Mindfulness: A Lifelong Practice

Mindfulness is a lifelong practice not a sex therapy technique. However, opening your senses to an experience or becoming present changes that experience in profound ways. And sex is best when your senses are open.
 
In my last column, I introduced Jennifer, a client who came for individual therapy wanting to want to have sex with her husband, Bob. She began doing homework that I call “mindfulness sensuality” which I described last time. She also learned to masturbate in a more mindful way. After some experience with this, she wanted to apply her learning to sex with Bob.
 
I suggested that Jennifer convey to her husband how to do the sensual mindfulness and that they do this in bed side-by-side before turning toward each other for a mutual massage done again incorporating a mindfulness approach.
 
Here’s how to do the massage:

The person giving the massage should have his eyes wide open and look closely at the other. Smelling and tasting the skin should be incorporated. Feel the tips of your fingers touching the others skin. Listen closely to the others breathing, moaning, sighing whatever the other presents in the experience. 
 
The receiver of the massage should start off lying on their stomach. Feel the other’s fingers. Feel how the skin and muscles move when being touched. Notice how the other’s tongue feels touching the skin. Listen to the other’s breathing. After 15 or 20 minutes the receiver of the massage should turn over and repeat the focus on sounds, feelings etc. While on their back, the receiver should have their eyes open and take in the visual part of the experience.
 
As it turned out Bob and Jennifer were way too anxious about the experience to get much out of it.
 
Jennifer returned for her session angry at Bob because he had criticized the mindfulness approach as “boring” and “completely unnecessary” for him to get aroused. This, of course, was upsetting to Jennifer. It took me a while to get Jennifer to acknowledge that she too had trouble with some aspects of the experience. Specifically, she had trouble opening her eyes and “felt guilty” for significant periods when she was receiving her massage.
 
We decided to have some couple’s sessions since the problem was no longer something that Jennifer could work on alone.  
 
Bob was not a reluctant client. He felt that he had gotten a lot out of their previous couple’s therapy (described last time). His point was that he found it very unnecessary for Jennifer to touch his body mindfully or otherwise to get prepared for sex. He was an eager beaver without the prelims. He also thought it crazy that his wife was touching herself and he was touching himself when they were in easy reach of each other.
 
I assured Bob that our main goal was for them to touch each other in pleasing ways. The exercises were simply designed to separate each of them to give them responsibility to prepare themselves for sex.
 
Following our session, Bob and Jennifer were able to complete the sensual experience together. They came in for several more sessions and did several variations of the sensual massage and incorporated aspects of it into their sexual experience.
 
The most important question I asked Bob was:  “What if this is an optimal way of doing sex for Jennifer, even if it isn’t the best for you?”  Would he be willing and able to give this to her?
 
Bob and Jennifer seemed surprised by this question. Both of them had assumed that they would do the exercises, get the desired change and then return to their previous way of doing sex. I assured them that if they returned to exclusively doing sex the way they did it before, they would get the same results.
 
Here is some of what Bob and Jennifer learned from these experiences.
 
First, they learned a new way to think about sex. The reason that Bob initially resisted the sensual exercises is because he viewed sex as almost completely genital.  Foreplay was an unnecessary inconvenience for him and here I was adding some more steps.  His sexual expression was lust not sensuality. Lust should be part of sex, but to limit yourself to only lust is to leave some things out. Jennifer had simply been following Bob’s approach: after all, he sure seemed to be enjoying himself. 
 
Jennifer had to overcome her anxiety about receiving pleasure. She needed to learn to relax through her guilt at indulging in her own pleasure. She had to learn that she was responsible for communicating about how she wanted sex to go.
 
Bob had to learn to consider Jennifer’s desires as important as his own. Like Jennifer, he had mistakenly concluded that because he enjoyed sex, Jennifer just needed to relax and enjoy it the same way he did.  
 
So Jennifer came in wanting to want sex with Bob. She described herself as lacking desire for sex.  What we found out was that her lack of desire was for exclusively genital sex.  When Bob and Jennifer learned to be more mindful of their own and the other’s desires, they were able to develop a sexual relationship much more fulfilling for each of them.
 
