“What I think is the first thing for people to consider is whether the magic has gone out in your relationship. Because it's not just the act of sex; it's all the things that make you want to have sex, it's all the things that come before that.
First, look to see if and how the magic has gone out in yourself. Because, first and foremost, every single relationship is really about the relationship we have with ourselves. So have you lost some of your sexy? And I'm not talking about your sexy in terms of how you look, I'm talking about energy, like how you feel. Do you feel energized by life? Are you bored? Because when people feel bored, burdened, and purposeless in their life, they don't really feel as alive. And it's the aliveness that leads to a feeling of eroticism.
You know, Esther Perel has referred to the erotic self — many people have referred to this idea. It’s not just the sexual self. If you think of what sexual energy is, it could be channeled in many different ways. But if you see someone really passionate about something, they're talking about something that they're really passionate about or they’re engaged in an activity that they're really passionate about, they're feeding their sexual energy, whether they know it or not.
So are you turned on by you? That's first and foremost. Are you not feeling good in your body? Are you bored? Are you feeling purposeless? Are you not working out and eating well so that you can actually be hormonally more balanced, which actually leads to wanting to have more sex or wanting to have more excitement? So that’s the first thing. It’s really an inside job. If someone is listening to this and it’s really striking a chord with them, then what do you need to address in your life? Maybe it’s that you need to relax more. Maybe you need to have that bath every day and slow down so you can connect with that part of yourself. Maybe it's that you have to start that new project or whatever it is so that you can feel more alive.
It's really about energy. And I'm not just talking about woo-woo energy, I'm talking about physical energy. How you feel. That's the very first step, because think about it. When are people most attracted to each other? We're most attracted to confidence. People are attracted to other people when they're confident. When is someone most confident? When they're in the flow of doing something. So people will say to me, ‘The times I'm most attracted to my partner is not when they're right in front of me, necessarily. It's when I'm watching them do something that has nothing to do with me. They don't need me, I'm almost irrelevant, and they're just in flow, in their element. That's when I want them.’ Because number one, you're seeing them not just as partner or daddy or mommy or someone’s brother or sister, you're seeing them in their element. Foreplay always begins when we are able to see the person in their element.
“People are attracted to other people when they're confident. When is someone most confident? When they're in the flow of doing something.”
So that ties to number one, which is, are you in your element? And you don't have to be doing something major or grand; it could be anything. I mean, some people have said, ‘I'm most attracted to my partner when I'm seeing them connect with our child in a way that has nothing to do with chores or nothing to do with me.’ So we need each other, and needing each other creates closeness. But it's those times where we don't actually feel needed by the other person that we're most drawn to them. So these are just things for people to think about. Maybe that means that they need to have a little bit of separateness, but not too much because that can be very destructive to a relationship. It's like this dance between together and separateness is this dance that we're all trying to figure out.
Another thing is stress. And stress is sort of the umbrella that encompasses all of this. If you're really stressed out, you're not in your flow state. If you're not in your element shining, and you don't feel alive inside, usually that has to do with stress. So stress is the thing that drives a wedge between two people. But it's not the stress, it's how we react to stress. And it’s not the my mother died stress, because that’s an extenuating circumstance. It's just how we're reacting and responding to the everyday demands of our lives.
So if you’re with someone for years, sorry Charlie, it’s not going to ever be the same as it was in the very beginning, unless you break up. But I don't suggest that you do that. The goal is to make it better than it was in the beginning — different, more powerful, more connected, more at stake, more meaningful. But you have to be able to see how your stress is impacting your energy and how you're showing up. Because if you're constantly bringing the stressed out part of you as opposed to the sexy part of you, the fun part of you, whatever, what are you creating? You're creating a relationship culture that's filled with stress and no one feels sexy or wants to have sex. You can use sex as a stress release, but when you're stressed, that's not when you're hot. No one actually wants to have sex with you when you're stressed out.”
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Want more? This is an excerpt from a longer convo with Moon Juice — listen or watch here!
