Back in Episode 98, I talked about the 4 things you need in order to Embrace Your Sexuality.   And the first thing I said you need to do in order to embrace your sexuality is to speak your truth.  Well today, I’m going to go into further detail on what that means and why it’s so important. 

Speaking your truth is all about being honest.  Completely honest with yourself and with your partner. 

Being Honest with Yourself

Most of us are pretty good at reading people.  We’ve been around people our entire lives.  We have many beliefs and intuitions about who people are.  And knowing things about yourself should be the easiest thing in the world.  After all, we’ve been with ourselves our entire life.  We should be the experts of our own life, right?

But, we also have human brains full of biases.  Our brain was wired to lie.  Back in the caveman days, we were a tribal species.  We had to live in tribes in order to survive.  Because if you were out on your own, you would not survive.  So your brain developed a mechanism to protect you and help you look good to those around you so that you wouldn’t get kicked out of the tribe.  Sometimes that mechanism looks like beating yourself up for every little thing, finding all the flaws that you have and so you can overcome them and people will think better of you.   And sometimes that mechanism looks like over-inflating your confidence and your abilities so that other people will think higher of you than what is actually true.  Both of these are lies. They are lies we tell ourselves and lies we tell others.

So what does this look like?  

• Beating yourself up for your size, your weight
• Thinking you somehow need to be different than you are
• Playing small
• Not standing up for what you want because you don’t think you are worthy

Or on the flip side

• Thinking that your spouse should have sex with you, no matter how you behave
• Thinking you are more virtuous than your spouse because you don’t think about sex and want sex as much as they do

Neither one of these positions is honest.  But as humans, we are really really good at self deception. We, we are really good at either beating ourself up for things or inflating things.  We don’t like to the see the truth.   And because our brain was designed to lie to us, truly knowing oneself can often be difficult without some sort of outside motivation.

Both of these positions are based in fear.  And I’m going to talk more about that in a few minutes.

Being Honest With Your Spouse

So why aren’t we honest with our spouse?  There are a couple of reasons that I want to talk about.

The first, is that we aren’t honest because we are trying to protect our spouse’s feelings.  We have been taught our entire lives that we are responsible for others feelings and other people are responsible for ours.  I’m sure you probably heard your mother say at one point in your life “be nice to your sister or else you will make her sad,” or something like that.  You’ve probably even said something similar to your own kids.  But this just isn’t true.  We are not responsible for each other’s feelings.  The only person’s feelings you are responsible for is your own.  This is one of the fundamental principles I teach my clients.  Emotional independence.

If you’ve been with me for a while you’ve probably heard this before, but I think it bears repeating.  The way you feel comes from the way you think.  Period.  End of story.  It does not come from the situations we find ourselves in.  It doesn’t come from what your spouse says or does.  It comes from what you THINK about those situations or what you THINK because of what your spouse said or does.

Let me share with you an example of what I mean.  If your spouse says “do you want to have sex tonight?” You have the option of thinking “Yeah, I do, that sounds like a lot of fun” and then you would feel love, excitement, desire, passion.  But you also have the option of thinking “I don’t like sex.  I don’t want to have sex with them.”  And I’m sure you have lots of reasons why you are thinking that, but when you think that you aren’t going to feel that same love, excitement, desire, and passion.  No, you’re going to feel disgust, resentment, anger, frustration, depending on the story that you are telling yourself about them asking.

Now, if you are thinking “I don’t want to have sex with them because of A, B, and C” but you just say “not tonight dear.”  Why do you do that?  Because you are trying to protect their feelings.  Because you think that if you tell them the real reasons why you don’t want to have sex, that this will hurt their feelings, and you don’t want to do that.  But when you aren’t honest, it actually creates more disconnection between the two of you than connection.

The second reason why you aren’t honest is because you are afraid of the repercussions of those feelings.  I have a lot of clients who tell me that if they turn down their spouse for sex, he pouts for days.  He turns off all affection.  Or maybe he even gets angry and takes it out on her and the kids.  So in order to protect themselves from that, they aren’t honest.  They either give in to sex when they really don’t want to (which causes lots of problems) or they don’t tell them the truth about why they don’t want to.

Now, I know you want to be a kind and loving person.  You care about your spouses feelings.  You care about their reaction.   And just because you can’t control how they feel and react doesn’t mean you don’t want to show up as your best self in the relationship.  But rather than lying to them, I suggest you tell them the whole truth.  The whole truth is, “babe, I’m really don’t in the mood tonight because of A, B, and C but I do love you and I’m kind of worried about how you are going to react to this.”  That is being honest.  That is telling the whole truth.  Then the spouse gets to decide how they want to think and feel about what you just said.  But that is totally on them.

Let me share with you an example of one of my clients. She actually enjoyed sex, but she didn’t enjoy the sex that she was having. She didn’t enjoy the process in which her husband initiated and tried to get her to perform. And the things that she did like, she kind of felt embarrassed and ashamed for liking or wanting.  So she often turned her husband down when he initiated and she never really initiated things herself.  And so, her husband thought that she just didn’t like sex.   But, after some coaching, she decided it was important for her to be honest with herself, about what it is that she liked, what it is that she wanted, and also be honest with her spouse, about what that was. 

