Episode 2: Foreplay Before The Foreplay

The more a husband is emotionally open and available to his wife the greater her desire, want and need for him grows. For women emotional connection is the foreplay….the best sexiest foreplay! Let's talk about it, may be your not feeling the flame? Wondering what's the source of sexual disconnection? It's not rocket science and it’s not as complicated as you think! The two of you are not having emotional sex...that is right...its the foreplay before the foreplay and when sprinkled into your marriage the end result is mind blowing!

Episode Transcript

This is the confident marriage podcast, and I'm your host, Jessica. Thank you for joining me today. I want to start by giving everybody a huge shout-out that listened to my last episode. I love the comments and feedback. I loved hearing how much you guys enjoyed it. It makes my heart sing that I'm able to help you.

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This is episode two Foreplay Before The Foreplay. Ooh, it sounds so taboo, sex, not feeling the flame. Wondering what the source of sexual disconnection is. It's not rocket science and it's not as complicated as you think the two of you are not having emotional sex. It's the foreplay before the foreplay. And when sprinkled into your marriage, the end result is mind-blowing. What is an emotional connection anyways? It sounds like such a broad word and it can have so many meanings.

What we're talking about is the emotional bond between two people. It runs deeper than any other bond with anyone else. It's knowing someone on a level no one else does it's knowing the ugly of your spouse and yes, we all have ugly. It's knowing our secrets, our demons, fears, hopes, values, future vision.

I'm sure you're understanding the depth here. It's all-knowing this connection allows us to open up to someone unconsciously on a level we wouldn't dare with anyone else, and if you don't think that will affect your sex, you're about to learn a whole new sex life. The word emotional by definition means arousing by strong feelings.

Ooh, aroused. Let's talk about that more. When you're married, sex becomes a lot more intricate. There are a bond and an emotional connection attached to the relationship that makes sex so much deeper and more satisfying. It's beyond the physical level. This is what makes marital sex so much deeper than casual sex.

Casual sex is often awkward. You don't know each other well, what they like, what you like, are you doing it right? Oh, they're not doing that, right? Do I look okay? And all the thoughts that go on, unless you're drunk, then it's typically just bad. With your spouse, they know you and you know them, there is little insecurity involved and you can just relax, be you, and enjoy each other

With that there, there's also a sense of security and hopefully a connection beyond physical excitement that allows the two of you to connect so deeply. If your marriage is lacking emotional connection, then it's time to check in with one another and find a way to grow this connection. It's not only important to the health of your relationship but the health of your sex as well.

The emotional connection allows the two of you to be open and removes the fear out of talking about what you like, what you don't like, new stuff that you might want to try that could be a little embarrassing and allows for full enjoyment of giving and receiving pleasure with one another. This connection allows the two of you to feel safe speaking at the moment without judgment or repercussions.

For women, emotional connecting is foreplay. They long for and desire to be connected to their husband's mind. It turns her on and opens her up to giving and receiving by allowing her to feel safe, to give herself to her spouse in ways that she wouldn't, without that connection when a woman is able to connect with her man on a level, he lets no one else into, it lets her know that she's special to him, she's loved, she's valued, and she's respected. This tells her that to him, she is the most important thing in his life. That with her, he is all vulnerable and that is hot.

One of the things that really shut this connection down is when husbands are experiencing a block with their wives. It could be from a past issue, it could be from problems in the relationship. Nonetheless, there's sosme kind of block there. Maybe he's feeling insecure about his job or he's got other family stuff going on. Whatever's got his wall up. It's there. And this wall shuts his wife down and then she's unable to feel safe to give herself to him and in turn, has trouble being intimate with her husband.

This becomes a cycle. It's a pretty ugly cycle, too. So as she starts to shut down on him, he becomes resentful and hurtful by the rejection. This causes him to shut down even more with her emotionally. And so the cycle goes on until the couple's no longer having sex.

This is a very common problem in marriages and both the husband and wife are confused as to how to fix it. The desire and passion are gone and they don't understand why we don't realize that this emotional cycle is playing havoc on the relationship and affects our intimacy. The More a husband is emotionally open and available to his wife, the greater her desire, the greater her want, and her need for him grows.

