If you’re realizing your partner isn’t showing up with the capacity for the love or sex or vibrancy you want, deserve, and need…
If you have been asking for what you need and they maybe make some moves toward it, and then take steps backward and you find yourself asking, “Am I an idiot for staying when I’ve made it clear what I need and my partner doesn’t seem to be changing?”
If you long for a depth of love and sex that you wonder if your partner will EVER be capable of meeting you in…
This story is for you. And if what I share here makes you slam your hand on the table and shout “YES! Thank you! That is what I’ve been feeling and trying to express! You named it!” then this might be a good post to share with your partner.
This post is a deeply personal one for me and for Kurt. He gave me the green light to share our story from my perspective.
We are both on a mission to help other couples create the love and sex they really want and to grow into the capacity to have a vibrant, life-giving love even if we didn’t grow up learning how to create that.
He and I just work on this mission in different ways. He’s an introverted, intensely private person who has dismantled and released so much of his own cultural conditioning and personal trauma and blown past the models of masculinity, marriage, and fatherhood he grew up with.
He isn’t one to talk about himself, but I’m so grateful for his partnership in my own growth AND his vulnerability in letting me be transparent about our growth together AND his support and encouragement for my work.
With Kurt’s permission, I’m going to share
Why it’s so hard for many of us to create a really vibrant, fully loving and intimate relationship
Kurt’s and my story of leaning into our growth in our marriage so we could build a love like none we’d ever seen
What I know about how to know when to stay & dig into your own work and when to shift or end your relationship and do your growing outside the relationship
How I came to realize our marriage will never be everything I want it to be… and why that’s actually a good thing
I want you to feel seen and supported, to know with certainty that I really GET how painful relationship can be when it’s good in many ways and in other ways it’s unworkable.. So painful that you want to give up. I HAVE BEEN THERE, and spent years working through those challenges… and I’m grateful to be able to be GLAD to still be with my very human husband and to be able to help others who want to create outrageous love inside the imperfect relationship they already have.
Let’s dive in.
First: Why is it so hard to create a really vibrant, fully loving and intimate relationship?
Maybe it’s not hard for everybody. There are some people who look, from a distance, when you haven’t heard their story, like love is easy for them. And that may be the truth - that it really is easy.
Different souls have their deepest learning in different domains of life - for some it’s relationship - whether the biggest lessons come in intimate partnership or parenting or with one’s own parents or with friends or siblings….
For others, it’s in their work, or in their relationship to money, to abundance, to supply.
For still others, the hottest, most intense experiences have to do with being in a body, with health and wellness and energy or with performance and adventure and challenge.
So if it looks like someone else’s marriage is easy, it may be. Their deeper learning in life may come in other areas. AND, as I’ve learned from working with thousands of couples now, you can’t tell from the cover of the book what plot twists the story contains.
A couple might look loving and content from a distance but harbor pain, conflict, sexual challenges, or losses you can’t see. So it never serves us to compare our relationships to others, or to say “relationship is supposed to be easy, if you’re with the right person.” That’s just absolutely not supported by fact.
Ease in your relationship IS a worthwhile direction to work in with your partner, and even more so within yourself, but it’s not a quality by which to assess your relationship as if it were a house you were thinking of buying and “ease” could be measured in square feet.
This is part of the reason it’s so hard for some of us to CREATE a really vibrant, fully loving and intimate relationship - because we are carrying an EXPECTATION that we don’t have to CREATE it - that it is supposed to COME WITH the vibrancy, the loving feeling, the deep intimacy. With that expectation, we assume that when we’re not finding those features front and center, it means one of three things:
There’s something wrong with our partner or
There’s something wrong with us or
Maybe we’re each okay individually, but we SIMPLY DO NOT belong TOGETHER.
But if the relationship domain is a domain of tremendous spiritual, emotional, and mental growth in this life - and it almost certainly is if (a) you want a LOT in relationship and (b) you’re finding yourself dissatisfied with what you’re experiencing right now - then that means this is a D-I-Y adventure!
The aim of relationship, for people like us - for I’m one of you, too - who came here to learn love, to learn erotic synergy, to learn intimacy, is NOT the satisfaction and ease and yummy feeling we crave.
“What?! The aim is not to feel the way I want to feel in love & sex?”
