Sex Archives - The Relationship School®

The Painful Reality of Teenage Relationships and Sexuality

Originally published on Elephant Journal here.

A brand new Harvard University study conducted for five years surveyed over 3,000 teens and young adults on the topic of romantic relationships and sexuality.

Richard Weissbourd and The Making Caring Common Project ran the study called “Young People’s Romantic Relationships” and published their findings in “The Talk: How Adults Can Promote Young People’s Healthy Relationships and Prevent Misogyny and Sexual Harassment.

What this bold research project found contradicts what we think we know about teens and offers new hope for one of the most important aspects of our lives—our romantic relationships.

The study confirms what those of us who have worked with teens for years have known, but didn’t have the research to back up.

For more information from Richard on this topic check out the epic podcast I did with him here.

Now, when you think of teens, college kids, and sex, what do you automatically assume?

“Kids these days” are irresponsible, reckless, and oversexualized, hooking up left and right with whomever, wherever.

This is what most adults think about adolescent behavior, especially when it comes to sex.

However, the Harvard study found the opposite to be true. The research found that prevailing assumptions about the teen “hook-up” culture are wrong. Contrary to popular belief, both teens and adults are exaggerating what actually happens in the sex lives of teenagers.

This leads to teens mistakenly comparing themselves to an embellished and exaggerated culture of sex, which perpetuates self-doubt and self-betraying behaviors. They might do something risky out of not wanting to be the odd person out. Or they may beat themselves up for being caring and sensitive, thinking they are the only one who feels this way.

We now know that young people care more than we thought about having respectful and mutual love relationships. In fact, 85 percent of the respondents said they would rather hang with their friends or practice sex in a committed relationship. Cool, right?

Another finding from the study is even more surprising:

They found that 70 percent of teens and young adults actually do want guidance from adults, specifically around love relationships. What?

Yup. Turns out, teens and young adults feel anxious and extremely unprepared for what it takes to have a romantic relationship. According to the study, “70% of the 18 to 25-year-olds who responded to our survey reported wishing they had received more information from their parents about some emotional aspect of a romantic relationship.” Yes, 70 percent! That’s the vast majority of teens, folks!

These two findings alone are monumental.

And what are we doing to deliver? Pretty much nothing. That is the painful truth this study reveals: We are failing kids in the romantic relationship department across the board.

Virtually no one is teaching young people about how to have safe, successful, fulfilling romantic relationships, even though they want it. As the study says:

“For adults to hand over responsibility for educating young people about romantic love—and sex—to popular culture is a dumbfounding abdication of responsibility.”

As a result, young people will grow into adults who really struggle to thrive in a partnership and instead blowout, break up, get divorced, and feel ashamed and incompetent in their romantic relationships. This adds layers and layers of mental and emotional stress into the life of the American adult.

By now, most of us have read the 75-year Harvard study that found the single biggest determinant of life satisfaction over our lifespan is the depth and quality of our relationships. So we know how important this is, yet very little is being done to teach young adults about realistic love relationships or to raise relationally mature adults.

Instead of getting formally taught or trained on how to communicate effectively, how to listen, how to work out differences, and how to not betray yourself and your needs, we allow our society to fill the void and teach our young people, which means whatever they see, hear, and absorb from peer culture, pop culture, and avoidant parents.

Gulp.

No wonder so many of us suck at romantic relationships.

Before we completely bury ourselves in shame and throw in the towel, let’s consider the recommendations the Harvard study proposes in our attempts to reveal the next step.

Here are their first two recommendations:

“Talk about love and help teens understand the difference between mature love and other forms of intense attraction.”
“Guide young people in identifying healthy and unhealthy relationships.”

I love it!

Basically, the study’s broad recommendation is for parents to step up and lead here. It makes sense. The study wants to get parents more in the driver’s seat of teaching their kids about realistic, mature, adult love. I love the aspiration and intention. However, we all know there’s a big limitation with this approach, which the study acknowledges here:

“Many parents and educators, to be sure, may not see providing this guidance as their role, may not know how to have these conversations, or may feel hobbled in these conversations because they view themselves as failures in their own romantic relationships—they don’t believe they have wisdom to share.”

And, this is the challenge with the directives. Sadly, as much as parents may want to guide the youth, my guess is that most parents don’t trust themselves in this department. Many parents might be equally lost and confused about love relationships.

Can we really ask parents—who might feel ashamed of their track record or unfulfilled in their relationship life—to teach young adults about love? These same parents also never received a proper education around romantic relationships—which, by the way, are the hardest of all relationships.

Sadly, many parents are out of their league, not because they are bad people or there’s anything wrong with them, but because they never learned either.

