Open Heart Coaching: Slow Sex and Relationship Coaching

I watched my 80 year old grandma say goodbye to her husband of fifty years a few weeks ago. My family stood on the Tahoe house pier and watched my dad and uncle wade out to my grandpa's favorite swimming hole. Conversations came to a stop, wine glasses placed to the side, we watched. My dad opened the plastic bag of ashes and poured them into the lake. My grandma stood up and started sprinkling red rose petals off the side of the pier and then she started to cry. Tears welled up in my eyes as I watched her. What do you do when you lose your person? The moment faded into the next as the petals, probably fifty of them now, floated toward the swimming hole, slowly joining the now water-soaked ashes. It was creepy and beautiful.

Death gives us a "platform tilt" as my favorite improv teacher Ann would say, a moment in a scene where the focus can completely change, a ripe opportunity for the whole scene to change course. My grandpa's death was tragic and sad and yet, a perfect platform tilt - it caused my parents to leave the Bay Area after twenty five years for job security and a fresh start, it brought me closer to my family, even the Republican ones, and it gave me a new glimpse at my grandma and her marriage.

On the night before the service, I heard my grandma fumbling in the wine cooler saying, "I don't know the darndest thing about which bottle to open honey, I don't know anything!" She finally brought a bottle to the counter and opened it and sipped it and said, "tastes fine to me" and I said, "well, that's all that matters Gamma." She didn't hear me. We drank wine and watched A River Runs Through It, after a lengthy rant about how she hated sports and she finally didn't have to watch them! She took another sip and told me a story about how my grandpa once burnt all the duck for their big party and was so mad he said he would never barbecue again. So she told him she was never going to cook again. He didn’t exactly love her response. We laughed and she grew serious and said, “He really never did barbecue again honey.” I looked at her wide-eyed. I can’t imagine holding onto something for so long. 

Resentment is an intimacy killer. We learned all about it in our coaching intensive last weekend and now I see it everywhere. I saw it this morning while I was washing the dishes, about to start up with my story that I always do the dishes until I realized that I was the one who wanted clean dishes in that moment and I could easily choose to not do them. If I hadn't let go, tonight I would have seen my partner as the one who didn't do dishes instead of as Eli. It's harder to let it go with the old crusty resentments or the ones where you still really think you are RIGHT but when we don’t clear them, we create residue on our relationship and the more residue, the harder it is to see the relationship at it’s base level: attraction, love, a desire for intimate connection. So, if you had a platform tilt in your own life - What are you holding onto that doesn’t serve you? What do you still have the other person as absolutely wrong for? Where can you get more vulnerable and express what you need? 

I (and now you're invited too) am taking a look at where I can clean up the residue and create more space for a fun and pleasurable platform tilt. 

With love,
LC