Uncover more passionate, meaningful sex

Sexuality is a powerful window into who we are.

Karen's personal development is starting to take off.

Ken decides it's time to speak up. "Can you do that with me see me through our sex practices?"

Sure. This may sound strange, but it's like sex hasn't really been personal for either one of you. Karen is lost in her fantasies, and you've had sexual desire out of hormonal drive. You've wanted to reduce your sexual tensions, but not necessarily because you crave her. You think the problem is that you're getting older, that the hormones are tapering off. But if you want to keep your sex alive, you have to grow up we all do. The solution involves shifting from desire out of horniness to desire for Karen wanting to share something with her. It's the shift from impersonal sex, like boys have, to having sex like a man.

Ken doesn't say much, but he's ready to hear more. "We can also understand your sexual pattern in another way. If you accept Karen's report at face value which I'm not telling you to do the fact that you can't tell when she's 'gone' during sex means either that she is a fantastic actress or you don't have much experience being close to the people you love. Like in your childhood family."

Ken stifles his surprise. "We loved each other," he says, not totally believing it, "but my family was sort of distant. We traded ideas, not hugs, and we didn't talk about feelings. I spent most of my time reading in my room." He pauses several seconds, silently redigesting his youth. When he returns from his solitary review, it's as if he's on a different track. "Karen wants to 'dress up' for sex even if it's just a necklace. She wants me to dress better, too. I've always been afraid to draw attention to myself, in bed or out. It's just not me. Do I have to?"

Suddenly it's clear I have more traction with Ken by staying in the present than talking about the past. "I can't answer that for you. It sounds like you want to maintain a low profile the same way you did growing up, even though you don't want to live now in that kind of house. You decide if you want to continue living that way."

I'm not as good at dealing with this as Karen.

You may not be as good at it, but you seem to have the same problem: you're tugging against the limits of your self-image 'leash' being a 'sex object' and wearing nice clothes. As long as you dress down, you don't bump into your low self-esteem.

Ken nods, more to keep me talking than because he fully agrees. He's used to keeping his own counsel and he needs time to think about this. There's no point pushing him. I turn to address both of them.

You can get in bed as the person you know yourself to be or as who you'd like to be. That doesn't necessarily mean you're not being yourself. The process of becoming means your behavior can lead you to act in ways that still exceed the limits of your self-image. In doing what we aspire to be, we become that person. But you decide.

I nod towards Ken. "Is refusing to wear nice clothing your way of defending yourself against pressure from Karen or a response to your anxieties and insecurities? If the clothes really feel phony to you, I hope you don't buy them. I never encourage anyone to sell themselves out." Ken seems to be wondering if I'm on his side or not.

Karen jokes, "His idea of dress-up is L. L. Bean." Ken shrugs sheepishly. "Whatever it is," I reply, "it's his body. If you are interested in dressing up, why not check out what's new in necklaces? Another client I worked with once said to me, 'Doc, I finally got it. You don't think your way to a new way of living. You live your way to a new way of thinking.'"

Karen and Ken give each other another long look. They leave my office quiet and hopeful, holding hands, lost in their own thoughts.

Karen and Ken enter our second day's session all smiles. They sit closer on the couch than they had the day before. "Sex was different last night!" they both volunteer. Karen says with pride, "I walked into the bedroom wearing only my necklace! Ken's eyes were bulging out in disbelief. Once we started, every thought that came to mind I said. That's very unusual for me no screening." Ken smiles in agreement.

You had a taste of self-validated intimacy. It's the key to intense sex and intimacy.

Karen looks puzzled for a moment and then brightens. "I remember you discussing self-validated intimacy at the Couples Retreat. That's when you don't expect your partner to validate or accept what you disclose. You validate yourself as you show your partner who you really are. But how does that apply to what we did?"

Weren't you doing exactly that when you wore just the necklace? Isn't sharing your thoughts without screening without focusing on your partner's possible response an even better example?