So, what’s the big solution?

First, let’s stop assuming teens and young adults are big, scary creatures who don’t want to listen or learn from us adults.

Next, let’s stop abdicating responsibility to the media, peer culture, and society about the most important and resource-rich part of our lives.

And if we have some sh*t to learn in this department? Let’s model being a willing student ourselves, which helps kids feel less ashamed and gives them more permission to take responsibility for this magical part of our lives.

Behind their screens and walls, young people are longing for our help and guidance here. This is wonderful news. All we have to do is our work so that we can provide the guidance, support, and resources that our kids need.

I personally aim to tackle this issue head on, as it’s my life’s work. That’s why I started The Relationship School®

If you feel called to help young people get the relationship guidance they’re longing for, and help change the way the world views relationship, think about becoming a Relationship Coach with us here.

Let’s do this!

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Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

How To Feel Like You’re Enough – 211

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Transforming Defensive Men Into Inspired Men – Adam Gilad – SC 190

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How A Couple Recovered From Cheating – Leahnora & Noah – SC 177

Couples that survive the toughest relationship challenges are so impressive! Leahnora and Noah are one of those couples. Cheating nearly tore them apart but they made commitments to change themselves and now they’re stronger than ever before.

What did they do? How do they handle the baggage of their past?

Jayson explores the tough questions here. Also, Leahnora and Noah are still working through some common issues around sexuality and conflict and they share vulnerably about this as Jayson gives some relationship coaching.

Here are a few of the highlights:

SHOWNOTES

- - How did Noah handle the cheating? [9:00]
  - Leahnora & Noah’s personal growth paths [15:00]
  - Defensiveness isn’t always bad [25:00]
  - Their open relationship experience [29:00]
  - Noah & Leahnora’s fighting style [35:00]
  - Trusting love’s message no matter the cost [40:00]
  - Jayson addresses their sexuality struggles [44:00]
  - When you’re both triggered [54:00]
  - Don’t respond with “That wasn’t my intent” [60:00]

If you would like to connect with Leahnora and/or Noah, they can be contacted at [email protected] and [email protected].

HELPFUL LINKS

GUEST BIO

Noah and Leahnora have been together for over 5 years, and got married summer 2017. Noah is 35 years and Leahnora is 34. They have two dogs but no kids (this is something they are excited about for the future). They went to high school together in San Diego, CA and now reside in Oakland, California. Noah works a real estate agent and Leahnora works for the California Department of Transportation as an environmental planner. They are both passionate about philosophy and the interconnection of humans, and navigating their way through the human condition. They have vowed to use their marriage as a container for a path to personal and couple awakening.

Leahnora and Noah’s struggles began early in their relationship. Leahnora was dating other guys while Noah was coming out of a spiritual quest in India. At the time, they couldn’t have been more opposite. Their first 3 years together were HELL. Leahnora was cheating and keeping secrets, and Noah was in his own bubble and stubbornly clinging to his self-righteous worldviews. Through years of hard work we were finally able to get on the same page and since Noah proposed, things have been wonderful.

Leahnora and Noah’s main issue is currently around sex. Noah wants more, and Leahnora could care less. About once a week, they get into the same argument. Noah thinks Leahnora doesn’t want sex because of her past unresolved trauma, and Leahnora is annoyed and frustrated that Noah is not truly understanding to give her the space to explore sexuality, in her own way. They both feel trapped. Leahnora is craving safety and Noah is craving sex.

They are looking for a way to find common ground, so that they both feel their needs getting adequately met.

The 3 Things Everyone Wants & Needs In A Partnership

If you are a normal adult that values human partnership, you want a relationship that is:

Safe
Sexy
Successful

In this post, I want to cover these 3 things you want and need in order to build and sustain a good, solid long-term relationship.

As you may have heard, a great relationship takes loads of work.

Anyone that thinks otherwise, either had a perfect childhood or just doesn’t understand how long-term partnership works.

In my experience the deeper you go with someone (which is where the fulfillment is), the more challenges you are sure to uncover.

This is why most couples prefer to stay on the surface in their relationship. These couples have no idea how deep you can go thus they wouldn’t know they are the ones blocking that kind of depth from happening.

Let me paint a picture…

Imagine a couple snorkeling around a beautiful shallow lagoon. Most couples don’t know there’s more to explore beyond the lagoon so they stay in shallow waters close to shore. It’s not that this couple doesn’t want to explore the vast ocean outside the perimeter of the lagoon, but they don’t even know there’s an entire ocean of possibility out there. Their understanding is limited to the lagoon.

