coach

My awesome coach  asked me to post this conversation Joe and I had in the middle of our relationship research.

Max: what part of you said "yes" to this relationship research?
Elle: my woman who knows said "yes"
Max: well, your woman who knows also knows that I love you. That's why she said "yes"
Elle: no, my woman who knows KNOWS that it's irrelevant whether you love me or not

the end draws near

It feels good that you've all been following Max's and my relationship posts! We both have certainly learned a lot from each other through this experience! it has been some very deep intense work for both of us and we have both found a security in being able to share it openly with everyone. It has helped us to process it and enabled us to stay open, raw, vulnerable, exposed with each other and with all of you! I can feel myself getting crazier and crazier as the end of it gets closer. I am incredibly torn to have it end (May 20). On the one hand, it will be a relief because the work of digging through and bringing up our most painful shit is quite excruciating! On the other hand, I can feel myself grieving it like the loss of anything and I am fighting to stay present. It is hard. I am grateful

My post from the last day of our relationship research

Last night I had a moment of clarity that had me remember exactly why I decided to say yes to this research in the first place. I laid in Max's arms after being resistant the whole night, and really through most of this research despite my determination to stay open. Something had clicked and I leaned into just being there with him. I felt an opening in my chest when I crawled back into the bed and crawled up beside him and felt his arms open to me and respondingly wrap around me, holding me tightly to him. All of a sudden all of my resistance melted. This was the spot. This was the spot that he had access to in me that I wanted to know how to reach. I have always known that the spot actually exists within me, that he is the catalyst for bringing it out. This is what I wanted. The place where I am filled with a peaceful expansion; where it is clear that only love really exists or matters. Not the other women, not whether either of us are doing it right, not whether he loves me back, not whether we have sex, not the scarcity or fear, not what will happen on the other side of this, but only the love. Everything was clear. It felt infinite as if it had been there all along. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t seen it. It felt easy to access and I thought that I could just remain there forever. I’d like to remain there forever, that is the point. I think it is possible. today I remember it and hold it as a template, but it is unfortunately elusive. I know in that peaceful, unconditionally loving spot, that all is exactly as it should be. I could feel that his level of resistance to receiving the love was lower possibly because he couldn’t block it as well in his sleep. I could feel compassion for how difficult it was for him to actually receive that kind of deep, pure, potent love and understand how his inner child both desperately needed it and fought desperately against it, yet I knew that none of that mattered because like the softness of water, that kind of love could erode even mountains. It is like the love you would give to a child; unconditional. They could be throwing fits or pushing back and yet you remain in a place of seeing and knowing that everything is a call to love or a cry for love. I know that my practice has grown to pursue this at all costs and all benefits; that I have no choice but to go after and access that opening, not just for him, but for everything. It is infinite. It is clear. It is all encompassing. It is what started this.

I struggled this morning to bring it back , holding to my template, trying to remember. I am struggling in this moment to describe it and it feels ironic that I am struggling to describe a place where there is no struggle. I also am intrigued that I started the relationship in this space and quickly lost sight of it only to get yet another glimpse of it right at the very end; as if I was meant to go through all the pain and misery that we have endured over the last couple of months, like magnets that repel each other and can’t find a moment of resonance and connection. I chastised myself for not being true to my original desire and making it about my wounds. I recognize the importance of feeling old wounds deeply and also see that if I had held my original vision, the whole relationship research would’ve been entirely different and far less painful for both of us, yet I also know that it was divinely perfect the way that it was, just as I know it will be going forward. It is this place that KNOWS that I long for more of.

This is the last day of our official relationship container and going forward in whatever capacity the relationship takes on and everywhere, I am determined to hold this pole of love as much as possible. I can feel how it is currently a ‘murky at best’ concept in my mind’s grasp, therefore I will be patient with myself. I am grateful for the template and each step that takes me closer to that infinite source of love within. The Buddhist quote that Nicole Daedone founded OneTaste and Orgasmic Meditation on “Just as the great ocean has but one taste, the taste of salt, even so, this teaching and discipline has but one taste, the taste of freedom (liberation).” This was one taste.

Max's post from the last day of our relationship research

Today is the last day of my relationship research with Elle.

The last week has been one of the hardest we have faced. We started coasting. Just biding time till it was over. I started putting less attention on her, flirting with other women, talking about future makeouts, and spending an increasing amount of time fighting with her. The energy we had cultivated started to go down. I was grumpy, distant, and tight. Since we're so blessed to be doing this in the presence of such an amazing community, I had a coach and friends to call me out on this. After a BIG fight Thursday night, I re-surrendered on Friday. I sent this:

I love you
I surrender again
You are too precious to waste our last 5 days
I am going to love you ferociously
And take full responsibility for our connection & intimacy and sex
You can fight me all you want and I'm coming right back
So just try and push me away!

She said:
That is probably the most beautiful thing you've ever said to me. Thank you

Then we entered the next phase of our saga. We'll call it the Laura stage. I have had an increasing level of intimacy with my former lover and current roommate Laura. Laura and I had become very disconnected before Elle and I started our game, but something about the game increased the desire between us. This led to enormous jealousy between Laura and Elle. I created some boundaries between me and Laura and did what I could help the two of them connect. They went back and forth between moments of deep sweetness, and fierce fighting. Climaxing on Saturday with multiple blow out fights and Laura going out of town with nothing resolved. Laura moves into the house in a week and we'll all be housemates so that will be interesting.