Now I get it! Karen beams in recognition.

I guess I'm a little slower than Karen, Ken says apologetically. "I really screwed things up. I made my usual move: I asked Karen what she wanted me to do for her sexually, instead of revealing what I wanted to do. I played it safe and tried to get her to stick her neck out. As soon as I realized what I was doing, I backed up. Karen realized what I was doing and laughed."

I saw Ken slip back into his old style, but he was really trying. Her eyes are smiling along with her lips.

What stands out as I listen to last night's happenings is the difference in tone there are nuances of meaning that make all the difference in the world. In this case, the tone was lighter. The message between them was "this is going to be different." Karen had opened with a high ante in her bid to jazz up their sex. Ken made a counter-offer to lower the self-disclosure, but didn't fold when Karen called him on it.

If you look at what happened, you can see that the level of intimacy and eroticism between you is negotiated early in the encounter. It's that way for many people, although we rarely recognize it. No wonder your former strategy of 'let's keep going and maybe it will get better' doesn't work.

Karen's eyes twinkle as she holds Ken's hand. "I think we had another example of self-validated intimacy. I took Ken inside my head while we had sex. I told him about a fantasy I was having as it unfolded. I imagined I was going to a sex club where men take care of women and give them peak sexual experiences. Ken listened for several minutes, and then I said, 'I have an idea, why don't you leave the room and come back in and let's see what happens.' He did, we did, and it triggered more pictures in my head. I told him and we did them. It was amazing."

I have no doubt! I said, "Behavior needs to follow the internal connection, not the other way around."

Ken suddenly stops making moon eyes with Karen and turns towards me. "Say that again I've never heard that before."

You let the sense of connection between you determine your behavior. By sharing the fantasy you followed your connection and did what came out of that. You didn't touch each other hoping to produce emotional connection, do. You used to touch the way you thought would make you feel connected such as stroking each other's genitals. When it didn't work, you thought there was some problem in your technical skill. Maybe now you can see you were barking up the wrong tree.

Ken is processing this and hits a snag. "Wait. Aren't you contradicting what you said last session about behavior leading self-esteem? We were talking about me wearing nice clothes and Karen wearing just her necklace to bed. You said we could stretch our self-esteem by doing things that seemed beyond who we saw ourselves to be."

I'm glad you're thinking this through for yourself. I don't think I'm contradicting myself, but don't take my word for it. Check this out from your own experience: if you want to expand sex and intimacy between you, you have to do things that seem beyond the person you've always been. But in the same moment, you have to establish a basic sense of connection with your partner to start with, and then let it dictate the sexual things you do together. This comes together if you think of it this way: what part of you do you use to touch meaning make contact with your partner? Do you touch your partner from the best in you? Or do you reach out from the part that feels inadequate or wants to hide? If you do it from that part you'll drop the emotional connection and resort to touching each other's genitals to try to get something going.

Karen looks meaningfully at Ken. "I'm realizing I don't have sex with you when we're together. I shut you out, and shut myself out of what we can have."

You're not the only one!

That's quite a revelation! I want to underscore what's happening between them.

Well that's not all, Karen says proudly. "I woke Ken up at five this morning to have sex. That's another first I never do that. I was lying in bed having a sexual fantasy, and I told it to him. Ken picks me up at a bar. Literally. I go there first and wait for him."

This sounds like it isn't just a fantasy. Do you want to play this out for real?

Absolutely! But in the fantasy I had this morning, another man sits down next to me and tries to pick me up. I tell him I'm waiting for my husband to pick me up. He says, 'Oh, your husband is meeting you here?' I say, 'No, he's going to pick me up, just like you're trying to do.' He's jealous. I tell him he can watch, but he has to stand to the side, out of the way. The idea of him watching turns me on. Ken shows up in a sexy silk shirt, and after we kiss a little we leave to have sex.

Ken finds his voice. "As we were having sex last night, Karen told me how to tease her. The way she was talking turned me on just as if she was stroking me."

