Krishnananda and Amana

When two people come closer in a love relationship, sexuality can become either a source of nourishment and deeper intimacy or a source of misunderstanding, conflict, hurt and mistrust. Sexuality and intimacy are strongly connected. Our intimacy suffers when we don't learn how to understand and communicate about our sexuality and our deeper sensitivities. Our sexuality suffers when we build resentments in other areas of our life together.

Sex naturally changes as two people come closer. Once the heat of the initial attraction wears down and as each person becomes more vulnerable and open, misunderstandings, fears and insecurities can arise. It requires deeper understanding, sensitivity and communication to keep the love and the sex alive and beautiful.

In our experience, it's all about connecting. When we find ways to remember, nourish and deepen the love, our sex life can stay vibrant and continue to grow. But if we don't make the commitment to work through whatever gets in the way of the love and the connection, our sexuality will suffer. We would like to explore some of the areas where problems can arise and offer some suggestions for how to work through them.




Often the earliest rifts between couples around sex occur when differences arise in the ways each person would like to make love. One lover may want sex to be spontaneous, hot, intense and frequent; the other person may want it to be slower, more meditative and to make love only when both can take time to deeply connect with each other. It is rare that two people have similar desires, expectations, energies and needs when it comes to sex. And the longer we are together, the more apparent these differences become.

And these differences are complicated by the fact that we bring into our relationships, many expectations, many of which are unexpressed and often even unconscious. The longer two people are together, the more apparent become our expectations especially when they are unmet.

We may expect the other person to give us the kind of sex we long for - to be available, confident, alive, uninhibited, adventurous and sensitive. We may even expect the other person to be aware and sensitive to our needs and fears without our having to express them. We may expect the other person to nourish us when we need closeness and to leave us alone when we need space. And the list goes on.

Though our styles and energies may differ, we can still communicate! Love is built on a willingness to share without blame, particularly about what is closest to our heart. It has become almost a cliché that lovers need to share their experience and needs about sex but all too often, we just don't. It is not something easy to talk about.

Yet we cannot expect our partner to read our minds. We have to take the risk and communicate - express what we feel, what we like and what we need to feel loved, alive, open and safe. But our communicating cannot be for the purpose of getting our expectations fulfilled but rather to let the other person into our vulnerability. This creates a basis for trust and love to grow and from sharing our vulnerability, deeper intimacy happens

How do we deal with all our unmet expectations?

Nearly everyone has expectations when it comes to sex. It is also natural and common to place onto sex our unmet needs for affection, love and attention. No one can possibly fulfill our expectations but often, what we really want is connection. When we take the time to share without blame, the love can open and many of our expectations dissolve.




A common situation with lovers is: one person is feeling fear and contraction when they make love while the other feels that his or her energy is being held down by the other person's fears. As intimacy grows, so do our fears and insecurities. And it is hard to keep our masks on forever, particularly in sex. Under our masks, most of us have fears and insecurities about our sexuality, about our body or some other area of our life, although we may be reluctant to admit it to ourselves or to our partner.

Yet opening this part of us is how trust and love grows and there is no more challenging and intimate place than sex. If we experience rejection or we feel we are not living up to our own expectations on how we should be performing in sex, it is very easy to then push away our partner. We may feel so much shame and unworthiness that it gets difficult to give and receive love. Most of us have not learned to share intimately and to let someone else into our private and hidden places because there may be so much shame and also, we may be at a loss for words to describe our feelings. When confronted with this kind of challenge, it is common to drift away from the person we love rather than to share. Often, we simply lack the tools to know what is happening inside, or what to do about it

Furthermore, many of us may carry some kind of past trauma with respect to our sexuality. It can be experiences of humiliation, shame and guilt, some form of invasion or abuse or feeling controlled or disempowered. For some of us, these prior experiences can be very extreme and crippling. For others of us, they can be less obvious and less dramatic.

Even if we are clueless about prior trauma, they can show themselves in our nervous system as some kind of sexual dysfunction because they carry an emotional memory. And as we open more and become more vulnerable with someone, we may be shocked to discover fears that we never knew about. To make this situation even more complicated, we often are attracted to someone who triggers our fears and insecurities. When this happens, it is difficult to distinguish the past from the present. Our experiences from the past become fused with the present and we may actually believe that it is our partner who is responsible for our fears.

When we are not willing to feel and share our vulnerability in sex, we compensate instead by moving into performance, pretense and habit. We may even seek outside aids such as drugs to support and enhance our compensation. When we compensate, we are not connected to ourselves and therefore unable to connect with our partner. In compensations, there may be excitement but often the excitement depends on objectifying the other person or relying on fantasies.

