Love with Janel

Longterm relationships go through seasons. And Winter is f*cking hard.

If Spring is the honeymoon phase when everything is fresh and amazing and full of potential, Winter is when you’re grieving that your relationship is never going to be everything you dreamed it would be.

Which, intellectually, you knew. But you’ve been fed a steady diet of happily-ever-after plot lines since you were 3, so it’s not so easy to shake the hope that was lodged in your heart by childhood fairytales:

That there’s a soulmate out there who will “complete” you and “just get” you, without you ever needing to explain your needs and feelings to them. It will just be perfect.

But then you get into a relationship. You spend a Summer blossoming in love with your sweetie. And you start to see the real them, flaws and all. Eventually, inevitably, you Fall into a pattern of trying to change them and wishing things were different.

Then, Winter comes.

And you find yourself in an icy season of disappointment.

When you’re in it, it can feel like it will never end.

So you worry that it IS the end.

Because, in a way, it is.

It’s the death of your old stories that are no longer serving you.

Only when you allow yourself to feel your disappointment and grieve the things you wish were different will your outdated expectations die.

Only when you sit with your disappointment that no relationship is perfect will you stop the cycle of cutting your relationships short in search of “happily ever after.”

(Maybe you’re not supposed to phase out the character in front of you just because they got complicated. Maybe you’re supposed to keep letting them unfold.)

Only when you grieve the loss of the fairytale can you make room for a new, more authentic and more realistic story with your partner.

From this place is born an acceptance that invites new growth for your relationship.

It may be Winter, but a new Spring is coming.

Happy New Year ♥️

Note: this does not apply to abusive relationships that are cyclical in nature. This was written for people in where they feel safe and *overall* more happy than unhappy with their partner…just going through a hard patch.

During the pandemic, I became dissatisfied with s*x with my partner. (And since my free class this Wed. is on designing a win-win intimate life, I want to share my own intimacy struggles with you.)

I didn't feel desired by him “enough,”which made me feel rejected. I struggled to remind myself of the context (the pandemic). In my head, it was his fault.

I held my frustration inside until I finally exploded. 🤯

I heaped all of my pent-up fears onto him...which didn't make him want to have s*x with me more.

In fact, it had the opposite effect.

Because, for him, s*x is tied up with feelings of obligation.

We knew we couldn't fix it on our own. We needed professional help.

At first, I felt ashamed. I'm a s*x coach. Why can’t I fix my OWN sh*t?

But even coaches need coaches.

And, with our coach’s support, I realized:

✨I was holding onto unrealistic expectations that were hurting my intimacy with my partner. I was waiting for him to change instead of taking charge of my own turn-on. ✨

So I began unshackling myself from self-sabotaging thought patterns.

I'm not going to lie. Untangling myself from them was raw. We can get very attached to our stories about how things are "supposed to" be.

But once I started freeing myself from expectations that weren't serving me, I stopped overly-relying on my partner to "make" me feel alive.

My partner felt this shift, and it had a wonderful effect: it drew him closer to me.

Still, our s*x life isn't what it was before the pandemic. But that's OK. And actually, that's not the goal.

The most important thing is that we're more intimately connected right now than we've been since March 2020.

And that's a huge win in my books.

🥰

Say YES to turning yourself on, reclaiming aliveness, and enjoying win-win eroticism with your partner again: join me Wed. at 5:30pm PDT for my free class, where I’ll share my step-by-step process for intimate reconnection.

Link in bio. See you there ♥️