If I understand right, you're not just talking about teasing as a style of touch. You're talking about an attitude. Teasing someone is a mind-set. It's not effective if it's done without the emotional engagement.

Correct! We didn't just 'go at it.' I felt less responsibility for making everything right, Ken affirms.

That's not all! Karen adds with a flourish. "I tasted myself! It was part of our fantasy. When I talked about it with you last session, I imagined an awkward experience like giving myself a medical exam. Instead I told Ken, 'I want to suck your penis, but I want you to enter me first. I think it would be nice to taste both of us instead of just you.' It was entirely different from what I had anticipated. I had no fear or revulsion."

At the end of the evening Karen burst into tears. Ken doesn't seem totally sure this is good.

I felt so much love for him. It hurt bittersweet. I was aware we wouldn't always be together. My fantasies didn't tune him out. The way we used them this time brought us together. Suddenly fantasy and reality came together so intensely. I cried a long time.

That sure doesn't sound like autistic sex! You challenged yourselves and it resulted in an intense connection.

Ken nodded. "While all this is going on I'm wondering, Is she playing a role or is this a side of Karen I've never seen before? It's like I'm with a new woman. I'm fifty-seven, she's fifty-three, we've been together twenty-six years, and I can hardly believe we're doing this."

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but the belief you're referring to is believing in yourselves.

Yup! said Karen. "That's it! It's getting the inside outside. It feels great! I have a totally different experience of my fantasies now they're a resource in our lovemaking. Finally, it's literally like making love. I can feel the difference!"

So when you look at yourself through your sexuality now, what do you see?

Karen pauses to take stock. "A woman. I'm no longer embarrassed by my fantasies . . . actually, I'm rather proud of myself."

I'm not sure I can keep up with this new woman. Ken is praising Karen and telling me his fear at the same time.

You can't if you approach her with that tone of self-defeatism.

I think he can! I loved seeing the little-boy excitement and playfulness in him particularly since this had nothing to do with being a little boy. The man in him stepped out to meet me. In fact, Ken played out different men in my fantasy. He changed his voice and mannerisms as he took on different roles. He never lets himself play like that!

Ken isn't totally comfortable being so complimented or exposed. He shifts the topic slightly by telling me something else of importance: "Now that I'm older, I last longer during intercourse. I use to think it allowed us to experiment with more positions. Now I see it another way. What you call our 'tone' is different. We can relax. I don't have to tune her out to delay orgasm like I once did." Ken turns to look at Karen for a long time. "I'm realizing how orgasm-focused we've been. I've been! If you'd have asked me a week ago, I would have denied it. I just couldn't see it. I'm realizing I bring Karen to orgasm first all the time because I'm afraid I won't have an erection after I climax. That's just another version of being orgasm-focused, isn't it?"

Suddenly, we've got meaning everywhere! Ken's insight is so accurate and important it would be easy to agree. But I'm also clear Ken isn't really asking me a question he's already pretty sure of the answer and anticipates praise for his insight. He's making a bid for me to validate him. Out of respect and belief in him, I'm not going to take the one-up position he's offering. But how far can I go before Ken feels like he's back with his uncommunicative family?

My clients pay me to help them, not to nurse them, but sometimes it's not easy doing what needs to be done. Trading on everything we've developed, I look Ken in the eye and invite him to join me as a competent man. "If you're becoming more of a man especially, your own man why not answer your question for yourself?"

Ken clearly isn't expecting my response. We talk a few minutes more. He walks out a little shaken. Karen looks a little worried.

Ken opens our third and final session with unusual vigor. "We're having a wonderful time, but we're not getting to see much of your beautiful town. We're spending lots of time having sex."

I had this idea to switch roles, Karen says, not missing a beat. "I showed him how I want to be seduced."

We've never done anything like this before, Ken adds. "I'm getting used to this new woman. And to make a bad pun, we're putting our issues to bed."

