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

It’s possible to be a good person and not love yourself. Not loving yourself doesn’t make you evil, troubled maybe but not necessarily bad.

But doesn’t this sound limiting? Yet loving yourself for most of us is not an easy thing to achieve.

Since many of us were made to feel unworthy or undeserving at tender ages, as in we were maybe abused, physically, emotionally, or both, or we were neglected or ignored, the message received would have been the same whichever scenario you experienced.

“I must not be lovable.” or “I must be a bad person.” or “If I was (any number of things which I will leave to your imagination and the memories of your past) my parents would love me take care of, cherish me.”

You would surely have tried to gain their love, and certainly you would have thought that maybe if I try harder to be good or if I do more chores or if I do better at school or whatever it was, then they will love me. And your efforts mostly if not always proved fruitless, didn’t they? But you kept on trying, didn’t you?

And you carried this with you through your younger years and on into adulthood. You may have come to know intellectually that you are as deserving of love as anyone. Yet you don’t own this, not completely. You still carry levels of self-loathing. You still “beat yourself up” over small things, big things, anything. You still treat yourself badly sometimes, maybe by not taking care of your health through poor eating, exercise, or sleeping habits or telling yourself nasty things such as “you’re ugly or stupid”.

Changing these patterns is difficult, especially if you never knew love during the critical years of early childhood. Your caregivers’ love maybe was there somewhere, but it was too deeply hidden in the deep and wounded recesses of their own hearts, so it felt as if not there to you.

Learning to love yourself when you don’t really know love is a challenge, but it’s a doable one. IF you want it. It’s as important maybe more so if you want to then continue on to have a special someone with whom to share this love. Look at this in another way; if you don’t love yourself, how can another person love you?

First of all to cheat yourself of yourself sounds so sad. Even if you can love yourself a little bit, this makes all the difference. You can build on this. It may ebb and flow, but if some sort of spark of self-love is there smoldering, love CAN grow between two people, as it blooms for yourself.

And every time you love on yourself and/or have good thoughts about yourself, this registers in you, in your brain, in your body, and in your heart. And this is how you rewire neural connections. This is how to grow love for YOU. And loving yourself makes room for another to love you. The more you learn to love YOU, the more they can love you too.

This is a hard one though, as I said, especially in the early stages or for those who come from a dearth of love backgrounds. We have to train ourselves not to be expecting the other shoe to drop at any moment. We have to teach ourselves over and over again to revel instead of wallow.

And each time you feel the tentative feelings of joy disrupted, your beautiful feeling cocoon you have created burst, as in someone says something to throw you or is abrupt with you or slights you whether it’s misperceived or not, yes you will feel awful for awhile, but it’s not the end. You can overcome.

You will have to tell yourself each time and maybe for always that this person’s reaction or outburst has NOTHING to do with you. NOTHING. And you can still love yourself despite what goes on around you.

AND each time you are able to reconnect to your good or better feeling feelings in a positive way, the more solid and secure you will feel within. So every time something or someone attempts or succeeds in upsetting this, the easier it will be to NOT let them affect you at all or at least allow you to re-establish the good feelings more quickly. You won’t feel as if tossed into a pit.

Everything you do in your life is your choice, even if it doesn’t seem like it, even if it seems out of your control. You have the choice to change. It may not feel comfortable getting to where it is you want to go, but that again is your choice. Do you want to go through a phase where you are out of your comfort zone to feel good, or would you rather stay where you are within your self-created illusion of safety and not feel so good as an example.

You have the choice here to love yourself in each and every moment, and this may feel unbelievably scary to you, for the thought of changing these deep feeling thought patterns around this can be terrifying even if it’s something you desire. Yet the choice is there. What are you willing to live with? For now? For later?

At some point it will have to feel so bad for you that you will feel at the end of your rope, and you WILL refuse to tolerate it anymore. Then you will take your first steps.

Learning to love and adore myself is something I have danced with and around most of my life. It’s not been an easy lesson to learn to say the least. And quite honestly I still struggle with it at times.

Let’s say for example I feel bad. Maybe I’ve been feeling bad a lot of the time. I ask myself if this is habit. Yes it is, yet it’s also part of my original programming. Do I want to feel good or at least better? Of course, but still I feel bad. And I just can’t seem to pull out of it.

Yes it could be hormones at play, BUT bottom line it is MY choice to feel good, so when I feel stuck, I can swim about in my moaning how this isn’t the way I want it; that isn’t right; this feels bad; I feel inadequate, BUT I can also look around and see how much wonderfulness I do have, how hard I have worked to create much of this wonderfulness, and I can choose to take pleasure in that instead. If I made that choice, I would instantly feel better, if only a little.

