It is common for couples to be opposites also in their sexual styles! Like it’s not enough for the partners to be opposite in everything else… As we know opposites attract and this is one of the reasons partners appear to be so different from each other… This is not a bad thing, there are actually a host of benefits in being so different (opposite) from our partner… Though this might make couples feel they are not compatible, compatibility has nothing to do with the things the partners like to do… Real comparability goes way beyond that. Having different interests and liking different things is just something to manage, and this includes different sexual styles…
Sexual styles influence the partners’ expectations about their sex life, are the drivers behind their sexuality, and are a part of the filter for their sexual experience.
When the partners don’t identify their sexual styles and don’t intentionally work with them, they find themselves in a misalignment and out of sync. This fuels what we already know areculprits to low intimacy… Leaving the partners further struggling for joint pleasure, connection, and love…
But as with everything relationship, this doesn’t have to break your relationship… There is a way to get on the same page and create a mutually satisfying and terrific sex life with your partner regardless of your differences, and other intimacy concerns…
In today’s podcast episode I’m excited to have a very informative and reassuring conversation with Deborah Fox, Sex Therapist, about how conditioning and other factors affect libido and desire, how partners are usually also opposite in sexuality styles and what to do about it, reasons for difficulties with female orgasms and male erectile dysfunction and how to address them, the truth about sexual satisfaction when couples have been together a long time and in older couples, and how to maintain a healthy sexual relationship to ensure a mutually satisfying sex life… This is an episode not to be missed!
PSS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2024 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
It is very easy to neglect our relationship and our partner, if we are not intentional about showing love, giving care, and investing in all the enriching ways… We live in a world where work is the priority… We spend more time working than we do taking care of our personal life and sharing time with our loved ones… The grind and the rat race are still very much alive. I had hoped that the pandemic would have made a larger impact in this regard. But old habits, social constructs and a deeply ingrained systems will obviously require a more sustained, compassionate, and cooperative approach to change… In the meantime, it is up to us to safeguard our bond and our relationship from the onslaught of life’s demands…
It is up to us to make a concerted effort, investment, in prioritizing our partner and our relationship. When we are not intentional the tentacles of chaos and other demands have free reign to reach into every crevice with an ounce of energy and snatch it up… Because of our programming and because of the world we live in, we allow this to happen. Other things appear more important in the moment to moment, until we are zapped and have nothing else to give.
But making a conscious and intentional decision to set up our routines, days, weeks, and months in a ways that build in the space, the time, the energy conservation, and mechanisms for having time for each other, for being resourced, for being present and available, and for being conscious and attuned, allows us to really be in relationship and enjoy our connection.
Going about our life and our relationship this way, allows for the Us to not only survive, but also thrive… It allows us to focus on what is important and to have the time and the energy for it. And, most importantly, it doesn’t allow for the rest of life to get in the way and wreak havoc.
When we do this reset and Alignment, we tap into the synergy inherent in our relationshipand are then better able to utilize it as the Life Partnership it is meant to be. It is our rock, our haven, our source of joy and so much more. It elevates it to its rightful place from which we can draw what we need to have our amazing life adventure and best Human Experience…
Embracing this relationship enrichment mindset and approach ensures our love is protected, nurtured, expanded, and everlasting… This is the abundance available to us if we just tune in and choose our partner everyday…
Being aware of how our current reality sets us up for the grind and disconnect, and how our systems reinforce separateness, competition, and lack, allows us to make different choices than if we blindly go along. And being proactive about collaborating in not allowing the machine to win, while being compassionate to those still under its spell, makes for an easier transition into more harmonious and joyful living.