Karen and Ken explain his comment. The previous evening they successfully discussed a bad experience that had hung over their marriage for fifteen years. Their tradition was to take turns surprising the other with dinner at a restaurant on their anniversary. Fifteen years ago Karen surprised Ken by bringing him to a resort where they could have sex in a private hot tub. Ken felt threatened and couldn't get an erection a rare experience for him. His response was to shame Karen into backing off. Karen was confused and hurt by his response and began to doubt herself. She withdrew sexually for many years thereafter.

Last night we talked about it, Karen says. "And then we did something about it. I did him! I tied his hands to the bed to make the point. Ken had the courage to let me take him."

Ken starts to blush. "I felt selfish just taking from Karen," he confesses.

Do you enjoy going out to dinner with someone who always insists on paying the check? I ask.

No, I don't. Then Ken realizes the question applies to him. "You mean my giving to Karen can be selfish?"

You decide. It sounds like letting her give you sexual pleasure challenges your identity and self-worth. Good for you! You

Thanks a lot! Ken cuts in with mock anger. He's grinning from ear to ear. "Go ahead, I know what you mean!" We're all laughing now.

You like sending your wife 'into orbit' and hearing her moan. Why shouldn't she have the pleasure of feeling her own sexual abilities and listening to you scream? And if you're feeling generous, why shouldn't you be the one to give it to her?

I wish we'd done this earlier, Ken says wistfully.

What makes you think you could have? It's taken every bit of development you've got to do what you did last night. The sex you're starting to have is not for kids or for immature adults. You can't go forward berating and rejecting yourself. Do you want to turn your most recent accomplishment into inadequacy retrospectively?

No, I just wish we could have shared this sooner.

It takes a long time for a human being to mature sexually.

"Well, at least we're on the road. This is what I thought our honeymoon was supposed to be. We did something else last night that has been a long time in coming. When Karen untied me, I did her!

Yes indeed he did!" Karen smiles like the Cheshire Cat. "But what I'm seeing is that it's really not about sex in the usual sense. This is about who we've been, where we've come from, and becoming who we can be.""

I couldn't have said it better.

Does Ken and Karen's process seem remarkable? It's the kind of thing I've learned is possible from watching my clients do it. But it still amazes me every time it happens. And it happens frequently.

This wonderful couple revolutionized their sex and intimacy in part because they received a therapy that's a revolution in integrating sexual and marital counseling. You may have been surprised at different points by the frankness of our dialogue, or by how they found personal meaning in their sexual behavior, or by the ways in which they were challenged to grow. These are just some of the ways in which this approach differs from conventional sexual or marital therapy. The fundamental changes go much further right to the ways we understand sex and intimacy and how best to handle marriage.

It will take this whole book to explain these new ways to understand emotionally committed relationships. Along the way we'll challenge ideas so widely accepted as truths that at first you might wonder why we're bothering to consider them at all. Some are such sacred cows that it seems like hubris to suggest they are wrong. But by the book's end you'll probably shed many popular beliefs, if your experience is anything like Karen and Ken's. You'll see yourself, your partner, and your marriage in an entirely new light. And more importantly, you'll have new ways of using physical contact and intimate connection to bring yourself and your relationship alive and keep it that way.

I believe married couples suffer under the burden of several misunderstandings that have been so widely accepted that we don't even suspect this possibility. These distortions, which concern how we understand intimacy, "good communication," and sexuality, all involve a similar kind of error. In each case we've seen only a portion of the process and convinced ourselves that our truncated view defines the whole thing. In other words, the way we commonly think about how intimacy and sex work in marriage is only part of the picture. As a result, many couples establish false expectations through which they conduct and evaluate their relationship.

