Many of you know that I was a divorce attorney for over 20 years in Omaha, Nebraska. I was amazed during that time to find out how many of my divorce clients had pretty much stopped having sex towards the end of their marriage.
What I didn’t know until I started working with couples through Sedona Soul Adventures, is how many sexless marriages there are out there. People who stay in their marriage and don’t have sex.
I was stunned to discover this week that sexless marriage is the top-searched marriage complaint on Google, according to data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. Searches for “sexless marriage” are three-and-a-half times more common than “unhappy marriage” and eight times more common than “loveless marriage.”
That explains why we see this issue so much in our Couples Retreats. And — I’m happy to say — why it’s something we’re so good at helping people with.
One of the things I know from being a divorce attorney for 20 years and doing Sedona Soul Adventures for 14 years, is that your sex life is an indicator of what’s going on in the marriage. It’s certainly not the only indicator, but it’s a big indicator.
And while sex is an indicator, it is NEVER the underlying cause. There’s always other things going on. And the range of what those things are is also staggering. Sometimes it has to do with things that happened in childhood. Sometimes it has to do with something that happened during the marriage that one person can’t forgive the other for. Sometimes it’s because one person has cheated. Sometimes there’s an anger that one person can’t let go of. Sometimes there’s a shame that one person can’t admit.
And I’ve also been amazed to find out that it’s both men and women who don’t want to have sex. I think the stereotype that I grew up with is the cold, frigid woman. That’s certainly not the case. The number of women who come to us saying their husbands don’t want to have sex is staggering.
But it doesn’t matter whether it’s the man or the woman, this is devastating for both people in the relationship.
And getting at the underlying reasons can be difficult. We’re not sex therapists, we’re just good at getting what’s underneath the problem. We had a couple who first contacted us over one year ago. Actually, the wife contacted us (I’ll call her Linda, they have asked that we not use their real names). When Linda spoke with her Angel Guide she said that her husband (I’ll call him Bill) started this about a year earlier, always saying he felt too stressed out to have sex. Although Linda tried to talk to him about it, he wouldn’t talk about it and would get angry when she tried to push him.
After Linda spoke with her Angel Guide, she arranged for Bill to speak with the Angel Guide. Bill kept saying he was just stressed. The Angel Guide knew there was something much deeper. She designed a Couples Retreat, and Linda was enthusiastic, but Bill was not. Reluctantly, he agreed to come, mostly to appease Linda.
In their first session together, he finally got it that Linda wasn’t angry with him. She was hurt. He finally got it, even though they had done months of therapy. Understanding that she was hurt and not angry made his heart open to her in a way that he hadn’t felt in a very long time.
He then did a session on his own to release his anger. In the session, he was able to look at the stress in his life in a different way. He said he dropped his anger toward Linda, but he mainly dropped his anger toward himself. He said he felt an amazing release.
At the same time, Linda was doing a Core Belief Transformation session and in that she completely got it that this was not about her, this was not about anything that was wrong with her. That took a huge weight off her shoulders.
And then it happened. Bill did a breathwork session. Ironically, he hadn’t wanted to do it, as he felt it was a little too “woo woo” for him. He told me later that he started doing the breath thinking “I’ll just use the time for relaxation”, however, the Universe had something else in mind. He immediately went into the altered state and suddenly saw a vision of an event that had happened between he and his father when he was a teenager. His father had caught him doing something and had shamed him. Bill was completely devastated by the shaming and it was something he never told anyone about.
Bill’s father had died the year before (at about the same time the problems started) and Bill saw the connection in an instant — he saw that he was unhealed from the event that had happened with his father and that’s where all this had come from.
He saw that his father did not mean to shame him, his father thought that he was giving him sound advice that was in his best interests. Suddenly, Bill felt his father’s presence with him in the room and felt the deep love that his father had for him and that he had for his father.
The next thing that happened was that he saw Linda and felt this huge wave of love for her.
Bill said he was crying like he had never cried in his life but that it felt so good and so liberating. He told his practitioner that he couldn’t wait to get back to Linda to tell her all about it.
That night at their hotel they reported that they had an ecstatic and blissful time together.
The next day in their next couples session, they celebrated what had happened, but then their practitioner took it much deeper. They talked a lot about communication and about how they would handle issues that would come up in the future. They realized that the way they handled this – getting angry with each other, not talking, blaming each other — was also how they dealt with each other on other, seemingly smaller issues. Things had been resolved on both a small and large scale.
They learned a process to talk to each other from the heart and then to really connect in with each other through their hearts.
Bill said he loved it so much that all these awarenesses came from him — not from someone else telling him what it was.
Linda said “I can’t thank you enough. I was afraid I was going to have to leave our marriage and I didn’t want to – I love him”
Having spent 20 years as a divorce attorney divorcing people, I can’t tell you how spectacularly gratifying it is that I’ve now spent the last 14 years helping people stay together. And it’s so gratifying that we were named one of the top Marriage Retreats in the U.S. by Guidedoc last year.
If this is an issue that is plaguing you, or if there are other issues that are affecting your relationship, please contact us and do something about it now. You aren’t meant to live in unhappiness. The two of you came together for a reason and part of that reason is to heal together.
Call us and speak to an Angel Guide. They’ll talk to each of you separately and design the retreat that is perfect for the two of you — to bring you back into the love and connection you’re craving.
Click here and one of our Angel Guides will call you. Or if you’d prefer, call us toll free at 1-877-204-3664 (US and Canada). For our friends outside the US and Canada call 01 928-204-5988 or click here and one of our Angel Guides will call you.
If you knew what could happen, you’d be calling us right now.
Wishing you a week filled with lots of love,
Debra
Debra Stangl / Founder
Sedona Soul Adventures – Transforming Lives One Soul At A Time
(877) 204-3664
https://sedonasouladventures.com
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“After months of marriage counseling the “D” word was coming up more and more. After our Soul Adventure, our relationship is renewed, passionate, and loving. We are connected more than the day we married back 12 years ago. Our communication is better than ever, and our romance is better than ever. Our marriage is safe, and there is no turning back. Thank you to your entire team of loving and talented individuals for all you do. Sedona Soul Adventures saved our marriage.”
Frank & Valerie F., Los Angeles, CA
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