Eleditor’s note: Elephant is a diverse community of sixteen million readers and hundreds of writers (you can write too!). We are reader-created. Many blogs here are experience, opinion, and not fact or The One Right Point of View. We welcome all points of view, especially when offered with more sources and less invective, more frankness and less PR. Dislike this Op-Ed or opinion? Share your own take here.

Warning: adult language below!

This is for the married couples on the front lines, the ones going through the day to day ups and downs of real intimacy—the soldiers on the field of love.

I’ve talked to many married couples in my lifetime, and although wedded bliss comes with security, stability and a vow to love each other through thick and through thin, it can also come with the feeling of “you get to be the one that deals with all my shit.”

It takes some serious spiritual discipline to forgive quickly, forget the past and accept your love for who they are, flaws and all. But the reason that we are often so hard on our partners is that we are hard on ourselves.

We can only accept others at the level at which we’ve accepted ourselves. No matter how hard we might try not to, sometimes that shit leaves our mouths before we even think it through. Before we know it, we are projecting, dumping and unleashing all of our subconscious fears onto the person who is trying their best to love us, flaws and all.

Today, we’re gonna flip the script and talk about real intimacy. I believe that we can experience real intimacy without blaming, projecting and dumping your bullshit onto our partners.

Last summer, I met a couple that was celebrating 37 years together, and they were still spicy! I told her I loved seeing couples that still got it. Three kids and 37 years later, and they’re acting like they’re on their first date.

I asked her what the secret was and she said: I never stopped dating him.

Marriages that lack romantic love and sexual fire have some things in common: they’re the ones that put the kids before romance, the laundry before date night, and talk to each other while they’re on the toilet. There’s no other way to say this then to just say it: do you want to be roommates, or do you want to be married?

There’s a chance that your open door policy of complete transparency might be killing your chances at romance and the spicy sex life you truly desire.

Our Facebook newsfeeds go from happily married and dressed-to-kill date nights to a non-stop photo display of baby’s first step, baby’s first bath, baby’s first everything…to the kid’s first day of school, the kid’s first soccer game, to the kid’s ninth Christmas, and so on. The next thing we know, the husband is forced out of his marriage and into his man cave to reminisce about the days when him and his wife really had it going on.

Nothing compares to a mother’s love for her child—it’s the most sacred gift a woman can experience. I’m not asking mothers to stop being mothers—I’m inviting them not to stop being wives.

This is where sex comes in: it can be ego-based or spirit-based.

When sex is about ego, it’s focused entirely on bodily pleasure and lacks the fibers of real intimacy. I don’t know about you, but I know women who treat sex as something they check off on their to-do list in an attempt to keep their man satisfied and still get everything done.

Marriage is hard. Real intimacy is hard. Cohabitating, running a household, raising humans, while trying to keep the romance alive is hard. But if we want real intimacy, then we have to put in the work—which brings us to the real reason you’re not having sex with your husband. It has nothing to do with the children, the laundry, or dinner being on the table by five.

It has to do with both partners. But let’s take a look at what we (wives) might be doing to discourage the kind of passion and sensuality that once fuelled our relationship. Take a moment to focus on that energy that surrounded the first sexual encounter with your husband. Did you feel like he was a true friend before you had sex? Did you know each other well? Did you play the five date rule and then jump into bed with him breaking out all the stops: lingerie, candles, showering together and sleeping naked so you could wake up and do it again before you both went to work?

Did you paint the picture that you were this insatiable sex kitten in the sheets in the beginning, and then once you “got him” you started to refuse to have sex with him? Just because the sex didn’t become a one night stand, or a casual fling, and the two of you made it to the altar, doesn’t mean it wasn’t sometimes used to create a false sense of intimacy.

The reason we may have jumped the gun and used sex to “get” a man is a lack of self love. Chances are you didn’t get the modelling you needed from mommy or daddy to lay the groundwork for spiritual sex–for real intimacy. Maybe you never really felt like you could fully surrender, or maybe it gives you anxiety, or maybe you just can’t seem to get out of your own head because there are deep wounds there. Whatever that wound, fear or core disbelief is—that’s likely at least a part of what’s happening with the lack of sex.