Today my attention is on how I let my love in and out. My inner child is so scared to be seen, and I've given Elle exclusive rights over him recently, to the point that my other friends feel less loved. And ultimately the places I close and disconnect from her are the places I do that with everyone.

So I AM OPEN. Last night I made the commitment to put my little one first. And when we started fighting about Laura, I dropped into what was hurting there, and told her that I'm sad that Laura is hurting and feel guilty that I didn't do more to help them connect. It softened her beautifully and she told me the deeper thing going on for her. Later she felt rejected at my resistance to sex and wouldn't let herself be held by me, so I told her how hard I'm trying to love her and how it hurts when she won't just feel it, and she softened again.

This morning she said she found a place of soft love that she had forgotten, and then I made love to her in the most lose and open way I think I ever have. There's no telling what will come after this. But I know I am cracked open and wide awake, and excited to soak her up for our last few hours.

Max's inner child post

My inner child has been locked away for 29 years. Out of fear of being hurt, I hid him in the shadows, and enrolled my inner teenager to draw attention away from him by being entertaining, charming, or hostile. In my relationship research with Elle I am letting my child fully come out for possibly the first time. And it is painful. And beautiful. I feel more grounded an energized than ever in my life.

I feel tender, vulnerable, weak, scared, and sad most of the time. It takes all the effort I have to stay in this spot and let her see him, touch him, hold him. While every other fiber in my body is screaming to run back, hide again, don't trust. Because he's been in the dark for so long, just the smallest bit of light hurts his eyes. So regardless of how much I want her love, my body involuntarily rejects it. It feels painful to just be touched or softly kissed. I recoil, pull back, withdraw. Which is confusing and triggering for her because she interprets it as rejection. When really it's because she's touching such a tender place.

Turns out I've always had sex from my teenager. Charming, dominating, in control, taking charge of the situation and pleasing her or getting pleased. So it has appeared that sex is easy for me, that I want it all the time, that I'm good at it. But sex from this vulnerable, intimate space is a totally different story. And so I'm having to learn it all over again. And I'm incredibly resistant. Terrified really. So having sex with Elle every day as a practice has forced me to lean in there, but has been the source of enormous tension because her rejection story is triggered and she has difficulty with switching to taking the lead in a sexual situation.

It is really easy for me to kill her here. To blame her for not doing it right. To accuse her of being the reason I'm withdrawing, and use anything she does as an excuse to hide again. So my work is to stay open. To just sit in this discomfort and remember that its incredibly energizing to be loved in this spot. And take responsibility for loving my own child by asking clearly for what I want and holding him softly myself when she can't.

9 more days. We're going to get the most out of it.

comment about havingness level

In my experience, it is actually more confronting for me to sit with the sensation of having the things that I want than it is to not have them. We call this our havingness level, the desires we allow ourselves to have before conditioning or programming or limitations step up and stop whatever we actually want from materializing in our lives. The practice of Orgasmic Meditation is desire based. It uses our desires to propel us into our own transformation and growth. We use this to go to our next level and then the next and the next one, each time we are expanding our havingness and having more of the life we want and knew somewhere deep inside was possible. My partner's love for me expands my havingness! It constantly challenges my unconscious and underlying belief that I am not lovable. It is one reason that we are good partners for our own wake up. When he gets past my defenses, I feel cracked open, seen, exposed, confronted, raw, loved. Those are all the voices of my ego and the doubts about myself that keep me from remembering who I really am and living from that place! 
We say in this practice "remember to remember". This can mean a lot of different things, but to me it is remembering the power of who we are at the core of our being and soul and not getting rocked with the waves of life!

Max spoke something similar to this in a couple's coaching session we had.

Max and I have continuously gone round and round with the place of me seeing his confrontation at being lovingly touched as rejection.  He doesn't understand why I can't see that it really is because we are so connected and close that he gets challenged by the intimacy.  I have a tremendously difficult time understanding it and often use it to sabotage our relationship by not believing it is more than fodder and his resistance to me proves it.  It hurts a lot in both directions. During one of our couple's coaching sessions where I had asked for more "sweet" times, meaning that we cuddled and loved each other more.  I wanted to find some balance. i understand that the relationship is meant to be a challenge as any "wake up" relationship is, but I also feel that we aren't ever going to be in danger of falling asleep with each other and the intensity of our work is often overwhelming and just plain depressing to work through our shit to such a degree.  I wanted something that felt nice to balance it out. His resistance triggered my feelings of rejection as usual.  In a moment of his exasperation at my lack of understanding, he finally took me by the hand and said something similar to the words below to me in a way that I fully let them in and could receive it.  It was an incredible moment in our relationship, one I will honestly treasure forever! We both surrendered.

Soon after the coaching session ended, however, I could feel my armies come on strong to defend my beliefs that I am not lovable. I took action against it and asked for him to put it in writing so that I had something to refer to. This is what he posted on FB.

Elle, I want you. I want to touch you. I want to love you. I want to let you love me. I want this relationship. I want to find freedom together.

I want it so much that I will do it even when it's uncomfortable. I will do it even when my virus tries to block & sabotage it. When my body forgets that it likes it and pulls back, I will remember and lean in. When I crave the quick comfort of an easier woman, I will return to the nourishing fulfillment of our heat.

My white flag is up

I surrender

to loving you