 
Gerald Drose is an Atlanta-based couples’ sex therapist.  Visit Dr. Drose at Powers Ferry Psychological Associates, LLC.  

Tips on How to Be More Mindful in the Bedroom

A female reader asks: How can I be more present during sex with my husband? I’m going to answer the question as asked, but we could easily replace ­wife with husband and get a very similar answer.
 
When I read the question I thought of Jennifer, who came to see me because she wanted to want to have sex with her husband, Bob. (Over the years I have seen many “Jennifers” and a few “Kens” for help with this problem.) Jennifer and Bob had been married for several years and had sex about once a week.  It had become painfully obvious that sex was a chore for her and a grand happening for her husband.
 
The difference in the two experiences was difficult for both of them. They had been to couples’ therapy for help with their sex life. The therapy helped them communicate better, but this had little impact on their sex life.  In fact, Jennifer and Bob concluded that their therapist was as uncomfortable talking about their sex life as they were, so they quit therapy.
 
But Jennifer and her husband had learned a lot from that experience.  

Jennifer realized that she held onto resentments that prevented her from connecting in many ways with Bob, not just sexually. 

Her resentments were legitimate, but they were hurting her and the marriage. They had both learned that Bob’s angry outbursts and his refusal to help out with most household chores (even though they both had careers) and his generally negative mood was affecting all areas of their relationship.  As a result of the therapy, Bob had made some real changes. 
 
This helped every area of their marriage--EXCEPT their sex life.
 
This is not an unusual story.  I hear this frequently enough to urge men and women to take care of these imbalances and get the resentments to a low enough level to let them go FIRST.  While this does not automatically fix a sex life, it appears to be a pre-requisite.  They’ll need to understand that their sex life may be suffering because they aren’t able to GET PRESENT during sex.
 
So how do you do this?  Let’s return to Jennifer’s therapy. I sent Jennifer home with an exercise that could be called Mindfulness Sensuality. It’s simple really.  Spend time alone, naked, breathing in deeply and slowly until you feel safe and relaxed.  Touch yourself in non-sexual areas of your body. Pay attention to what feels good. Also, pay attention to judgmental statements you make about your body.  Breathe in deeply, and when you breathe out tell yourself to let go of the judgment. Repeat!
 
Jennifer came back (as most men and women do who take this exercise seriously) noting that she had a lot of judgments about her body.  She felt herself becoming particularly tense when she touched her stomach. She liked her stomach when she was in great shape, but she’d gained ten pounds after her second child. Now when she touched her stomach she found it very difficult to feel anything but disgust.  By the end of the exercise, however, she felt a little better about it and generally had enjoyed herself more than she had imagined. She even took a nap at the end, which was the “nicest nap I’ve had in years,” she said.
 
The next step for Jennifer to take was to follow the same procedure and extend it to the sexual areas of her body.  My instructions typically go something like this:
 
After you have relaxed and touched yourself as before, take the same approach by touching yourself in sexual areas of your body. Again, focus on the way you like to be touched and repeat the exercise noticing and then letting go of judgments.  When you begin getting aroused instead of taking the quickest path to an orgasm, slow things down. Try touching areas that you haven’t previously.  Notice if there are areas you avoid that are actually pleasurable. Notice the judgments and breathe deeply and let them go.
 
Jennifer returned for her next appointment and started with something that did not totally surprise me. She was furious with her husband because he was “backsliding” and walking around the house “pissed off and making everyone miserable.”  How could he expect her to want to have sex with him? Because she was so angry she had not done the exercise.
 
I wasn’t surprised because many people do some backsliding of their own in therapy. I asked her if she wanted to learn to be more present with her own body as a gift to her husband or because she wanted to be a sexual being as a gift for herself.  
 
This is actually a critical question. The only way to become a fully sexual being is to want it for yourself.  The reason she came in for help was because she wanted to want to have sex, and now she wasn’t even willing to masturbate when she was upset with her husband.
 