Together we can conquer all…
In today’s episode, I have an enlightening and informative conversation with Dr. Jeffrey Dunne about the concept of interconnectedness, unity consciousness, and implications for a more harmonious and loving relationship and a more sustainable future…
PSS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2024 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
It is not uncommon for relationships to experience an intimacy or sex drought. Where the partners are just not being as intimate as they would normally prefer. There is usually one partner that expresses less interest, but it can happen where both are just not into it. The partners might have different reasons for the lack of desire and interest. And they most likely have different libidos, desire levels, and preferences for timing, frequency, and duration of their physically intimate moments as well as what they entail… In other words, what kind of sex they like to have. It is a wonder that we even make babies, but that’s a different topic…
There is much intricacy in each of these factors making each couple unique in their experience and what kind of relationship they create. And even within the couple, the partners have very different experiences and ideas from each other about what is going on… Not for nothing this is a very sensitive, delicate, and complex situation for partners to address and be able to change.
The uniqueness of each partner in-and-of-itself plays a significant role. Two unique individuals coming together to create a joint life is no easy feat. All the differences that made the match of the partners so special in the first place now make an elaborate undertaking to align and synchronize for optimal bliss within the relationship…
The richness and gloriousness of what is a couple, and a relationship, gets lost on most people. There is so much going on that meets the eyes, and even more underneath it all.
Couples are super special. They are the coming together of two people to create a greater whole, a much larger One. This whole, the relationship is the vehicle through which we navigate and live our life. It is imperative that we take care of it so we can have a wonderful Journey…
What does this mean for our connection, intimacy, and sex life?
~ This means that we can’t allow ourselves to get sucked into our negativity bias, into our limiting believes and scripts, into righteousness, into poor communication hygiene and habits, into our reactions and defensive patterns, into complacency and denial, into competition, comparison and tit-for-tat. That we are mindful and intentional about how we do ourselves- who we choose to be and how we choose to show up.
Partners are on the same team! They are allies. Yet they might fall prey to seeing and treating each other as the enemy. This just compounds the difficulties and disconnect they might be experiencing…
~ This means that we choose to address anything that is getting in the way from our most epic relationship and love affair with our partner. That we choose to get medical attention and other services for anything physical or emotional affecting our health, wellbeing, and everything else.
~ This means that we address the circumstances affecting our relationship, our connection, our intimacy, our libido and our passion.
~ This means that we address any relationship issues or concerns, anything we are fighting about or that gets us, any egoic patterns, any relationship patterns, and anything that keeps us from getting along, getting on the same page, connecting deeply and meaningfully, from having the best sex, from really having fun with our partner, from creating the strongest partnership…
~ This means that we give some serious, and some playful, thoughts to our purpose, the meaning of our life, the kind of life we want to live, the type of human we want to be, the kind of legacy we want to impart, the kind of relationship we want to be a part of to help us sort through all this and enjoy the process…
I offer to not get hang up in the weeds of what is going on with your intimacy… I offer to take a larger view of your situation and how everything interconnects… You might be surprised as to what comes up to tweak to help all the dominos fall into place… All the above becomes so much easier and a pleasure to mitigate, address, deconstruct, and even transcend…
PSS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2024 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Often I hear that it feels like all the stars need to line up for partners to be able to get to a physically intimate moment… There are many factors that impact our libido, our desire, and our ability to have a passionate relationship with our partner. Most believe it is impossible to have an epic love affair with our partner.
They believe in mature love and settling down into comfortable love. This is one of the reasons partners cheat- they still seek that passion… And where are they supposed to get it if they don’t think they can get it with their partner? But they can, you see! The secret is in what to do in between sexy times…
Having passion in your relationship is not about having passionate sex with your partner once in a blue moon, if your love making even gets that hot.
Having passion in your relationship is about having an epic love affair with your partner that is more than sex… It’s about being enthralled by your partner, it’s about getting the butterflies in your belly when they are near or when you think about them, it’s about wanting to be near them and touch them, and about wanting to please them and take care of them (not in a caretaking, codependent way, mind you).
And yes, having passion in your relationship is about wanting to be with them, to join with them, to derive pleasure from them and through them, to transcend and become one…
If this feels like a pipe dream because of what you believe about relationships and because of the current state of your relationship, don’t fret- please know it is possible, initially you just have to go on faith…
So how do we go from struggle to epic love affair when it might feel like an impossible trek?
