How to make your love stronger and improve intimacy when things are stale
By Orit Krug | November 8th, 2021
You can make your love stronger even if your relationship has been stale for a while.
Let’s first talk about WHY this might be happening in your relationship:
- You’ve been together for a long time and there’s not much excitement at this point
- There is a numbness and lack of spark inside of you, so you cannot feel it in your relationship either.
- You’re used to drama and trauma in past relationships, so your safe & healthy relationship today feels boring (we’ll expand on this below)
The first reason is pretty common amongst many couples who’ve been together for a while. But if you resonate with #2 and #3, this is a strong indication of unresolved trauma from your past.
The most common response that people have to unresolved trauma is to disconnect from their bodies. This is to protect themselves from feeling any pain or hurt, which consequently makes them feel numb.
As a result, they become too disconnected from their bodies to enjoy sex or feel an exciting connection with their partners, even through the mundane things of everyday life.
Additionally, unresolved trauma creates a primal instinct to block deeper love and intimacy. Even in a healthy, loving relationship today, your nervous system will primarily operate under the belief that your partner WILL hurt you like the others did in the past, and push away intimacy.
The first step to make your love stronger is to safely and gently connect back into your body.
Blocking, numbing, and repressing feelings in your body was a brilliant coping strategy when you experienced trauma. If you didn’t escape your body this way, you would’ve had to endure all the physical or emotional pain that your abusers put you through.
But now, it’s necessary to start being in your body again and FEELING in order to make your love stronger and enjoy intimacy with your partner.
When you block out “negative emotions,” you also prevent yourself from feeling the good ones too. Love, excitement, joy, connection. These all get buried under a thick layer of armor too.
This is what creates numbness and a lack of spark within you.
It’s understandable that past trauma would make you want to disconnect from your body to guard yourself from anything that could potentially hurt you.
This is normal. This is the way you’re wired now, because you still are holding on to this trauma in your body.
But once you start to feel alive in your body, you can feel more alive in your relationship. You can also feel safer to invite more intimacy and make bolder moves in your relationship.
Once you release trauma from your body, you stop carrying it into all parts of your relationship.
One of our former clients, Melissa, began working with us because she had trouble forming a strong, healthy sexual relationship with her partner.
They had an amazing emotional connection, but she brought all of her trauma into the bedroom.
As we worked together to release her trauma, Melissa also started trying on more enlivening, passionate, strong, and fiery movements in her body. This was a way for her to experiment with feeling and expressing herself more powerfully.
While Melissa became more comfortable CHOOSING the way she wanted to express herself through her body, she started feeling free of heaviness and more daring to follow her impulses.
This translated to being able to initiate sex with her partner and be more spontaneous. Instead of always stopping herself for fear of, “What will he think if I just take his hand and skip down the sidewalk together?” She just did it.
At the end of her work with us, she said, “You know, I came here to resolve my sexual intimacy issues, but I got so much more.”
“The thing that changed my life forever is that I finally feel ALIVE for the first time.”
She described that feeling her body again was this huge shifting, opening feeling. Almost like she was entering an entirely new way of being in her body, life, and relationship.
Being comfortable in her body helped her feel more pleasure and confidence with sexual intimacy. It also impacted the way she connected to every part of her life.
Rewire your nervous system so you can enjoy a safe, healthy, long-term relationship.
Coming from past traumatic relationships, you may feel like safe and healthy relationships are not exciting enough. This doesn’t mean that you love abusive partners. It just means you’re physically used to it.
Your nervous system became adapted to the drama and chaos that those relationships brought. So now, relaxed and stable feels painfully boring.
You’re currently wired to thrive under the survival and danger of traumatic relationships. Thus, you need to rewire your nervous system to enjoy your healthy relationship without the rollercoaster.
Once you’re rewired, you can really feel your partner’s love in such a comforting, exciting and meaningful way which isn’t boring at all. It’s honestly one of the best feelings in the world (cheesy, I know).
When your nervous system is calm and regulated enough to connect deeply, then you finally have the ability to make your love stronger.
Sign up for my online course (ranges from free to $20 USD) to begin a unique, body-based learning experience that will teach you:
- Science-backed education about how trauma is stored in your body and nervous system. You’ll gain an understanding why it has NOT been your fault you haven’t healed yet from past trauma.
- Gentle, guided body-based movement that is necessary for integrated healing. This is crucial if you want your mind’s intentions to match your body’s behaviors in relationships.
- An embodied approach to healing that has helped hundreds of clients break unhealthy relationship patterns and let in healthy, lasting love.