Furthermore, our sexuality may remain more focused on performance than on intimacy, more goal-oriented and focused on orgasm than on deepening the connection. When we compensate rather than feel and share our vulnerability, we may overstep our boundaries and disrespect ourselves over and over or do the same to our partner. Or we may blame our lover for our pain without taking responsibility to recognize that it is a re-enactment of earlier trauma. When we compensate, both partners eventually feel frustrated, betrayed, misunderstood and hurt and slowly pull away from each other.

The remedy for compensation is to be willing to face our fears and insecurities and even our buried traumas if they are there and to share this with our partner. It also requires us to be willing to share even when we are making love if something comes up that provokes fear or insecurity. It is not easy to talk about fears and insecurities in sex but at the same time, it is precisely these situations which challenge us not to betray ourselves by pretending and holding back our truth. Furthermore, because sex is such an intimate experience, it is one place where it is difficult to hide our own vulnerability from ourselves and from our partner.

The Transition from Excitement to Meditation
As two people stay longer together, their sexuality will naturally change. For one thing, as we have mentioned, intimacy brings up more vulnerability. But one of the problems couples face is that they attempt to cling to the initial passion and intensity that they had when they were first together rather than allowing time to bring its own rewards. Excitement often depends on newness, on fantasy and objectification of our love partner. When two people are together for a longer period of time, the newness is hard to sustain, it is harder to get lost in fantasies and we know each other too well to objectify each other. We may lose the excitement and we miss it. Often without excitement, we pull apart and stop making love or try to bring it back in different ways or get a new lover on the sly.

Sex does not have to disappear as intimacy grows, but we need to face the challenge of the change. In our experience, this change requires the addition of meditation. When two people bring meditation into their lives and become familiar with connecting with an inner space of silence and stillness on their own, they can bring this quality into their sexuality. When we take the time to connect with this inner space, we begin to discover a space inside which is not dependent on sex or even the other person for nourishment. We may still have intense hunger for connection and closeness but we also learn to contain disappointment, frustration, unmet expectations and feelings of aloneness. With this awareness, lovers can enjoy a depth of connection and melting which simply does not happen when there is only excitement.

The nourishment of love making that includes this quality of meditation enables us to let go of our addiction to excitement and on a deeper level, our addiction to the other person. Our love-making can become more about connecting with one another rather than experiencing the ultimate orgasm. Excitement can be replaced with the depth of love. Passion and heat can be replaced with deeper love which may be cooler. In fact, at times, there need not even be an orgasm for sex to be nourishing and satisfying, something that might have been unthinkable earlier on. And paradoxically, it's our experience that when we bring meditation to our sexuality, we may even have episodes of intense excitement and hot sex even with someone we have been with for many years.

In our work, we describe three levels of sexuality. These levels are not exclusive or linear but they are helpful in understanding our sexuality more deeply.

First Level Sex
First level sex is essentially about energy, passion and excitement. It is a wonderful experience of arousal and exploration. Most of us hunger and fantasize about this kind of sex and it is important to live it out. Many of us carry negative conditioning about sex - we have been infected with guilt, inhibitions, self-doubt and shame from our parents, teachers, society and religious upbringing. We may have repressed our natural sexual life energy. If we have not lived it out, we may find ourselves longing for it for much of our life. And because so many of us have been conditioned with this kind of repressive messages about sex, the desire for this kind of sex could be like a volcano inside waiting to erupt. It is not uncommon for people to have settled into a comfortable and secure domestic life and later discover that they have never explored this aspect of their sexuality. If both partners are willing, they can find support in workshops or from a therapist to explore this together. Often, though, it is a reason that longterm couples separate.

Second Level Sex
In “second level sex”, our shame and fear is surfacing, it is affecting our sexuality and we can no longer hide it or run away from it. When this happens, it interferes with “sex as usual”. As we have mentioned earlier, when this is happening, we may want to avoid sex or we may try to compensate to push aside the fear or insecurity that is coming up. Moving from level one to level two is healthy and growful because it invites us to know ourselves in a deeper way and it is the road to deeper intimacy as well. But we may miss the uncomplicated sexual high of level one. And we may also not understand or know how to communicate when fears and insecurities arise in love making. Often, we may not even be aware that we are afraid or in shame, but our body knows and will fair to respond or function the way we would like it to. Man may come fast or can't get an erection; women may have difficulties with orgasm or the problems.

