You may have unconsciously decided “I can’t count on the people I love,” or “People who love me abandon me.” Each experience you have as a child helps you make certain decisions, until you have a collection of decisions you have made about life. This collection of decisions or beliefs is called your emotional programming. In the same way you would program a computer with basic information, and the computer would use that information to do tasks or solve problems, so you program your mind with this emotional programming. For the rest of your life, this “program” affects how you think, how you behave, and especially, how you react to circumstances that remind you of your painful childhood experiences.
The majority of this emotional programming occurs when you are still very young. Psychologists estimate that:
Between the ages of 0-5 years old you receive 50% of your emotional programming
Between the ages of 5-8 years old you receive 30% of your emotional programming
That means, by the age of 8 you are 80% programmed psychologically. In other words, 80% of the decisions about yourself and others have already been made.
Between the ages of 8-18 years old you receive 15% more of your emotional programming
So by the time you are eighteen years old, you’re 95 percent complete! That leaves 5 percent for the rest of your life. This may not seem like much, but it’s that 5 percent that I work with when I help people make changes in their lives. And the good news is that you can use that 5 percent to understand and change the other 95 percent!
Perhaps now you can better understand why it’s easy to be so unaware of what motivates you in your relationships. The 5 percent of your mind that is conscious says “I want to be a loving husband to my wife” but the 95 percent of your mind that is unconscious may be programmed to avoid intimacy and keep a wall around your heart.
In my Making Love Work at-home video and audio seminar, I talk about a three-step healing process that you can use to eliminate your emotional programming:
1. Identify, feel, and express the old, unresolved emotions that are trapped inside your heart so that you can “Work them out, not act them out.”
2. Understand your old, unhealthy love choices, and then make new, healthy love choices which will heal your old fear and build new trust.
3. Open up to new, positive experiences of love that will heal the old pain which was caused by some lack of love.
I strongly suggest that you find a system of emotional healing that incorporates both experiential work in releasing old emotions and practical, action-oriented behavioral changes to build healthy new habits.
Now I’ll bet you’re thinking, “Boy, this sounds like a lot of work.” And it can be. But the rewards are worth it—the freedom to give and receive the kind of love you’ve always wanted!
My honest response to this question is:
“NO, I DON’T BELIEVE IT IS POSSIBLE TO HAVE A HEALTHY, LASTING, ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP WITH SOMEONE WHOM YOU AREN’T ATTRACTED TO, at least for me or anyone else who wants to include sexuality as a part of our lives.” After all, it is sex that distinguishes an intimate relationship from a friendship. Perhaps if a couple met when they were both quite elderly and no longer had an interest in sex, they wouldn’t need more than a strong friendship as a foundation to live together happily. But there is no reason people in their seventies and even older can’t enjoy active and fulfilling sex lives, so I don’t even like to use this example. Besides, it’s not sixty or seventy-year-olds who usually ask me about love without attraction—it’s men and women in their twenties, thirties, and forties.
If you’re not attracted to a partner, can the sexual chemistry develop over time? That depends. For instance, if you have an issue like the woman in Question 15, where she isn’t normally sexually attracted to nice guys, you could develop sexual attraction over time by doing some emotional healing. However, if this pattern or any kind of sexual dysfunction or abuse hasn’t been a problem for you, and you simply haven’t felt sexually attracted to your partner from the beginning of your relationship, you’ll be unlikely to develop it over time.
If you’re in a relationship with someone you’ve never been sexually attracted to, here are some things to think about:
1. You are avoiding true intimacy. A sexual connection binds a couple together in a very special way. There is nothing more intimate than taking someone inside your own body, if you are a woman, or putting a part of yourself into someone else, if you are a man. Especially when you are making love, and not just having sex, you create tremendous intimacy between yourself and your partner. Although it may look like you are avoiding sex, becoming involved with someone to whom you aren’t attracted may actually be a way you are unconsciously avoiding intimacy in your life. Since you know you aren’t going to have a strong sexual relationship, you are naturally protected from feeling too vulnerable with your partner.
2. You are avoiding sex. Some people aren’t just avoiding intimacy by selecting mates they aren’t attracted to—they are avoiding sex. If …
You have experienced any form of sexual molestation or abuse
You have been raped
You have felt sexually controlled by previous partners
You were brought up with negative sexual programming
… then you may unconsciously fall in love with people who don’t turn you on sexually. This way you get to avoid sex. You may not be aware that you have these sexual issues. You may even bemoan the fact that you keep attracting partners in whom you’re not sexually interested. But if lack of chemistry is a recurring theme in your relationships, you may need to do some work on healing your sexuality.
3. You are trying to maintain a position of control. When you feel sexually attracted to someone, you are, in a sense, giving them some control over you. It’s as if your mind is saying “You affect me so strongly that you make me want to lose control around you.” If you have issues with needing to be in control, or being afraid of being controlled by others, you may choose partners toward whom you feel no or little sexual attraction in order to keep yourself “safe.” Because you don’t feel a strong sexual pull toward them, you get to maintain a certain emotional distance, creating the illusion that you hold more of the power in the relationship.
This is one of the most difficult, yet most important issues a couple should face before getting seriously involved. As painful as it may be, think carefully about everything I’ve said, and make your decision based on what you know in your heart to be true.
14 How do you motivate someone to want to change and open up emotionally?