Confidence – from intimacy to sexuality

It’s the first time that I actually feel they’re having a conversation as two adult partners. Two adult people who love each other. They sit next to each other, literally and figuratively. They seem at ease. Confident. They just have been through a really rough period, but they are proud of themselves and the way they handled it. It feels good to them. And it looks good as well to be honest. I’m proud of them and at the same time it surprises me that I haven’t seen them this way before.

There is always some form of restlessness between them. Of insecurity. But none of that seems to be present during this conversation.

We talk about intimacy, for there has been plenty of that between the two of them. Intimacy that comes in a form of emotional support, being present together, connecting with each other, and being in touch with each other. To her, intimacy has always been a condition that had to be met before she could get involved in sexual encounters. So from intimacy, we move over to the subject of sexuality. Has there been any of that in these last few weeks?

And then it happens: from two confident, equal partners that are at ease, I see her transforming into an insecure, clumsy, small girl. Her posture changes. She raises her voice and she wrinkles her nose. When I ask her if she ever feels like a confident sexual woman, she raises her voice even more, she gets more wrinkles in her nose and pulls up her shoulders.

She can’t get to it, to that feeling. She feels clumsy. She just doesn’t know what to do. She just doesn’t know how to feel like a mature, confident, sexual woman.

When I confront her about her posture and the contrast with the beginning of our conversation, he says that this is just the way she is, and this is just what she does. He thinks it makes it harder to approach her, since her discomfort awakens his insecurities, and so when it happens he suddenly doesn’t know what to do anymore.

And then he mentions the moment in which he finds her extremely beautiful, insanely feminine and sexual: it’s the moment in which she is just there and experiences all there is, without doing anything herself.

Her shoulders relax, her voice sounds more pleasant and mature, and her posture softens. She becomes that adult woman again, who would love to have sex with her husband. She just needs to learn that she as a woman is enough, is sexual enough, to be able to have sex and to be allowed to have sex. Without having all those expectations. Because the moment this happens, the little, clumsy girl shows up again, with whom her husband can’t have sex.