint or cigarettes I then go back on my word to myself and betray myself, my head, heart and body relationship is fragmented.  The head says one thing; the heart listens but loses trusts for it then gets betrayed because the body does the complete opposite of what the head previously promised.

Emotional commitment to ourselves is where we start to learn about our hearts libido, our hearts dance of expression in other words.  Our heart too longs for its own type of orgasm which we call intimacy.  Those beautifully intimate moments when a lover looks into our eyes, holds our hands and kisses us tenderly on the lips pausing to savor the softness and privilege that only a lip kiss can offer.  Those times when our lover wants nothing more than to just be close, to smile and to heart connect.  This is giving good heart, it is intimacy.  It is sublime, sacred and privately delicious.  Heart connection cannot be rushed intimacy takes a willingness to invest in time, and if you don't have or make time, you won't know intimacy.

How do I know?

I mention in most of my articles how I have been a master in my past at conducting head and body connections only.  When it comes to emotional intimacy, or heart connections at age 33 now 16 years ago when my recovery journey began, I discovered I was still an emotional virgin.

I used to blame men for not getting me, the reason they didn't get me is because I didn't show all of my heart to them.  I never fully emotionally undressed for them,  so how could they?

I used females as emotional lovers. Men as sexual partners giving them only snippets of my heart perhaps an eighth.  My therapist got perhaps two eights and my trusted female confidants got the bulk that was left.

No wonder my two previous marriages never worked.

It took a bold and brave therapist to point my past emotional infidelities out to me for it was an emotional blind spot. I honestly didn't realize I was doing it.

When clients ask me these days how to build more intimacy in their relationship there are a couple of tips I like to share as daily exercises I still use to keep myself emotionally fit. 

I remind them that those who report abundant levels of intimacy don't always have to have heaps of sex.  Their sexual connections happen when they happen naturally and they are comfortable with that ebb and flow.  The common contributors to robust intimacy are regular hand holding, smiling eye connections, and tender lip kisses.  These are the basic ingredients required to maintain daily intimacy.

If I find desire more intimacy with my hubby Mr. Delicious, I remember to check in with myself first and ask myself

"How am I loving?"  

It always starts with my relationship with myself.  I remember the actual word intimacy does not have the letter U in it, so if I want more intimacy I have to look at what I need to do, am I cherishing loving and adoring?  When I am, intimacy magically flows.  When I'm not it doesn't.  It's not rocket science.

It helps to also remember that intimacy is built through heart connection and the hearts primary connectors are found in our common senses. 

Sight, smell, taste, touch and sound.  Some suggestions to create intimacy:

1. Be aware to smile when your lover looks at you.
2. Try and smell delicious most of the time.  
3. Linger and ensure you taste and savor their kiss.  
4. Hold their hand often
5. Speak gentle words of love.

When an intimate relationship is free of abuse and oppression, it can be the place where we share our deepest secrets and stand the most exposed; a place where we learn to feel special without being better and learn to compromise without losing ourselves.

I would like to leave you with these Word Vitamins from a beautiful poet Octavio Paz, and thank you for sharing this time with me.  Until next month ...

"Love is an attempt at penetrating another being, but it can only succeed if the surrender is mutual."