For the past couple of years I’ve been writing articles for Dan and Jennifer of the askdanandjennifer.com website.  Lucky for me they live close by and Mike and I have had dinner with them a couple of times and I now consider them to be friends.  They are a great, generous, and hardworking couple of kids.  I’m proud to know them.  They have an interesting website but – be warned they deal with a lot of sexual material.  I personally think this is good thing because they answer a lot of people’s questions about things that are hard to get good answers about.

The Forum Questions

In the past couple of months I’ve been answering a lot of their forum questions – in fact I’ve been doing more of that then writing articles.  It’s as fascinating thing to do because it gets to the hear of what intimacy means to people.  Of course, sex and intimacy are not the same thing – but to most people they are deeply connected.

So many of us seem to have trouble with intimacy and sex simply because we are stuck in the fear based reactions of the Cycle of Egocentrism.  Our old brain reactivity kicks in and we loose sight of ourselves and our partner. 

Not so silly message

I watched a silly movie with my daughter yesterday, “Waitress”.  It had the guy from “Serenity” (Nathan Fillion) in it so my daughter wanted to watch it.  It was not all that well written and had a seriously slow pace, but it was cute. Two things struck me about this movie though. The first is that the waitress’s husband, Earl, (played by Jeremy Sisto) was painted as being a “bad husband” from the beginning of the film.   The waitress, played by Keri Russell, never had one bit of empathy for him.  Now, I’ll concede he was a painfully difficult person; he was somewhat abusive and controlling.  But as the movie progressed it became clear he was also in a lot of pain, and horribly incapable of knowing how to connect with his beautiful, uncommunicative wife.  When the waitress did connect with someone it was with a married man (Nathan Fillion) who was also her OB-GYN.  This relationship contrasted with that of her marriage by showing her new lover as being emotionally caring, and sensitive to her feelings.  During the narration she did she stated that she realized how great it felt to have someone really listen to her like what she felt and thought mattered to them.  Obviously her husband didn’t have that gift. 

Clueless men and dissatisfied wives

I bring this movie up because it reminded me so much of some of the questions sent in to the forum on Dan and Jennifer’s website.  Clueless men asking why their wives have no interest in sex anymore and dissatisfied wives seeking out connections with other men because their own husbands don’t know how to connect with them emotionally. 

“Bad guys”

Now, I realize how I just framed things makes it look like it’s the guys fault for not being emotionally available.  The truth is that it’s not their fault, and it’s not entirely about them not being able.  Men are frequently raised to hold all sign of emotions inside and are not given a vocabulary with which to express their feelings.  They are not supposed to need any kind of affection or nurturing from anyone past about the age of three.  Then we marry them and suddenly they are expected to know how to give and receive nurturing and to talk about feelings; and if they don’t they are a “bad husband”. 

When we put people in categories of “bad” and “good” were are limiting them – and ourselves – as human beings.   And it absolves us of any responsibility for what occurs when we label someone else as the “bad” one. 

My “bad guys”

I did this during my first two marriages. I was caught up in seeing how “bad” my husbands were at being husbands.  I believed I was the innocent victim wanting intimacy with men who were incapable of expressing it.  I had no desire for sex with them because I didn’t feel the least bit connected with them.  And that, I believed, was because of them. 

What I know now is that they and I came into the marriage with baggage from our pasts. We all do.  And I was no more capable of intimacy than they were.  I had to learn how to be empathetic for them, and for myself, in order to allow myself to experience the intimacy I so desperately wanted. To do that I had to let go of the belief in “good” and “bad” guys. Getting out of what I call the Cycle of Egocentrism changes everything. 

Is there a “bad guy” in your life?

Tell me what you think? Comment below.