Sex and HeartHow I transformed devastation into love and loving lust

I received this request from a reader.

“I would really like to you to give some advice on addressing “wandering eyes” in men. Last night while walking in the park with my husband we came upon a ball field. There was a very petite well-enhanced blonde mother who was grabbing all the coachs’ attention (including her teenage son’s friends). My husband actually slowed down almost to a stop and peered around me to look at her while doing the 10 second up/down look. I stopped walking, glanced at her and looked at him–I was speechless. He was picturing her naked right there in front of me with this lustful look on his face and even looked around me to do it. I was shocked that he didn’t hide it. I know that this is a problem for a lot of women and would really appreciate some advice.”

First of all it’s normal and natural for men to check out women. It’s almost as if it’s built into their DNA. Can you in all honesty say to me that YOU NEVER notice a well-built man or one that has a certain look that makes your heart beat a little bit faster? Or maybe a man smiles at you as he passes by, and this makes you feel good, and maybe even a little spark of something sexual glimmers inside you.

Doe this mean anything to you? Do you imagine this man in your bed having sex with you? Of course not, unless you’re totally single, ready, and available, or you are just not that into your man. Unless you are trolling for a new guy, it would be a passing thought, and it’s just as quickly gone.

And so it is with your man.

Now when out with their woman, men “should” have learned along to the way to be discrete about their natural instinct to simply look, and this is all it is. For the most part, they are not even aware they have done it, given a woman a quick once over. It’s SO quick that if you had blinked when he did this, you would have missed it.

In this case and in any other similar ones, and this is VERY important, it may NOT be as you have imagined. I can almost guarantee you that if you are with a good man, it’s rarely if ever what you think.

You really DON’T know he was undressing her with his eyes. Really you don’t. You are majorly making assumptions here. Yes he was checking her out. It was likely as a reflex, as I just explained, BUT he was also looking to see what the obvious to do was about which you described. You were looking to see what was going on too, weren’t you? Commotion creates curiosity.

AND for all you know, and this is likely a more accurate depiction of this scenario, he was looking not in awe at her enhancements but in shock and horror, in astonishment. As in WOW!!! Why would she do that to herself? How silly she looks. How plastic. And the hair! Can we say so uninviting, so unappealing. How pathetic. How sad. Yuck. Of course I’m translating HIS words into girl speak.

That said, let’s say your man actually did obviously and blatantly stare at another woman, tongue hanging, eyes bugged out. It’s clear he desires her. My first question to you would be, “why are you with a man who has seemingly no regard for your feelings, who would be this disrespectful to you? He doesn’t seem at all committed.” Think about this first.

Okay so let’s say this is a first time occurrence. If his look lasts for more than an instinctive split second, and if it bothers you for more than a split second, then you need to let him know that what he did feels bad. It made you feel uncomfortable, insecure, angry, whatever it was you felt. And you must speak up in the moment.

If you initially let it go though and this incident continues to eat at you, then you still need to say something. You don’t want it to fester and then have it come out at another time in a totally inappropriate, out of proportion way. You could say something like this:

“The other night when we were out walking, it seemed as though you were ogling that blonde woman, and that felt so bad. I felt so not enough in that moment.”

A good guy would apologize and make it right is some way, in his way.

My reader’s response:

“Wow I never thought I could say anything like that if a man does that. I always felt it’s ok to look at the menu just don’t order.”

There is a distinct difference between a brief glance over that even you as a woman would engage in in this kind of situation, and flat out eyes wide staring for fifteen seconds.

BUT we don’t really know if he was staring at the woman, or if he was simply wondering what was happening or if he was staring at the “spectacle” that is she, a caricature of a real woman.

We women have a tendency to project our insecurities on to our men. And it’s okay to be mistaken.

If after voicing your feelings over what you think was going on, he still gets defensive, then you will know that maybe you were correct in your assessment, and there are maybe things you need to talk about. Maybe you need to rethink this man. But do talk first.

“Tinque…you are awesome!! I know they will look (I walked through the red light district in Amsterdam with him once)  It’s the 15 second look and re-look that made me feel icky and so undesirable…so not enough…maybe it was the fact that she had that “porn star look” (sorry but that’s what she looked like…unnatural body…fake tan…bleach blonde)…maybe scared the porn use will skyrocket again…then the sexual rejection will come back again. Maybe I feel my man doesn’t look at me that way. I wish men (more importantly…my man) would look at me with “lust in their eyes”. I felt totally turned off from him in that moment. I felt like giving up trying to deal with the lingering feelings of rejection and turning around and walking away.”