Why We Are Not Honest – Two Core Fears

So, I mentioned earlier that the reason we usually aren’t honest is because of fear.  So, the way that our brain has developed in order for us to survive, as humans is that we have two core fears. And I have seen this in pretty much every human on the planet. Besides, maybe like a sociopath or something. First we have this core fear that we are not enough.  This core fear is innate in all of us. It makes us feel like we can’t show up in life as we are, we can’t be honest with who we are, because then people might not like us. They might think that there’s something wrong with us. And that would feel terrible because we already believe that about ourselves, and they’re just confirming our worst fears that we are not lovable. We are not worthy. And so we hide that we hide from people and we make ourselves smaller and different than who we truly are, hoping that people will like us more. This is, again, a lie our brain tells us.   There is no such thing as enough.  What does enough even mean?  We will never be “enough” because we don’t ever define what “enough” is.  Lies.  

Because what is the truth?  The truth is that our worth is inherent.  It is always “enough.” We are as children of Heavenly Father. Our loveability is inherent. It is 100% always. And there is nothing that we can do that will increase our worth. And there is nothing that we can do that will decrease our worth. 

A couple of weeks ago, for Come, Follow Me I was studying Doctrine and Covenants Section 18.  And for those who are not of my same faith, the Doctrine and Covenants is another set of scripture in addition to the Bible that we study in our faith.  Anyway, in Section 18, verse 10, it says that ‘the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.” And further on in that chapter, it talks about what our worth actually means. Which I will come back to in just a minute.  But as I was studying this chapter I was listening to a podcast called Don’t Miss This with Dave Butler and Emily Freeman.  And Dave Butler was saying his kids are always coming to him with baseball cards and saying “Dad, what’s this one worth.” And he said, “Well, it’s worth what someone will pay for it.”  Well, we know as Christians, and this is what was explained in further detail in Section 18,  that our soul was paid for with the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  Yes, the Atonement was for us collectively. But, it was also for us individually. And so our worth as a human being, as a child of God is the price that our Savior paid: his life. And there is nothing that we can do that will increase that or decrease it. It just is.  It is inherent. Further proof that “not enough” is a lie.  Because to say that we are not enough, denies the price that was paid for each of us.

So, the first core fear is “I am not enough” and the second core fear that we have as humans, that shows up in all areas of our life is that we think that our experience should be different than it is. There’s this FOMO, the fear of missing out. And that our experience, or it might be our kids experience, or our spouse’s experience, should be different than it is.  But this core fear shows up for all of us. And a lot of times each two core fears play off of each other. So when we are refusing to be honest with ourselves and our spouse, it’s usually because these two core fears are being triggered. And with those two core fears being triggered, we think our safety is at stake. Our brain is saying, “If you do this, you might die.” And so it feels like a very dire circumstance. But when we can overcome that default programming in our brain and call it out for the lie that it is, then we can speak our truth.  And we can say the whole truth. And that is when we can really start to develop a better relationship with ourselves, our spouse, and develop our sexuality. 

So going back to my client, she had to go to her husband and say, “The truth is, I like sex. But the truth is, also, that I don’t like the kind of sex, that we’re having. I love you. That is also true. And I want to be honest with you about what I do like even at the risk of you rejecting me  in order to build a better sexual relationship with you.” That is honest. That is speaking her truth. And that is key in order to create more desire, and to create a better intimate relationship. 

We talk a lot about intimacy. Intimacy is all about knowing the other person, and being fully known. And if we are not being honest, if we are not being truthful, and sharing the full truth with our spouse, at the risk of rejection, we can not fully embrace our sexuality and we cannot truly, create an intimate relationship. 

Now what happens when we do speak our truth. And we are rejected. It feels terrible. It absolutely does. But we have to remember that rejection isn’t actually about you. It is about the other person and their thinking, and their thoughts. They are choosing to think things like “this isn’t acceptable.” “This isn’t okay.”  “I don’t like this.” “There’s something wrong with her.”  But, that doesn’t mean that what they’re thinking is actually true. It’s just their thinking. So there’s actually nothing wrong with you, and you can be proud of yourself and be honest and true and speaking that truth and living in your integrity, even in the face of rejection. No, I’m not saying it doesn’t hurt. But when we can remember this is their truth, or it’s them deceiving themselves even, and actually means nothing about me. And I love myself and I’m proud of myself for actually speaking the truth and showing up as the person that I want to be in this relationship. I want to be a person that is honest and in integrity. That’s who I am as an individual, that’s who I want to be. And I am willing to risk that.  I’m willing to risk the relationship in order to be an honest and truthful person. 

All right, my friends, that’s a lot of information, but hopefully you can see that this is a really really key piece in embracing your sexuality, in having a healthier marriage and a more intimate marriage. As always, if you need help in actually doing this, please reach out to me. Come, sign up for a free consultation, come into my group coaching program. This is the work of what we do, helping you understand yourself better so that you can speak your truth, to be honest with yourself and your spouse and create a truly intimate relationship.