Thank you for taking our Love and Sex Quiz!
You scored as an Emotional Pursuer and a Sexual Withdrawer
Emotional Pursuer Characteristics
You long for deep sharing and heart-to-heart connection with your partner. You get energy around people, like to make them happy and are baffled that your partner doesn’t see your good intentions. You like to talk out conflicts and only feel settled after a good conversation and all feelings are shared and soothed. In fact, you’d rather fight than let things be unsettled. Even when there are good moments, however, you may feel slightly anxious that they won’t be repeated. Your sense of your partner’s love and commitment can be rocked when you feel unappreciated. If your partner is preoccupied, you might find yourself reviewing what last happened and how you might have caused a problem.
Emotional Pursuer Growth Pathway
You deserve closeness and safety! It’s imperative to our psychological health to find a partner who we can depend on in times of distress. Learning to soothe yourself during this process of change, by saying inside, “all relationships have a few ups and downs” may help comfort you when you get anxious about “is everything okay?” You might have to diversify the ways you get self-esteem through creative endeavors, friendships, and productivity. Letting go of the little stuff can help your partner feel less micro-analyzed. Your challenge may be to change complaints into positive, clear, short requests. You may also have to learn to accept your partner’s “no” to your requests and find other solutions. Managing your anger, criticism and escalation of a conflict is the fastest way to help your partner feel safer to be honest about their true feelings rather than placating you or backing away. Talking about your needs and fears from a vulnerable place will help your partner see you as approachable. We want to help you find that soft and fulfilling pathway that gets through to your partner and creates a responsive relationship where you can trust that they are there for you. If you are tired of feeling frustrated and unseen this is a sign to start counseling sooner than later.
If you would like to explore and strengthen your relationship, Contact Us!
Sexual Withdrawer Characteristics
Being a sexual withdrawer doesn’t mean you don’t like sex. Often you very much like sex but need to be ready for it inside your mind, in your relationship with your partner and definitely, in your body. For you, sex may be a part of love but it is not the be all, end all of love. You want the moment to count for your partner and you don’t waste time thinking about whether or not it was better than the last time or how you could make it better – it just was fine as it was. Engaging in sex might be very intense with the exposure of both your body being naked and your soul being open during orgasm. You might decide not to have sex because there is so much risk in disappointing your partner over one thing or another. Or perhaps you really don’t have much sensation at all and the whole thing is a disappointment. Maybe your body doesn’t seem to work the way it once did and you’ve decided, “Meh,” I don’t really need it. Worse, maybe you’ve given up on your own expressions of eroticism because your partner didn’t listen over time.
Sexual Withdrawer Growth Pathway
Being called a sexual withdrawer is not a judgement. You’re not bad for not wanting sex whenever your partner wants it. We’re simply referring to the direction you might move when there is conflict in your sexual relationship. As we said, you may actually like sex, but pull away from what feels like pressure. In fact, when they do agree, many sexual withdrawers start from a willing place, not really a “wanting” place. Then, they find once they are in the midst of making love, they are glad they got started. We call this responsive desire. Willingness can be an intentional starting place as well. You could also think about what you would like sexually if there was no pressure. Imagine times when you had an inkling toward sex – what was happening? Was there loads of talk, gobs of time, plenty of compliments? See if you can find your magic formula that makes sex safe to engage in. Examine your history for early messages from your family, faith, and culture about what you were supposed to be sexually; see how that matches with what you want for yourself now sexually. Learn to express yourself clearly for your sexual preferences.