Feelings come and go all day long, all life long. One thing you can count on is that they will move and shift. You CAN choose to have those feelings come from love.

You deserve to feel your own love. It’s good. It’s beautiful. Enjoy it as much as you are able in this moment, in every moment. You can learn to love you more and more, SO much even and all of you, even the parts you may not like so much. They’ll love you back soon enough.

So love on yourself tonight. Love on yourself all day, every day. Be it kind words. Or a smile to yourself as you pass a mirror. Or maybe blow yourself kisses. Or take a hot bubble bath or shower. Or self-pleasure. Or anything that makes you feel warm and safe and LOVED.

xxoo

This question has come up often enough that I feel it needs addressing. How long does it take to heal?

Clearly everyone is different. We all have different issues and degrees and depths of issues to heal, our hurts, traumas, fears. Within these areas of healing, each one of us has varying levels of tolerance to the pain that will arise and the courage and resilience to work through the pain which healing entails.

This question is not an easy one; in fact it’s an impossible one to answer, but what I can let you in on is what to expect while you work through your issues, as you walk your healing path though anything I posit may NEVER come to be for YOU, or you may experience each and every one I detail and then some, things I haven’t anticipated.

First of all whatever you feel and whenever you feel it is perfectly NORMAL. You will never be alone in your feelings. There will always be someone or many someones out there who feel just as you do. So you can at least put aside any notion that you are weird, different, or broken in any way.

As you walk, skip, jump, or run about on your journey, you may wonder at times if you are changing at all. Sometimes you will feel sure you’re not, as in you are stuck in the mud and muck that is your maybe your lot in life, as in you will feel like this, icky, low, depressed, forever.

But there will be other times you will be just as sure you are moving forward, as in everything looks a little brighter and smilier, so shiny and beautiful, rainbow colored, YES!!!

Yet there will be other  times you’re just not sure of anything at all. Any and all of this is NORMAL.

You may feel so lost at times.

You may feel like you don’t understand any of it, you, your partner, nothing at all. This too is NORMAL.

You may wonder if you are doing it the right way. There is no right way. Whichever way you do it, whichever road you choose or find yourself on is right for you, for YOU. Whatever works for you even if only a little is right for YOU.

You may at times wonder if it’s even possible for you to change at all. Are your issues maybe too deeply ingrained? Do you have what it takes, the perseverance, the fortitude, the ability? Is it too late for you? Are you a hopeless case? My answer to all of these questions and any others like them is this; if you have the desire, even if it’s just a hint, if you can imagine it, even if it’s just a wisp of an image, then you CAN do this.

The only way through the sometimes very dark tunnels is to go through them. Sooner or later there will be light. The farther down the path you walk, the shorter will be those tunnels and the sooner will there be rays of sunshine, for the most part.

However big or small your steps may feel, they are huge simply because you are doing this work on yourself at all. It will feel sometimes that you haven’t gone anywhere at all, backwards even, but that’s just not possible.

Once this journey has been embarked upon, the journey will continue, sometimes seemingly without your consent or approval. It can feel at times as if it has a life of its own.

AND you can’t fall into old patterns because you will know it, feel it immediately, and you WILL stop yourself before you continue into the once familiar pattern. You won’t be able to do it any other way anymore. And in time the old familiar will feel totally foreign, and the new familiar will feel like just that, familiar if not comfortable, at least once in awhile.

You may feel like you’ll never get there. Well this part is true. Where is there anyway? BUT you will eventually feel a nicer flow, a more relaxed feeling around most things. Things, life will just feel easier. Your heart will feel more open and loving and receiving of love. And really what else is there?

So how long your personal journey will take to where you feel as though you’ve come to that “somewhere”, a better feeling place, a more peaceful state? This is undetermined. It may take a short amount of time, or it may feel like forever. However it plays out for you, know this, this journey is a lifelong process/proposition.

So the short answer, really the only answer to the question, “how long?”, is that there is no definitive answer to this question.

It will be what it is for YOU. And please sink into it all, every icky feeling and every wonderful feeling and everything in between. The deeper you can sink, the sooner will you heal.

xxoo

Have you ever woken up one morning feeling as if the world is pressing down so hard on you that you feel as though you may very well crumble and break into pieces? Negative or “bad” thoughts swirl ceaselessly in your brain making you feel as if you are losing your mind?

Or maybe you feel as if you want to give up? You may yearn to crawl back into bed, pull the covers over you and sleep all day, all week, forever.

