Sexuality and Parenthood - ebook

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Why and Who For

ZOSIA AND DAWID’S STORY

IS THERE A RECIPE FOR GOOD SEX?

2. Stages of Love—the (Al)Chemical Dimension of Attachment

•Stage 1. High on Love—Natural Stimulants

•Stage 2. Nesting on “Cloud Nine”—Endomorphins

•Stage 3. Creating a Mature Bond—Oxytocin

IS MATURITY SEXY?

•Freedom and Responsibility

•Social and Family Legacy

•Femininity, Masculinity and Other Creatures

3. The Three Pillars of a Relationship

COMMUNICATION

•Challenges in Communication

•How to Heal Faulty Communication

CLOSENESS

•What Is Closeness?

•Practicing Closeness

INTIMACY

•Sex and Intimacy are Good for You

•“Intimacy? I Wish I Could Simply Talk Her into Going to Bed with Me!”

•Where Our Sexual Fuel Comes From

•Development of Human Sexuality

•Sex: How to Get Started

•Why He’s “Pushing” and She’s Pretending

•What a Man Dreams About, What a Woman Dreams About

•Giving Consent and Experiencing Abuse

•Unraveling Sexuality

•Sex as a Spiritual Experience

4. The Sexual Life of (New) Parents

THE BIG NEWS

THE BIG BANG AKA LABOR

THE BIG LITTLE PERSON

5. Threats and Pitfalls

WHEN HE DOESN’T WANT TO AND WHY HE DOESN’T

BLUE MOVIES AND BLUE FUNK, OR THE IMPACT OF THE WESTERN CIVILIZATION ON SEX

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: INFIDELITY

6. It’s Not the End but a Beginning of a New Adventure!

STOP AND LOVE—THE MEDICINE OF LOVE

•Acknowledgments1.

WHY AND WHO FOR

“I’m exhausted. Maybe tomorrow? Once I get some rest …” This is a reply that can be often heard in parents’ bedrooms when one of them asks, “Do you feel like making love?”

The list of possible reasons may become even longer over time:

“Shh. You’ll wake her up.”

“I can’t do it when he’s lying next to me.”

“Hold on, what if he comes into the room?”

“First I need to do the laundry, reply to emails, wash my hair …”

I bet each of you could add something you know from your own experience, lines you often repeat or hear that mean the same: sex may well be nice, but there are more important things right now, so it has to wait.

So we wait. First, we wait a few weeks. Then, we start counting the months, or possibly years. True, something might happen in the meantime, but it’s usually somewhat forced, rushed, or tense. Lurking between the lines, there are fears, unfulfilled expectations, unexpressed hopes, and disappointment that insidiously creeps into our life.

The vast majority of couples with small children, or older couples who can still remember that time, know perfectly well that the arrival of a new family member usually triggers a crisis, be it big or small. Easily visible in many areas of our life, this crisis doesn’t concern sex exclusively. What is certain beyond doubt is that the shake-up following the birth of the first child can be really huge. This is exactly the moment where we might find ourselves stun­ned and overwhelmed by the thought, “Well, no one prepared us for that!”

A newborn is a high explosive emotional bomb for their parents. Each new explosion triggers a whole gamut of different behaviors in us, and the way we cope with these adult emotions takes center stage in our relationship. True, parenthood can bring indisputable beauty and many moments of happiness, intense emotion, joy, and self-fulfillment into our lives. But just as it can open our hearts, it can also bring great challenges or even crises.

Since the most radical changes in a system are brought about by the disappearance of an element or the arrival of a new one, a child changes everything in the so-called family system or pattern. Looking at the problem from a certain distance, we realize that transformations and entering new phases and stages of life are vital elements of all development.

Crises in relationships are nothing new to most of us, and over time we manage to develop different strategies for dealing with them. And until these coping strategies start to fray around the edges, we’re able to ignore even the most blatant signals telling us that the old ways aren’t beneficial to us anymore and that we need new behaviors, tools, or habits that will respond more adequately to our present needs.