But at a certain point, a smart couple will see how limited the lagoon is and they will want more. They will want to expand and explore a bigger landscape. In order to do so, they will need to build a seaworthy vessel. This metaphorical boat they build will be their homebase. And because this homebase is the boat they will travel in, they will need it to be able to withstand the adversity they will soon encounter out in the vast sea.

This brings up the first thing you need and want in your partnership.

1- Safety.

Safety is paramount for a smart couple.

Why? Because with a foundation of safety, you can travel further and weather the storms you will encounter during your adventure.

Think about it.

If you are this couple traveling the vast ocean and you hit some threats along the way, you want those threats to be from the outside, not the inside of the partnership. You want to be scared of sharks, not scared of the other person in the boat, right?

But here’s the bad news.

Even if you found the safest person on the planet, your nervous system will still register threat with their tone of voice, the look on their face, or their body language. There’s no way around these “little threats” because we are all sensitive animals perceiving the most subtle of behaviors that fire our alarm bells. In other words, your hindbrain can’t perceive the difference between a shark and your partner.

So, the smart couple understands this bizarre phenomenon and both parties work to be kind, respectful and caring given that they will likely trigger each other in this way for the rest of their lives. You eventually learn that this isn’t a problem and it’s all one big opportunity to work with those little threats and use them to get stronger and more resilient, together.

Even after I became a psychotherapist, I never thought it was my job to make anyone feel safe, let alone my partner. However, after getting schooled in 10 years of marriage, and after finally learning about neuroscience from the founder of the polyvagal theory and countless others who study the human nervous system for a living, I see things a wee bit different now.

In my relationship with my wife, we work to help each other’s nervous system feel safe. Becuase when we support each other feeling safe, we are freed up to do other important tasks in life.

We have no physical aggression, abuse, or negative vibes in our relationship. We live in a very high-functioning adult partnership. However, due to our past, on a neuroceptive level we can both behave in ways that trigger an unsafe feeling in the other person. It’s just the deal.

If you want a deeper dive on the nervous system in relationships, we go much deeper on the nervous system, fear, and how to create a secure homebase in The Relationship School®. In fact the secure homebase is one of the 4 pillars of an Indestructible Partnership.

Finally please don’t confuse safe with apathetic. The couple that “plays it safe” is a complacent couple relegated to the lagoon. This is apathy at it’s finest. On the other hand, the couple that takes risks with a foundation of safety gets the goodies out in the vast ocean.

So, couples that do well, are tracking the very subtle levels of safety in an ongoing way. So, of course, my wife and I feel safe on many levels after 10 years of partnership. But the animal in us can feel threatened easily because we are both sensitive people. So, we attend to our homebase and make sure it’s clean and clear as much as humanly possible. This way, we create the optimal environment for creative play, learning, taking on bigger challenges, and sexual exploration.

Once you build and understand safety, you get to progress to the next layer…

2- Sexy.

Once you have a secure homebase in place and actively monitor it, your relationship can deepen, widen, and grow because you are freed up to explore finer points of your intimacy, sexuality, and whatever else you want to co-create. So, a secure homebase is the foundation of a sexy or sexually active relationship.

When you both are free to be yourselves, it’s just plain sexy.

No one likes to be around someone who is incongruent, playing a role, or trying to be someone they are not. That’s unattractive and far from sexy.

Sure you can have amazing sex with someone with zero safety and many of us have had those experiences. However, those are short lived, one night stands, affairs, or six-month long relationships and don’t happen in the context of a long-term partnership. A long-term relationship triggers our deepest insecurities and brings up very old unprocessed material from our past, which is why sex can get complicated after many years of marriage.

In fact, most couples drift in their sex life for one reason and one reason only. They no longer feel safe and instead are in a chronic state of low-grade fear as I explored in this blog post.

You have to remember that all of our emotional baggage, repressed childhood trauma, and anything else that is unconscious to us lives in the human body. And, we access our sexuality through the body. So, it’s in our best interest to attend to our somatic experience if we want a good sex life with our partner. This means, exploring where our body does and doesn’t feel safe with our partner.

As we attend to our bodies this way, we can explore our sexuality, creativity, and we can grow and learn without having to be on guard all the time.

Can you override the safety issue?

Well, um, sort of…

Couples that schedule sex every Wednesday morning do this all the time. They are often stuck in a routine to get each other off, which can temporarily help with stress relief and a short-lived emotional connection. But to me, that is a moment of sexiness operating at about 50% capacity and sometimes it’s the best we can do. If that’s the case, no problem, but know you are operating at a lower capacity. And just don’t expect the “successful” part we’re going to talk about next…

3- Successful

A safe relationship leads to a sexy relationship which leads to a successful relationship. A good solid relationship is a successful one.

