Rekindling Intimacy: A Couple's Guide to Sexual Healing and Connection
Do you and your spouse feel distant, frustrated, and insecure? Does one of you feel neglected, rejected, and unloved while the other feels pressured and unsafe? When you do not feel emotionally safe with your spouse, this might lead to difficulties in your sexual relationship and cycles of sexual disconnection because our emotional and sexual cycles overlap in our romantic relationships.
Emotionally focused couples therapy can help you heal your emotional cycle and recover from the negative sexual cycle in your relationship.
What are the Emotional and Sexual Cycles in a Relationship?
How do you feel when things between you and your partner aren’t going well? Do you feel hurt, rejected, unimportant, and lonely? Maybe your partner’s comments and behaviour make you feel inadequate, let down, worried, and hopeless. How do you communicate these feelings to your partner? How do you show your hurt and discontent in moments of disconnection? Do you show it at all? Do you become angry, yell, criticize, blame, analyse, or get defensive? Or do you shut your partner out, turn inside, refuse to talk, or physically leave the room?
There are two ways we typically behave in our relationships: as pursuers or withdrawers. In moments of disconnection, when they feel unsafe, the withdrawers usually shut down and distance themselves by refusing to talk, changing the subject, or trying to minimize their concerns. On the other hand, the pursuers express their frustration in angry ways. They may become aggressive, demand answers, and be critical.
This emotional cycle, or the patterns of connection and disconnection between you and your partner, tends to repeat itself whenever you feel emotionally disconnected and unsafe in your relationship. The emotional cycle is driven by your deep-seated needs, fears, past wounds, and responses to each other’s behaviour. However, the emotional and sexual cycles in relationships are interconnected and impact each other significantly. The level of your emotional closeness, intimacy, and security influences the quality, quantity, and satisfaction of your sexual interactions. When both partners’ emotional needs are met, partners feel connected, making their sexual cycle positive and fulfilling. On the other side, emotional disconnection usually leads to a negative sexual cycle manifesting as mismatched sexual desires or libidos, reduced or non-existent intimacy, or conflicts around sexual preferences and activities. This usually results in both partners feeling hurt, hopeless, and unsafe.
For instance, if your partner is often busy with childcare, chores, and work and doesn’t express affection regularly, this can cause you to feel unappreciated or neglected in your relationship, creating a barrier to your sexual closeness as well.
The Pursuer-Withdrawer Dance
The negative sexual cycle often begins when partners start feeling unsafe and create layers of protection toward each other, which eventually creates emotional distance and disconnection, leading to a negative cycle. As we mentioned earlier, underlying emotions and unmet needs are at the core of the negative sexual cycle. The pursuer seeks intimacy more aggressively because of the layers of frustration and resentment that build up with each excuse from their partner for not wanting sex. Every rejection sends them the message that they are not good enough, not wanted, or that something is wrong with them.
Suppose you are the partner who typically initiates the intimacy and feels rejected when your longings are not reciprocated. In that case, you might start feeling abandoned and inadequate, saying things to yourself such as, “I must not be attractive enough.” “There’s something wrong with me.” “I’m too needy.” “I must be doing something wrong,” etc. This sense of emotional disconnection may urge you to pursue sex more aggressively, constantly feeling unloved and rejected.
On the other hand, if you’re a partner who feels overwhelmed by sexual intimacy, you may blame yourself, believing that your low libido and a lack of sexual desire are abnormal, saying things to yourself such as, “I am letting my partner down.” “I’m frigid," “There’s something wrong with my body,” etc. Your partner’s aggressive pursuit of intimacy can cause you to feel pressured and unsafe about being sexually intimate.
In addition, self-critical thoughts might diminish both partners’ self-esteem and exacerbate the negative sexual cycle. The more one partner pursues, the more the other might withdraw, and vice versa, reinforcing the negative sexual cycle. So, sex becomes a source of uneasiness, frustration, and conflicts in your relationship.
How Couples Counselling Can Help Recover from the Negative Sexual Cycle
Emotionally focused couples therapy can help break this cycle. Our team of emotionally focused couples therapists can help you understand and address the underlying needs and emotions at the heart of your negative sexual cycle.
Through therapy, you can learn to communicate your needs and emotions in a way that makes you both feel seen, heard, and valued. Emotionally focused couples therapy can help you understand that the pursuer initiates sex because they might need reassurance that they are loved and desired. At the same time, the withdrawer might need to feel connected and safe emotionally before they want to engage in sexual intimacy. So, in therapy, you will understand that while you need physical intimacy to feel loved and accepted, your partner might need an emotional connection to feel sexually open, and vice versa.
Emotionally focused couples therapy can help both pursuers and withdrawers understand that different sexual needs and responses are normal and can be addressed through open communication and self-exploration.
Emotionally focused couples therapy aims to help couples understand and de-escalate their negative emotional and sexual cycles so that they can create a more secure and emotionally connected bond, which in turn can improve their sexual intimacy.
How Williamson & Associates Counselling in Alberta Offering Couples Counselling in Alberta Can Help Heal Trauma for a Great Sex Life
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy in Olds, Alberta and virtually across Alberta can help you feel connected in your marriage and relationship!
All of our couples counsellors are trained in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. Reach out today to book your free phone consultation here!