Jennifer immediately recognized the errors in her thinking and had a sense of humor about it. Over the next couple of sessions Jennifer reported feeling more like she felt sexually early on in her relationship with Bob now that she was masturbating using a mindful approach.  She even looked forward to her “homework” and joked that she had gotten some “extra credit” by masturbating a couple of extra times.
 
Next time I’ll describe the next phase of Jennifer’s therapy where she learns to apply her Mindful Sensuality experience to sex with her husband. In this phase we invited her husband for some couples’ sessions to help them reach a greater sexual potential.

 
Gerald Drose is an Atlanta-based couples’ sex therapist.   Visit Dr. Drose at Powers Ferry Psychological Associates, LLC.   

Seven Tips to be a Better Lover

(1)  Open your eyes. 

       Or better yet open all your senses.  Being present is THE KEY to being good at giving and receiving pleasure. If you find yourself paying your bills, preparing your grocery list, re-painting the ceiling or re-playing an earlier discussion, get out of your thoughts and into the moment.  Unless you’re an amazing multi-tasker, seeing your partner in a sexual way and preparing your grocery list should be mutually exclusive activities.

(2)  Slow down. 

       Move everything slower. Sex can be a passionate experience with reckless thrashing about, and it can be a tender experience of paying slow attention to nuances. Even passionate, thrashing sex is better when you alter the rhythm. 

(3)  Change the drama.  

       If you are like most couples, you’ve established a pattern that is comfortable but perhaps a bit too predictable.  Think about the roles that you and your partner play as lovers.  If one of you tends towards being more dominant and the other more submissive, switch it up. 

(4)  Masturbate together.  

       This may be as connected or as disconnected as you feel comfortable; pleasuring yourself in front of your partner can be an extremely intimate activity. 

(5)  Masturbate alone. 

       To evolve your sexual potential, you need to be intimately familiar with what your own body likes.  Touch yourself in non-sexual and sexual areas and pay attention to the sensations.  

(6)  Communicate about what feels good, before, during and after sex.  

       If words are tough, use your body or your hands to show your partner what you like.  If you are afraid to give feedback because you don’t want to wound your partner’s ego, orient the conversation thusly: “Let me tell you a secret about what I really like” as opposed to “Here’s how you keep messing up…” 

(7)  Read sexy literature or watch pornography together that is at least close to comfortable for you.  

       Notice I didn’t say completely comfortable; the touch of anxiety that results from stepping out of your comfort zone can spice things up. Reading something like Tinamarie Eshel’s blog often is a good place to begin.  

To do all of the items on this list you are going to have to start thinking of yourself as a sexual being, which is a good thing.

Gerald Drose is an Atlanta-based couples’ sex therapist.   Visit Dr. Drose at Powers Ferry Psychological Associates, LLC.  

Discrepancy in Desire: Understanding the Need for Connection

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.  

Discrepancy in Desire: Getting up the Hill Together

I met Jack and Jill a few days after they had the frustrating evening I described in my last column. They came for therapy stating they were 100% committed to their marriage but they’d both been unhappy for a couple of years.  

Jill summed up her feelings: “I love him, but I don’t like him. He disagrees with everything I say, and the only thing he wants from me is sex.”

On cue, Jack disagreed. In fact, he was outraged. “If I agreed with you any more than I already do, I’d have to have my balls removed.”

Jack said that Jill was addicted to emotional drama, leaving her little time for fun. Jill practically leaped out of her chair when Jack claimed that she avoided sex (and just about every other possibility for joy in her life) “exactly like her mother.”

Jill called Jack a couple of choice names, which Jack laughed off.  He looked at me with an eye-roll and responded, “See what I mean by ‘drama’?”

Jack and Jill could go on like this for an entire therapy hour.

So how do we get Jack and Jill out of the Valley of Discontent and Up the Hill where they can drink together from the Grand Waters of Emotional and Physical Desire (to mix some metaphors)?  

Let’s go back to the night that (they both agreed) typified their problems. This is the discussion that I pieced together from both of their descriptions.