“Crisis” sounds dangerous. We’re not fond of crises, either at work or, even more so, in our personal relationships. When there’s a “calamity” threatening our financial situation, we can think of a multitude of ways to overcome it. Such difficulties have been the topic of many books and articles, and they constitute the field of expertise of so many professionals that, even despite the stress undoubtedly accompanying them, we’re able to see a light at the end of the tunnel. But when emotions—both expressed and hidden ones—are involved, as is the case in relationships, a crisis may appear absolutely catastrophic.

The worst thing we can do about this is to pretend it’s not there. Unfortunately, that’s how most of us react to begin with. We push ahead by force of habit and end up painfully hitting a wall. Sometimes, a crisis is merely the sum of many trivial, even if annoying, matters that don’t have a lasting impact on the bond between the partners. Other times, however, the problems they neglected for years, or that arose after the arrival of a baby, pile up so much that partners end up cheating on each other or splitting up.

We often lack the knowledge or good habits that could help us cope with the intense emotions and exhaustion that come to the surface. We might be able to overcome many hurdles on our own, but this ability may not help us when a child has appeared and the challenge involves both of us. We don’t want to examine wounds the origins of which we don’t understand. What’s more, we don’t necessarily have positive role models. We might also be simply exhausted and prefer to have a nap or unwind than to trigger an earthquake and confront some vaguely unpleasant feelings we might not be able to tame afterward.

On the other hand, if we tried to look at a “crisis” from a more dispassionate angle, we would notice that, in fact, it informs us about an ongoing change. The old ways aren’t effective or adequate anymore, and the new ways haven’t taken shape yet. Seen from this perspective, a crisis can be defined as a time of gaining new skills and entering a new stage in life.

On seeing increased tension and more frequent frustration in their child, many conscious parents rightfully think that the child is approaching something psychologists have dubbed a developmental leap (a time when a child is quickly acquiring new skills). Every human being develops in leaps: milestones are reached suddenly, and the casual observer could have the impression that the change happened literally overnight. But before a child is able to use their newly-acquired superpowers, they inhabit the stressful “almost” zone—I can almost do it, but I’m still lacking full coordination, self-confidence or, simply, experience. I’m willing but still unable. I’m frustrated. I’m going through a crisis. This is also the pattern we follow to get from one stage of our relationship to another and the reason why we shouldn’t perceive a “crisis” as a herald of an upcoming catastrophe, but of an extremely advantageous developmental change.

It is, therefore, couples with children who, we hope, will find this book particularly useful. However, while working on the book, we also had in mind childless couples and singles. We believe that the information you will find here can be of use to everyone as we haven’t limited the scope of our work to the sex life of new parents. On the contrary, we’ve tackled the wider issues of intimacy and relationships. Such knowledge may deepen your understanding of what’s already happened in your life, of what’s happening now, and of what might happen in future so that you’re prepared to handle it better.

This book was born out of the need to share the knowledge, both theoretical and practical, we’ve gained thanks to the years of work as coaches and therapists.

The questions we’ll try to answer are:

•How can we deepen our self-understanding and grow closer to our partner?

•How can we use the first-time parent crisis to our advantage in order to fix, strengthen, and develop our ability to live a life characterized by a feeling of closeness and intimacy with our loved one?

•How can sexuality guide us to an uncharted territory of life, where we’ll leave behind our longings and stop hiding behind fears and shame?

•How can our sex lives be transformed into an area of growth and an opportunity to discover our own deep-seated needs and desires?

•How can sexuality enable us to embark on a path of personal and spiritual growth?

Ever since we met and fell in love back in 2004, we’ve been working together as life coaches and tantra teachers. Since 2010, we’ve mainly focused on providing assistance for long-term relationships. We conduct advanced workshops for couples that contain some elements of tantric sex, as their name and description suggest, but offer a more comprehensive view of what makes up a relationship: the way we talk to each other, the way we nurture closeness, and the way we make love.

Drawing on our experience of tantra, we teach couples how intimacy can set the stage for a deep CONNECTION between them. Through years of work, we’ve come to appreciate the numerous hurdles that await long-term couples on their way to this genuine and honest CONNECTION. Sometimes, they turn out to be insurmountable and lead to many problems, or even mean that partners split up. However, approached in a systematic way and with care, and faced together, these hurdles can turn into challenges that will bring the partners closer together and cement their love.

