This is the last column in a three part series on how couples can reconnect a common disconnection: a discrepancy in the desire to be emotionally connected with their spouse’s desire to be sexual connected.
Jack and Jill both yearned for reconnection because they were exhausted by a long period of distance and unhappiness.
This is a very brief description of what brought them to my office: Jack and Jill had their arms around each other, kissing. Jack touched Jill’s leg and she touched his. His breathing quickened as he became aroused. He assumed she was aroused, too and slid his hand between her legs. She tried to relax and enjoy it, but felt annoyed because he was rushing her. She wasn’t lubricated yet so Jack felt she wasn’t turned on by him.
He stopped.
They turn away from each other, both frustrated because they can’t seem to get in sync. Lying in moonlit shadows, Jack thought, “Jill doesn’t care what I want. She’s just like her mother. She never wants to have fun.”
Jill recalled their earlier conversation when he accused her of being “just like her mother,” and added it to Jack’s haste in bed.
“He’s unbelievably insensitive," she thought. "All he wants from me is sex and has no interest in talking to me or hearing what’s on my mind.”
Jill was distracted by her anger over the earlier discussion (and the barrel full of anger over similar discussions in the past) and she unsuccessfully tried to put it aside and enjoy sex. An important part of Jill—her emotional self, did NOT want to open up to Jack because she was mad at him.
In our therapy session, Jack insisted his approach this particular evening was very similar to previous sexual encounters.
I then asked Jill to tell me of a typical sexual experience. Much to her surprise, her description was very similar to the one described above, where they ended not having sex. The difference this time was that when Jack touched Jill she either slowed him down by guiding his hand or was already lubricated and ready for him, not to mention usually Jill felt closer to Jack and was present to the sexual experience.
When Jill admitted she was so distracted by her anger she couldn’t be sexual, Jack pounced on her for being too emotional.
“See you’re so angry, you’re messing everything up,” he said.
Once again our right and wrong couple is going to attack when the other is able to admit to messing up, accusing him or her of being the “problem” in the relationship. In their relationship the “bad one” is either too emotional (Jill) or too sexual (Jack).
But in reality, Jill doesn’t need to learn to be less emotional, and Jack doesn’t need to be less sexual. What Jack and Jill needed was to see how their dominant needs could be met if they learned to be available to meet the other’s needs.
Jack learned that by being present and connecting to Jill’s emotional needs he gave her the gift of feeling connected. Jill learned that by being present to Jack’s sexual needs she gave him the gift of connection.
Happily Jack and Jill both learned that by giving of themselves to the others needs they were able to have their own met. More emotional connection led to more sexual connection; more sexual connection led to more emotional connection.
Remember that when we started this discussion two columns ago, Jack and Jill had a “desire discrepancy.” To Jack, Jill felt emotionally needy and to Jill, Jack was too sexually needy. Unhappily, they saw the other’s healthy need for connection as excessive.
Their desire discrepancies were not the problem. The problem was that they saw the other’s important, but differently expressed, need for closeness and involvement as “Bad” or “Wrong” or “The Problem.”
Only when Jack and Jill saw the other’s need as an important desire to be close did Jack and Jill get up the hill with Jack knowing how to support Jill’s emotional needs and Jill knowing how to be present to play with Jack’s sexual needs.
Jack still had more sexual desire and Jill more desire for emotional connecting, but they now loved and respected, even cherished that about each other.
Gerald Drose is an Atlanta-based couples’ sex therapist. Visit Dr. Drose at Powers Ferry Psychological Associates, LLC.
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