1 ~~ First off, it takes commitment to stick with it through thick and thin, assuming you are within the range of a workable relationship, which most are! This is not a popular concept nowadays when relationships are disposable.
There are some exceptions that are contraindicated for staying in the toxic context. And of course, it is always your prerogative to not want to continue in your relationship, but don’t blame it on it not being workable… It’s OK for the relationship to have run its course for you. We are all in a Journey, and that includes the relationships we play with…
2 ~~ Then, it takes theright kind of investment in your relationship where you stop blaming your partner for everything that’s wrong and making yourself a saint. You are not. You contribute to your dynamics and cocreate whatever nonsense you might have going on. Sorry, don’t shoot the messenger.
I have seen time and again that when partners fully embrace owning their side of it, not from a martyr position but truly owning their side, that they create marvelous relationships. I have seen as well when partners struggle with this how detrimental it is for the relationship.
Don’t wait for your partner to own themselves first, or to respond in kind… It doesn’t matter what your partner is doing (within reason of course!) to fully own and work your side. Stop trying to prove how they are not doing their own work. All this is just keeping you stuck. Focus on your side, full stop.
I’ll even take this a step further and let you in on a little secret. Even if your partner doesn’t do anything, your work in and of itself is powerful enough to shift and transform your relationship… Just saying…
3 ~~ And finally, once your relationship is on more solid footing and becoming a radiant and successful relationship, then you are ready to step it up a notch in creating a more passionate relationship.
This has to do with playing more specifically with the Desire side of the Love-Desire Spectrum™, without foregoing the Love side… And it has to do with embracing Alluring Habits™. Behaviors and activities in your relationship that are sexy, erotic, inviting, enticing, seductive…
When you focus on Desire, more desire is easier to come by and available for play…
A radiant, successful relationship and meaningful life, and epic love affair with our partner, doesn’t just happen! We have to want this and invest in creating it.
Watch the video for what to do in between sexy times… Enjoy!
💐 Not a member? No worries, join us with a Lifestyle Membership. This Membership includes access to our private community, full access to our Member Center and previous content, and access to upcoming Masterclasses at no additional cost, all for only $29 per month.
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.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.
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:
Transcend the grind
Shift more from doing to being
Detach from the noise
Create more spaciousness
Pursue inspiring and engaging outlets
Embrace interests that integrate and expand the self (not the ego!)
Explore your likes and preferences
Seek different kinds of pleasure and joy
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.
Our radiance and sparkle infuse the interactions with our partner seducing them into our Epic Love Affair…
Watch the video on Foreplay Before Foreplay™… Enjoy!
APPLICATION: Decide that you will embrace becoming more sparkly and alive, and that you will take full personal responsibility for turning yourself on… In your Journal:
~ Explore how you currently do these in your life- -Transcend the grind -Shift more from doing to being -Detach from the noise -Create more spaciousness -Pursue inspiring and engaging outlets -Embrace interests that integrate and expand the self (not the ego!) -Explore your likes and preferences -Seek different kinds of pleasure and joy
~ Select one of the above to target with more attention to help you shift your energy…
~ Identify three activities, habits, and/or tactics that you’ll implement around your selected item to start generating more radiance, energy and vibrancy… And, integrate them into your lifestyle- add to your routine and calendar.
Bring your new swag to your relationship! Enjoy!
Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
PS: Masterclasses
💐 If you missed our recent Masterclasses, you can still get them through our Member Center:
~ A Self-Love Strategy for Creating Your Best Life – Designing and implementing your personalized self-love practice
~ Relationship Enrichment Mini Retreat – Reprogramming and shifting for connecting more deeply and creating the relationship you desire
~ Feeling Stuck and Spring Cleaning is NOT Cutting it – Deconstructing and reconstructing yourself to unleash the radiance within
They include gorgeous workbooks of transformational processes
💐 Not a member? No worries, join us with a Lifestyle Membership. This Membership includes access to our private community, full access to our Member Center and previous content, and access to upcoming Masterclasses at no additional cost, all for only $29 per month.
Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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