Having worked with couples for more than a decade, we’ve gotten to know thousands of life stories, thanks to which we’ve learned a lot about relationships. We’ve observed what usually fails, what our students stumble on, and what they need most. Oftentimes, couples come to our workshops for better sex, which is something we all desire, and leave with the ability to speak to each other. A couple of doctors, who’d been together for thirty years, took part in one of the workshops, and at some point the man turned to us and said with tears in his eyes: “We came here to get more sex and now we’re sitting here together, hugging, and feeling that this is enough …”

Among our clients, there are not only those who are going through a crisis, but also those who feel they’re such an outstanding couple that their love will keep any crisis at bay. There are those who were “referred” to our workshops by their therapists; for them it’s the last hope. There are the spiritually-minded, on a quest for holiness, who come to improve and deepen their self-understanding. Finally, there are other psychotherapists, sex therapists, psychologists, and life coaches. All those different people share a feeling that their relationships have enormous potential that they haven’t fully explored yet. They know that in love, there’s room for the mind, feelings, and conscious sex, and so their love can give them hope of finding their true selves. So this book has been written for all sorts of couples, and also for those who are only planning to start a family or build a relationship and want to approach this task in a conscious manner.

Having said that, we did single out one particular moment in a couple’s life: the moment they cease to be exclusively partners and become parents as well. Bookshops are full of fantastic self-help books about conscious motherhood, parenthood, and child-rearing. Similarly, there are great publications on relationships and sex. But despite this abundance, we haven’t come across a title that focuses specifically on the time a first baby is born, and that is targeted at the parents in the making facing many challenges connected with their sexuality. These challenges may arise at different stages—not only during pregnancy but also after the arrival of a baby and later on when we’re full-fledged parents.

We have hands-on experience in the field of parenthood as well. I have a grown-up daughter from my previous marriage and two small children, together with Zosia, who are excellent teachers of humbleness and devotion. What our daughters teach us above all is how to seize the most precious moments—those spent with them, and those for just the two of us.

What you have in your hands is a guidebook written by parents with other parents in mind. At the same time, we’re certain that the knowledge and experience we’ve shared in these pages can also be of help outside the very challenging time of being a parent. The skills we’ve covered in this book are versatile and useful regardless of the life stage you happen to be in. They can be useful over many years and become, just like they have for us, the foundation of a healthy, long-term, and balanced relationship.

Although the title of the book refers to sexuality, we devote a lot of space to matters not directly related to sex. Drawing on our experience, we know how heavily good sex is dependent on other aspects of being together in a long-term relationship. All those different aspects are inextricably linked and interwoven. While writing, we took a holistic approach to the topic. Our goal is to create a full picture of a well-functioning relationship in which good sex is the outcome of efforts made in different areas of life. So if you’re looking for ten quick tips on how to satisfy your partner in a novel way or for twenty fail-safe techniques for earth-shattering oral sex, you might be slightly disappointed.

First, we’ll tell you about different stages every relationship goes through. We’ll tackle the issues of sex when you’re expecting a baby, after the arrival of a baby, and when you have kids.

Second, we’ll share with you our original three-element method of strengthening a relationship.

Third, we’ll talk about the most common difficulties couples struggle with, based on our experience as coaches.

Finally, we’ll explain how to approach your sexuality in a fresh way in order to open up new horizons for your intimate life.

A substantial part of the book has been written in the form of an interview that, hopefully, has made some complex points a bit more accessible. Natalia Fiedorczuk, a writer, journalist, and editor, is a coauthor and godmother of the book. By listening to what we have to offer and asking many interesting questions, she enabled this book to take shape.

ZOSIA AND DAWID’S STORY

DAWID1: I have a degree in philosophy. After graduating, I directed my passion and commitment to the fields of psychotherapy and personal development. For many years, I’ve been interested in Eastern philosophy and in its potential to improve the quality of life and relationships of people living in the West.

