Column Nathalie Sommer
Relationship and Intimacy – Coach, Nathalie Sommer, gives her expert advice on intimacy and the modern relationship…
Relationships have evolved but passion has always existed! Back in the days, people mostly had sex with one person and that was (likely) the person they were already married to. The accepted norm was to meet someone, get married, have sex, have a family and be together with that person until death did them part, no matter how bad or good the relationship was.
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Times have changed. Most people date and have several relationships until they meet the modern day equivalent of ‘the one’. Marriage is certainly not a must! What we want is the fairy tale – we want to have epic sex, feel safe and to experience continual mystery, to never feel bored and to feel deeply in love with the person we’re sharing our time with. We want that one person to fulfil all our wants and needs (is it too much to ask?). And of course, when it comes to the sex and intimacy… We want it to be mind-blowing!
I think it’s safe to say that we expect much more from our relationships than we’ve ever done before. Back in the day, marriage was framed within duty rather than love. Now, it’s to fall in love and stay together until we no longer love each other. It’s a complex world that we live in and our modern relationships reflect that. When we look at sex in the modern world, you don’t need to have a legitimate relationship to have sex. Sex is no longer quite as taboo (thankfully), and casual hook-ups are increasingly normalised. You can easily meet people in bars, restaurants, social gatherings and on the net, and we want to have our deepest desires met in our relationships and in the bedroom.
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So, what does this mean when it comes to modern relationships and sex?
When two sexually experienced people start dating, sex comes with certain expectations. We want there to be fireworks (who doesn’t)! But as soon as you set expectations, we put pressure on things, and it can easily set us up for failure. We, not only, want to experience deep passion on the first night, but all the nights to come after. As you can see, it can easily lead to disappointment and boredom if the sex doesn’t meet expectations.
It’s usually not the lack of sex that drives people away from each other. It’s bad sex and not having our needs in the bedroom fulfilled, that slowly kills, otherwise perfect, relationships, and ultimately leads to less intimate engagement.
Your pathways to arousal may not be the same as your partners. Especially in modern days, we can deeply explore our sexual desires, and there is less taboo around it. It’s normal and healthy to have a natural desire to feel sexually fulfilled. Take my Eros Archetype Quiz to help you discover your unique sex language and learn what it’s like to finally touch and be touched in a way that honours your particular body and its desires, to feed and be fed in such a profound way that your body feels like it’s being deeply seen and understood.
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Roles & Patterns In Relationships:
When we move into a relationship, we establish roles. Roles are often patterns rather than habits. It’s easy to feel annoyed when these patterns get established, as it’s hard to change them. What tends to happen is that blame starts to appear along the lines of: ‘”you never take out the trash”, or “I always have to do the dishes”. If you want these patterns to change, start by taking ‘never’ and ‘always’ out of your vocabulary. And instead of using blame, you have to be able to spend two weeks not doing it. For example, you don’t do the dishes for two weeks or don’t take out the trash. You don’t say anything and wait until the other person finally notices it, or you take the step towards having an open conversations. Remember, when you’re not there, or before you got into the relationship, the other person sorted the bin. They can do it. It’s just that when you’re there, they’d prefer not to, as you have been taking over that role.
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The woman of today and sensuality:
Women of today are no less interested in sex than men, but they can be less interested in the sex readily available to them. So what makes women lose interest? It can be anything from routine, house chores, not feeling heard about her needs, motherhood, to a lack of feeling truly in tune with herself.
As a woman, maternal tendencies may come naturally to you. You may find yourself wanting to nurture and take care of everyone. It’s easy to feel that you’re overextending yourself. That there aren’t enough hours in the day to have to yourself to be able to nurture your needs and give yourself the space to do so. This leads to losing focus on yourself, and not feeling sensual.
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To feel sensual, you have to focus on yourself in the most basic way. My experience has been that a woman’s path to greater wellbeing and empowerment leads through bringing awareness and kindness back to yourself and your female form. To feel heard about your needs creates safety and empathy, which in return will lead to feeling sensual and wanting to be intimate with your partner. I know it’s easy to lose touch with your most inner being when you’re constantly chasing your tail by making sure everything around you is in flow. I want you to know that you’re magnificent, powerful and wise. This is something that’s within all of us, but it’s often the parts of us that are most true to our being that we connect with the least.
Modern relationships are a journey!
I’d like to remind you, that relationships and sex are a continuous journey. You don’t just find one person to go through life with, and expect no struggle or the need to course correct. In reality, we need to course correct continuously. It’s how we evolve and grow in ourselves and the relationship we are in. If it were all rainbows and sunshine, we would get easily bored, and never improve or challenge ourselves, right?!
Relationships are like a mirror to yourself. It’s an opportunity to look deep into yourself to evolve, heal and grow. We have to allow for hiccups in relationships, and sometimes they create crashes. Mostly, relationships are an opportunity to rebuild, and to come out wiser and stronger on the other side.
About the author:
Nathalie Sommer is a certified Relationship & Intimacy Coach, Women’s Transformational Coach, speaker and international workshop facilitator. Through her communities, 1:1 + group coaching, speaking and events.
Nathalie is supporting and transforming women’s and couples relationships and lives from around the globe, helping them to create powerful transformations through sensual feminine embodiment, relationship & intimacy work.
You can follow her work via https://www.instagram.com/nata.sommer/ on Instagram and join her lively Eros Temple For Modern Women Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1835416650102332/ for intimate chats all about relationships, pleasure and sex. You can also visit her website to find out more about her services http://nathaliesommer.com/, or take Nathalie’s Eros Archetype Quiz http://nathaliesommer.com/quiz/
