The penultimate fear is fear of sharing power. Power can be measured in many ways and means. One person may have more mental power. One may have more emotional power. One may have more physical power. One may have more psychic power. One may have more sexual power. Both partners may actually have equal power in various areas of their selves. No matter who has more or less and even if both are equal in many measures of power, sharing power is an act of surrender of will power.

Much can be said and written about power of individuals. There is no lack of examples in relationship. Nearly any argument will be based on demonstrating power. Even the dating and mating game is an act of maneuvering with power to gain the attraction, confidence and commitment of a potential mate. Merely reminiscing on acts of gaining favor from a potential mate can bring up all kinds of memories whether from one’s own unique memory plus all memories gathered in childhood through to adulthood from all sources. The metaphor “the birds and the bees lecture” about sexual education can conjure up all kinds of animalistic rituals to seduce and gain favor of a mate. However when the mating pair is coupling or has coupled, there will be the ruminations of power plays that are embedded into our hearts, minds, psyche and soul. The surrender to the mate requires safety, security and trust. If one partner surrenders while the other has hidden agendas to control the relationship, there will be significant power struggles. If both cannot surrender, there will be no partnership. If both partners are willing and able to isolate power issues and negotiate total surrender to accept, acknowledge and balance the inequalities and equalities, both partners can gain from the power of the relationship as a partners.

The final solution, whether by legal or oral agreement and contract is marriage. Anyone can make an agreement to marry another given legal age of consent. Yet, Sacred Marriage is one in which both parties are c0-creating the most Sacred of Unions. Intimacy between two parties who are agreeing to share all the layers of their selves from hearts, minds, souls are committed to continually building intimacy no matter the circumstances which can arise from inside their own selves or outside their selves. Fear of commitment arises no matter the circumstances as all fears arise from the mere courting of a potential partner. If one party does not know s/he feels the desire for marriage when entering the relationship, s/he may hesitate. If the other partner knows s/he has entered relationship with the desire to marry yet does not express this to the other party, this may come as surprise. Not everyone is prepared to consider a lifetime commitment. It takes time and energy to get through the stages of getting to know one’s own self not to mention getting to the self of a partner.

Building intimacy also requires two people to discuss the potential outcome of a relationship. Are we building intimacy for eventual marriage? Are we testing intimacy in case we may want marriage? Are we thrown into marriage for reasons we have not chosen? Are we feeling pressured into marriage? What do I need and want? What does s/he need and want? Can we meet our mutual needs? What wants can we live without? What wants are we not willing to sacrifice? Partners need to feel free enough to ask each other probing questions about the meaning of marriage. Both parties can create individual lists of questions as well as be prepared to answer the questions from their partner. Making life easier vs harder makes relationship easier vs harder.

The more we as individuals and couples can create our own unique and not so unique lists of questions about our fears of intimacy in self-reflection and mutual shared reflections creates intimacy vs avoiding, ignoring, blocking intimacy. Troubleshooting one’s own self is a task. But actually two people can make games out of building intimacy and have more fun with each other. Otherwise we can fall in to pitfalls of self-delusions of who we are ourselves and illusions we have intimacy when we are role playing, acting out of scripts from movies we watched as children. The Learning About You Game can become part of the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly ritual. Even when you think you know every thing about your self or partner, there is much more to discover, uncover, examine and enjoy. Life can be an adventure with a partner who loves life and plays by the agreed upon rules both partners establish over the course of time.

Here is Part One and Part Two while this is the third part of a three part series. This series articulates a concise and precise bullet proof bullet point serious of subjects for singles dating with intention to marry and couples heading toward or even within a marriage. This always more to learn from and within one’s partnership. Unmasking, unveiling, revealing our hidden, secret, sacred selves within relationship with a partner is the ultimate intimacy between two persons in love – compassion and passion. May  your journey into partnership be blessed and sacred.

Enjoy,

Jedhi

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