ZOSIA2: After graduating in psychology, I further deepened my knowledge and developed my skills in the fields of psychotherapy and psychological support. Ever since I can remember, I’ve considered relationships and love to be the pivot of my life and felt how important sexual energy and life force are to me. But everything I’m doing at present with my husband Dawid, both in my private and professional life, began on a lovely day in June, when me met at a workshop. Actually, it started even earlier, when we were on our way to the workshop.

DAWID: I was driving with a friend who said that a friend of his would join us. I still have very vivid memories of that day—it was a beautiful, warm, sunny day on June tenth. We set off in the morning. Back then, I was right in the middle of a self-development challenge I’d forced on myself. Some time before, my marriage, from which I had a daughter, had ended. The divorce had left a mark on me; I felt I hadn’t come to grips with my own problems and that had played an important role in the divorce. In order to examine my own responsibility for what had happened between my ex-wife and me, I decided to be celibate for six months. I wanted to face up to my problems before I became “seduced” by another relationship. And it was right in the middle of this internal quest that life happened to me.

ZOSIA: I happened! My story was different, but somewhat similar. Back then, I was in a relationship with another man but felt he wasn’t the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. We were together because we were learning a lot from each other. And on that very morning, Dawid got out of the car and beamed at me. I thought to myself, “And what if he’s the one? The right man for me?” I immediately shook that thought off, though, as I didn’t want to build up any expectations for that encounter. I decided to wait and see. We were introduced to each other and I got into the car.

DAWID: I can remember you took the seat behind me, but I could still see you very well in the rearview mirror. After a while, I stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank. Since we were driving to another city, we all decided to chip in for the gas. We started talking about how much the three of us—you, me, and our friend—should each contribute. At some point, you handed me your wallet and said, “Just take as much as you need.” I was taken aback.

To hand over a wallet with your money, documents—anyway, a large chunk of your life—to a guy who was a complete stranger was to show a trust that caught me off guard. I was used to thinking that financial matters were very personal and so was someone’s wallet. And then you came and did something that completely undermined that way of thinking and contradicted my idea of what a relationship can look like. You might not have realized what a precious gift you offered me—being trustful right from the word go. Needless to say, I took exactly the amount I needed from your wallet.

ZOSIA: And later on, our car skidded.

DAWID: Yes, and that was another sign. At some point the car went into a skid that I, almost miraculously, managed to handle. The car didn’t have any modern safety features like traction control or ABS, so when I saw it was heading straight into a ditch, I instinctively steered in the opposite direction. There was already a wrecked car in the ditch whose driver wasn’t as lucky as I was. There was also a small crowd of onlookers around it. So there we were, sliding in a car that had lost its grip toward the people standing on the side of the road. I’ll never forget those few seconds when the onlookers were running away in fear, again miraculously avoiding being run over. It must have been thanks to a guardian angel and a great deal of luck that I managed to negotiate that bend in the middle of a slide, drive around the people, and move on without harming anyone.

I had my fingers clenched around the steering wheel and my friend was clinging to the grab handle. The deathly silence that followed was full of tension and almost unbearable. And then—

ZOSIA: —and then I said something like, “I knew we’d be fine.”

DAWID: You said, “I knew we’d be safe,” in a calm, laid-back tone. I don’t know which made a bigger impression on me: the skid, so full of adrenaline, or your reaction. Again, it was so unlike the patterns I was used to in relationships. I was (honestly!) used to my loved ones escalating tensions. I was anticipating a telling-off, which would have been absolutely justified in my view, something like, “God, I was sure you’d kill us!” or “I saw it coming!” or, milder, “Could you at least slow down a bit?” I would have probably reacted that way myself. But in that one sentence you gave me so much acceptance, support, and trust that I instantly slowed down and was driving much more carefully.

ZOSIA: Of course, we managed to get to our destination safe and sound. Luckily! It was a psychotherapy workshop with a specific contract setting out rules about the boundaries between the participants. Physical contact was permitted, or even expected, in the form of platonic touch, physical closeness, hugging. On the other hand, it was prohibited to establish any sexual or business relations. The emphasis was put on safety, contact, and the participants’ development process. And during those rather intense workshops, I felt a great need to be close to you. I wanted to be honest with you and emotionally close, but I was also looking for physical closeness; I wanted to hug you.

