If your partner asks for something that’s challenging, when do you try to step up and when do you say no?
With Reid Mihalko from http://www.ReidAboutSex.com and Cathy Vartuli from http://www.TheIntimacyDojo.com.
Cathy: Someone wrote in and said, my question is say my partner ask to meet a need for them, which is difficult for me. How do I know if this is difficult but worthy of me leveling the upcoming better version of myself or I’m trespassing an inner sacred ground and keeping apart from myself that made me attracted in the first place. Is there any a way to know it in advance?
Reid: Holy Molly this is a great question.
Cathy: It really is.
Reid: Welcome to the deep video thoughts with Cathy Vartuli from http://theintimacydojo.com/.
Cathy: And Reid Mihalko from https://reidaboutsex.com/.
Reid: Wow. Good. Keep sending us questions like this, like all of them even the shallow ones we love them we just wanna hear it from you. How are you doing? How are we doing? This things okay, well okay you’ll go for it.
Cathy: I think part of that is tuning in and checking and you might even tell your partner, hey I’m not sure about this one, I’m willing to try and take it slow, I may be able to change my mind. Or saying no and then giving them a try, your ways if everything’s okay?
Reid: But you don’t mean to say no and then cross your own boundaries?
Cathy: No, I’m saying maybe I’m not certain if this crosses my boundaries or not but I tell my partner, I’m not there for you to make the scene and you probably you need to find someone else. That doesn’t mean I can’t also try and experiments. Like I’m telling them “hey I don’t think this is for me but it doesn’t mean I can’t just explore it and then we could try it.
Reid: The way I would break it down first is, if you’re maybe always say no and no isn’t always a no forever, just start there coz I’ll give you some room to be like, let me check it out. Date people and be in relationship with people ideally that can handle you for being a no and see the wisdom in. Oh, maybe we should not do it and kinda take a check in. Understanding that if you don’t know around this question or if you’re crossing some sort of internal boundary and you giving up something about yourself. I think exploring anything new especially when you’re in, is different than I really wanna try this even if it doesn’t end well, I wanna try this.
Cathy: You can ask your partner, I don’t know can we explore it?
Reid: There’s different between gradations of, if you began try something in that place “ahhh” place then put a time limit or we’re gonna try this for a couple of times or we gonna try it once and I’m gonna think about it process maybe we’ll try it again or in an nonevent kind of way. Let say we’re gonna try this sexual things a couple of times to see if I like it then there’s a like, we’re gonna open up our relationship to see if I can handle it. Like there’s a time limit, let’s try this, and let’s take baby steps. General rule, slower and less like baby steps almost always better in almost every situation than sky diving. Because you can’t do baby step in sky diving you’re ended in plane or you’re out of the plane.
Cathy: Said from a major sky diver.
Reid: I never did sky diving before. Sky dove? What’s the past word perfect for sky diving?
Cathy: But if you invest in something we jumped off the cliffs.
Reid: That’s because my risk tolerances is different than a lot of people. So again like, even baby steps with the time limit for exploration and room for people for process, super useful coz a lot of people’s reptile brains how they figured things out is, they think about worst case scenario and they think it’s gonna be forever. That’s just your flight brain works. So, combat that or front load for it to be like okay, this is not a forever situation we have a time limit. And baby step makes it not the worst case scenario and the self-awareness of I’m going or my partner is going to worst case scenario and things last forever. So the balls get rolling, it never stops. Know people do that and take those baby steps into it. And when it doubt, stop everything and re group, those are good baseline to approaches I think and it worked well for me.
Cathy: And know that sometimes comfort zones will masked themselves or kind hide is “oh this is a boundary, this is not who you are”. I do like trying things out and actually experience it I learned more about myself. And it maybe that I get it really clear that I have a note that never do it again. But trying it, it helps me step out some of my comfort zone and look at it and get clarity was sometimes my first was I tend to be shyer and I’d like to do new things as much as we do, we both have different expressions. So my first inclination, my though in my head is “no this is going to be horrible” doesn’t necessarily for mean that I actually would be horrible or violating a boundary of who I am. So I think you should get to know yourself and try it with somebody things around smaller things for example. You start to learn how your brain responds, my brain if someone says something new my first thought is no let’s do what I know is good but then I could go deep breath, is it worth trying this one time or settling a limit. Well, let’s try this for 5 minutes and if hate it, we will stop.
Reid: Other things to do, have a hire a professional listener to be able to work out and process stuff around it. Have a several conversations before you ever do the thing [inaudible 00:06:08], opening up a conversation does not equal agree to do it. So you can talk about stuff and never have to do it. And the last thing I’ll add up to here is, it is great to try things and then discover you don’t like them so that is a win-win, too. Even if your partner really wanted you to like it and they’re really disappointed that you don’t. It’s still a win-win coz you tried things and you got clarity.
Cathy: And it’s okay also just to know that something isn’t right for you.
Reid: Yeah, absolutely. You’re not involved coz you never wanna try that sky diving thing that’s totally fine.
Cathy: Why jump out from a perfectly good plane?
Reid: Comments! What do you think? Next video.