Anytime you enter a relationship from a place of lack, that belief will follow you into every sack session until it’s dealt with.

Our ego tends to sabotage romance by masking such wounds with excuses like “I’m tired, let’s just do it tomorrow, I’m not in the mood…” and so on. What if, now, the man that you raced to the altar with is feeling resentment thinking that he married someone who pretended to be a sex kitten but doesn’t really care for sex at all.

Maybe he feels mislead, and could you blame him? And even if that’s not the case, does it really make you happy to withhold sex, if that’s what you are doing?

If this sounds familiar, It’s not too late to transform fear into love. There is nothing the power of spirit cannot do. Even if you entered into the relationship with a lack of self-love (and who doesn’t have some kind of lack of self-love?!), rest assured that every human being is wounded.

No one has it all figured out. You can still change your mind today and clear your heart and conscience by deciding to work on it.

Balancing the masculine and feminine energies inside of your intimate relationships is the key to keeping the romance and sexual fire intact. Let’s say you’re a “feminine energy woman” and your deepest psychic craving is to have your feelings cherished, and feel loved, safe and protected by your man. If that is the case, try checking your masculine energy at the (bedroom) door. We can’t be the boss all day and then come home and boss our men around, then expect them to be loving toward us.

It doesn’t work like that.

Romance requires conscious communication spoken from the heart of the feminine. Masculine energy looks like the woman who is in constant to-do mode, who has no time for romance, and dictates when she has sex with her husband but then feels like her husband doesn’t know how to love her.

In other words: if you are not already doing so, let your man be the man. If you are constantly challenging and correcting him (for instance), this may be ruining your chance at romance.

Of course, it goes both ways! He has to want the romance as well. Intimacy is a two-way dance.

Real intimacy is created when spirituality and sexuality become one. You invite spirit into your mind, your bedroom, your marriage, your sex life, leaving no stone unturned to create and maintain a happy, healthy intimate relationship.

The relationship you have with a higher power must come first. Marianne Williamson says that if our relationship with God is fractured, then the rest of our relationships will follow. Anything can be transformed from fear to love—we just have to be willing to give it up and hand it over to a higher power. Surrender the fear, the wounds, the blaming, the insecurities, and everything else that is blocking you from having sex with your husband.

Surrender to spirit. Tap into the powerful Source of divine love that is living inside of you.

Try this: Create your own love pyramid—similar to the old food pyramid—and draw five layers within the pyramid like the food groups. Those five layers are going to be the five places where your energy goes for the next 40 days. They are the five energetic layers of relationship that mean the most to you—it goes something like this:

Relationship with God.

Call it what you want; the Divine, Allah, the Universe, Higher Power, it doesn’t matter, it’s all the same energy Source, but without a connection to Divine Love, you leave love to the hands of the ego.

Relationship with yourself.

Kick up your self-love and self-care game. Make time for yourself. Do some yoga, take a walk, a bubble bath, anything that makes you feel like the goddess that you are. Marianne suggests taking 30 minutes after you get home from work to step into your feminine.

Relationship with your partner.

The kids wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for your husband. He must exit the mancave and reclaim the throne. His place comes before the children. This is where sex comes into play as a sacred part of your relationship, used to deepen your communication and connection to each other.

Relationship with the kids.

We are responsible for raising humans and teaching them about love and intimacy. Just because you didn’t get the modeling from mommy and daddy, doesn’t mean you can’t do it differently and show your children what real intimacy looks like. They’re watching how you love and modeling how they love after what you do.

Relationship with everybody else.

Pets, family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and so on. Make time for your top four and these relationships will find their own place in your life.

Keep the love pyramid somewhere you can see it when you wake up and make prayer a priority at this time. When spirit is in control, you focus less on guilt and more on love.

Surrender any desire for your husband to be who you think he should be…and just let him be.

Relephant:

The Truth about Marriage that Nobody Tells Us.

6 Reasons She’s Not Initiating Sex. {Adult}

When our Sexual Feelings in a Relationship Change.

Author: Stacy Hamm

Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: by Edie Rosson-Pagán (via the author)