DAWID: There was some therapeutic work to do in pairs, and I was also very much attracted to you. I’d just like to add that I didn’t feel any seduction was involved; I didn’t feel I was taking part in the classic seduction game between a man and a woman. I wanted to get to know you better as a person. There was space offered to us at that workshop that enabled us to look closely at each other. It was thanks to the candid conversations and the openness that was in a way forced upon us that we left the place absolutely certain we should meet again.

ZOSIA: It all happened very organically. We arranged a meeting, both completely oblivious to the fact that the simple human c o n n e c t i o n we made at the workshop would evolve into love and a relationship. I texted you first, but before I did, I’d split up with my boyfriend, in fact a day after I came back from the workshop.

DAWID: You simply came to my house with a toothbrush and stayed forever.

ZOSIA: We spent the next few days talking to each other. Our talking resembled the therapy sessions we’d participated in during the weekend workshop. But in fact, our conversations were so intimate and honest that they were like a system update we performed on each other’s hard drive. Each of us felt the urge to learn literally everything about the other.

DAWID: Seven days after we’d met, we had to admit we were in love. It finally dawned on us that it was love.

ZOSIA: And that he was the one—the man I’d been waiting for.

DAWID: And that Zosia was the woman who could open the world of relationships and trust to me. I also realized that a relationship is neither emotional entanglement nor a utilitarian partnership we’re in out of convenience but a bond seething with life. I realized a true relationship is love.

ZOSIA: But there was still your celibacy. You’d only maintained it for a few weeks, and I felt it was important that you give yourself the space to do it. What’s more, I also wanted to first become your friend.

DAWID: Thanks to my internal need to break the mold in our relationship, we refrained from penetration, from the classic sexual intercourse, at the same time discovering physical and sexual intimacy. We spent the months in which we didn’t have conventional sex—

ZOSIA: —practicing something akin to tantric sex, even though we weren’t aware of that back then. We were discovering our bodies and the way they react to each other. We examined the areas where sexual energy was born and pleasure built up. We were getting to know each other.

DAWID: We managed to break away from our old patterns. Falling in love with each other, we let our assumptions about love go through a radical overhaul, which resulted in a new way of thinking that we’ve benefited from ever since.

ZOSIA: We became interested in tantrism and tantric sex both as a couple and as tantra co-teachers. At some point, when the practice of tantra had become part of our identities, we realized we wanted to create our own solutions as some of the principles developed by other practitioners and teachers of tantric sex weren’t in fact “ours.”

DAWID: We came to the conclusion that we wanted to help couples to cement and enrich their long-term relationships by tapping into their sexual energy and into our expertise as therapists and psychologists.

ZOSIA: What we’re offering you in this book is our experience and reflections resulting from years of practice, journeys to the East, thousands of discussions, and a whole host of workshops, stories, and meetings. What I find particularly useful is to look at relationships in which children are born.

DAWID: We’re also parents of two small girls, so everything that follows stems from our own experience, and not only professional experience. This topic is one that’s very close to both of our hearts.

IS THERE A RECIPE FOR GOOD SEX?

What do we mean by good sex? What potential does it have? And most importantly, what’s needed in a relationship to unlock its sexual potential?

Let’s be clear: the secret of good sex is not simultaneous orgasms. It’s not about how long we have sex for or how intense the sensations we feel along the way are either. “Perhaps it’s about some sexual techniques?” some will ask. Isn’t it about the ability to pinpoint the G-spot, to have multiple orgasms, or to cause a woman to ejaculate? Well, it isn’t.

The defining factor of good sex is whether it brings both partners deep satisfaction, which is the result of a complete and multidimensional CONNECTION between two people. Such a CONNECTION is so thorough and genuine that, for a brief moment, their sense of self is lost and replaced by a sense of unity and togetherness. Experienced in that way, sex may become something much more profound than the sensual pleasure it provides, not to mention the tension it relieves.

Thanks to love, we become so united with a partner that for a moment we cease to perceive them as a separate body, separate personality, or even separate being. We broaden our consciousness and thus move beyond the fragile boundaries of our own self. By recognizing that in our most intimate essence we are truly free, we become love.