For example, we've taken one kind of intimacy the type in which our partner accepts and validates us and convinced ourselves this is what intimacy is. Thus, we assume that intimacy hinges on acceptance and validation from our partner. Likewise we've confused "good communication" with being understood the way we want and getting the response we expect. We never consider the kind of intimacy where we validate our own disclosures when our partner doesn't. This is self-validated intimacy the kind of intimacy that made Karen and Ken's marriage more intimate and expanded their sexual . (Chapter 4 is devoted to discussing self-validated intimacy.)

If you're asking yourself, "You mean intimacy doesn't involve acceptance and validation from my partner or feeling secure enough to disclose?" You're having the same reaction I did when my understanding of intimacy fell apart and eventually coalesced into something more meaningful and useful. As you'll learn in later chapters, intimacy is nature's latest "experiment" (because it uses the part of our brain that evolved last), and we're still trying to understand what it is and how it works in long-term relationships.

A sociologist once observed that the prevalence of "intimacy" themes in mass media, pop psychology, and "alternative lifestyles" suggests that we're driven by hunger for intimate union. It may look like this on the surface, but my clinical work work has helped me realize that there's actually something else going on. We're driven by something that makes us look like we crave intimacy, but in fact we're after something else: we want someone else to make us feel acceptable and worthwhile. We've assigned the label "intimacy" to what we want (validation and reciprocal disclosure) and developed pop psychologies that give it to us while keeping true intimacy away. We've distorted what intimacy is, how it feels, how much we really want it, and how best to get it. Once we realize that intimacy is not always soothing and often makes us feel insecure, it is clear why we often back away from it.

The same "mistaking the part for the whole" distortion has occurred with sexual desire. In 1929, humorists James Thurber and E. B. White published Is Sex Necessary? In it they wrote:

Sex is less then 50 years old. The sublimation of sex, called Love, is much older although purists question the existence of Love prior to 1885, on grounds there can be no sublimation of a non-existent feeling.

Quite regardless of whether the urge for food or sex came first, the sex "urge" creates a much greater stir . . . . Sex urge has upset the whole Western World because, while the urge to eat is a personal matter concerning only the hungry person, the sex urge involves (for its true expression) another individual. It is this "other person" that causes all the trouble.

What may escape attention on first reading is that Thurber and White considered sexual desire to be a drive to satisfy a biological hunger, much like our need for food. That's because the "biological hunger" view of sex is deeply rooted in society. So deep, in fact, that it permeates the way many therapists approach problems of low sexual desire. Using the same rationale as humorists Thurber and White, they refer to it as "sexual anorexia" a sexual "eating disorder." The notion behind this is that, since desire for sex is supposedly like desire for food a basic biological drive, you have to be pretty screwed up not to want either one.

Superficially, the common idea that sex is a natural biological drive seems reasonable. After all, isn't sex drive a function of hormones? Isn't sex encoded in all animals? If sex drive weren't "normal," wouldn't our species die out?

While there's some truth to these notions, they limit our perspective on human sexuality and interfere with sexual satisfaction. We don't realize that seeing sex as a "drive" makes us focus on relieving sexual tensions rather than wanting our partner. It may be true that the more tension ("horny") people feel, the more they tend to seek release (meaning their partner) but if that's the only reason you think your partner wants to be with you it tends to kill sex and intimacy in marriage. It's hard for couples to approach this any other way: even the diagnostic manuals used by physicians and therapists conceptualize sexual desire as eagerness for sexual behavior rather than desire for your partner. Focusing on desire as motivation to start having sex overlooks the many couples who struggle to increase desire (passion) during sex. (Chapter 5 focuses on an intimacy-based view of sexual desire that corrects this.)

Seeing sexual desire as a biological drive sets us up to believe we're automatically supposed to know how to have sex although humans take longer to reach full sexual maturity than any species on earth. It also makes us think we should want sex all the time although human sexual desire is more affected by circumstance and meaning than in lower species. This was partly why Ken felt pressured to want sex and assumed he was inadequate when he didn't. But you can't make sex more intimate or ever feel wanted (chosen) using this approach because hormones, hunger, and sex "drive" don't choose. It doesn't help couples like Karen and Ken keep sex alive as their hormonal urges taper off with age.

