Until we get the highly specialized help we need to dismantle and heal our Core Trauma wounds, our primal needs will ALWAYS take precedence over our adult needs. This is not a consciously held condition. It's simply an integral part of our human nature.
We settle for lovers who are good in bed and mirror us positively, even when there are glaring deficiencies we notice about them. We do this, because our primal needs of infancy and early childhood are being responded to and met~ and in a sense, nothing else matters as much to us besides the immediate gratification of these long yearned-for supplies.
When our primal needs (previously UNMET by mother) for warmth, holding, touch, adoration (and sex) are met by a lover, we feel we've finally arrived. We feel safe and at peace~ but sex and reliable, dependable love seldom come in the same package. Our practical adult needs for a financially responsible partner (for example) may be minimized by us, so we can keep getting our infancy needs for physical attention, met.
Females are notorious for confusing good sex with love, and aside from the powerful chemicals released into a gals brain and body during highly pleasurable sexual experiences, they've been subtly programmed since very young, to "save it (sex) for someone special." What this does, is it has women bestowing qualities to men they simply do not have, and metaphorically trying to make a fruit salad out of a banana, which never yields satisfying outcomes.
Unmet infancy or primal needs propel most people into unsustainable relationships. The "love-bombing" a Borderline drenches us with at the start of our relationship is too seductive to resist. Remember, we've been CRAVING this type of attention our entire life! Now, we're getting served a 12-course meal of it.
Under the Borderline's adoring gaze (in the beginning stages of our dance), we get to finally feel good enough and lovable. They give us this validation and confirmation, in spades! Who WOULDN'T fall for such a person?! The downside of course, is that as soon as we step-in fully to TRUSTING their declarations of love, they begin back-peddling, distancing, finding fault with us, and acting like a completely different person than we initially met and fell for.
How can we NOT think this sudden withdrawal of their adoration has nothing to do with Us? It's inevitable that we blame ourselves for having angered or disappointed our lover, because we GREW UP with experiences of this type with our mommy, and suffered a great deal, until she rebalanced a bit emotionally, and we were once again allowed to feel okay about ourselves, when she finally smiled at us.
A healthy coupling is one that allows us to make love with each other in ALL domains of our relationship. We connect and 'make love' in intimate and numerous ways OUTSIDE of the bedroom. We share a similar spiritual orientation, and can discuss aspects of how we each see ourselves in relation to the world, we can connect intellectually and enjoy robust debates, we relish cooking together or taking turns reading a book aloud to one another. We love taking long car rides together and appreciate taking in the scenery and nature. In essence, our relationship 'energy' is not solely funneled into what goes on between us in bed!
Our lovemaking extends far beyond the bedroom. We feel intimately connected within a wide range of activities, even if it's just snuggling on the sofa, watching a movie or series. Our attachment and feelings of closeness are disbursed throughout many domains of the relationship, and SEX is only one spoke in that entire wagon wheel.
What occurs with our partner between the sheets is merely an outgrowth of the love, closeness and connection we share with each other. It's a pleasurable, tasty side-dish in our relationship~ and not the main course.
Just a bit of Schreiber wisdom for ya this New Years eve morning. I hope it brings you a broader perspective on what a healthy, enduring love bond looks and feels like. God knows, we need it, don't we??
When people grow up; a biological madness takes over. This is the desire for good sex.
I think the idea of good sex, the fantasy of good sex; the aftermath of an incredible evening
(Kissing, nibbling, cuddling, soft voices, and funny jokes), as skin touches the skin; and a person's body is gently explored, and water is shared from the same glass like a pagan-ritual (With the desire and fantasy of a happy healthy family bubbling on the backburner now potentially manifesting); makes women swoon.
If you think really deeply about it, and if you try to think like a woman, you will start to agree with them; fantasize with them; and feel that the only meaningful activity in this whole world is good passionate sex; I mean, what else is there?
(Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization almost reaches the same conclusion; He argues that Authoritarianism comes from the suppression of Eros to do meaningful work; and thus create structures and institutions; so we have to reduce masculinity and increase femininity; unlock the erotic principle in society; and thus "save it".) Herbert Marcuse, among others, was a leading philosopher for the counter-culture of 60s which brought about the Sexual revolution.
When I think of sex between mal-adaptive personalities (I like the term maladaptive because I feel it's just that - a mal-adaptation to Trauma), I recognize that it is incredibly lacking in any meaningful romantic foreplay or after play. It's emotionally hostile in these very sweet tender vulnerable moments.
Mal-adaptive personalities will say the most vicious things - like a little ice pick at your heart - when you are in this acutely vulnerable state with them.
They get you naked, get you bonded, get you sweet and close; and as your heart is open, submissive and truly open; poison starts to flow. True recovery is to realize that they can't help it, and thus no tender moments should ever be shared.
Even they're just silent, act like dead fish, get on their phones, or are just disconnected, know that this is silent numbness is also poisonous. It robs you of vitality.
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I discovered you by great heavenly fortune when I was 20, about 4 years back.
Someone had just ghosted me, and I decided that there is more to this than meets the eye.
God sent your page, gettinbetter, to me.
When I read, I decided to do something; silently, I opened my heart to you and believed everything you said to me. I took your word like God's message; and it wholly transformed me; for the better.
I try to think about why people don't change; even when they might get terrific sagely advice from individuals like you; I think it's this.
Emotional abandonment causes one to focus too much on our primal needs; We hang by on a thread from this world, and that is our sexual energy. Our sexuality makes us feel alive. Getting emotionally healthy and whole causes a temporary loss of sexual energy; as the body, mind and spirit are in-conflict to make better psychological and behavioral patterns. For a person who feels alive only through sexuality, a temporary loss of sexual energy FEELS like death. So, a whole lot of people stay stuck in their mal-adaptive patterns because at least, once in a while, they feel Sexual; and thus alive.
If you drop your standards, there is no limit to sex in this world. One has to say No a lot, in order to have the beautiful erotic fantasy be realized in its healthy wholeness.
Only through inner work, can one realize that one is more than their genitals. Some of us will never make that journey. One can only pity them as innocent babies.
Great share @ritvikkhare .I liked shari's response to yours, and do see how it is about the addictive compulsive drive. My responses and reactions to that drive, make me feel dead, deadens my ability to communicate considerately to a partner with reason, integrity, and humility ( absent of pride and fear)