Read Online Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship by David Schnarch - Free Book Online

your sexual desire means understanding the naturalecology of love relationships. The rules of love relationships often differ from what you want to believe. Throughout history, laws have surfaced giving men legal control of their wives’ bodies. These laws document how patriarchal societies attempt to overcome the way sexual desire operates in emotionally committed relationships. Today, the man is the LDP in half the cases I see. But the rule still holds true: The low desire partner always controls sex.
    My approach will help you get it right: It embraces a unique view of love, sexual desire, and relationships. It is an
ecological
approach. An ecological approach says that the rules of love relationships already exist in your marriage. When you live according to how things work, rather than how you want them to be, relationships become more productive and gratifying.
    Ignore the rules of love relationships at your own peril. These rules exist within even the most destructive relationships—the reason they’re so destructive is because no one heeds them or acts accordingly. You are more likely to stay together, and be happy that you did, if you heed the rules of how relationships really work.
    This is a huge shift if you’re indoctrinated with the modern mantra, “Work on your relationship!” In many ways you
can’t
work on your relationship, any more than you can work on the environment. You can support the environment doing what it does naturally, instead of interfering with it. But you can’t improve the way it functions as an elegant, interdependent whole. If you understand and respect how love relationships operate (relationship ecology) and how people operate (individual ecology), your life will be healthier and happier. 56
•
Sexual desire problems: Learning to take care of your self
     
    It’s easier to resolve sexual desire problems if you see how they involve your brain, mind, body, and relationship. There’s a lot more involved than doing what comes naturally. Resolving sexual desire problems can create powerful personal development that ripples through your life.
    We’ve laid a scientific basis for what I’m telling you: Sexual desire problems are a normal and healthy midpoint in the evolution of arelationship and the people in it. They don’t necessarily mean something is going wrong. Sexual desire problems replay epic sagas of human evolution. Now it’s your turn to go through it. Don’t waste your time perfecting your sexual techniques.
    Nature is clever: The relationship in which you seek refuge pushes you to develop a more solid self, like pushing toothpaste out of a tube by progressively winding the other end. The love relationship you thought would make you feel safe and secure pounds your fragile reflected sense of self into something solid and lasting.
    It sounds weird to think of sexual desire problems as naturally occurring growth processes, but that’s how I’ve come to see them. That’s the way my clients come to see them too. Like Doreen and Adam, many folks come to look upon their desire problem as one of the best things that ever happened to them. If you handle your opportunity wisely, there’s a good chance you’ll end up feeling that way, too.
•
Back to Doreen and Adam
     
    Adam said, “I don’t like Doreen thinking I owe her sex. She makes me feel like my body doesn’t belong to me. She doesn’t see me as a separate person. She doesn’t respect my boundaries. She’s constantly telling me what to do, down to the clothes I wear. I don’t belong to her, I belong to me.”
    Doreen retorted, “When we first got together you liked us belonging to each other. I know you felt supported and encouraged by me, and I felt important and needed in your life. Now the idea of belonging to each other makes you furious. I think you have a problem with commitment. It comes out by you withholding sex.”
    Doreen looked at me and said, “Why does something so natural have to be so