My husband is very fond of telling me the “the only constant is change” and he usually has a “holier than thou” look on his face when he reminds me of this!
He’s right. Which is annoying when you’ve been with somebody for 30 years who knows that you personally struggle with change, especially when it feels unnecessary.
I even struggle with tech updates, I often want things to stay the way they currently are, manageable, controllable and known.
So, change in most forms has always been tough for me,
Especially when the change feels like it doesn’t really improve anything.
When the change takes you by surprise, or is unexpected.
When the change is decidedly unwanted, or feels too huge to achieve.
Change often involves the unknown and the unknown, for most of us, brings fear.
I’m not going to tell you that there’s an easy way to push past fear, because fear is what keeps us alive. Fear is what kicks our nervous system into a place of protection and survival.
The problem is, the nervous system invokes protection by shutting us down to everything but the most basic of living, the survival zone.
The survival zone also shuts us down to any of the real evolution of change.
One of my personal challenges with unwanted intimate change came from surgical menopause. It was instant, almost overnight within the body and it was freaking terrifying.
Terrifying because of what our culture teaches around ageing.
Terrifying because of the huge changes in libido and sensual pleasure.
Terrifying because there was no way of stopping it.
But what if there was a different way?
After my hysterectomy in 2023 I began to have to use my work as an intimacy coach to move beyond the sensual arts and incredible pleasure I had discovered in my body, into a reconfiguration, an intimate evolution of my hormones and pleasure chemical.
This was not a chosen path, it was unwanted change, yet it taught me a system for an evolution of the change into the possibilities, instead of just the social narrative.
So, learning how to move with it, to reframe it, taught me techniques that helped me both evolve my intimate life and integrate other difficult personal change.
It started for me with vision.
This meant I had to look at what I was currently paying attention to and what I wanted to ignore when it came to the changes in my intimate life.
I had to see that my libido had become basically non-existent.
I had to see that our old patterns around our sex life just didn’t work any more
because my libido was no longer present.
I had to see that I would have to walk my talk with the techniques I taught, evolving for this new stage of intimacy.
This vision also meant being able to find clarity on my best and most realistic path forward.
At one point, that was simply being able to find physical pleasure from non-sexual touch. Slowing everything down to adjust my nervous system, because I no longer had the instant rush of arousal.
I had to adjust my vision of pleasure.
I realised that I had actually done that once before, in my 40s, when I had heard of the possibility of a two-hour orgasm.
When I first heard of this, I actually didn’t believe it, but was still willing to learn the technique from those who had apparently travelled that pleasure path!
I learned the techniques, had the difficult conversations with my husband around the practising (and believe you me, those conversations to change our patterns of sexual touch were TOUGH) and took the actions to finally experience a two-hour orgasm.
I planted the seeds to make the vision actionable.
The thing about planting seeds is that it is really not glamorous. And it’s not instant.
The seeds for evolving our intimacy in both cases included lots of heated discussions and sometimes arguments. We had to learn to express the sadness of what we felt we had lost and the anger and frustration at not knowing with clarity what was next.
Seeds need fertiliser and preparation.
Trusting the possibilities of the vision and plan.
Where the vision gets actionable.
Where we have to learn, feel and grow.
And when this stage begins, it often feels totally awful.
The first couples’ classes Tim and I did together were not great.
The learning involved digging up old emotional baggage and a fair amount of arguing, the fear around what was changing in our relationship.
Fear involves intensity.
“Intensity is how fast something feels deep, intimacy is how slowly it becomes safe.” JB Copeland
To create intimate evolution requires patience and safety.
Safety can arrive through rehearsing, through repetition, the practice.
The ‘walking of the talk’, the dress rehearsals…
And sometimes those still have chaos surrounding them too.
In fact, in the theatre industry there’s a deep-seated belief that a chaotic dress rehearsal means a great opening night!
We don’t really get many dress rehearsals in our lives, so practising how to feel fear and evolve it into useful action, is a way to get beyond the initial survival instinct in our bodies.
This is to evolve intimacy with the actual process of change, to move it beyond fear, into the curiosity of learning,
Oh – and by the way – I’m not at the stage where I can welcome every change with glee, I don’t think I’m that enlightened…
But I’m evolving.
Through vision, seeing the possibilities of the paths others have already walked.
Through seeds being planted in my life from those possibilities.
Through the baby steps of small rehearsals in safe spaces until those spaces are familiar.
I’m finally learning to be more intimate with change.