No! The actual aim is the awakening we’ll need to experience in order to create those feelings. The feelings are the BAIT, the lure that draws us into the adventure that the Divine actually wants us to have here.
It’s crucial that we really get that: that the way we want to feel in love is worth going for - but that it’s NOT the marker of right relationship or wrong relationship, and it’s not even, frankly, the POINT, when it comes right down to it - it’s just the incentive. Once we’ve got that perspective, our ability to create the kind of relationship experience we really want to have is dramatically expanded. We have so much more power, because we can seek the CONSCIOUSNESS, rather than childishly demanding the PRIZES, the goodies, the ways we want our partner to make us feel.
When we recognize we came to this relationship not to feel good but to wake up - and that as we wake up in the relationship, we feel more and more the way we want to feel in it! - THEN we harness our power to create what we really want, and our love begins to feel easy and expansive and, honestly, quite magical.
So that’s the answer to the first question of why it can be so hard to create the kind of relationship we want. If it’s hard for you, it’s because this is your life’s work. If your partner is wonderful in many ways AND frustrates the SHIT out of you in other ways, you’re in the right place!
Second: Speaking of partners who are wonderful AND drive us bonkers, here’s how Kurt and I have leaned into our growth in our marriage so we could build a love like none we’d ever seen:
We’ve been together since 1997 and married since 2002. In that time, we’ve worked through a lifetime’s worth of issues. We came into this relationship looking like an adorable couple - he was an architecture student, I was a budding executive coach. We had globetrotting adventures and we met each other at night in our lucid dreams. My dad who’d died when I was 19 was a palpable presence, guiding Kurt as our relationship grew. And my dad who’s chosen to be my dad since I was 7, along with my mom and the rest of my family, absolutely adored him.
We had a gorgeous wedding celebration that lasted for several beautiful July days in Seattle, which was a faraway destination for many of our friends and family and clients.
We looked great from the outside, but our lifelong friends can tell you those early days were not all wine and roses. In fact, they contained a bit too much beer (him) and a few too many books and throw pillows and dinners out (me).
In the early years just before and after our wedding, we had to begin to confront our issues.
Kurt drank to deal with social anxiety and stress.
I spent more money than I had to try to feel like I was successful. I drowned my anger and my fear in ice cream and pastries.
We had differences in our temperaments that caused tremendous pain for us both. Kurt is a gregarious introvert. I’m an extrovert but so highly sensitive that I have a lot of introverted tendencies as well.
So many times, it seemed to me that we were just incompatible, that I could never be fully self-realized, truly fulfilled, or deeply content while connected to this man to the exclusion of others.
But whenever I prayed, “what do I do?” I heard a still small voice simply say, “STAY.” I would curse and cry in response. It felt so unfair, so not-what-I-wanted. But the message felt clear in my heart - this is HARD, but it’s worthwhile work.
So, work we did.
We went to tantra workshops to learn more about how to connect deeply with our bodies and hearts. But still, we would come closer and then retreat into a sexual stalemate that might last for weeks or months, leaving us less intimate than before. Then I’d eat my pain and hurt, and exacerbate a growing weight problem and numbness from myself.
We had intense arguments that left us both exhausted and emotionally hungover for days. I would fall apart emotionally when we’d fight. We’d both get so plugged in we wouldn’t place the normal, healthy limits on our own behavior that are crucial to not deteriorating the relationship. Then, battered emotionally, we’d both try to recover and patch things up enough to keep going.
We never wanted to not be together, but at the same time, being together was explosive and painful.
What helped me stay was that faith that at some level, a power greater than me or Kurt was at work. I felt deeply that on one level I had chosen him. And even though on that level I wanted to un-choose him, many a day, it was also infuriatingly clear to me he had been selected FOR me on a spiritual level.
He had been handpicked not just for my happiness, my contentment, my getting what I thought I wanted. He had been chosen for my growth, for my evolution, for my getting what I NEEDED. His eyes, his smile, his arms and hands, his laugh, his way of seeing the world, and all the other things I adore about him… Those are just the lure that hooked my personality so that I would come in close and get the medicine I needed through this relationship.
