More with Dr. Corwin

“Sally,” a smart, professionally successful woman, confesses resentment toward her partner. Sally pays all the household expenses, entertainment, vacations, and everything else. Her partner, who has been out of work for a year, visits with friends and dreams of starting her own business. She doesn’t look for a job, cook, clean, or do yardwork. She gets mad when Sally asks her to help, and points out that Sally can afford to pay.

Outrageous? It’s easy to label the partner–what a sense of entitlement! But what’s up with Sally? She suffers from the opposite problem–destructive un-entitlement. Sally doesn’t get it that it’s okay to expect your partner to meet you halfway, do her part, share the load. Sally learned this at the feet of depressed, unstable parents who needed their small daughter to take on adult responsibilities. She thought care-taking is the same as caring.

Caring is between adult equals. Care-taking is taking care of someone who isn’t meeting adult responsibilities. It’s good to help take care of children, the elderly, people with disabilities, anyone passing through temporary life hardships. But check out the entitlement issue. Do you have a healthy sense of what you deserve as an equal partner? Or are you destructively un-entitled?

Just spend another wonderful day with a group of same-sex couples, talking about sex. I’m always amazed by the power of a group of women sharing their thoughts on this sensitive topic. As some said, “We don’t talk about sex with our friends…it helps to know you’re not the only one.”

When you hear others saying the things you’ve been thinking, you realize you’re not alone or weird. You’re “normal.” No matter how unique, intelligent, and successful we are, deep down we’re still social animals who need to connect with each other and run with the pack. And we get to choose the pack!

I always come back to the “safety vs. growth” paradox. You have to feel safe where you are before you can risk going somewhere new. Feeling connected and “normal” is where you start. As Ram Dass said, “We’re all just walking each other home.”

Every couple says “We need to communicate better.” But do you know why? Sure, it’s important to say how you feel, and understand her feelings–that helps you feel closer. And also, there’s an even more important reason to talk.

Talking about something makes it real–not just to another person, but to yourself. Talking let’s you hear yourself and realize what you’re really feeling and wanting. You can understand what’s going on and how it affects you.

Therein lies the problem–and the solution! Sometimes talking makes you realize you don’t like something, and want a change. And change is threatening. But guess what-change happens anyway. That’s just life–people are always getting older, plants are always growing, knowledge keeps expanding. Better to be an active agent in your own changes, by knowing what’s real for you. And talking is what helps you get real.

When I first heard Elton John sing “You Gotta Love Someone” I remembered an incident of TMM (Temporary Moment of Maturity). I’d been worrying about whether someone I cared for deeply reciprocated my feelings. Then I realized that what really mattered the most, what would last forever with me, was that I’d let myself love her. Regardless of how our relationship evolved (and it didn’t), I had that almost physical sense of my heart expanding. I knew this was a gift that would always be part of me, and that it came from letting myself feel what I felt. T

That was the “maturity” feeling–like the prayer of St Francis, “grant that I may not so much seek…to be loved as to love.” That feels realistic, reliable, something I can count on.

Those TMMs come and go, but this one did make a big impact. So that’s why you gotta love someone–it expands your own heart.

Faith and fidelity–they’re pretty closely tied. That’s why infidelity is such a bad idea. There goes your faith that someone will be true to you, your hopes that there’s someone who will stick by you no matter what. Infidelity always brings up that question–will I ever be able to trust someone again?

Yes, you can–but here’s the clue. You need to trust yourself first. You need to know that you’ll pay attention to your relationship, that you won’t just withdraw or get lulled into meaningless routines, that you’ll have the courage to change or leave your relationship before it gets to this point.

What doesn’t work is to withdraw into feeling victimized, or tell yourself that you don’t really need your partner’s attention, or that you’ll never trust anyone again. Start with asking–can I trust myself to reach out, be vulnerable, face the truth whatever it is? That’s a faith you can keep.

A woman weeps in my office because her partner has left her, saying “I’ve needed you sexually a long time, and you don’t seem to care.” Their last conversation about this was 6 months ago–but nothing had changed.

The woman in my office looked puzzled. She explained “That’s not the way I show love. I like to do things for her, or cook together–that’s my love language.”

If you want to connect with her, you need to speak HER language–not yours! Otherwise you’re just talking to yourself. Imagine me bursting into conversation in Mandarin, when you’ve told me several times that you only understand English. That’s not trying to connect with you–it’s just trying to make you talk the way I do.

So don’t miss the point. Yes, we have different love languages, and if you want to connect with someone you need to speak hers, or at least be honest about your willingness to learn.

At last weekend’s intimacy workshop I was struck by something I’ve noticed at every workshop. Couples who start out being a little tense and standoffish with each other end the day sitting closer, touching affectionately and laughing together.

Why? Could be the workshop helps melt some chronic tension, and brings back warm memories of when things were better. I think there’s something else too. I think it’s about how good it feels to have a space where your public display of affection for your same-sex partner is not only okay, it’s wonderful. This is how we validate ourselves and affirm our sexuality, and re-commit to sustaining sexual intimacy in long-term relationships.

I know internalized homophobia exists–but really I think the bigger problem is externalized heterocentricism. It’s true that each of us carries a ton of anti-gay, anti-sexual messages, and that these can pop back up a million times over the years. But you don’t have to look into your unconscious to see how heterocentric our world is, especially about sexual matters. Romantic ads on TV, pictures on billboards, articles in magazines–they feature a man and a woman, preparing for high-social-approval activities like romantic getaways, honeymoons, walking hand-in-hand on the beach. These are heterocentric messages: sex is a wonderful, important part of a committed relationship–for straight couples. Not for you.

So I love to do these workshops to say sex is good for us too! We also have the right–and the need- to express ourselves physically, to show off our sensuality, to claim this unique bonding and pleasure for ourselves. And I’m so happy to help create a space where we can let our love show.

Today we acknowledge people we love–and especially, we honor passion with a lover. For many women, that passion was strong enough to propel you past your fears about being sexual with another woman. You could have lived a heterosexual life, befriending women and partnering only with men. But you didn’t, for certain reasons–sexual reasons. Sex isn’t everything, but it is something–something important, even vital to who we are. It can improve the quality of our lives, and strengthens the attachment that holds us together through thick and thin. So today celebrate your capacity for sexual intimacy. Whether you have a lover today or not, you’re someone who had the courage to express your sexual self. That courage is still part of you, so honor that, today!

Just learned that Whitney Houston died, and read a painful history of her last few years. She was only 48. What a sad portrayal of external beauty and internal torment. We’ll be thinking about her a lot, and talking, and I hope there can be something healing for all of us. And remember her beautiful songs.

Valentine’s Day is approaching, and that’s a mixed blessing. If you don’t have a lover, you can feel like a loser. If you have a partner who’s no longer a lover–you’ve drifted into asexual “friendship”–you may feel a painful loss of passion. Even if you have a lover, you may feel stressed about getting the right gift, dinner reservations, flowers, etc etc. Where’s the joy in all this?

We humans have a very basic, biological need to feel attached to another living being. Sexual intimacy is one way to have that, but there are others. Could be a person or a pet, but the need to touch and be touched, to feel like you matter to someone, is universal and powerful–and it’s not limited to lovers. So the joy in Valentine’s Day can be this: remind yourself and whoever is close to you that you both matter, that you love and care for each other, that you have something to give and receive just because you’re reaching out in a loving spirit.

That’s where you’ll find the joy.