She becomes more interested in pleasing him. Wanting to make him feel loved in return and wanting to be closer physically, the longer the relationship experiences, emotional bonding connection, the more open the wife becomes to her husband in the bedroom. She's more open to trying new things with him, and she's more aroused more often.

She feels sexier because she feels connected to him. She feels like she is the queen of his world. And what's even cooler about this phenomenon is that the woman actually experiences a more intense orgasm as well, because she's more likely to feel safe, secure, and connected. Therefore, in turn, she lets lose a little bit more and she doesn't have that feeling of holding back, she can just let loose and be herself.

So I know what the guys are thinking. “This is overwhelming”. How in the world do we do that? It sounds like a lot of work. Well, now that we've talked about all the fun and sexy stuff, let's talk about the how, let's give you those answers. How do we create that emotional connection with your spouse, but just like sex it takes two?

We all know the stereotype here, and I hate stereotypes. It's that whole scene of the woman wants to talk her husband's ear off and the guy just wants to watch the game, and his thought is what's the big deal with feelings anyways. Really though, this is only a very small piece of what emotional connection is and how it takes place.

Emotional connection happens when someone asks a simple question, like, “How was your day?” But. It's not giving short answers. It's about actually talking about your day. Talk about what stressed you out, what pissed you off, what made you happy, what your accomplishment was, and go into detail about it.

Tell them the story as if they were there as if you want them to feel as if they had experienced the whole thing with you. Those are the kinds of things that create an emotional connection. Okay, so we're just speaking about how to talk about your day, but, what I'm really leading into here is treating your spouse as if they are your best friends. You know what, forget I said that don't treat them as if they're your best friend, make them your best friend. Tell them stories of your past, both the good and the bad. Let them in on times when you were humiliated, embarrassed, bullied, or let down, Tell them about your most memorable moments, maybe things that you had hoped or wished for taking your spouse for a stroll down your memory lane, and prompt your spouse to talk to you.

When you know that they've had a bad day. Take some time to go to them and ask them if they want to talk about their day, ask if they want to get it off their chest, just be mindful and ask if maybe, “Do you need to vent?” “Do you need a yell?” “Do you need time alone?” Do they want advice?

But it's not just about their day. Ask them about the things that they did that day that was interesting to them. Talk to them about their hobbies, get into detail about it. If it's not something you guys are doing together and it's something that, you know, they're doing on their own, ask them to explain it to you, ask them to tell you “Why do you like it?” “What brought you into it?” “What's your favorite part about it?” “What do you dislike about it?” Just get into their world in that. We spoke in Mythical Marriages about sharing each other's interests and having your own interest. This is the time to get into their world with those things that they do on their own. It allows you to connect and it allows you to get into each other's world.

The other thing that you guys can do to build that connection is to take up a brand new hobby that you both can learn together, do something that the both of you have never done before, but maybe you both have always wanted to try and enjoy that time together and talk about your experiences in it and what you learned and teach each other the things that may be the other is not understanding or something that you learned about it that maybe your spouse didn't know.

Make sure that you two are committing to spending time together on it, read about it, learn about it. Ask each other questions about it. This is a really good way for you, to develop a deeper understanding of how your spouse experiences life and turns out to be a really cool time that you get to learn new things about your partner that you never knew, and sometimes we even learn things about ourselves we never knew, and we get to experience that with our spouse. That's a pretty cool moment.

So there are a couple of personal examples. I'm going to give him this. The first one is my husband and I both took up kayaking together. Now we're not experts in it, and we're just, you know, starting to understand really the kayaking world because I guess there's one, we ran into some people at a restaurant one time who was big into it and half of what they said went over my husband and I's head like that's far beyond what we're doing, but it was something that we both have never done before.

We both really liked the water. We both like nature. We like being outside. So we bought some cheap kayaks and we'd go to the local waters and just kind of paddle around and enjoy that time together, and we really learned how to get closer with one another. There's something so simple as that it was beautiful. It was romantic. It was fun. We usually have the kids with us, which made it a little hectic, but they even started to enjoy it and love it. So there's one example of how doing something so simple can bring you two closer together and build that connection.