But what I said earlier to Karen and Ken holds true for the rest of us: examining the contradictions in our sexuality can become our window into new ways of living. Espousing "be with your partner!" and "communicate!" doesn't shield us from how society has developed approaches that jump-start arousal but destroy intimacy in the process. For example, common but misguided encouragement to "focus on your sensations" takes you away from your partner and causes some people to feel pressured to have an orgasm. It promotes a mechanical approach to sex that often leaves partners feeling ignored and "used."

Consider the fact that techniques used to treat low sexual desire often create low sexual desire when couples do the same thing spontaneously. For instance, some therapists encourage embittered couples with low sexual desire to "bypass" (ignore) their partner and fantasize about someone else. Although sometimes it "works," bypassing seeks minimally effective stimulation by limiting contact with the partner. But when you realize your partner is touching you and pretending you're someone else, does that fill you with desire? Sexual desire problems are difficult to cure when treatment has nothing to do with the eroticism, intimacy, and passion that we anticipate and demand.

The same thing holds true for the "squeeze technique," long regarded as a principal method of treating rapid ejaculation. While somewhat effective in stopping ejaculation, it stops intimacy, too. Imagine a man whipping his penis from his partner's body as his orgasm approaches and squeezing it. Long before that he's stopped focusing on his partner, awaiting the proper moment to perform the sexual Heimlich maneuver. This approach has gone largely unchallenged because it teaches troubled couples the same intimacy-incongruent sexual styles used by most people.

Our near-sightedness blinds us to the ways our incomplete views of sex make us feel inadequate: once you adopt the seemingly sex-positive view that "sex is a natural function," the only way to explain sexual dysfunction or disinterest is to look for pathological explanations. When something goes wrong sexually we're set up to ask ourselves, "If sexual response and interest are natural, then why am I not responding or even wanting to respond?" If you remember, this is exactly what Ken was asking himself and feeling inadequate in the process.

Ken and Karen's therapy sessions demonstrate a new approach that emphasizes intimacy during sex. They realized they often weren't with each other when they made love. Karen was lost in her fantasies and Ken was preoccupied with his anxieties. Ken was shocked to learn just how much Karen was "gone," that he often couldn't tell, and that this had personal meaning for him: it was related to his prior lack of experience being intimate with the people he loved. In treatment, this couple focused on reducing the time their minds were apart while their bodies were together. They even found a new way to use fantasies to bring them closer. Karen displayed a classic example of self-validated intimacy by saying everything she thought while they had sex and letting Ken into her head. She showed Ken her strengths, and Ken let her see his limitations.

Until couples go beyond viewing sex as a biological drive, they presume sexual behavior is a good measure of sexual desire and that orgasm always involves high arousal and satisfaction. Common experiences of married couples disprove both assumptions. Both Karen and Ken were regularly orgasmic, even though their sex lacked intimacy and eroticism.

Like the joke about the three blind men who try to imagine what an elephant looks like from feeling its trunk, ear, and tail, we've developed distorted notions about intimacy and sexuality in long-term relationships. We might say our resulting view of marriage is a joke if it didn't also contribute to many tragedies, particularly the social tragedies that half of all marriages end in divorce and many who stay married are sexually unhappy and alienated. Our cherished distortions fuel the even higher divorce rate among second and third marriages. It's not simply that some people don't learn from experience: their feelings of inadequacy lead them to try harder and hold tighter to common beliefs that create relationship problems.

In the midst of marital discord few of us have the courage to consider that the beliefs and practices we share with many couples are the source of our misery. We usually think problems with sex and intimacy are caused by how we're uniquely screwed up. I propose, instead, that they're often caused by being normal. If you're well-adjusted to ill-fitting beliefs that permeate society, you're going to have trouble.

