Barbara Angelis - The 100 Most Asked Questions About Love, Sex and Relationships

Perhaps now you can better understand why it’s easy to be so unaware of what motivates you in your relationships. The 5 percent of your mind that is conscious says “I want to be a loving husband to my wife” but the 95 percent of your mind that is unconscious may be programmed to avoid intimacy and keep a wall around your heart.

In my Making Love Work at-home video and audio seminar, I talk about a three-step healing process that you can use to eliminate your emotional programming:

1. Identify, feel, and express the old, unresolved emotions that are trapped inside your heart so that you can “Work them out, not act them out.”

2. Understand your old, unhealthy love choices, and then make new, healthy love choices which will heal your old fear and build new trust.

3. Open up to new, positive experiences of love that will heal the old pain which was caused by some lack of love.

I strongly suggest that you find a system of emotional healing that incorporates both experiential work in releasing old emotions and practical, action-oriented behavioral changes to build healthy new habits.

Now I’ll bet you’re thinking, “Boy, this sounds like a lot of work.” And it can be. But the rewards are worth it—the freedom to give and receive the kind of love you’ve always wanted!

People who ask me this question are usually involved in a relationship they wish were different. They feel love for their partner, but don’t feel sexually attracted to them. They don’t want to leave, so they try to rationalize their lack of sexual chemistry and make it “okay.”

My honest response to this question is:

“NO, I DON’T BELIEVE IT IS POSSIBLE TO HAVE A HEALTHY, LASTING, ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP WITH SOMEONE WHOM YOU AREN’T ATTRACTED TO, at least for me or anyone else who wants to include sexuality as a part of our lives.” After all, it is sex that distinguishes an intimate relationship from a friendship. Perhaps if a couple met when they were both quite elderly and no longer had an interest in sex, they wouldn’t need more than a strong friendship as a foundation to live together happily. But there is no reason people in their seventies and even older can’t enjoy active and fulfilling sex lives, so I don’t even like to use this example. Besides, it’s not sixty or seventy-year-olds who usually ask me about love without attraction—it’s men and women in their twenties, thirties, and forties.

If you’re not attracted to a partner, can the sexual chemistry develop over time? That depends. For instance, if you have an issue like the woman in Question 15, where she isn’t normally sexually attracted to nice guys, you could develop sexual attraction over time by doing some emotional healing. However, if this pattern or any kind of sexual dysfunction or abuse hasn’t been a problem for you, and you simply haven’t felt sexually attracted to your partner from the beginning of your relationship, you’ll be unlikely to develop it over time.

If you’re in a relationship with someone you’ve never been sexually attracted to, here are some things to think about:

1. You are avoiding true intimacy.A sexual connection binds a couple together in a very special way. There is nothing more intimate than taking someone inside your own body, if you are a woman, or putting a part of yourself into someone else, if you are a man. Especially when you are making love, and not just having sex, you create tremendous intimacy between yourself and your partner. Although it may look like you are avoiding sex, becoming involved with someone to whom you aren’t attracted may actually be a way you are unconsciously avoiding intimacy in your life.Since you know you aren’t going to have a strong sexual relationship, you are naturally protected from feeling too vulnerable with your partner.

2. You are avoiding sex.Some people aren’t just avoiding intimacy by selecting mates they aren’t attracted to—they are avoiding sex. If …

You have experienced any form of sexual molestation or abuse

You have been raped

You have felt sexually controlled by previous partners

You were brought up with negative sexual programming

… then you may unconsciously fall in love with people who don’t turn you on sexually. This way you get to avoid sex. You may not be aware that you have these sexual issues. You may even bemoan the fact that you keep attracting partners in whom you’re not sexually interested. But if lack of chemistry is a recurring theme in your relationships, you may need to do some work on healing your sexuality.

3. You are trying to maintain a position of control.When you feel sexually attracted to someone, you are, in a sense, giving them some control over you. It’s as if your mind is saying “You affect me so strongly that you make me want to lose control around you.” If you have issues with needing to be in control, or being afraid of being controlled by others, you may choose partners toward whom you feel no or little sexual attraction in order to keep yourself “safe.” Because you don’t feel a strong sexual pull toward them, you get to maintain a certain emotional distance, creating the illusion that you hold more of the power in the relationship.

This is one of the most difficult, yet most important issues a couple should face before getting seriously involved. As painful as it may be, think carefully about everything I’ve said, and make your decision based on what you know in your heart to be true.

Every time I try to talk to my husband about working on our relationship, he says he’s “happy with the way things are.” I’m not happy, but no matter what I do, he shows no interest in changing or growing. How can I motivate him to want to open up more?

I’m going to give you an answer you don’t want to hear: You can’t motivate another person to grow and change. He has to motivate himself. That may sound logical, but I know how painful it is to accept when you really love someone, and know that if he doesn’t open up and grow, your relationship probably won’t make it. In my own life, I’ve faced this same dilemma several times, and understand how much it hurts to see your partner resisting the very kinds of help that would ultimately save your marriage. It’s like watching someone you love drowning in the ocean, and wanting to save him, but when you throw him a life preserver, he pushes it away, claiming he doesn’t need it. You know that if he doesn’t reach out, you will lose him, so you plead with him to grab hold. Stubbornly, he refuses, and you are forced to see him slip away

Here’s one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned about love: Some people just aren’t capable of loving you the way you want to be loved, or capable of having the kind of relationship you need. It’s not that they are trying to be difficult, or stubborn, or deliberately trying to make you unhappy. They simply cannot operate on the same emotional level you operate on, nor do they want to. Unfortunately, most couples don’t discuss these issues sufficiently in the beginning of the relationship so they can determine whether they have enough emotional compatibility to live happily together. They fall in love, have a family, and then realize they are two very different people with very conflicting pictures of what they want and need from an intimate relationship. One partner isn’t right, and the other wrong—the problem is that their love styles are incompatible.