Show Notes
The JFF Book Club starts 2/19, you can join HERE for six interactive discussions with Dr. Jennifer!
Falling in love is easy. Staying in love requires our maturation. A few years (or decades) into marriage, it's tempting to wonder if we just married the wrong person—the passion has faded, the differences feel more irritating, and that deep sense of connection doesn't feel as natural as it once did. And while it is tempting to think that something is going wrong, really, marriage is just inviting us to stop chasing what was and to start creating something deeper.
In this episode, Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife joins the Date Your Spouse team to talk about what couples can do to bring a sense of aliveness to their marriage. She challenges the idea that going along to keep the peace is an act of love, explains why duty-based sex quietly destroys desire, and offers a surprisingly simple practice any couple can try TONIGHT to create more intimacy and connection.
If you're looking to create more passion and connection in your relationship, enroll in Dr. Jennifer's new Sex Worth Wanting course!
More from Conversations with Dr. Jennifer
Sexual fantasy makes many of us anxious, because it often taps into darker aspects of ourselves we don’t always understand, let alone want to disclose. Hearing our partner’s fantasies can be just as unsettling, especially if we assume that they want us to go along with what they share.
**SAVE $200 on our upcoming workshops and retreats (use code JFF200)** An intimate marriage asks us to let our spouse see all of us, not just the good parts. It takes a willingness to be known and the courage to know our spouse as they actually are. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it’s what’s required to create an honest, soulful connection with our partner.
No one hopes for a marital crisis. But it's not uncommon for couples who emerge from one to look back and see it as the catalyst for a more mature, more alive partnership. Adversity and disappointment pressure us to face what's true, and while that rarely feels good, it's what allows us to become more solid, more knowable, and more capable of real intimacy.
Pornography brings up a lot of feelings on both sides, and most of that charge comes from the meanings we attach to it, not the behavior itself. Much of this tension is the result of a culture that taught many of us to treat sexuality with fear rather than understanding. That fear tends to show up as shame, and shame doesn't make porn use go away, it just makes it harder to face honestly, ultimately fueling more anxiety, rigidity, and compulsivity.
Past trauma doesn't just stay in the past. It can show up in our relationship in unexpected, inconvenient, and disheartening ways. Desire can disappear without warning. Old distress can resurface years after we thought we'd made peace with it. Our instinct is often to judge ourselves for the ways that our past trauma impacts us, but judgment only pushes desire further away. Understanding does the opposite. It gives us something to work with instead of something to fight.