But how are we defining success? Success in this context means fulfillment. It means you are both fulfilled in your relationship. Fulfillment comes from having gone through adversity and challenge alone and together by continually finding your open heart in life’s challenges and tragedies. When you close down, you work to open back up.

Sharing your crazy life journey with someone is why partnership can be so powerful.

But here’s the thing about success…Success is always earned and not given and it always comes at a price.

For example, a new couple can call themselves successful but their relationship has yet to be put to the test. They haven’t had to earn their stripes yet, so success for them means something different than the couple who has weathered some big storms after many years.

A new couple hasn’t really ‘earned the right’ over time. That would be like a freshman football player winning a game and thinking he is a champion. The senior, on the other hand, knows what it truly takes to win a national championship. And a pro player who’s been in the game for a decade or two, understands success at an even deeper level. Champion level athletes win because they train day in day out, year after year. They win because they work harder than the competition, not just one year, but year after year.

So, to be truly successful in a partnership, you must both want it. You must both want a deeply fulfilling relationship and then work hard to keep that fulfillment a central focus. Notice how I didn’t say “happiness.” Couples that chase happiness usually end up miserable.

This can be hard for young couples who think a great relationship is a happy one or that it’s just given to them. It is also hard for the young couple who is juggling new children, finances, work, in-laws, sleep issues, and everything else coming your way (My wife and I were extremely challenged during the first few years of raising 2 kids, so I can relate here).

The successful young couple, in this case, understands that even with the crazy demands, they still need to make the relationship a priority otherwise their partnership will drift and they will get bored or get burned out over time.

The bottom line is that success = your fulfillment and your fulfillment is a result of the amount of intelligent effort you put into the relationship. It also means you support each other and you challenge each other to be your best and you approach each other in “safe” ways that your partner can learn and grow from.

Okay, now that we’ve covered the 3 consecutive elements that you need/want in a good solid-long-term relationship, the next question is:

Do you have all 3 elements that build off each other?

It’s likely you don’t have that or you wouldn’t have read this far. To be extra sure, download this one-page scorecard then fill it out together. If you are single, fill it out based on your last relationship.

And if it’s true that you don’t have the 3 S’s in your partnership, or you’re single and you’ve never experienced this over time, you’ll need to ask the next question:

If I don’t have a safe, sexy, successful partnership and I want that, what am I going to do about it?

If you think you can hope and pray for a good relationship and that will get you there, you’re up shit creek.

Instead, go through each of these 3 elements and be brutally honest with each other. If you are single, evaluate your last relationship.

Once you are honest enough to identify that you are not there yet and you don’t have a safe, sexy, and successful partnership, ask, “what is missing?” Identify the gap and “work” together to build a bridge.

Notice if you are wanting a sexy or successful relationship without addressing the subtle levels of safety that promote success. Don’t chase sex without first addressing safety. After many years, safety becomes foreplay. Two relaxed nervous systems are free to be wild animals, creative love-beasts, and are free to co-explore each other’s bodies in new ways.

Lastly, go get the education you never received. Learn how to Embrace Conflict here in Boulder. Take the 9-month class you never got in school and get educated on how romantic relationships actually work.

Report back. Share your struggles and victories in the Smart Couple FB group here.

photo credit: Talita Neres Flickr creative commons.

The #1 Reason Married Couples Stop Having Sex

Is it common for married couples to stop having sex after many years of marriage?

Hell yes!

In my own marriage of 10 years, we’ve had short periods of no sex. Here’s why we and so many other couples might let their sex life drift…

(Full episode here.)

Yup. It’s that simple.

The number one reason couples stop having sex is:

Fear.

Fear of what?

So many things. But most often a couple will unconsciously slide into fear and then come up with some lame external excuse like, “I’ve lost the attraction” or, “We just aren’t in love anymore.”

While these might be partially true, there’s always more to the story.

So, what do we do?

If you are in a sexless marriage, instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me or my partner?” (which is more blame), try asking a more intelligent question like, “How do we face our fears and anxiety around sexual intimacy?”

By first asking this important question, married couples can begin to tackle their fears.

We can make it even more vulnerable and sexy by sitting on the bed naked together with no other agenda than to state our fears in front of one another. Take turns saying, “I’m scared…” and fill in the blank. Go slow enough to feel and not dissociate.

Be courageous and face the deep vulnerability that sex can bring. Tender, naked, raw, beautiful…

Just make the simple move of owning your fear. By doing this, we are making a very intimate statement. And this level of vulnerability is lubrication for sex.

Tune into The Smart Couple Podcast for more long-term relationship advice.