Can you see how she’s boarding that run away train in her brain? A few seconds long look at something totally freakish (and I am sure that’s exactly what he was thinking) and she has gone from, “I know men look to, I WILL be rejected. My man never looks at ME that way, with lust.”

Her fears are understandable, and maybe they are well founded since he has had a problem with porn before, but since she has chosen to be with this man, she cannot live her life thinking, “what if”.

If his porn habit escalates, if he starts neglecting her, then and only then is there something to deal with. In the meantime, she must work under the assumption he looks a little at porn or not at all. And when he notices women out in the street, it’s nothing more than a passing glance. Maybe he will think briefly that she’s attractive, but that’s it, nothing more to be thought about or done about it. If he is turned on at all, then this is only fuel for his fire for HER.

Now in this case in Amsterdam, very much like the case in the park, he may very well have been looking at her in astonishment and couldn’t stop looking because she looked liked such a cartoon. You know how people can’t get enough of looking at car wrecks even though they’re hard to look at?

And lastly I would have her ask herself this, and this is crucial:

“How do you know he doesn’t look at YOU with lust in his eyes? Have you looked? REALLY looked? Have you checked his eyes right before you make love?

Have you ever looked at HIM with lust in your eyes, soft, open, come take me eyes?”

Please think about this. Think about this long and hard, and then go give him THOSE eyes, and see what he does.

xxoo

I often suggest sinking into feeling before falling asleep, deeply into whatever feeling it is, for this is the time when you are at your most vulnerable, when you are most open and thus available to suggestion and change. It’s a fabulous way to rewire your neural connections.

If you fall asleep immersed in good feeling feelings, you are training your body and mind to accustom to these feelings again and thus feel them more frequently and with increasing levels of comfort.

I was asked a wonderful question this morning though. If you fall asleep while feeling bad, while your mind is looping negative thoughts, when your gremlins are yapping away at you, won’t you reinforce feeling bad, or maybe you will reprogram yourself back to the old ways?

It would seem contradictory to say NO to this question, yet it’s not at all.

When you are asleep your body goes into a very deep state, deeply relaxed, deeply receptive too. If you check in with your body the second you wake up, EVERYTHING is completely and utterly at ease. Nothing hurts anywhere, not physically or emotionally.

You may only be able to feel this for a split second, for you could start to tighten up right away. This is simply habit, your protective mechanisms kicking back in, unwarranted maybe but there nonetheless. But the whole time you were asleep, you were in total relaxation.

Your body WANTS this, craves it even. It wants to feel good, at peace, calm, but we immediately start to THINK upon awakening, and the tensions set in, the negative, gremlin voices may start talking to you too. Your fears take over, and you close down a little here, a little there, maybe a lot, and maybe you are even unaware of any of it.

When you are on the brink of sleep, when you can really sink into whatever feeling you are having at this time, you WILL have even more of an opportunity to transform when you fall more deeply still, deep into a state of sleep. The bad feeling stuff will be more able to move through you and more quickly. The good feeling stuff will be more able to settle into you on a cellular level.

So you might ask, why would the good feeling stuff stay with you somewhere in your body if only as a trace memory and the bad feeling stuff move on out?

You were born in a pure state. Somewhere inside, your body, mind, heart, and soul remember this; they know this peaceful state, and desperately wish to feel this and be this, as in coming home. They will soak good feeling stuff up like a dessicated sponge.

The other stuff is at core foreign. Remember we are all born as love.  So you will in a sense reject it. Reject is not the best choice of word, for that seems like passing judgment, so maybe it’s more of the body wanting to let this stuff go because it’s not what it knows nor needs to thrive on at core. It’s not what you really desire despite the constant barrage in your waking state.

In the sleep state, your body can operate from its wisdom which we aren’t always so much while awake. Your smart being releases what doesn’t feel good, and it incorporates what does feel good.

And so when you know this on a conscious level, you can keep at it so that more and more your sleeping wise being more closely aligns with your awake being though I would say that our sleeping body’s eyes are far more open and awake, and our awake body far more asleep with eyes wide closed.

The body and mind really DO want peace and love. ALWAYS and ALL THE TIME.
xxoo

When you find yourself wondering where you are going in your relationship, maybe wanting to lay out an agenda such as where to take it, how to take it there, how about thinking in terms of day by day, moment by moment even.

If you feel sure you are both exclusive with each other, yet you haven’t been together very long, not long enough to really know each other, then there is really nothing to do right now but continue to get to know each other through ever deepening levels.

