We learned very young how to deflect, defend, and deny in order to save us from perceived danger. It all made sense at the time, but now as adults in relationships, that same defensiveness shuts down constructive communication with a defended word, or even just a look. As adults in relationships our defensiveness is just as transparent as our younger selves. Our vocabulary may have grown but the strategy is still pretty simple. Deflect and defend from attack.

Intimacy is the foundation to our relationships. When it’s burning bright, everything flows with ease, patience, forgiveness, light-heartedness and safety. Yes, safety. Sharing a feeling of intimacy with our partner gives us that much needed sense of security. Security that we belong, that someone has our back, that we are doing something right in our relationship, and feeling the positive effects of it.

When two people get together to form a relationship, there are two sets of wounds merging and intertwining, our partner’s and our own. We know when our old wounds are being dragged into a conflict because our pain and defensiveness will suddenly spike. If our partner is speaking the same words as our inner abuser, the armor will go up, and disagreements will escalate into shouting, tearful battles.

There’s no getting away from the fact that couples in long-term relationships impact each other profoundly, in small and large ways. If you’re a couple who live together there are moments throughout each day that bring you together to discuss something, to work on a task, to accomplish an errand, to share a story, or listen to one. Partners flow in and around each other with such symbiosis, that we can sometimes feel like we’re one mechanism with a shared mind.

It’s pretty easy these days to find out what’s going on people’s minds when it comes to sex coaching. Type it into a search engine and voila, you get back 7 questions about sex coaching, most commonly asked on the internet. I decided to answer those 7 questions here, because my bet is that you might have some of these questions yourself.