Do you recognize this…?

When you first meet, everything happens naturally when making love.
The spark, the right scent, the right touch…
But after a while, this changes.

We still like each other very much, but intimacy becomes boring, we repeat, one doesn’t touch properly, the other closes down.
Suddenly, it feels like a task to be intimate with your partner.
Our rose-colored glasses make way for a mirror, and if you don’t look into this mirror, intimacy often fades, until it dies, until we look for someone else, or make jokes that being married means being sex-less.

This is a pity ofcourse.
Cause how wonderful is it to touch, to be touched, to feel, to flirt, to make love?
How can you keep this alive in a positive way?

The world of intimacy as we know it is often based on performance; we have to perform, and the reward is an orgasm.
The pressure on the man is to satisfy the woman as often as possible, and the pressure on the woman is to be beautiful and shiny (for convenience I’m only referring to men/women, but there’s also performance pressure in gay couples of course).
What an incredible amount of pressure!

We’ve also learned to suppress uncomfortable feelings like shame, guilt, fear, and insecurity.
We don’t want to feel these, and also in connection with others, we often push them away.
“I’d better not say this or I’ll spoil the moment,” I often hear.
My response to that is: if you’re thinking that, the moment is already gone. You can no longer truly be present in what you’re doing.
And this is exactly what gets in the way of the flow of intimacy and connection if we don’t do something about it.

True connection arises when we let go of our protective layer and dare to be vulnerable and open with each other.
Vulnerable and open about how we really feel inside.
Your insecurity, your desires, your fears, your discomforts.
True connection happens when everything in us can participate.
Then you can experiment, discover, and explore.
Then you don’t have to get it perfect and can figure out together how it feels right.
Then you can feel more and more and just be with everything that arises in the moment.
Then you can play together without a goal, not focused on an expectation or an end result.
Then the flow of sexual and loving energy between you can start to flow again.