It takes a long while to REALLY get to know someone, especially the older you are, more time for more experiences and thus more secrets to be hidden away.You may think within a few months or a year possibly, but I guarantee you, ghosts from before can and will show themselves, and they are more likely to do so the more comfortable you become with each other which takes time.

If you live together, all or most all cards are revealed within two to three years. Longer if you don’t. I’m not advocating dating for this long before you make a commitment to each other, but what I am saying is don’t rush the ring and the proposal. Don’t even rush the words, the I love yous. Take your time to KNOW this other being, feel him, his heart, his essence. Give him the time to do the same.

What’s the hurry? Really and truly what is the hurry?

The wedding or the marriage is for some unnecessary. If you are both committed, and no one is planning on going anywhere, the rest is simply legalities which do make things easier in some respects, yet it can also feel like an imposition. Still the trappings of all of this can seem very attractive, alluring.

For others it makes them feel that little bit more secure, like it’s all that little bit more real, and this is quite valid.

But I say again. What’s the hurry? Don’t you want to be sure this is really and truly your “the one”?

Wouldn’t it feel good to explore each other, swim the uncharted waters together, dive ever deeper, to the deepest of depths with each other? I mean REALLY, REALLY develop intimacy and authenticity?

In reality there is no “future”. There is only right now. Yes you can plan for things, hope for things, yet this moment is all there is.

I’m not suggesting to take this piece I’m giving you and go forth to live recklessly with no thought of consequences, nor am I saying you should live your life just as you wish, selfishly, with no thought for those you care about or even those you don’t or don’t know at all. You still have responsibility. You still have feelings about how others might feel or be affected by your actions.

But if you are not hurting anyone, and it feels good to you, then go and do. And enjoy. Relish every second. Be curious. Be in awe. And BE this way with your man. BE with him.

Discard the rose colored glasses, and keep your eyes wide open. Please try to take the stars out of your eyes, and please put down your romance novel notions. Think about this. You are a real live human being, beautiful yes, yet you are full of foibles, wonderful ones no doubt, but you are not perfect. You are a perpetual work in progress.

So is he. There will be times for sure when you do see moonbeams and rainbows, and fairy dust falls everywhere around you and on you, evoking all the most lovely things imaginable, and he will sweep you off your feet in perfect white knightly fashion. But he too has bumps and bruises and warts and probably some other very gross things. You need time to discover them all or most of them and decide for you if these things are okay, if any of them are deal breakers.

THIS TAKES TIME. This takes living for right now.

Once you fully and honestly know him, then and only then can you have your own version of happily ever after.

xxoo

Uprooting old stuff, bad habits that no longer serve you, your protections, your walls which are no longer needed is like cutting out a questionably healthy or outright diseased body part. It HURTS.

You can experience physical aches. You can have painful memories. You can struggle with resistance. You can feel all kinds of uncomfortable things coming to the surface.

It’s kind of like releasing the cork on a bottle of brew that has been building up and building up, creating pressure, and then you let it go. It can all spew out. Or it can come out in spurts depending on how quickly you take off the lid. More slowly is best by the way, for it gives you time to integrate, minimizes messy clean up.

It can also feel like you’re tearing away and discarding a close friend, for those coping mechanisms have been good to you for a long time, kept you safe in a way. They did help you manage difficult situations.

But now they’re in your way. They are interfering with your movement forward. They are impeding you, keeping you from having what you really want.

You may very well suffer a sense of separation anxiety and fear as you work at letting this all go. Your old self is being replaced with an unknown, and unknowns can be exciting but also very scary.

And really you aren’t discarding the “old” you or rather the parts of you that you took on over the years and want to change. It’s more like you are absorbing them into your being but not so close by, kind of like leaving an imprint in your long term memory brain cells.

It will feel good to tell them thank you for taking care of you when you needed them, but then you must ask them to leave you be, be quiet, and go sit somewhere else. You are not banishing them entirely. You are just moving them to a farther away location in your body. When and if they do come to visit, you can give them a big smile, hug them even, and then you can remind them they don’t live here anymore. bye bye.

And now you have made room for and can allow the new parts of you or rather the deeply buried parts of you that wish to emerge and make you feel better and have the life you wish for. Does this make sense?

So the desire to grow is now stronger than the fear of releasing or of uncharted waters. You want to tug at that maybe stubbornly stuck bottle stopper. And so the journey begins.

You will feel like you’re being tested to your limits sometimes. You will feel really tired sometimes. You may feel like giving up sometimes. You may despair at your ability to do this, BUT if you have this desire and you can remain determined, you will be able to override thoughts such as these.