This CONNECTION is an experience that can be recounted in spiritual terms. It consists of a sudden realization of being inseparably linked with everything else around us. We don’t feel self-isolated anymore and view ourselves as being part of a bigger whole.

Since it involves our bodies, hearts, and minds, sex gives us an opportunity to experience the most profound CONNECTION with another human being. It enables us to engage every level of our perception, spur every cell of our body to action, dedicate ourselves emotionally to the fullest, and consciously experience every passing moment—one after another—as if time ceased to exist for a moment.

Is all of this even possible? Yes, it is, but it requires maturity and readiness; it requires an ability to CONNECT with each other in truth, moving through all the levels that were previously mentioned.

What we need is:

•first and foremost, complete trust in ourselves,

•complete trust in our partner,

•courage as we can come across the hidden demons of the past—for instance, unhealed emotional wounds,

•perseverance, as it’s easy to give up in the face of adversity,

•a sensible approach to expectations,

•curiosity.

Once we embark on this path, we’ll discover completely new regions of our identity, which may enable us to discover many fascinating facts about ourselves and our partner. We’re offered the opportunity to rediscover ourselves, to learn who we truly are, why we were born, and why we were given the chance to cross paths with our partner on this fabulous planet.

We’ve already mentioned that this is the sort of awareness sought by the couples who come to our workshops. And although we know techniques that can bring them closer to their goal, we know very well that one has to be ready for such a CONNECTION. It isn’t always straightforward.

Even if we know our partner very well, even if we’ve been together for years, sooner or later, we will encounter mental blocks that we most likely haven’t expected, and which may be due to multiple reasons. They aren’t caused solely by problems in the sex department, but may be linked to aspects of our relationship that are seemingly unrelated to sex. If sex is to offer opportunity for a CONNECTION to which we’re fully committed, all layers of our relationship must be healed.

Intended to help people experience their sexuality more deeply and consciously, the techniques we have developed are not only universal, but also, to our mind, essential for building a happy long-term relationship. So many times did we hear participants exclaim after a workshop, “This should be taught at school!” Some of the methods are absolutely basic tools in the toolkit of every well-functioning couple; others are more sophisticated and innovative. But they all fit within the simple pattern below:

COMMUNICATION > CLOSENESS > INTIMACY = FULFILLING RELATIONSHIP

We are, of course, aware of the fact that this is something of a simplification, since all of the three elements are present on all of the levels of the above equation. A thorough CONNECTION involves all three: intimacy, closeness, and communication. Even if we’re merely talking to each other, deep inside we can feel both the closeness and intimacy. If we’re making love to a beloved person, we’re emotionally committed; therefore, sex will be incomplete without closeness and communication. A relationship is complete when all of these three elements work well, cooperate, or even create synergy. They’re like different ingredients that, skillfully combined together, produce a fantastic new taste and smell. Every recipe starts with a list of ingredients but, as every expert chef knows, they have to be fresh and of good quality if we are to cook a mouth-watering dish. Bearing this in mind, we have broken down the dish called “a good couple” into its basic ingredients in order to write a recipe for all couples.

You’ve already seen the list of ingredients—what follows are the directions. The interaction between communication, closeness, and intimacy could be compared to a map drawn on the outline of the body.

Communication will be located in the throat and head (conscious listening-speaking). Closeness will be found in the trunk, mainly in the heart, but also in the diaphragm and in the stomach. We will discuss emotions “from the stomach,” trust from the “solar plexus,” and, most importantly, love “from the heart.” We’ll start off by improving the functioning of the head and then move down to the heart. Once we’ve created a bond and feel close to each other in terms of mutual trust and love, we’ll move further down to the “pelvis,” which is a space of deep intimacy. This space couldn’t be more
distant from the head, mind, and reasoning. It’s the least conscious and tends to be clouded by difficult stories, shameful beliefs, and cultural taboo. What the space of sexual energy needs is healthy closeness and skillful communication. If we achieve these, we’ll discover more magic in our life and relationship than has ever been dreamed of in philosophy—precisely because philosophers usually use nothing but their minds to dream.

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1 Pronunciation: David.

2 Pronunciation: Zosha.