The other thing that we do, it's not really a hobby, but we run errands together instead of us splitting up and doing those little things that we need to do individually, we do them together. We'll go to the grocery store together. We'll run to the bank together. Whatever those things are that need to get done. We'll do them as a team and we always make sure that while we're out, we grab a bite to eat or grab a cup of coffee. It's time that we get to spend talking and laughing and joking and playing around and being goofy and just connect.

It's just something that we do on a regular basis to get that connection that our marriage needs. So speaking of errand dates, here's a little game, my husband and I like to play, which I happen to make up one day when we were out doing errands, we were sitting in the car quietly, not really talking much and I felt so disconnected from him. Which was pretty unusual when we're out together and I was wondering what he was thinking, how he was feeling, so instead of just asking him all these questions, the game just happened to pop in my head and it ended up being pretty cool.

So here are the rules. One partner counts down from five, so five, four, three, two one, when you reach one, the other partner starts blurting out their thoughts. There are no pauses allowed and you have to keep going for at least one to two minutes. No filtering allowed either. No matter how random or off the thought is, you have to say it once that partner's done, you guys switch.

So there's a cool little spin that you can put on it and that's throwing out a word or a sentence to switch their thinking paths to see what they do with it. And it's kind of cool to see how your partner's train of thought works at that moment. It's hilarious. So the first time I did it with my husband, I could not stop laughing.

He started off by talking about the stress of work, the stress with our kids, our teenage daughter, and then all of a sudden, a sexy car drove by and he started talking about the car, but then couldn't understand why they would pick that color. And then immediately went back to the stress of work and then flipped all the way to he was hungry and he wanted food.

It was hilarious, lots of fun. Something you guys should try out. See if it works for you, another fun, little thing that you guys could try is to revisit those old high school dating questions again. Even if you know the answers, they might elaborate on it a little bit, or you'll learn something new. I mean, really go back to the favorite color and why movies, bands, music likes to dislike.

You never know, there's usually something new and each one, when you try that out, This is where you can talk about yourselves. You can even bring sexy in. Talk about what made you fall in love with the other person. Do they remember the moment they realized it? When did they notice you for the first time? What are your best memories of the two of you? Is there something that you do in the bedroom that drives them crazy? What do they wish you would do more or maybe less of. And what would they like to try? What do they admire about you and wish that they had, what quality do you possess that makes them feel like you complete them?

Just ask, keep asking all the questions that come up, things that maybe you've wondered in the past or been curious about, and don't be embarrassed. Just ask, so the next thing I'm going to talk about, it's not mine. It came from John Gottman. If you haven't read any of his work, I highly suggest you pick up his book. I'm going to refer to him a lot in my podcast. He's absolutely fabulous. I'll post a link to his website in my description.

But one of the things that he talks about is building admiration for your spouse and that the more fondness you build towards your spouse by verbalizing that the closer you feel to them, which really runs in line with what scientists and behaviors are finding is one of the key factors and having a change of mind and attitude towards something is changing your thinking about it. So one of the ways that you do that is to brag about your spouse, to others, do it in their presence, do it out of their presence, put them on a pedestal, make them feel like a king or a queen.

When you increase your positive idea of your spouse, you find yourself thinking about them more, missing them more, and being so much more attracted to them. It deepens that emotional connection. This also makes your spouse feel loved and appreciated. It makes them feel special, makes them feel wanted. And who knows, you just might say something about them that they never knew you thought. What a nice and sexy surprise. Were going to go from talking about admiration to talking about that elephant in the room. I know it sounds so counterintuitive to getting closer to more sex. But it's not, I promise you when there's an elephant in the room, everyone knows it's there, but your spouse doesn't really know why or how it got there.

Start cleaning all that shit up you've been holding in, but please do it in a loving and productive way. Don't ever do it in a hurtful or spiteful way. Talk about the crap that's been bugging you, the things that have been locked up in your heart, let it out when you start removing those barriers and those are barriers, even though we don't realize it, you start drawing closer to one another.