Has the sadness taken over, overwhelming you to the point that you feel as though you will sink so far down you may drown in the sorrow? You may feel as though you are falling into a bottomless pit.

And have these feelings seemed to come from nowhere in particular? As in nothing special or notable happened to cause them?

You feel so awful. You feel as though you are being crushed. Or you feel as though you are melting. The tears are at the ready, about to fall at any moment. Maybe they do. Maybe they flow like a river, streaming down your cheeks. Your hearts aches. Your body may hurt too. You just feel SO awful. And you don’t know why.

There seems to be no reason for this. Your life is mostly wonderful or at least good. Maybe you have a man who loves and adores you. Maybe you have a successful career or at least one that fulfills you if not compensates you nicely. Maybe your life is mostly filled with things you like to do and are passionate about even. Things aren’t perfect, but there’s no such thing anyway.

You “should” feel happy, ecstatic even, but you don’t. And to add to these tear filled feelings, you feel guilty for feeling like this. You have a lot. You have more than so many. You know there should be NO shoulds in your life. There is nothing you should do. Yet you feel you shouldn’t feel this way.

But still you have woken up on this day feeling so bad. And you wonder what this is. And you ask yourself what you can do abut this.

Why is trickier, yet it’s not really. This journey you are on is a process. Yes? So as you walk along your path, there will be shifts, changes, letting gos, releases. Each time this happens, something unlocks inside, and what was in there will come spewing forth. And sometimes, like this time, it’s especially icky.

Usually it’s old stuff. Past hurts, ancient pains, old traumas. You have in essence opened up a relief valve, and all that has been living beneath this stopper wants to come out. And it can feel REALLY awful. In a sense you are re-feeling what once was. This is far different than re-living an experience. You will likely have no specific memories.

For example I carry areas of tightness in certain places in my body. These are all areas into which I stored my pain. I have over time become acutely aware of these places to the point of at times extreme frustration and anxiety because I feel them, every one of them, and they don’t feel nice, and they don’t seem to want to let go, or maybe they’re not ready, and they are in my way, keep me from feeling love, and I feel SO frustrated.

They don’t seem to leave me alone, won’t seem to set me free. I work at them, and I work at them. I’m kind to them. I try to embrace them, love them, but they hang on to me like what feels to me the strongest crazy glue yet to be created.

Oh yes sometimes I get respite, but far too soon the holdings come back or shift to another place. Yet when I’m calm and being honest, I can recognize that over time, bit by bit, they have been releasing. If I look back with open eyes and my heart as wide as I can manage, I can see and feel this. I do know that the more persistent ones carry my deepest fears, and this is what remains. This is what I still feel.

Sometimes it seems as though when there is finally a tiny shimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, I become almost more anxious and impatient, for I want it NOW. Yet on the other hand there may also be a fear of being free of the familiar even though it feels bad. Still it’s a known factor which may be why some of the tightness comes back, albeit to a lesser degree. It can be a nasty tug of war in a way.

I really, really want to be love, live as love, feel only love, but then what will that be like? Will it hurt more? Such extreme vulnerability. The unknown can be VERY scary. Still I really, really want this. I do.

The desire for freedom and peace is FAR stronger than the fear of something new. And one day, as in this morning when I feel life suffocating me in despair, one of the last tenuous threads that’s been in the way teases itself away from its mooring. Some of the way? All of the way? It remains to be seen or felt. This latest one is in the muscles behind my heart. As it strains to relinquish its hold, it feels as though a dam is breaking, and I am flooded with an ache so deep, so profound. I feel as though it’s going to push me beneath this onslaught of feeling.

Old “bad” thoughts surface, familiar yet at this point of my journey no longer comfortable in its familiarity. Old insecurities, old fears rush to the fore. My heart is literally at stake.

I instinctively want to fight these bad feeling feelings, but I know better, so instead I do all I can to welcome all of this because I know what’s happening to me. I know that this is an amazing opportunity for further growth, deeper releasing. It’s hard to go against what comes naturally, but I sink into these feelings as much as I can anyway.

The only way through this is to feel every awful feeling feeling that’s coming up so it can then pass through me and become something else, something much better feeling.

I know that this spell will pass, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not for weeks (oh please not weeks this time; it’s so hard when it takes a longer time). But when I do come through to the other side, my heart will be even more free and open to love and to receive love. I will feel good, awesome even.

And this is how the journey to your heart and your soul, your very essence works. It can test you to your very limits, yet it will bring you rewards, joy, bliss you can maybe imagine but not really “get” until you feel it. I can do this. I want to do this. You?

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