And on the days when those weren’t enough, when I was defiant and thought, “F this shit! I deserve so much better than this! It’s not supposed to be this much work!,” what helped me stay was the message that I heard back:
“You’re right. You do deserve better than what you’re experiencing with Kurt. You are meant for happiness, for pleasure, for intimacy and joy. And no, he’s not blameless here. He has growth and change to do…
“AND if you leave him, he will continue his work, and you will continue yours… But you’ll have to start over. You’ll go through that period of delusion again where you think you’ve chosen better this time. And then, a few years from now, since you cut your learning short… You’ll be back in this exact spot, a few years older, but faced with the truth: wherever YOU go, there YOU are.
“And the suffering you find in this relationship today, you will always find wherever you go, inside a relationship or outside of any relationship, because these seeds of suffering are uniquely yours. These stories and hurts are your samskaras to heal in this lifetime. These are the knots in your consciousness that you came to unravel.
“Stay. Untie them right here. He is a good man with whom to do this work. Feel free to start over, if you like, but know that your work will remain the same. “
My Source really knows how to pin me down. Pema Chodron writes about this sort of realization in The Wisdom of No Escape. The insight that I can escape my marriage but I will never escape my learning has helped me stay. And I’m so very glad it did.
That’s how we are able to stick it out together and dig deep.
And we have learned through time to pay more attention to the voice within that tells us what our relationship can become than we pay to the models we saw around us as kids or the marriages we see around us today. We do strive to cultivate friends and mentors who have what we want, but to a great extent, we’re having to build that vision and that community for ourselves, because we’ve already come so much farther than most people even aspire to.
In an era where many people are leaning in the direction of polyamorous relationships and others are divorcing to try their luck with a different monogamous partner, and most of those who stay married do so by settling into a ho-hum stalemate, often aided by alcohol, shopping, food, and recreational drugs or psychedelic experiences… We are devoted to making monogamy the hottest place on earth, and to making successive decades together deeper and sweeter and hotter even though we don’t see many other people building that kind of love through the years.
That’s how we lean into our growth, individually and together, day after day.
How do you know when to stay & dig into your own work and when to shift or end your relationship and do your growing outside the relationship?
I have to say - I know I sound very pro-marriage and very pro-monogamy. For myself personally, I am! This is where I sense right now I belong and am learning and growing phenomenally, if not always painlessly! But that’s not to say I’m dogmatic or think that staying is the right answer for everyone, or will always be right for me or Kurt. I want to share a few of the indicators that tell me when staying is a good idea and when leaving is a good idea:
WHEN TO STAY AND DO YOUR OWN WORK
Digging in and doing more healing, learning, and expansion yourself is a good idea when:
You really love a lot of things about your partner; you like them as a person and know them to be good and decent and someone whose qualities are worth learning from. Those are good signs that this is a person you can learn with and grow with. That holds true even if it seems that they’re NOT as into growing and learning as you are.
Your partner is open to change and growth - in their own way. I’m a coach. I read psychology and spirituality books FOR FUN. Growth is my JAM. If I were married to someone as growth-y as I am, they would probably drive me crazy! I’d like to THINK that someone who would get as excited as I do over a book or a workshop would be really great, but like everything, it would have its drawbacks, too.
My husband does a lot of personal growth work today, but he’ll never be “into it” to the extent I am. That is not a shortcoming on his part… It’s actually a blessing because he grounds me. He helps me keep perspective. He holds the corner of our picnic blanket that says “things are pretty good as they are. WE are pretty good as we are!” and that helps me find contentment. I hold the other corner that says “we can learn, expand, grow, discover, explore!” And that helps us both find adventure and unfoldment. It’s the tension between the two that creates the best relationship.
All of that to say - your partner, like mine, will NOT be into growth in the exact same way you are. And that’s good news! What tells me that someone is worth staying with is that they do, over time, tend to accept influence to some extent. They do tend to take on board feedback you give them - if you give it in a loving way and aren’t either domineering or passive-aggressive about it.
I used to give Kurt a LOT of feedback and a lot of what I thought were “requests” but that were pretty much impossible to respond constructively to, unless he’d been a complete bodhisattva himself. So when I’m looking with someone at this “should I stay or go?” question, I look at “do they make proactive moves when given actionable feedback or requests?”