There's not that elephant between you. I know it's hypothetical, but in our minds, unconsciously, that's literally how it acts and we don't even realize it. Now, this is not going to end up with the two of you running your hands all over each other right after, but in the long run, it is one of the best things that you can do to make that emotional connection deeper, stronger, and even more wonderful because there isn't a block.

So what is emotional safety? Emotional safety means that you're understanding your spouse's point of view, their perspective. This doesn't mean that you have to agree with it. It just means that you understand and respect it. Just make sure that you stay respectful. Through the conversation, don't put your partner down and don't mock them.

Be sure to not judge them, especially if they have confided something to you. That was very difficult for them to share. When it's your turn to talk, keep it open and keep it honest. You can disagree with them without being cruel about it. Make sure that you speak all of your thoughts and feelings, don't leave anything out, and don't assume that they already know, even if you've said it a thousand times, maybe in their head, they wouldn't think that it fits the bill for that conversation. So still make sure that you say it.

So, those are lots of ways that you guys can make that emotional foreplay work for you but find things that might work for you in your marriage. There isn't just one way to do things. Every marriage, every couple is different. Find the things that work for both of you. There's a little analogy that I want to give and trying to understand what it is we're trying to create here with that emotional foreplay. So I'm going to paint this picture for you.

You're at a friend's dinner party and you meet two people. There, person A becomes a friend you've gotten to know them. You've built a mutual trust. You understand the other person. Then there's person B, person B is just an acquaintance. You don't build a relationship with them yet you've seen them here and there at other events that your friends are hosting, but you haven't really built a relationship with them.

A year later, you're invited to go hiking with this group of friends, and both of these two people, person A, and person B are both there. During the hike, something goes wrong and you're injured and you just happen to be with person A, the person you've gotten to know and build a relationship with, and person B the acquaintance. You need help and you can only choose one of those people to take you back and that is going to keep you safe. Who were you going to choose? It's going to be person A, the person you have a bond and a mutual trust built with. This plays out in your marriage a lot more than we realize we take for granted. The fact that if we're married, we're sharing life, we're sharing a home, money, parenting we're sharing just about everything. Of course, they know me and I filled them. That isn't the case though and that's what happens to a lot of marriages. We can actually become quite disconnected from the very person we should be the closest to. This closeness by human nature increases endorphins that arouse our sexuality and that is how the emotional and sexual connection come into play.

Now, I know that we've talked about women craving this connection from their men, but I'm going to throw a wrench in this. Are you ready for it? Men need this emotional connection and just as women, men are no exception to need, to feel safe, secure, and respected by their partner and they're just as vulnerable to the endorphins that create arousal by emotional connection as women are. Men who have a bond with their spouse on an emotional level that they don't have with anyone else are proven to be happier, more sexually stimulated by their partner, desire, more intimate, and yes, they even have better orgasms.

So, I know we might not have talked about sex as much as you were hoping for, but if you start talking about it with your spouse, we won't need to talk about it as much because you'll be too busy having it, but don't be too busy having it that you don't listen to my next podcast or better yet. Listen to my podcast while you're having sex.

I'm just kidding. That's really creepy, don't do that. On the next episode, I'm going to go more in-depth about one of the myths I mentioned in the first podcast, Mythical Marriages. What happened to your love? Has it changed so much? You're left confused. Have you lost it? And what does that mean? Anyway, maybe your partner's lost it and you don't know what to do.

How do you bring it back? Maybe you haven't lost it, but things are not as exciting and spunky as they once were. We're going to dive deep into this hard topic and discuss what you can do to bring your marriage back to a place of love and happiness. Also, please check out the link to John Gottman's website.

It's in my show notes, don't forget to hit that subscribe button and share the show. Hey, you might as well take your spouse's phone and subscribe them to it. I'm just kidding. Again I'd love to hear from you. So visit my website, www.thecompetentmarriage.com. I'm also on Facebook @confidentmarriage, Twitter @cmarriage, and Instagram @theconfidentmarriage. Keep sending in your questions and feedback as well as topics you'd like to hear on future episodes.

I love hearing from you guys. This is the confident marriage podcast. And I'm your host, Jessica. Thank you all for listening and please have a very sexy week.