Embark on a journey with me, Igor Meystelman, as we unravel the complexities of relational intimacy that go far beyond the bedroom. Imagine a bond so intricate and profound, where emotional and physical closeness weave together, creating a tapestry of connection that is the bedrock of any romantic partnership. Throughout this episode, we illuminate the path to understanding and nurturing these non-physical aspects of intimacy, challenging the conventional wisdom that underscores gender roles and exploring the rich tapestry of individual desires that fuel a truly intimate relationship.
As we tackle the delicate interplay between emotional space and physical intimacy, we reveal how true closeness stems from a foundation of emotional security and appreciation. We address the often overlooked reality that for many, the journey to physical intimacy starts with an emotional connection, well before any physical interaction. Join the conversation, as we dissect the consequences of pressure and coercion in intimate relationships and emphasize the importance of empathy, shared effort, and a deep understanding between partners to promote an environment where genuine intimacy isn't just a goal, but a natural, flourishing aspect of a loving, dynamic partnership.
Embark on a journey with me, Igor Meystelman, as we unravel the complexities of relational intimacy that go far beyond the bedroom. Imagine a bond so intricate and profound, where emotional and physical closeness weave together, creating a tapestry of connection that is the bedrock of any romantic partnership. Throughout this episode, we illuminate the path to understanding and nurturing these non-physical aspects of intimacy, challenging the conventional wisdom that underscores gender roles and exploring the rich tapestry of individual desires that fuel a truly intimate relationship.
As we tackle the delicate interplay between emotional space and physical intimacy, we reveal how true closeness stems from a foundation of emotional security and appreciation. We address the often overlooked reality that for many, the journey to physical intimacy starts with an emotional connection, well before any physical interaction. Join the conversation, as we dissect the consequences of pressure and coercion in intimate relationships and emphasize the importance of empathy, shared effort, and a deep understanding between partners to promote an environment where genuine intimacy isn't just a goal, but a natural, flourishing aspect of a loving, dynamic partnership.
Hello and welcome to dating, marriage and divorce conversations where we analyze, navigate and troubleshoot all stages of your romantic life. I'm your host, igor Meistelman, a divorce attorney turned relationship coach. Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. This is going to be, I feel, like a bit of a mix of sharing ideas, concepts, things I get to see in the trenches in the work that I do. At the same time, maybe we'll come off as a bit of a rant. I don't know. I'm a little nervous if it will come off that way, but at the same time, the topic is just so prevalent, so problematic and needs to be talked about. There's just no way around this. There's no way to skip it, no way to pretend it's not there. I mean, people do it all the time, with devastating results, and so I'd like to at least begin some sort of a dialogue or, at least at this moment, a monologue, and we'll see what it stirs up in people's consciousness and how people feel about this. The topic I'm going to call it the anatomy of relational intimacy, and I'm giving that name very specifically because this is not an episode about sex physical intimacy, so to speak, in its purest form. What is this supposed to look like? What is the Torah perspective on this topic? Actually, I'm calling it anatomy of relational intimacy because I feel like it's been proven to me through the conversations with hundreds of couples that what we really are talking about, or what we would actually like to be talking about, is the full picture of intimacy, the complete analysis and evaluation of what is taking place.
Speaker 1:And I think, given the level of sophistication that the Jewish world and the world at large is reaching, we can no longer settle for a rigid application of the concepts of a male and a female. And what I mean by that is that in mystical literature, in various Torah sources, there's discussion of how a man is a mashpia, he's an influencer. A woman is a macabre, she's a receiver from him, and that's why even the biological is the symbolic expression of the spiritual. And the woman's makeup physical makeup is clearly very different than the man's. Man's is, he's giving over to her something, he shares, something. That's a world of a potential, which is what man does create, whereas woman's world is a world of actualization. She takes one of the man's potentials and she nurtures it for nine months and everything else is discarded and she ultimately, alone, solo, delivers life into the world.
Speaker 1:And yet, the more I speak to couples and the more we get into the anatomy, the intricacy of what goes on in that relational space, it just seems to me more and more that we cannot simply assign it to this rigid black and white framework, because the reality is that there are times we men would like to experience receiving and there are times when women would like to experience being givers, and vice versa, and therefore the conversation has to be more nuanced, it has to carry more sensitivity to the fact that there will be individual factors at work. There are different strengths, different leanings, different interests for each human being and to simply say well, you're a female, so it must be that you will like this. You're a male, it must be that you would like this. It's just simply gonna be too short sighted and will not resonate for some people, special people who will have some unique bent to the story.
Speaker 1:Now, if you're wondering what that preface being said, if you're wondering what's prompting this conversation, well, first of all, it saddens me it truly does that so many couples find themselves struggling in the arena of physical intimacy. Now, when we are young and we're dating and we're newly married, it seems like sky is the limit, meaning the hormones are raging and flying and finally there's an opportunity to experience physical intimacy in its purest physical form. But this time passes and as children join the family and the family dynamics become more complicated and the roles we assume and play in our families become more complex, more agitating, more draining. It becomes harder to enjoy physical intimacy, to engage in it in a way that feels right, feels good, feels like this has a place in my life and I crave for it to have place in my life, as opposed to what I call one of us is a winner and one of us is a loser in that aspect of our relationship. So, for example, men generally again without making it a blank statement generally are more easily aroused.