When anxiety sets in, do your best to let all of those busy, looping thoughts go. Know that as much as you worry, things NEVER turn out as badly as you might imagine. In fact most of the time they will never come to be at all.

It’s a change of mindset, and this alone will help the process quite a bit. What I mean is that when you are anticipating negative sorts of things, you will tend to get what you anticipate, or at least worry yourself needlessly. In other words when you prepare for the worst, the worst is more likely to happen. Though I could argue that there are no “bad” experiences, only opportunities for growth.

Imagining the best will tend to bring you the best, or at least take a huge edge off of anything that does happen that could be perceived as negative. When you have your mind set to more of the good thoughts and not so much expecting the best but just knowing it will be there, the best is what you will attract.

Try telling yourself this any time something that feels not so good comes about: “This is not such a big deal. This is great. This is exciting even. I am getting the opportunity to work with and release more things inside so that I can have a fuller, richer life. Not many people get this chance or even recognize it’s a possibility. I am SO lucky.”

Anticipate how good you will feel as you let go of things bit by bit. Feel how this might feel. Imagine it if you can’t really feel it. It will shift your feelings around many things.

For example, my body became distorted due to physical traumas and reinforced by emotional ones. I’ve been working very hard to restructure my entire skeletal construct even though I’ve been told this is impossible. But I knew I could change anything if I set my mind to it. It’s bone and muscle after all. Change the muscles, and the bones will shift. Shift the emotions, the body will change.

And I have proved “them” wrong. It has been difficult, physically painful, and as the trapped emotions are released, emotionally sometimes really awful feeling. It takes constant vigilance (this is where determination is helpful, but it can also feel like a curse at times, crazy making) to change how I sit, stand, lay down even, how I move. It takes perpetual attention to where and how I hold tension. It’s a constant push pull throughout the day.

For a long time, most of the time I felt physically uncomfortable, sometimes pain, not easy in my body which can greatly affect mood. I can still experience this though it’s greatly diminished. And it can be enormously frustrating, but I know what I want, and I just know some day this too will go away altogether.

And I can recognize the huge progress I have made. I have changed not only how I look but how I feel and it’s been SO MUCH over the years and all in good ways. My body has opened. My heart has opened right along with. Yes I still feel discomfort which tells me there’s just more to work on, on all levels.

My point is this. When I am struck with say more pain than has been or spasming in muscles I’ve been working to release, along with any accompanying bad feelings, anxiety, irritation, frustration, anger, sadness, I don’t tell myself, “Again? Oh no. I can’t take it.” Instead I smile as authentically as I can and welcome all of it, for I know that something big is releasing and bringing me ever closer to where I wish to go. And this comes naturally now. I don’t have to force it anymore.

Yes there are times when I feel overwhelmed. Or I feel there’s seemingly no light at the end of this tunnel this time. Or I just feel really cranky about it all, but it ALWAYS passes.

Once you’ve taken steps towards healing it’s just not possible to give up no matter how difficult it feels sometimes. Whenever I felt I couldn’t take anymore, that the spell of feeling icky I was in had gone on for just too long, suddenly the clouds would clear, and I would get respite. And it’s these periods of respite that will keep you going through the darker feeling times. And soon you will find these sunny spells lengthening, becoming bigger and brighter all the time.

xxoo

What does it feels like while you process your emotions as you work to heal from your past and even your present? What can you expect? Have you ever wondered if what you feel is the same as what others feel? Have you ever speculated as to what’s normal?

You may feel a myriad of emotions coming at you one after the other at breakneck speed, so fast in fact you lose your breath. This can feel scary, overwhelming. You may feel like pulling the covers over your head. You may have a strong urge to run away or go and hide. It may feel like it will never stop. But it always does stop, eventually.

You may feel stuck on one particular feeling for awhile. This too can be frightening, feeling like you’ll never move on to something else, let alone a good feeling something else. You may feel like disappearing altogether, but think of how much you might miss when the feeling does move on, and it WILL.

You may move through varying feelings slowly and consistently though this is one I’ve only heard of in theory. I have yet to meet someone who can work this methodically unless they’re in denial or dismissing what’s really coming at them.

Or you may feel all kinds of things, maybe one way for awhile, like one of the above scenarios or something else, and then it shifts to a different way. This can feel so confusing.

You may also find yourself suddenly going numb. Numbness occurs when too much is processing too fast, and your body overloads, shuts down in a way.

And the thing with numbness is that you may start on your journey with this already firmly in place. If life has dealt you one too many blows for your particular psyche, you will numb out. AND numbness keeps you from having any kind of full life at all. Numb keeps you very, very small.

