S&A asked: "At the risk of sounding personal, in what ways were you avoiding intimacy with your fiance, and why? How did you and he get over this problem?"
You know the weirdest part is, I'm not even sure myself why I was holding back on intimacy. No doubt it must be an old childhood wound or something....but I don't really have any direct knowledge of a specific reason.
I think subconsciously, it was for the same reason most people hold back on intimacy: the fear of losing myself by the act of sharing myself with someone else. Somehow, when you consider how deeply intimate two people can really become, its scary to think then that you might - oh, say for instance - you might make unconscious noises or body movements during a passionate moment, which might make you look stupid and they will laugh at you. Or you might feel so close to someone you fear you will never want to let go, you fear you will get fused with them, or you fear that you will die without them if you "let them in". Or you think that you will be rejected if you let someone into you so close that they can feel and see all of you....they might decide they don't like what they see. Or they might later use it to hurt you somehow....
None of these types of thoughts were conscious in my head, but somewhere lurking in the shadows, we all beat ourselves up and tell ourselves that "no one will really want you if they really know you all the way".
But of course, none of these crazy ideas are or were true, and my fiance had to keep gently showing me that they weren't true. The "how" of this was easy for him, because he could see right past all my deflection of intimacy and see into my TRUE desire, which was to be fully intimate on all levels with him. My passion sort of oozes out of me (even when I'm trying to keep it hidden) so he knew he had a willing student, just a student who would throw up some road blocks here and there.
Being totally sure of himself was the key. He led me by example. He was so open with his intimacy and passion that it made me be brave, over time.
For instance, as I said above, maybe one fear of becoming too intimate is because you fear you will look silly in a moment of passion if you make weird noises or whatever. Well, he showed me exactly what it DOES look like when he really lets go and makes any noises or movements his body wants to make in that moment...and of course, it was beautiful to watch. It wasn't uncomfortable or strange at all....and yet, I feared it would be strange to HIM if I were the one to really let go? Of course it wouldn't look strange to him, it would be beautiful. This was obvious to me as he revealed himself to me and how much I loved seeing him truly let go, versus keep ahold of everything inside himself. This is just one example.
Another example: I had some body image issues leftover from my teen years. I don't even want to justify them because, basically, in retrospect, even the body issues were in themselves, an attempt to block intimacy. It was a way of saying "my mind is sick enough to see my body as it isn't, so I'm going to use this as an excuse to not let anyone see me naked". And to me, not letting someone see me naked was a way of not letting them "see me" at all.
I really actually thought I had the body image issues tackled by the time I met fiance...but I hadn't. As soon as I was in the position of getting naked with someone new (after being married for 15 years), it all rushed back and I found myself unwilling to get totally naked in front of him. I told him my "story", the tangled web of lies I told myself which made up the "reason" why I had body issues. Again, in retrospect, this was all just excuses to not allow him to really "see me". But to his credit, he was very gentle about it, sensitive to my "story", and never really pushed me to get totally naked. Instead, he just slowly but surely made me comfortable in his presence, and also showed me by example that HIM being naked didn't bother HIM one bit....which did make me stop and ponder, "heck, why AM I being so weird about this?" Because my fear of being naked was so wrapped up in this old teenaged story about myself that I had been telling myself for so long, it didn't really make sense anymore.
Just as a side note, even though I was not willing to get totally naked, we WERE having very passionate sex by this time. Yes, that's right...we had sex and I would not be totally naked.
Its actually laughable now!
Finally after we had been together about 10 months or so, and he had been totally patient all this time...there was one time that we decided spontaneously to have sex in broad day light in his truck...we had parked in an out-of-the-way place, but it was still a little bit risky because people could have come around a corner and seen us. The riskiness was part of the excitement, of course. So we hopped in the back seat and started removing clothing, but I (as usual) refused to remove my bra (because if I at least had a bra on, I would not be "totally naked"). I climbed on his lap and we started making out, and then he started taking my bra off of me. I stopped him and expected him to "honor" my stupid insecurites and not make me get fully naked, especially not here in broad daylight in semi-public.
Usually he would "honor" my insecurities...but this time, he made a stand for himself, and for our intimacy. He stopped making out with me and started looking very sad, like he would cry. I was stunned and asked "what the heck is wrong, honey?" He just simply said "I need you to share yourself with me, and you are refusing". I said "but you know that's how I am honey, what's the big deal?" He said "the big deal is that you are holding yourself back from me, not sharing yourself, not giving yourself to me". The look on his face told the rest of the story to me. I finally "got it". I understood what I had been doing, all at once in that moment.
While he had been patient and sensitive to my internal stories that "caused" me to not want to get naked, he had also been waiting for me to come out of that shell, and he expected and deserved for me to come out of that shell. I was making it clear to him in that moment, that I wasn't really growing. I was staying stuck in my old stories, in my shell. I was refusing to be fully intimate with him.
So I whipped my bra off and hopped back on him, totally naked there in the daylight....we made love and it was awesome and so much more intimate than ever before....and I have never held myself back like that, ever since.
And we have gotten more and more intimate (on all levels) ever since that one time. Because I really did let go of whatever fear was holding me back....but it took seeing that look on his face for me to understand it. Before that moment, I didn't see how holding back on intimacy (in my case, using my nakedness as a sign of intimacy) would or could actually HURT HIM. But once I realized that if I don't give ALL of myself, he will not feel fully intimate toward me either....I just stepped out of those shackles all at once. Well...maybe a tiny bit of resistance remained, for a while. After all, those years and years of telling myself the same story about body issues had a lot of power over me. But it got really easy after that...I grew in leaps and bounds after that.
I became very secure about my body, being naked, and really truly GIVING MYSELF to him entirely. Not holding anything back. This is when I then started to look around inside my mind and found other traps and ways of blocking intimacy....it was weird actually. I actually laid mines in my mind - one step and KABLAM! NO INTIMACY FOR YOU, ONE YEAR!
Its so hard to try to describe these things, but I hope my examples above give you the gist of it.
Any stories or examples from anyone else is encouraged....