Speaker 1:Men more easily are able to experience the desire and the arousal, the two terms that I'll be using frequently, that are very commonly used in the world of sex therapy, to essentially join the forces, both the desire and arousal, can almost happen simultaneously, right, which is why a man could walk down the street, see a pretty girl turn around, whisper, whistle, I mean, or you know clearly, with his eyes be eyeing a female women. While totally can do that as well. Very often don't operate that way and certainly don't operate that way in their intimate lives. There is much more desire for connection, emotional connection, to be emotionally seen, to deeply feel, appreciated. Now, for many men it's like a mystery island. It's a completely foreign concept. Appreciate it, feel seen.
Speaker 1:What are you talking about? It's physical intimacy, let's get it on. It literally almost carries this. There's the act we get to engage in certain physical activities. We're both going to experience enjoyment, engagement you know of our different energies climax and that's it.
Speaker 1:And it massively, massively misses and, sadly to say and I'm telling you anecdotally from experiences causes horrific ruptures to the relationships. And not only does it cause those ruptures but the recovery, the healing process is enormous. It's an enormous undertaking to recover from ruptures around physical intimacy, because when there's an emotional rupture in this area, restoring it isn't going to happen by more physical intimacy, it's going to happen by sitting down and saying wait, what is it that my spouse needs? What is it my spouse is experiencing that I need to address? And I have to participate proactively, not passively, but proactively. I have to participate in some way to make it possible to bring the relationship back into space of joyfulness, curiosity, enjoyment, a state of general desire, genuine desire to just want to reach out, connect and be in a physical and emotional connection simultaneously.
Speaker 1:And what's interesting is that when we are feeling healthy overall in our emotional health so what I mean by that is I don't feel I'm on guard, I don't feel I'm right now under attack. My world does not be criticized, my world is not being ignored or not seen. I feel cherished, I feel seen, I feel valued. When that goes on, we naturally, almost by default, will want to gravitate towards an expression of love through physical intimacy as well. But it's when there is an emotional rupture. I don't feel appreciated, I don't feel seen, I don't feel safe being around you. I feel like you're going to criticize me, you're going to minimize, downplay, undermine what it goes on in my world.
Speaker 1:When that happens, for some reason, we also experience very naturally a deactivation of a desire craving to experience physical intimacy. So it's also just very interesting to observe that the way we're wired is in our natural default state. We want it, we crave it. We could say God put it into us precisely so we could continue reproducing our own species. So we will naturally seek it out the hormones that kick in right from adolescence and for the rest of our lives, hopefully, are there to continuously nudge at us. And you know the idea of engage. Engage, right, don't, don't remain sort of in solitude and a disconnect.
Speaker 1:Right, when people talk about hormonal balance, right, essentially referring to like hey, wait a second, why am I not craving intimacy? Or like, why is there just no desire? Right, that's because some something is off, because that's not a default state of human being. Well, guess what? Just like we could hear how a medication, especially things like like various psychiatric medications, may shut off those channels in the brain that activate physical desire for intimacy, so, too, emotional space in a relationship can also deactivate desire. You see, if you're going to criticize me enough times, if you're going to point out enough times that something's wrong with me, if you're going to put me down, emasculate me, make me feel like a loser, make me feel like I'm nothing, well, that emotional, pressurized space is going to directly impact my desire to want to be physically intimate. And so we see them that it's not only about oops, I'm taking medication and so I have a low sex drive. No, I'm getting clobbered by my spouse and I have a low sex drive. Yes, that also exists. It's not only about other external forces, believe it or not.
Speaker 1:If this doesn't resonate for you yet, what resonates for most couples I work with is an emotional space is not safe and good and loving and nurturing, and instead it's toxic and defensive. And we have all these cycles of combativeness and tension. There's very little drive for physical connection. I mean, I may still want purely the physical act, but I don't want the physical act in order to connect with you. I'm just using the act, whether to self-soothe, whether to pretend everything's okay or whether I just want to express my pure animalistic urges. And with all this said, if any of this still makes sense, then I'm hoping this next step is going to make sense as well, because this where we're now really going to enter into some theory, what might almost seem hair splitting nuances, but they make all the difference in the world of whether the relationship will be in a trajectory towards a deeply meaningful emotional and physical encounters or a place of pain, place of invisibility, place of not feeling valued.