We almost always have to back up from there and remodel the way you’re communicating to give your partner a fair opportunity to respond to something that’s constructive and congruent.
You’re highly reactive to your partner. You get intensely triggered by them. I put this in the “stay” category because you’re standing on sacred ground when you’re close to your triggers. THIS is where you have the potential to rewire your own reactivity. Hopping to a circumstance that’s less triggering just delays your next reaction; it isn’t really a positive change in your life. \
Learning to regulate yourself in the presence of your triggers? Becoming the person whose internal boundaries allow them to be in the presence of previously triggering material and NOT be as reactive? THAT is a positive change in your life and your spirit.
Kurt can trigger my loneliness like no other. He can trigger my rage. He can trigger my feelings of being unwanted, unseen, unheard…. And those are some of the greatest ways he blesses me.
Because all of that is to a huge extent MY PERCEPTION. It isn’t the reality of what’s happening. But if I’d left to find - in my words when I’m in a reactive state - “someone who wants me, can see me, can hear me, is more available for intimacy, is less punitive and withholding” I wouldn’t have found my own capacity to see and hear and hold myself, to dive under the tsunami of hurt and rage and find the deeper truth of myself and of Kurt and of our relationship that is always there.
WHEN TO LEAVE
Leaving is probably the more healing, expansive move, and the way to learn the most, when:
Your partner is not someone whose personal qualities are admirable, decent, or healthy for them or for you and others to be around. If you look at them, when you're in a perfectly grounded, calm, happy, loving space, and you can see with clear eyes, “Oh yeah, s/he's not a very good person,” then, if you have children, you don't necessarily want your kids to spend all their time with that person.
The challenging thing to keep in mind is that your kids are going to spend part of their time with their other parent without you around. I’ve learned from many divorced clients and friends how painful it can be to watch your children spend part of their lives with someone you don’t view as a great parent or an admirable person. It can be frightening to think that that person or the divorce or the dynamic between you will hurt your children, that they will be scarred by this experience. But each child has their own path as well. At some level they chose both their parents and every experience they have is FOR them, not happening TO them. It’s okay for them to have some difficult experiences.
My dad was a lovely person on some levels and kind of a child and other levels. The weekends I spent with him were full of fast food meals and his girlfriend of the week, but there are a lot of ways that kids can survive those experiences and even turn them into strength.
When you look at your partner and you don't have much love, admiration, or warmth for them, that may be because the love is already dead or wasn't ever there.
Your partner is on a negative trajectory in their life - physically, mentally, emotionally, and/or spiritually, and won’t reach for help to shift that trajectory. They're deteriorating, they won't take care of themselves. Maybe they don't ever talk to anyone but you about what really goes on for them. Maybe they drink or smoke pot most nights just to cope. Maybe you never go to bed together because they spend hours in front of one screen or another every night instead of connecting and then resting.
Or maybe they seem to have a kind of a death wish at some level that could look very socially acceptable, like overworking. They might look like a really great provider but there's something being hollowed out inside, or they're sinking into depression and they won't do anything about it.
That's the key with this point: That they won't reach for help to shift their trajectory. You can't complain to someone that they're depressed and demand that they get help and expect that to create good results. But there are ways to support someone who is losing themselves in their work, in mental health issues, in substance abuse or a process addiction. There are ways to be really clear within yourself about what you will and won't stick around for, what you will and won't support, and to ask them to change their trajectory.
We can't expect anyone to overcome something that is huge and debilitating overnight. I'm years into my own recovery journey and I'm far from healed totally on all levels, but my family can certainly see that I work on it every single day and I'm all here now. I'm not abusing food the way that I used to and it's crystal clear what trajectory I'm on.
You should be able to see - if your partner has one of those anchors that threaten to drag them to the bottom of the sea - that they are endeavoring to stay on a positive trajectory. If they can't, then you too will be dragged to the bottom of the sea by their continued self-destruction.
So please, reflect back on what you’ve read here and pull out the single most useful distinction, idea, or message for you, and go apply it in your own relationship. I’d love to hear what you’re taking away and what questions you have.
This blog post is adapted from Sex.Love.Power podcast episode 33, “How To Stay. When To Go.” To listen to this or other episodes, subscribe to Sex.Love.Power wherever you get your podcasts at podcast.lisenbury.com.