When we talk about developing a fuller, deeper understanding of marriage, many people automatically think of unconscious feelings or repressed experiences. We've grown accustomed to looking at life's struggles as a reflection of unconscious processes. When we're unhappy, we look within ourselves for past traumas that incapacitate us in the present. The notion of uncovering repressed feelings has become synonymous with mental health, as if progressively stripping away façades and unearthing unconscious anxieties will liberate our innate vitality and creativity. In this view, therapy is a method of peeling away the layers of your character like an onion. Often, however, the problem is not a matter of peeling away layers but of developing them growing ourselves up to be mature and resourceful adults who can solve our current problems.

Many marital therapists believe childhood wounds drive marriage, leading us to reenact our family problems with our adult partners. I do not. While I don't ignore unpleasant childhood experiences, I also don't believe they are the only or even the strongest factor shaping a marriage. Childhood wounds have their impact, just like parental modeling and social conditioning. I believe other aspects have at least as much if not more impact on marriage than our childhood or unconscious processes. These involve how sex and intimacy operate within marriage as a system with rules of its own. (I'll discuss these shortly.)

Misguided emphasis on childhood wounds does more than send couples off in the wrong direction. The resulting "trauma model of life" ignores everything outstanding about our species' determination to grow and thrive. When Pulitzer Prize winner Ernest Becker said our social "maps" trivialize life and destroy any opportunity to feel heroic, this is an example of what he meant. Likewise, in Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore observes "we like to think that emotional problems have to do with the family, childhood, and trauma with personal life but not with spirituality." Passionate Marriage is about resilience rather than damage, health rather than old wounds, and human potential rather than trauma.

I'm not proposing that we ignore past events that limit our present efforts. Awakening creative effort, however, requires leaving personal tragedies behind rather than constantly revisiting and revising them. This is neither as difficult nor as undesirable as it might seem. Presumably you're reading this book because you're interested primarily in improving your relationship. If you also have important childhood issues to resolve, the approach I will be outlining can help. It offers ways to resolve the past in the present by focusing on what's currently happening in your marriage.

This "non-regressive" approach does not deny the impact of the past but you don't necessarily have to go back into the past to resolve it. You can work on the past where it's surfacing in (causing or triggered by) the present. This gives meaning and utility to your current difficulties and provides an active way to work on your present and past simultaneously. You don't have to put your marriage on hold while you rework your past; often your current situation won't permit this, and there's no guarantee this will resolve your present difficulties anyway. When working on the past in the present, you're working directly on your current problem, too, so what's of immediate concern to you your marriage often improves. You don't have to decide from the outset what's causing what.

As mentioned above, when people think about going beyond a superficial view of marriage they often think about unresolved childhood issues. This is another place where we've "mistaken a part for the whole." Fifty years ago, child development specialists recognized the importance of infants' drive to bond (attach) to their caregivers. Unfortunately we've erroneously assumed this is the dominant and overriding drive for children and adults and popularized the image of infants being helpless and terrified when no one is there to comfort them. We've applied this same image to marriage and concluded our partner is supposed to soothe us and not do things that make us insecure. However, radically new information emerging from infant research over the last decade shows that infants have remarkable resilience and are able to regulate some of their emotional equilibrium by three months of age. (Chapter 12, which discusses self-soothing, explains these findings.) We've ignored how taking care of your own feelings is an integral part of maintaining a relationship and how it fuels attachment and self-direction. We've reduced adults to infants, reduced infants to a frail ghost of their resilience, and reduced marriage to providing safety, security, and compensation for childhood disappointments. In other words, we've eliminated from marriage those things that fuel our essential drives for autonomy and freedom. Common notions of interdependence emphasize our neediness but not our strengths.

There are many ways you can make sense of and respond to patterns and events that surface in your marriage. Our failure to understand the basic ways intimacy and sexuality ebb and flow within marriage has contributed to confusion about how best to use common developments that arise. You can respond in ways that use common "problems" for optimal gain or you can act in ways that increase problems and minimize any benefits derived.

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