Jill says to Jack, “God, my mother is going to make me crazy. She just cancelled plans to come to our house for Christmas because she can’t leave her dogs.”

Jack says, “I don’t know why you’re so angry.  She always does that.”

Jill says, “That’s why I’m so mad!  She puts her dogs ahead of visiting us and the kids.”

“It’s not her dogs,” Jack says.  “She just hates to leave her home because she’s a stick in the mud.” For good measure, he adds, “…always has been.”

Jill looks away.

Jack wonders why she quit talking. “You know it’s true. She just can’t have any fun!”

“Whatever,” Jill mumbles.

When Jill described this conversation, she claimed that she was trying to avoid an argument that night.  She felt furious because it seemed like every time she spoke, Jack disagreed with her.  In the past she might have made a scene, but she was so sick of  arguing, she just stuffed her anger, mumbling, “Whatever.”

Jack was genuinely outraged, once again.  He thought that he had been very supportive. “That’s why I say she is insatiable. If I don’t agree with every word she says, she’s pissed! Okay, from now on I’ll just agree with everything you say, right? That’s exactly what you want.”

Jill accused of Jack of lying. “How could you possibly believe that you were agreeing with me? You told me that I shouldn’t be upset that my mother was coming. You said that it wasn’t because of her dogs, then you started putting her down for not having any fun. Right?”

Jack simply could not admit that he was being unsupportive.  He thought that “joining her” in complaining about her mother WAS supportive. What Jill heard was: “Don’t be angry,” and “Your mother is a bitch.”

Over the next few sessions I tried to help Jack understand that when he said, “Why are you angry? She does this all the time!” his spouse heard “Don’t be angry,” which doesn’t FEEL like support (even if it is intended as such).  

You don’t lose your authentic self (or balls, in Jack’s language) by changing the way you say something so that it will be experienced by your partner as supportive.  Jack needed to realize that when Jill was upset, he could simply say, “Sorry you’re upset.  I know she’s done this before, so it’s a bummer for you.” This statement conveys support for her experience while also adding Jack’s take; that this happens a lot.

It took a while to convince Jack of the importance of supporting first, then expressing his reactions afterwards (…and Jack, with a PhD in Physics, was no dummy).   Part of his resistance to this new way of thinking was his own defense against being Wrong.  Jack was a perfectionist who believed that by acknowledging he was part of the problem, he was admitting that he was not perfect.  And, just as he feared, when he did admit to Jill that he had been unsupportive, she began punishing him. (“See, the therapist thinks you’re an ass, too,” she almost said.)

You see, Jack and Jill were involved in an age-old struggle among highly driven, successful couples.  Accustomed to being in charge and in control at the office, they were in a continual competition for who was Right and who was Wrong in the home. 

Many couples view therapy as akin to a legal procedure:

         They each build and present their case.

         I am jury and judge, deciding who won. 

         The winner gets to punish the criminal for the crime.

A wonderful family therapist and psychiatrist, Frank Pittman, once told me: “You can’t be right and happily married at the same time.”  He meant that if you’re obsessed with being Right, you will end up in a death battle any time either of you make the slightest error.  You may win the race to the top of the hill, but you’ll pay the price in Loneliness. 

Since everyone makes errors in a relationship, the key to a happy marriage is for both parties to admit errors, learn from them, let them go and move on.

While it took time for Jack to use the Support first, then Add Your own Reaction approach, it worked so well with Jill that it eventually became a habit.  Jill learned to be positive about Jack’s changes, rather than shaming him for not doing it sooner.  So Jack and Jill were now getting up the hill together, rather than racing and tripping each other on the way up. 

In my next column we will explore how this new-found connection played out in the bedroom~

Stay tuned. 

Gerald Drose is an Atlanta-based couples’ sex therapist.  Visit Dr. Drose at Powers Ferry Psychological Associates, LLC. 

Sex: Working through discrepancy in desire

The desire to feel deeply connected to another is a universal human need. Emotional and Physical closeness are the two main ways couples can experience this connection.  

