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Sexuality in marriage PART SET

Dr MargiAnne Isaia, MD MPH PCC-T Dr MargiAnne Isaia, MD MPH PCC-TDrAnneenthusiasticLifeDrAnneenthusiasticLife

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Love Labwww.enthusiasticlife.net

“Self-control lets you stop controlling your partner”.

“Holding onto you requires an accurate picture”.

”You can get a more accurate self-picture if you construct your crucible of self-confrontation”.

David Schnarch, PhD “Passionate Marriage”, 2009

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“In order to build your crucible you must follow specific principles.”

“Relationship involves both self-soothing and other-soothing”.

“Marriage is a system of balancing growth and stability”.

“The partner who doesn’t want to grow attempts to freeze everything in place: by embroiling the other in conflict or undermining all forward-moving efforts”.


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“Critical mass or the point at which fundamental reorganization takes place is experienced differently by people at different levels of differentiation”.

“Therapists do not know when someone should leave a marriage”.

“Every spouse must decide if and when things have gone too far.

“After serious self-confrontation and effort to repair your relationship have failed, it can be an act of differentiation, integrity, and sanity to divorce”.



When you self-control yourself, you work on creating a flexible and anxiety-free relationship.

It makes you to eliminate the distortions and projections and find the truth about you and your partner.

Only when you are courageous enough to focus and listen to yourself you enter into your crucible and address your unresolved problems.

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It takes determination and integrity to accept the crucible experience, but it will impact you and your partner.

There are specific principles for building the personal crucible, the majority emphasizing the role of integrity, personal development, wisdom of silence, focusing on self, being truthful to you.

Balancing attachment with autonomy and self-regulation is probably one of the most important developmental tasks valuable for any age-category individuals, not only for infants.

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I found that this is critical for partners to understand because it will help enrich their sexual experience, for parents to understand because it will impact their family life. Also, this is critical for therapists to address loneliness anxiety.

Self-confrontation is involved in the growing cycle. Also, it brings comfort to the person because the truth brings liberation and stability in relationships.

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Self-soothing is involved in the comfort cycle, but without self-confrontation there is the risk of not growing and getting uninterested for keeping the relationship alive.

This is so prevalent in Christian marriages where wives are required to be submissive to their husbands and find comfort while professing their religion. It is no wonder that children raised in these families end up by not embracing their parents’ religion or postponing the age of marriage.

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In marriage both partners must be involved in balancing the individual process of growing and comforting in order for the relationship to grow and provide comfort. Otherwise, things could become tragic.

If the qualities of critical mass could be experienced by both partners it is possible that the marriage will be resuscitated. The problem is that the partners will live with an increased sense of uncertainty for the future.

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The decision to divorce is probably one of the most difficult life’s decisions.

(I remember the struggles my client went through when she finally decided to get divorced after 28 years of marriage. Advised by her pastor to remain faithful to her husband because no sexual infidelity was involved in their case, she reached the bottom: atypical depression for years, heart attack, and brain surgery. Finally, after three years since the divorce she enjoys life again).

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Understanding that making a decision for divorce increases the differentiation level would help many partners to get free from a miserable marriage that resulted in negative health outcomes, discouragement and hopelessness.

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Help the partners explore the level of anxiety when “out” of synch.

Ask them to look for resilience factors in order to increase the differentiation level.

Explore self-soothing strategies.

Introduce the concept of “Critical Mass”.

Show the importance of self-differentiation in the process of moving successful through critical times.

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Define the qualities of critical mass. Let the partners evaluate their marital perspective.

Ask for the meaning and risk factors for divorce.

Let them answer their questions regarding what to decide.

Evaluate if there are special sexual behaviors that are not agreed on by one of the partners.

Assess the issue of sex addiction of one of the partners.

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Discuss the concept of infants’ resilience.

Explain the importance of time “in” and “out” when raising children.

Teach self-soothing strategies.

Teach the dynamics of marriage as a balancing system between growth and stability.

Address the hallmarks of critical mass.

Make the partners understand the types of infidelity.

Explore the conditions for divorce in their culture.

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Explain the magnitude of infants’ self-repair processes.

Let the student explore his/her status of emotional self-regulation.

Provide him with some practical ways for self-soothing.

Explore the meaning of relationships and principles for building and maintaining a healthy one.

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Discuss factors that hinder the growing process in a relationship.

Make the student understand the value of integrity in a relationship where one partner is not willing to grow.

Help the student face the dissolution of a relationship after trying to build it.

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“If Christ is abiding in the heart, He will be in all our thoughts. Our deepest thoughts will be of Him, His love, His purity. He will fill all the chambers of the mind. Our affections will center about Jesus. All our hopes and expectations will be associated with Him”.

EGW --Lt 8, 1891. (HP 163.) {1MCP 238.2}


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