Kirshenbaum, Mira - Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay

And, since it’s so closely related to this, do you want to touch your partner in any way too, even just to give her a kiss on the cheek?

And, even though you might have to guess about this, based on your experience, would you say that your partner wants to touch you in any way, and does your partner want you to touch him? I realize that some people are naturally very physically affectionate and others are naturally more “hands off,” but given your partner’s basic personality, has he moved to a zero point where he wants no physical affection?

Where does lovemaking fit into this? For now, just think of it as another form of touching, like any other. Don’t give it a higher status than other forms of touching. But since lovemaking is a form of touching, you could ask yourself if you want to make love to your partner. If you’re not making love, do you wish that this period of coldness and distance were at an end and lovemaking started happening again? I’m not asking about how often you want to make love to your partner. I’m just asking if in general you want to make love to your partner at all.

When you look at him does it ever occur to you to make love to him? When he touches you do you ever feel you want to make love with him? When you’re by yourself do you ever have the feeling that you want to make love with him?

And do you guess that even though your partner’s acting mad at you he really wants to make love with you, too?

All these questions point to the basic issue of whether you and your partner are physically attracted to each other. Wanting to touch and wanting to be touched are the bedrock of the part of your physical relationship on which your emotional relationship builds.

Most other sexual problems people can and do cope with or live with. But if you’re agonizing over whether to stay or leave, here’s the guideline:

GUIDELINE # 13

If either you or your partner has stopped wanting to touch the other or be touched by the other, and this goes on for several months without any sign of abating, then you’re making a profound statement about how alienated you are from each other, and based on the experience of other people in this situation you won’t be happy if you stay and you will be happy if you leave. Quick take: If someone makes your flesh crawl, it’s time to crawl out of the relationship.

There’s one thing you have to be careful about with this guideline. It’s why I talked about this going on for several months without signs of abating. You have to be careful about the fact that people get into weird places when they’re mad at each other or when they feel hurt by the other. So there are very commonly periods in troubled relationships where there isn’t any touching going on, much less sex. And there are periods where emotions are running so high that you don’t want to be touching each other. But I’m not talking about situations like these, and you’ve got to make sure that you don’t apply this guideline to what’s essentially a temporary situation.

Guideline #13 applies only when it sinks in that literally not wanting touching has become permanent for you or your partner.

The Bridge Back

Why is not wanting touching the touchstone? Why is this the place I go to in the sexual realm to diagnose a relationship that’s too bad to stay in, other than the fact that this is where most people feel comfortable having drawn the line?

It has to do with the way people in a troubled relationship that’s basically too good to leave find their way back to each other. One way they do so is by building on some kind of physical bond or connection. As bad as things are, they hold hands or kiss each other good-bye, or their bodies make contact when they lie in bed at night, or suddenly out of nowhere they find themselves hugging, or in the midst of their distance from each other they find themselves wanting to touch.

You remember that I talked about mutual shutdown, the way two people pull back from each other, and keep pulling back, each waiting for the other to make the first move, emotionally, conversationally, on every level. Well, wanting touching is one of the most important ways two people find a way to stop this mutual shutdown. Some “accidental” or spontaneous touching happens that both people want, and the touching escalates, and shutdown becomes turn-on. And that’s how millions and millions of couples find their way out of a nightmare of hurt and anger.

You could think of wanting touching as the brakes on a car. Of course brakes can’t steer you out of danger but they do stop you from reaching it. A car without brakes is undrivable. A relationship without the braking mechanism of both people wanting to touch and be touched on some level and in some way is a relationship without this protection against a crash.

The good news is how seldom guideline #13 applies. But when guideline #13 does apply and there’s no one there to want to touch the other, then they’re just trapped in a nightmare of hurt and anger and there’s no way to get out.

STEP #14: GETTING PHYSICAL

A question people often ask me is how good sex has to be before it makes a relationship too good to leave. And where this question comes up most often is with people who’re feeling very ambivalent about their relationship because there are a lot of things going on they don’t like, and yet sex itself is still really good. And so they wonder if they’re being too finicky, if great sex doesn’t in fact cancel out a whole bunch of bad stuff, the way you might stay in a crappy house that happened to be right on the ocean.

Let me tell you where I’ve learned to draw the line. It’s between two parts of your own sexuality. There’s the part you carry around with you wherever you go. Let’s call this your general sexuality. I’m talking about sexual responses and feelings that you’ve generally had in most of your sexual relationships. For example, the physical process you actually go through to reach orgasm in most of your relationships is part of your general sexuality.

And there’s the part that responds to the person you’re with. Let’s call this your person-specific sexuality. This refers to parts of your sexuality that are different with your current partner than with other partners.

Your general sexuality shouldn’t have anything to do with whether you stay or leave a particular relationship. So even though it might feel wonderful to be touched and your orgasms are satisfying now, if this is something you’ve experienced in other relationships or think you’d probably experience in other relationships, that’s great but it’s no reason in and of itself to stay in your current relationship. It might seem as though there is great physical chemistry, but that’s only because of what you are carrying around with you wherever you go. It’s because of who you are, not because of what there is in the relationship.

But your person-specific sexuality, the part that responds to the person you’re with, is the part that’s absolutely critical for ending your relationship ambivalence. If you want to see what it is about the physical side of your relationship that makes it too good to leave, just ask yourself:

Diagnostic question #14. Do you feel a unique sexual attraction to your partner?

I’m not asking how great sex is with your partner now. That wouldn’t be fair to this relationship, because great sex can so often have to do with your general sexuality that you carry around with you wherever you go. And when I’ve worked with people in iffy relationships and it became clear that for whatever reason the relationship was too bad to stay in and yet they stayed anyway because of great sex, they didn’t end up happy with that decision.