Personal responsibility includes turning yourself on
Emma K. Viglucci, Relationship Therapist (She/Her)
Founder of MetroRelationship.com
We are responsible for absolutely everything in our life… When people struggle, they are quick to find the reasons and explanations for why things are not going as they would like. They usually end up pointing the finger at some external factor for why things are as they are…
What if they were to look at their situation instead as a growth opportunity, as an indicator of needed change, as a place for course correction? We are responsible for all our outcomes and all our experiences, what we do with them and about them… This applies also to our libido, desire, sexuality, and sex life. Personal responsibility includes turning yourself on…
I hope you didn’t do a double take when you read that, but it’s ok if you did. This is such a foreign concept for most people as we are accustomed to looking to our partner, or another person, for satisfying our sexual needs and preferences.
Yes, I get that being sexually intimate requires another person. But the sexual activity that might come from engaging with another person is actually the last gear of the physical intimacy cycle ... And, there is the whole thing that happens before the gears even get going…?
See, partners usually treat physical intimacy as the act of being sexual with each other, which makes sense. But I’d like us to stretch way beyond this definition to generate passionate energy in our relationship that leads to physical intimacy…
Once partners become committed, their attention turns to focus on other activities, responsibilities and concerns in their relationship and their life that mute and subdue the sexual energy between the partners… These become the culprits to low intimacy and the low desire and lack of intimacy pandemic …
The key here is to make a commitment to creating an Epic Love Affair with our partner. Because then we keep the eye on the price… Becoming committed to each other is the beginning of the relationship. Dating partners look at it as the goal, moving on to other pursuits once the conquest is made.
When we commit to creating the Best Relationship in all its aspects, we can create a map for making it happen that can keep us focused on our desired outcome in our Journey.
Foreplay Before Foreplay?
I hear often enough that intimacy between partners might feel like a duty. It feels like something that needs to be done and so the partners make sure they hit some unspoken quota to keep this going.
Some couples’ quota is a lot more frequent than others, but for the most part when partners operate this way the quota is not that frequent… And when they get down to it, it might feel contrived, mechanical, and just something that needs to be done. Partners lost the drive, the magnetism, the passion…
Low desire and low intimacy do not have to be issues in your relationship as you can be preventative against them, but they can also be reversed if they have already manifested.
The word foreplay has gotten a bad rap as women in heterosexual relationships use it to tell their partner their approach is not acceptable. They request foreplay from their partner as a prerequisite to further intimate engagement. This puts the pressure on their partner to “turn on” and “get the woman ready” for the next phase of the physical intimacy. Why is this the guys’ responsibility?
Note, in other gendered couples the same dynamics might playout regardless of the partners’ gender, gender identity and sexual orientation. The focus here is not on the gender per se or on the physiology, but on everything else that comes along from being who they are and in the relationship they are in with each other.??
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Feeling our libido and desire happen before we even get to a physical intimate moment with our partner. Therefore, we have to get ready for foreplay!
Getting Ready for Foreplay
The foreplay before foreplay is how we choose to be, show up and do our life and ourselves… This is what creates energy, vitality, radiance and sparkle. This is what makes us attractive regardless of our outward beauty. This is where the chemistry between partners happens. This is what is alluring and inviting about us.
Most people are doing their lives through the grind. They are forever exhausted, run down or not feeling well, too preoccupied, and muted because all they do is the minutiae of life and put out fires. There is no vibrant energy or aliveness here. This is not attractive, inviting or seductive. If we are going through our lives with this blah energy, not for nothing this translates into blahness in the bedroom…
Our focus is then to:
This way of doing our life ensures that we don’t squander our energy, mute ourselves, and atrophy our sexuality which would leave us wondering how come we have low libido, little desire and might feel unattractive or unattracted to our partner… When we are Alive these things don’t happen!
We get out of our relationship what we put into it…
It is our responsibility to create the relationship we desire. We have to address our side and work our side, we have to mind and cultivate our own energy. When we start generating new energy, magical things start to happen. When one part of the system changes, the whole system changes- when you change, others will change in response to you for you will be inviting different stuff from them…
The trick is to take full personal responsibility and not wait for the other to do something or change…
Playing full out in our life makes us feel alive, full of energy, sparkly and turned on... This is the foreplay before foreplay…
When we’ve had our own foreplay before we interact with our partner, now we are ready to fully be with our partner. The joint foreplay is to derive more pleasure and truly enjoy being with each other. It is not a necessity to get the gears moving… This different level of engagement makes for more passionate encounters and a more passionate relationship.?
Watch the video on how to infuse radiance and sparkle into the interactions with our partner seducing them into our Epic Love Affair… and complete the Application exercise ON THE BLOG .
Download the Relationship Verbs List and allow the new to emerge!
Enjoy!