Getting Back Out There by Susan J. Elliott

Getting Back Out There by Susan J. Elliott

Author:Susan J. Elliott
Language: ara
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2014-11-12T16:00:00+00:00


The Sexual Standards and Compatibility List

The first standards and compatibilities list was to narrow your choices. It’s important to concentrate on defining that list before you embark on a sexual relationship. Practicing your new observation skills and honoring your list is an important component of healthy dating. The next list is the sexual standards and compatibilities list. This list assumes that you are moving toward the place where you are ready to engage in deeper, possibly committed relationships. Now that you are accepting yourself fully, it’s time to focus on your sexual list of negotiable, nonnegotiable, and maybe negotiable.

Discovering your authentic sexual self requires reviewing your sexual inventory and your list of sexual standards and compatibilities. If you found that your sexual behaviors and choice of partners are based in trying to fill empty places, wanting to be liked, or being confused, it is time to discover who you are and to embrace it, perhaps for the first time ever. The important thing in developing your authentic sexual self is knowing that you are okay no matter what and if your new partner isn’t compatible with you, that doesn’t mean it’s your fault or you have to change anything. Again, if you decide to change something about yourself, it has to be an informed decision based on the level of compatibility in other areas and the honest desire to give up a little for the right person.

When going through your sexual inventory, note anything that you engaged in because someone else wanted you to do it or because you thought you needed to do it to keep a relationship alive. Many times chaotic relationships will be filled with “toe-curling sex” that is more performance than passion. More than one client has told me that it was difficult to leave a bad relationship when “the sex was so good.” Getting swept up in the high wire act that can come from wild makeup sex after a knock-down, drag-out fight causes a person to lose perspective on what truly feels good. Without the wild makeup sex, these couples cannot survive. There is nothing else to connect them. It’s time to leave the wild makeup sex in the bedroom and realize that intimacy happens everywhere (not the sex act, but intimacy). Healthy couples do not engage in breakup/makeup cycles. Further, once you relieve yourself of having to be “on” in the bedroom, you can spend some time thinking about what you really like and are willing to do.

One woman said there were certain boundaries that she allowed men to cross that she was not willing to do anymore. “When I looked at my sexual inventory, a feeling of ickiness came over me. There were things I decided to never do again and if that was not okay with my man then he was not the man for me.” When I brought up the topic at a women’s retreat, most in the room nodded their head. Being real instead of putting on a show



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