It's our experience that we can not fight with our trauma. If fear and insecurity is arising, it needs to be dealt with. It is not going to go away. Sex may have been one of our most favorite ways of avoiding deeper inner spaces but now we may no longer have this as a road of escape. Problems can arise when one person is in the second level and beginning to experience shame and fear but the other person is in level one and longing for passion, excitement and uncomplicated high energy sex. For two people to be handle this difference, the love between them needs to be strong enough to allow them to work through it and they need to understand what is happening. In our experience, in any relationship, both people mirror each other's state of fear, shame and dysfunction. It usually shows itself in different ways and also one person may be more successful in his or her compensations, but deep down, the wounds are equal in strength.

Third Level Sex
When we can begin to accept and even share our fears and insecurities in this area, trust grows. As trust grows and as we become more comfortable at accepting and sharing our fears and shame, we enter into what we call “third level sex”. In this level, the emphasis is clearly on connection rather than on the sexual high. There is a foundation of deep love and trust and there is space to handle whatever comes up in sex. At this point, orgasm and high energy can happen or not, or the sexuality can be more silent and non-active, dysfunction can happen or not, it doesn't matter. It is the love and connection that matters and there is a willingness to go through whatever it takes to deepen that




This issue is one of biggest saboteurs of our sexuality. Two people living together will probably lock horns from time to time. No problem. But it definitely becomes a problem when resentment grows, patterns get ingrained and these are not dealt with. Most of us carry past resentments with members of the opposite sex going all the way back to - mom and dad.

We carry a script into our most intimate relationships which can make us super-sensitive to certain behaviors from the other person.

• Perhaps it is feeling controlled or invaded.
  
• Perhaps it is feeling patronized and treated like a child.
  
• Perhaps it is feeling ignored or not listened to.
  
• Perhaps we feel that the other person is not being as present as we would like.
  
• Perhaps we feel that the other person is taking us for granted or behaving like an irresponsible child.

When this happens, we get resentful and we may take revenge by attacking or pulling away. We may even start putting each other down. Whatever strategy we use, our sexuality will suffer.




Power struggles intensify when we get lost in the stresses of life and forget to nourish the love. Many of them dissolve when we remember to take the time to love each other. It is also good to know our script - to know what we are sensitive about because most likely, we are going to be with someone who does exactly what we are so sensitive about. If we know our script, it helps us remember that we often confuse the present with the past.

And it is important to take responsibility when we get triggered, to work with our energy on our own and then share without blame when we are ready for that. The longer we wait to share, the greater our resentment and our resignation will grow. It is also important to know our partner's sensitivities so we can learn to be more understanding, respectful and loving. We can't prevent ourselves from stepping on the person's sensitivities from time to time. But we can become more aware of each other's script. That builds love and trust.



Dishonesty and intimacy do not go together. Dishonesty breads mistrust and when there is mistrust, sex is often the first thing to go. Does that mean we have to be totally honest with each other? We need to express anything which if not expressed would create distance between us. Lovers are incredible sensitive to each other. We have nonverbal antennae up all the time. When something important is withheld, we know it even if we don't know that we know it. Furthermore, when we are withholding an important truth from our lover, we also pull away out of guilt and diminished self-respect.

It is scary to be honest. Many of us are habitually dishonest because it may have been one of our most effective survival tools as a child. Now, it may have become an old unconscious habit. We lie about our finances, we lie about the behaviors that we are ashamed of, and we even lie about our affairs. And the most common way we may be dishonest is that we don't share openly and honestly our feelings with our partner. This may be dislikes or judgments that we have about the other person and this kind of dishonesty creates distance.

The remedy for this problem is gently to develop a lifestyle which begins to strive toward greater honesty. Also when we take the risk of being honest, it raises the level of intensity in the relationship.

The last topic we take up concerns examining our priorities. It is easy to get bogged down in the practical details of life and when our minds are continually focused on practicalities, it is hard to feel sexual. If the other issues that we have discussed don't interfere and the problem is just one of priorities, this one is relatively easy to fix.

It is important to interrupt our busy life and take time to be together - to give each other massages, to pleasure each other and to explore ways to make love which are non-threatening and enable both partners to be fully present. Sometimes, it is helpful to get some guidance and inspiration from outside in the form of friends, therapists, or workshops which help us to take the time to be together and to nourish our sexual connection.

The most important thing to remember is that to keep the love alive and flowing, we have to nurture it. There are always more practical life details to take care of, another phone call to make, another thing to attend to and before we know it, weeks, months, even years go by and we have not brought the bodies together and connected. The remedy is a bit like the Nike ad, "just do it.




Intimacy and sexuality are deeply connected. When sex declines, it may be because we are touching sensitive areas inside which bring up fear and shame. It may also be because we have not learned or taken the time to communicate with each other. As two people are longer together, the challenges become more intense. Sex may change with time, but if we deal with the issues we have mentioned and remember to take the time to love each other, love only gets stronger and deeper.

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