But often in couples, there is this unhappy paradox: One member of the couple wants more physical/sexual connection while the other wants more verbal/emotional connecting. Further, each of them thinks of the other’s need as excessive and feels burdened by it.

In the psychology world, when one member of a couple wants more sexual connection than the other we call it Sexual Desire Discrepancy (SDD).  This is a common complaint among couples visiting marriage and sex therapists. 

Interestingly, the psychology world has yet to come up with a label for Emotional Desire Discrepancy (EDD, for our purposes); when one member of a couple wants more emotional connection than the other. Yet, I find this problem to be as common among my clients (if not more) than SDD. 

In both cases these unmet or under-met desires can cause great unhappiness.

Jack and Jill can’t get up the hill because neither feels the other desires them. Jill feels that Jack has no desire to know her emotionally.  Jack feels that Jill has no interest in himsexually. Jack and Jill both want to feel closer and more connected. They have been busy with their lives and haven’t had sex in a couple of weeks.

When we meet them in their kitchen, Jill has just gotten off the phone with her mother. She walks into the kitchen where she finds Jack cooking dinner.

“God, my mother is going to make me crazy. She just cancelled plans to come to our house for Christmas because she can’t leave her dogs,” Jill said.

“I don’t know why you’re so angry.  She always does that,” Jack said.

“That’s why I’m so mad!  She puts her dogs ahead of visiting us and the kids.”

“It’s not her dogs,” Jack said.  “She just hates to leave her home because she’s a stick in the mud, always has been.”  Jill looks away.

Jack wonders why she quit talking.

“You know it’s true. She just can’t have any fun,” Jack says. 

“Whatever,” Jill mumbles.

A little later Jack feels Jill continuing to be distant; it’s hard to ignore the slamming of kitchen cabinets and generally cold demeanor.  Wanting to connect he walks over and puts his arms around her, kissing her as he whispers, “It’s been a couple of weeks, maybe we should have some sex tonight.”  

Jill offers, “Maybe,” but pulls away because she is still annoyed about the earlier conversation.

A few hours later in bed Jack and Jill have their arms around each other as they kiss. Jack touches Jill’s leg; she touches his.  His breathing is quick and shallow as he becomes aroused. He assumes she is aroused, so he slides his hand between her legs. She tries to relax and enjoy it, but feels annoyed that he seems to be rushing her.  She is not lubricated yet, so Jack feels she is not turned on by him. He stops.

They turn over and go to sleep, both frustrated they can’t seem to get in sync with each other. Jack thinks to himself, “Jill is just like her mother.  She never wants to have fun.”  Jill thinks back to the kitchen conversation and Jack’s haste in bed and thinks, “What an insensitive guy!”

Next time, we will get Jack and Jill up the hill and try to keep them from tumbling down.  By paying attention to and honoring the other’s primary desire and responding differently based on this awareness, each can actually get their own desires met.  It’s a change in mindset that can alter the discrepancies in desire that trouble most marriages

Stay tuned.

Gerald Drose is an Atlanta-based couples’ sex therapist.  Visit Dr. Drose at Powers Ferry Psychological Associates, LLC.   

Anger at partner might be path to deeper question: What Do I Need?

Leslie sat in an extra chair in my office, not on the couch next to Robert as she usually did. I looked at Robert and he looked weary.

“I’m mad as hell,” Leslie started. “He stayed out until 3:00 in the morning without calling me.” Turning to Robert, “You have no respect for my feelings…you never have and you never will. You’re such a self-centered son-of-a-bitch. I’m at home trying to get some sleep so I can get up at 6:30 in the morning for a meeting, and you’re out playing around, doing whatever you want to.”

Robert sighed. “I told you I was going to be out with my best friend ‘til late. I hadn’t seen George in a year. I’ve apologized. I lost track of the time and didn’t want to call and wake you when I realized what time it was. Why didn’t you call me?”

Leslie seethed. “Don’t try to turn this around on me! Where were you? At a strip club? Out picking up bimbos? I’m home doing the right thing and you’re out doing God-knows-what!” 