Breaking through perpetual numbness is difficult, but you CAN do this if you keep at it, keep working on feeling anything, even if it feels awful. Awful IS better than numb. I promise you. I’ve been in both places.

All of this is hard stuff, scary stuff, however your process goes. It can sometimes hurt a lot, but it can also sometimes feel really, really good, and those feeling good spells will be what keep you going.

Emotions are an isness of life, not good, not bad. They may FEEL good or bad but inherently they are neither one or the other.

You WILL feel terrible at times or worse even, absolutely miserable. You will feel anger. You will feel sadness permeating your every part.

But you will also feel amazing at times, like a huge lightbulb went off showing you such gloriousness. You WILL feel free. You will feel at peace. You will feel intense love.

As you work through these things, a wonderful way to allay the fears is to play at being child like about it. Try looking at whatever comes up, whatever you feel with curiosity.

Ask yourself questions such as these. What is this feeling doing? Does it move? How does it move? Quickly? Slowly? Erratically? In a pattern? Flowingly? Stiltedly? Is it walking? Running? Dragging its feet? Is it dancing? Skipping? Spinning?

What’s it going to do next? Where is it going to go? Will it go elsewhere into another part of my body? Will it stay in my head? Will it go visit someone else?

What color is this feeling? Is it brightly colored? One color? Multi-colored? No color at all? Do the colors change with each emotion, within an emotion? Is it hard? Dense? Prickly? Soft? Light? Silky? Fluffy? Porous? Airy? Sticky? Is it smooth? Does it have angles or sharp edges? Is it dark? Forbidding? Is it light and bright? Welcoming?

Can you touch any feeling with your mind? With your heart?

If you feel tears, allow them to flow. Sob, wail if you feel moved to do so, until there’s nothing left even. Crying is a wonderful release. Crying is cleansing.

Giggle if you feel tickled to do so. Laughing is a wonderful endorphin booster. It’s an amazing and effective way to shed residual ickyness.

If you don’t allow your feelings, all of them, they will sit inside and fester and become something you probably don’t want. And avoidance will not prevent them from returning anyway and likely sooner than later. Imagine all of your emotions like a big pot of simmering soup. Each and every emotion will bubble to the surface at one time or another.

If things feel like they’re moving too fast for you and/or you fear numbing out, try imagining yourself taking pit stops. See if you can pause at an emotion (like on a DVD player) and see what happens. Can you stay with it awhile? Can you feel it more? Or does it want to run away from you? There is no right or wrong here.

If it’s too much to handle, as in overwhelming, ask your mind to slow the pace. Try breathing deeply and consciously. Meditation is a wonderful tool to use as a vehicle.

If memories pop up, try acknowledging them, and then tell them, bye bye. Tell them they are a part of your past, and it’s now time to move on. So thank them for the messages they bring you, and ask them to go integrate.

Let yourself feel all of this, every nuance. It can then move through you and become something else.

Growing is difficult and sometimes painful. I have been through years of awfullness, but even within the darkest periods, there have been rays of sunshine, even if only glimmers at first. Really, really feel those times, sink into them even more deeply if possible, even if they are only fleeting moments. When you feel seemingly at your worst, you can then conjure them which just might shift you out of an icky stuckness.

These dark times are a wonderful opportunity for learning how to be there for YOU, comfort YOU, for learning how to love YOU, just as you are, no matter how red your eyes may be or droopy your countenance or how ratty your hair or how bedraggled you may look.

It may feel weird. This may go against everything you’ve been taught by your family, your culture, the media, but loving yourself deeply and profoundly will be one of the greatest gifts you will ever give to you. Plus it’s really, really sexy. A man will only love you more the more you can love YOU. So take this chance to embrace YOU exactly as you are, perfect.

And remember this; just when you feel you can’t take anymore darkness, suddenly there is light.

Everyone is different. Anything which you experience is FABULOUS, whether it feels like a roller coaster ride or like going over a waterfall or like wallowing in mud.

Any and all of this is “normal” however you might define “this”. The way I see it, there really is no such thing as normal. What’s normal is normal for YOU.

On a day to day basis, when you aren’t processing per se, know that emotions come and go all day and all night long. They can be and usually are fleeting. They can move through rather quickly, more quickly than thoughts sometimes. You can and will feel maybe hundreds of them within a twenty four hour period. And this too is “normal”.

So there is no definitive answer to the opening questions since everyone works through their stuff in their own way. And since you can’t be in someone else’s body, you will never know if their feelings are the same as yours, but you can know that whatever you do feel, it’s NORMAL.

xxoo tinque