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In my last significant relationship, the sex was consistently amazing. Most everything else consistently sucked.
I broiled in the fire of that bittersweet pleasure for five years. It was the longest and most significant relationship of my life, and at 36 years old (when it ended), I was clearly still completely ignorant of how to make relationships work. But I sure knew how to make relationships hard work.
But the sex was exquisitely finger-licking delicious. Always. In five years, I believe we had fewer than five fingers worth of bad sex moments. And even those were still pretty damn good. I used to joke that the only reason we were together was clearly because our bodies wanted desperately to entangle with each other.
Otherwise, we got it all so wrong. Which brings me to the point:
Great sex is never enough.
I know that may already be crazy obvious to some people. But it isn’t obvious to everyone all the time. It’s certainly not obvious to the sexually-satisfied but relationally-exasperated soul, which is who I was during that relationship.
The sex was divine. The relationship was hellish.
I tried everything to make the love work: couples therapy, self-help books, personal-growth workshops (together and solo), going to church and praying to whomever, running away, staying put, and plenty of other curious things I could figure to try.
Nothing worked.
Nothing worked because we didn’t have all three of these “essential C’s” for a successful intimate relationship:
1) Chemistry
Oh, we definitely had that one! At least sexual chemistry. Anytime. Anywhere. Any way. Our bodies just fit. Our pheromones did the work for us, flickering bright and brilliant between us like a Las Vegas light show! Chemistry was never a problem.
2) Compatibility
My partner and I were incompatible in some seriously fundamental ways. We had enough compatibility to be able to live in the same apartment, but it often seemed we didn’t inhabit the same universe.
Here’s a simple example. She was private and hated it when I shared openly with other people what I was struggling with, particularly if that sharing involved our relationship. I was a budding young writer and life coach, and sharing my struggles in service to learning and teaching was integral to my doing my best work.
Looking back, I know I could not do the coaching work I love to do and succeed in today, or write the way I love to write, if I were still in that relationship.
There were many other ways we were deeply incompatible in how we wanted to live our everyday lives, and this became a source of endless frustration.
3) Communication
We also didn’t communicate effectively or constructively. In my coaching work, I’m seeing many couples who struggle with communication. While modern culture is filled with messages that communication is the cornerstone of good relationships—reflective listening, non-violent communication, etc.—many of us still lack the skills to communicate well.
Further, most books and articles on functional communication fail to explore the differences in how masculine-oriented people and feminine-oriented people communicate. By masculine and feminine-oriented, I don’t mean men and women in that order. Because there’s lots of stuff on how communication polarizes by gender.
I mean recognizing that a person’s masculine or feminine energy does much to determine his or her communication style and listening skills, and the way that person frames issues when there is conflict. And this is tragic, because intimate relationships are essentially interactions between the different expressions of masculine and feminine being, which can coexist within the same person and which are are independent of one’s sex organs.
People who consistently express more masculine energy (man or woman) tend to communicate more at the level of thoughts and ideas. People who are more feminine-oriented in their expression (man or woman) tend to communicate at the level of feelings and emotions.
Ignorance of this dynamic caused great strain in my hot-sex relationship. I was always trying to meet her at the logical “level of complaint” while completely missing the emotional message that her words were often pointing at. In other words, I was so intellectually focused on the details of her complaints that I failed to hear her yearning for emotional connection with me. Andy my blindness to that largely ruined us.
I also see in my relationship coaching practice that this same disconnect causes great strain for many. It’s not something men are taught in our masculine-oriented culture, yet it sabotages us constantly.
Of course many couples do have great communication skills that help them navigate through inevitable storms. The point is, good communication is essential for great relationships.
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What happens when we don’t have all three?
If you have chemistry and communication but no compatibility, you have a part-time lover, but not a sustainable relationship.
One of my recent clients was trying to make a relationship work with a woman who lives six time-zones away from him. He was in Wisconsin; she was in Italy. He would just be getting off work as she was going to bed. She literally lived in his future! That’s pretty incompatible. But they pretended they had compatible lives, which is what we all do when we ignore fundamental lifestyle differences. The result was ongoing misunderstanding and aggravation.
If you have compatibility and communication but no chemistry, you have a friend, but not an intimate relationship.
Some couples can live quite happily without chemistry for years. As we age, anyway, chemistry can wane and become less important. You still need personality chemistry, of course. But for sexual chemistry, this combination works just fine for those not as interested in sex. However, if our sexual fires are alive and we engage in a relationship with no chemistry, even if we have great communication and compatibility, we may as well shove our burning loins into a freezer. You just gotta be careful those loins don’t one day burn through that freezer and set your cozy life on fire!
If you have chemistry and compatibility but no communication, you have chaos.
My girlfriend and I fought constantly! We had enough compatibility that we could live in the same apartment, but we had dysfunctional and often destructive communication. So we lived together and sexed together and fought incessantly together. Perhaps that’s why the sex stayed so invigorating: there’s nothing like the drama of fearing you’ll never again have delicious sex with your fantasy partner only to make up and dive right back in!
Great sexual chemistry is often so overwhelming that it’s easy to overlook compatibility issues or stressful patterns of communication. I did so to my inevitable detriment, but you and your partner don’t have to.
Last thing: if you have chemistry, compatibility and communication? Just enjoy your awesome relationship!
*Author note: The 3 C’s are from “Getting To I Do” by Dr. Pat Allen.
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Bryan coaches single men and women and couples to help create delicious intimate relationships. Click here for information.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Unsplash
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