Speaker 1:Now, what I'm hearing over and over again in my office is the great gap, great divide between men and women and how the experience of intimacy takes place. And again, as we were saying earlier today, for men it can be a truly just a physical experience. Okay, some basic connection will do, will be good enough, but that is not experience for most women, for most women, unless they are in exceptionally healthy place and they just feel really, really good about themselves because they have a great self-esteem and because their spouses or significant others have been outstanding at delivering love and care and appreciation and demonstration how precious and valued and cherished they are in their husband's eyes. So there a woman could experience I guess we could call it an instantaneous arousal, almost like mimicking a man. A woman could just be there and be like oh, I could feel a desire for my loved one and I want to be close to them. That is a experience that is very limited in terms of how many people have shared that type of feedback, because for overwhelming percentage of women, what is shared is I don't receive in my intimate life what I need. And very common, not always, but very, very common.
Speaker 1:What women start with is my intimacy with my husband does not begin in the bedroom. It begins way before we walk into the bedroom. I mean, think of the classic scenario a couple gets into a fight and now it's time to go to bed and then they'll work next day. They're tired, they lie down in bed and the husband is expressing that he is trying to make advances. He's expressing he's clearly interested in intimacy and the wife turns him away and the husband says what's the problem? I mean, maybe this will help us make up. And the wife says do you know how far away I feel from you right now? If, assuming she felt brave enough to even tell him this, do you know how far I feel from it Now? Why? What's the problem? The fight happened two hours ago. For you, the fight happened two hours ago. You're ready to engage and just be physical. I don't work that way. For me, the fight lives in me this moment, even though the actual confrontation happened two or three hours ago.
Speaker 1:Because until the repair in the emotional space takes place, it's very hard for me to also reengage the physical dimension of the relationship. And so now a man will find himself in a dreaded experience of. I now have to sit and listen to my wife and find a way to demonstrate that I care, if not pretend and demonstrate to her that I want to be better, I want to improve, I want to work in this area and, most importantly, I want to be here with you. I want to be here for you because you deserve it, because I love you, because you're my spouse. You deserve to have for me unconditional love. You don't only deserve to have for me this time an attention because of my ulterior motive hope that I'm going to get some from this relationship, from you, and that is something that for many men is just a massive pill to swallow, believe it or not.
Speaker 1:For some men, conversation in their heads goes like this what do you mean? That's why we're married, is it not because you would be available to me and I will be with you and I will get feel of physical intimacy from you, from this relationship. And the challenge then becomes as how do we help? For instance, in this case, men understand that you're going to be married to a woman. That's not her wiring, that's not most of the time, that's not how she's going to be aroused. It was not going to be through what happens in the moment, in the here and now in the bedroom. That journey began way, way before you got into this room, and so if you are planning a night where you're hoping there's going to be intimacy, that plan better not be limited to the time you're going to be inside that room. That plan better begin day plus in advance.
Speaker 1:What else am I doing to show my wife that she's important, that she's precious, that she matters? What else can I introduce into the conversations with her? Whether try to understand her love language and give her the gifts in her love language, because it's typical mistake has been comes home with flowers and wife is like I don't really care about flowers. I would have enjoyed if you listened to me for 10 minutes, because my love language is quality time and not gifts, that's all. So you figure out your spouse's love language and you give them that love language. You continuously demonstrate you are so important to me and the physical interaction we'll have is just the culmination of the foundation of our relationship. But if intimacy alone is going to be what we'll attempt to lay as the foundation of the relationship, it will come down like a house of cards and leave people with trauma, with animosity, with deeply, deeply held pain, because that is not how women are wired most of the time.
Speaker 1:A woman needs a time and affection and attention outside of that bedroom and she needs to feel and she has, for whatever reason, got made it this way as a very strong antenna. Are you doing this because you have your own ulterior motive, or I'm gonna do nice things for you, meaning as a husband, but now the wife says, oh, but I have to now have the pressure of I have to also do this, as opposed to feeling from a husband. You know, I do these things for you, my wife, because I love you, and that's it. There is nothing else. I never want to be intimate, and you'll signal that to me or you'll share with me explicitly that I'd love to meet you where you are, but I'm gonna free up the space from being a pressurized environment where you, my wife, have to feel this pressure of I have to give them this, or else I have to do this or there'll be consequences for me, and instead we want to shift that entire space and entire experience into.
Speaker 1:This is a safe place for me, where I could be my authentic self, including around the realm of physical intimacy, and so when I want to share that, I need something in order to meet my own threshold of what will be needed to make this enjoyable, to make this desirable.
Speaker 1:So then I know that you're my spouse, with whom I could safely share those things, but if everything is coming from a place of just like a pressure that I have to perform, or else I'm essentially coerced into going in this direction, or a husband just saying what's your problem, which is a fancy way of signaling I don't understand your world and I'm not even gonna make efforts to understand your world, all of these things will energize terrible pain and suffering within the relationship space, and so I think in the next episode, we might discuss even more in more detail, what can be the relational dynamic that we could put in place that will promote, nurture and support relational intimacy, as opposed to just create a transactional space within the relationship when it comes to physical intimacy, which is only going to feel, leave people with resentment, frustration, disappointment, pain and ultimately not wanting to be experiencing physical intimacy that a relationship could have.
Speaker 1:See you next time. Thank you for joining us today. For questions, comments, topics you'd like to hear more about, or to try out our 24 week relationship challenge, email us at relationshipreimagined at gmail.