Revolutionize Your Relationship: 6 Counterintuitive Alternatives to Couples Therapy
Are you tired of endlessly talking about your relationship problems and not seeing any progress? Have you tried traditional talk therapy and found it lacking? It's time to try something different. In this article, we're going to explore six counterintuitive alternatives to talk therapy that involve play, embodiment, and even kink.
One of the biggest challenges when you’re in a relationships is getting through conflict. Certain challenges come up, and you move through them with ease. Others come up, and it can be like quicksand—the more you try to get out, the it drags you down.
When you have challenges like quicksand, there are certain commonplace ways that you can get out of them. Conventional wisdom will tell you to do date nights, read a book together, and if none of that works, it’s time for talk therapy.
But what if talk therapy doesn’t work?
That’s when couples run out of ideas, and it can get scary. If the issues are too big and intractable, you may need to start thinking about other options—and of of those options may include putting breakup or divorce on the table.
As hard as we try, we want things to work out. Breakup and divorce are never good options, but if your emotional life gets too painful with your partner, there is a tipping point, where you need to consider whether this is the best option.
The thing is there are other options besides breakup and divorce, but they involve counterintuitive approaches, and exploring realms that typical society hasn’t explored.
Luckily, you’ve come to the right place if you’re looking for these methods, so here they are:
Be less adult-like and more child-like
When we get into conflict with our partner, assuming we have done some personal development on ourselves, we often try to be more adult-like. Learn to communicate with more compassion. Learn to own “our side of the street” more effectively, and take accountability. This can lead to compromise, where you see your side, and have compassion for your partner’s side.
But sometimes that’s not enough. If you’re reading this article, you may be too far apart in your perspectives, and you’ve come to an impasse. “Trying to be more conscious and adult-like” isn’t working. So you need to be more child-like. Children have an inherent emotional guidance system. They want what they want, and they will go for it. Getting in touch with the raw emotions, can be very freeing. You need a process that will help you get in touch with these emotions, and can show you the practical way to bring them out in a container that’s not destructive, but helps you build a bridge back to your partner.
Instead of more talking, you need more embodiment
One of the problems with talk therapy, is that it’s very “heady.” You’re trying to think through your problems, and communicate in a way that relays your experience to your partner, but often, this just isn’t enough. Your emotions live in your body, and therefore, it’s hard to reach them through your head. Sometimes you can have powerful insights, but other times you can just get mired in talking in circles with your partner.
There are ways to access this pain and challenge in the body—feel it all the way through, and even turn this powerful negative emotion into sexual turn-on. This is a huge step—taking that negative emotion, and feeling the raw energy of it, gives you access to life force energy that lives in your body, which can often manifest as sexual turn-on. We can help you transform your emotional triggers with each other into that life-force turn-on that feels so good. This will become a powerful way to reconnect with your partner, and come back to love.
Instead of trying to hide your negative emotions, be willing to bring them out in a fun and sexy way
One of the nice things about therapy, is that it helps you become more real, and part of that process is creating a safe container. There is huge value in this, and what we would say is that you may not be going far enough. Therapy has a container, but can it really hold all of your negative emotions? If you’ve come here, you’ve probably realized that it can’t. You need to express yourself. There is probably a mountain of frustration at this point, so how do you move that energy all the through and out of your body.
Our process helps you create an even stronger container than the talk therapy container. It’s a process where you have boundaries and safe words. You can go really deep, but you also have your “hand on the joystick” and can adjust the process to make sure you’re getting what you need. This is where the kink container comes in very handy. We use it not just for sexual turn-on, but also for transformation. We help you create a container that is strong enough to help you feel your emotions fully, express them to your partner, and even have fun and play with them, eventually turning them into sexual turn-on. For that, you need a strong container, and we’ll show you how.
Instead of being more “appropriate” in your communication, be messy and just let it flow
This is very counterintuitive point, but it needs to be said. When we are working on ourselves in relationship, we understand that so much of the issue is the lens that we are seeing the conflict through. When we get this realization, we can start to feel like, “Oh, it’s all me, so I just need to work on myself.” But this is a slippery slope, because we can often try to bypass what’s really there. When we are in a conflict there are strong negative emotions that are coming out, and want to be transformed, and we can try to transmute them ourselves, but this can be really challenging to do, and have it work all the way through.
The key here is to have your container that is rock-solid, and then go into it in a playful way, and often getting messy. In this container, you might say the thing that you have thought for years, but never had the guts to say. The purpose of this is not to hurt the other person, but to say the thing and be done with it, so that it’s not just rolling around in your head. Often, it might come out in a messy breakup, or acrimonious divorce, where you are, in fact, trying to hurt the other person. In this case, we are simply letting some steam out of the system by saying the things, in a strong container, that are going to let you say everything you need to say, even if you know it’s ultimately your projection, and even if it’s a little messy.
Instead of trying to be a better version of yourself, access a different part of yourself
In therapy, much of what the therapist is trying to do, is to help you be more authentic and real with each other. This involves getting in touch with your true emotions, and expressing them to your partner. This is wonderful, but there is a challenge because we all have parts. Part of us wants to reconcile the situation, and part of us wants to be right, and make them see our way. Part of us wants to love them, and part of us wants to punish them for the way they are acting with us. So how do we reconcile these parts?
We need to let them out to play. Creating this safe container, we start to embody these different parts, and we let them have their air time. Some of them are “darker” parts that want to dominate and control. Others want to covertly manipulate them into seeing our way. In this container, we let those parts play. Our partner is experiencing their own parts, and they can come out and meet our parts. What do these parts want to say? You will find out in this container that allows you to truly let these parts speak for themselves. They also have their own feelings and emotions, so we let them feel those, while you have let yourself become that part. All of this helps us get more in touch with these parts, and integrate them into ourselves, so that we can become our true and full selves. The embodiment piece is key here. When we become the parts, we can look their eyes, see what they see, and feel what they feel. This helps us move the energy that are feeling stuck with, and allows us to come back to wholeness.
Instead of trying to love your partner more, find the part of you that is frustrated with them and embrace it
We all have times that our love turns dark. We love our partner so much, but then they do something that is so aggravating, that it makes us feel frustration, anger or even contempt. Often, we try to push these feelings down, ignore them, and make them go away. How can I feel all of these negative feelings for someone that I have so much love for? It can be confusing, and we need ways to transform this energy, otherwise, we will start to tank the relationship.
In therapy, it’s encouraged to speak to the feelings we have, but it’s often not acceptable to bring out such dark emotions (unless it’s a one-on-one session). Surely bringing this out to our partner, would be a disaster. So it builds. And builds. Until we can’t take it anymore and we do something drastic. What if you could approach it another way. We have talked about setting the container for darker emotions to come out. What if it could even hold these really intense emotions, like anger, contempt and hatred.
This is what we do in the emotional containers that we create. It’s a space for you to let your darker energies out, in a safe way. Your partner will know that it’s only a part of you that feels so negatively towards them, and you get to express it in a way that won’t damage the relationship—and in fact, can become a sexual turn-on.
In summary, instead of trying to change all the wounded parts of you, we look to welcome these parts into the light, and have them expressed in a fun, playful, and sexy way. This helps you get connected to what you’re really feeling, show your partner, and then allow the energy to flow through instead of getting stuck, as it often does in the dynamic between couples.
Feel free to try this work on your own, but like therapy, it can be helpful to have a facilitator. We would love to share more of the tools. Get a free consultation from me, or sign up for the next live workshop, where I can work with you, so that you can understand and start to embody these tools.