Robert leaned away from Leslie and looked at me. “This is just ridiculous. We’ve been arguing about this for two days. She’s not going to let it go. It’s just ridiculous.”

“You’re ridiculous!”

“You’re a controlling bitch!” Robert blurted out.

“You arrogant ass-hole! I should’ve divorced you years ago,” Leslie said before throwing one of my pillows at her husband. 

Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field. I'll meet you there. ----- Rumi, 13th century Sufi poet

Sometimes couples arrive at my office, sounding like the couple above. (Most of us married people have sounded like this couple at some point.) When I hear couples engaged in this drama, I know that underneath the fight, each participant is actually yearning for their partner to intuitively hear the need beneath the anger, to empathize, understand, validate and even meet the need (without it ever being stated out loud)! 

  

But how does someone who is being called an arrogant ass-hole or a controlling bitch listen with empathy, understanding and validation? Attack-language, name-calling and threatening to leave are designed to punish: You hurt me, now you should suffer equally~Attack-language seeks to prove who is the Perpetrator and who is the Victim, and to punish the offender accordingly.

But here’s the problem: even if the offender is punished, the attacker’s needs will continue to go unmet if they don’t learn to express themselves differently.

Now I know this is complicated. Sharing your needs with your partner makes you vulnerable; especially if your needs were ignored, invalidated or dismissed as a kid or in a past romantic relationship, it may be difficult to, A): know what your needs are, B): feel like you have a right to speak them out loud, or C): know what to do when someone knows what your needs are, but says “Sorry, I can’t or won’t or don’t want to meet those needs.” (Just because you ask for something, doesn’t mean the other has to give it to you!) Because this venture is so complicated, so wrought with buried pain and brings up such shame and vulnerability, anger is often the default “safe” response.  

In the short run, anger feels good, empowering, righteous (for some, even addictive).  But in the long run, it is always ineffective.  

My job is to help my clients discover the tender, all-too-human, universal needs hidden beneath the rage. 

I said to Leslie and Robert, “I can see how angry you all are.  It looks like your anger is interfering with your ability to know what you actually need right now. Can you try go under the anger and discover what that need might be?”

After a few prompts, Leslie responded: “I feel hurt and scared.  I wonder what he was doing that night…”

“What is the need that makes you wonder that?”

Leslie’s responded, “I need to feel safe, like I can trust him. I’m scared he might be lying to me. Maybe he’s having an affair.”

Robert interrupted,  “Leslie, the last thing I would do is have an affair. I was with George.  I hadn’t seen him in a year and we drank too much. That’s all. I’m sorry. I never stay out like that. It was just like, you know, being in college again. It was irresponsible, I agree, and I felt like shit the next day at work. I’m sorry!”

“What do you need right now, Leslie?”

“I need him to commit to me that he won’t do it again.  It’s okay for him to go out, but I need him to call and check in so I don’t have to worry.”

“Can you give Leslie this, Robert?”

“Of course!  I thought I said it. I’m sorry. I’ll call next time. You know I don’t normally do things like this. The last thing I would want is for you to be worrying about me when you need to be sleeping.”

Listen to how the conversation changed when Leslie got out of her anger and expressed her needs and fears directly.  Anger can prevent our partners from hearing the content of what we are actually saying because the tone produces an instinctual reaction of defensiveness and self-protection.  Anger can also block us from being aware of our real needs.  Instead of just letting the anger fly, slow down and see if the anger might be a path to a deeper question: what do I need right now?

After this exchange, I asked Robert what he needed.  “I just need her to believe me, believe in me, and remember who I am. I never come home late, right?” he asked Leslie.

“I know,” Leslie quickly said. “I was just…”

“I know,” Robert said.

And the drama was over.

There are reasons that we are so good at feeling angry and yet so bad at knowing what we really need. One very prominent reason is that our culture actually teaches us this.

I invite you to listen to Marshal Rosenberg, one of the world’s great teachers of nonviolent communication, as he explains this phenomenon.  

Gerald Drose is an Atlanta-based couples’ sex therapist.  Visit Dr. Drose at Powers Ferry Psychological Associates, LLC.