Relationship has two key words- relate and ship. These two terms express that there is more than one party. As much self-reflection we can do as individuals, we have our blinders on protecting our fears of abandonment, rejection, loss and other fears. These fears are held deep within our selves, our psyche, our hearts and souls. Protecting our hearts and souls is natural. All animals are self-protective. No organism survives in the wild without protecting itself in some capacity or another. Some animals have natural camouflage while others hide in the shade, dark places. Others have large teeth or horns or claws. The list goes on. The fact is that as we share our selves, we are going to reach the points where we are in fear of sharing our selves. These layers of self-protection are embedded into our survival mechanism. However, there are all kinds of memory patterns and traumas stored in our hearts, minds and soul. Understanding our emotional responses requires self-reflection on our own memories and isolating our memory patterns.

Our memory patterns can cause us to react to situations which we feel as emotionally charged while others in the same position are not emotionally charged. Two people in a couple can have two separate and unique emotional responses to the same stimulus.  The stimulus can be as simple as the smell or taste of a food, sense of touch, hearing certain sounds, seeing various colors or environmental scenery. The list goes on in countless sensory experiences of perceiving the world from both inside and outside our selves. These layers can be triggered in both positive and negative ways and means such as watching a movie and having an emotional response of anger, fear, sadness or laughing. One partner may be crying while one is laughing watching  the same scenes of a film at a cinema theater. Creating safety and security includes allowing a partner to ask about questions in order to create intimacy to understand the similarities and differences of perception between partners. We cannot assume we know why our partner cries or laughs when we laugh or cry at the same scene we both are watching. The list of examples can on and on. Every time we are sharing our experiences of emotion is an opportunity to examine our own selves as well as learn more from our partners about their selves and communicate and build trust and intimacy.

Sometimes our previous experiences of feeling pain about love creates an illusion that  love is the cause of pain. This illusion can become embedded due to various experiences from childhood onto adulthood. Some people have early childhood trauma which never leaves them. Some people have trauma later in life. There are infinite experiences of pain we can accumulate over the course of our lives. Our love lives also can accumulate painful traumas. It does not matter the actual memory if it is remembered as being attached to pain. Pain can be mental, emotional, psychic, physical, and also sexual. We cannot assume any one person’s pain is less than or greater than another person’s pain. The pain a person holds may be entirely unique and unexplainable to others. Yet, in a one to one relationship, emotions surface and whether we can pin point the cause of the emotions, we must learn to handle our emotions. The fact of this matter is that love opens us to feelings which triggers our emotions whether we understand our own selves or not. All we can do is allow our self and partner the freedom to express emotions without criticism and judgment.  This is a point of mystery and unity.  A partnership is based on partnering as a team effort. If we do not know, we need to agree to accept and acknowledge that we do not always need to know. At least as emotions surface, as long as we are safe and secure, we can build trust based on the team effort in co-creating trust.

Needless to say that some people have sexual trauma and have natural fear of sex. Yet, people who have no sexual trauma may also have fear of sex. It seems that they are merely afraid for no reason. Ultimately, sex is intimacy which renders partners vulnerable. Creating safety, security, trust are keys to breaking through fears of being vulnerable. Some people can have sex and not express emotions. Sex may be the key for those people to actually open to becoming more vulnerable to finally discuss their other fears verbally. If one partner expresses intimacy through sex while the other does not, a lot of talking is needed to create communication between the partners. If both partners are oriented towards sex a means of intimacy, they both will need to create safety, and security and trust from their sexual relation and build toward other forms of communication.

In some ways, this is much like romancing each other as they may need to express affection through ritualistic ways and means much like animals.  If both partners are afraid of sex, both must learn to communicate by allowing each other to express emotions and co-create a ways and means of learning how to accept and acknowledge their own individual emotions as well as expressing their emotions freely with the partner. There is an endless list of reasons for one partner or both partners to feel fear of sex and both partners need to discuss the ways and means of researching, examining and sharing resources from sources of information to unlock their sexual emotional desires to handle their intimacy through sex.

Part One and Part Three are here while this is the second part of a three part series. There is more than enough to ponder upon between the issues of love and sex. Some people believe that love must come first. Some people believe that sex must come first. For certain, two people entering a relationship need to discuss their views on love and sex as well as the rules of engagement. There is plenty of resources both in print, film and internet media to discover more and more fun and exciting issues about love and sex which can be shared with one’s partner.

Enjoy,

Jedhi