Which Comes First for You: Physical or Emotional Connection?

People have different ways of getting to connection. Some people find emotional connection necessary before they feel safe to connect physically. Some people want physical intimacy in order to access emotional connection. If you are different than your partner in this, it can cause a lot of strife. This episode unpacks this common issue and helps you understand how to start solving it. 

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Transcript

Welcome to Sex Help for Smart People. I'm Dr. Laura Jurgens. I'm here to help you have better sex, intimacy and relationships. So let's get at it. Hey everyone. Welcome to episode 62. So today we are gonna talk about physical connection and emotional connection and in sex and intimacy. Which one comes first for you?

When these things are different between partners, it can cause some real misunderstandings and some painful disconnects, some feelings of rejection, some feelings of not being seen, some senses of just like. Sex feeling impossible, not getting what you need. All of that stuff. But sometimes it really boils down to understanding the different ways that people connect and understanding what needs to happen first for you and for your partner.

So essentially, when you are getting ready to have sex with your partner, you may be going to the same place, but you're taking different routes and that's. Just normal. That's really common for people to have different ways of getting turned on different arousal needs, but underneath all that, a lot of times there's also just a fundamental difference in whether people feel like they need to connect physically first in order to connect emotionally.

Or whether they need to connect emotionally first in order to feel capable and safe connecting physically, and it's really common. For couples to have differences in this, and if you have different ways of going about this, you can imagine if one person needs one thing first and the other person needs the other thing first.

You know, the horse and the cart are different for each different person then, so it can be really hard to understand each other and it can cause a lot of rifts. This is common. In all kinds of couples for all kinds of reasons. So how you were raised, what part of your emotional life stage you're in, and the amount of work you've done on your emotional self connection and awareness.

It can also just be sort of like an orientation or ease with one or the other, but a lot of times it's also because of gender socialization around sex and emotions. And that means it tends to, now this is also common for same-sex couples, but it tends to be even more common for opposite sex couples to be very different in how they like to connect first.

And that's because of very different ways that our culture trains us. Based on gender around how we relate to sex safety in sexuality, and how we relate to emotions. And this is a broad generalization, not meant to be a stereotype because there's actually tons of exceptions to any gender stereotypes, but because of the way culture socializes us.

When we come out with one type of bits versus another type of bits, and the doctor decides which bits we have, even if we're an intersex person and assigns us a gender identity based on those bits. This whole heap of socialized expectations comes with that. And if you grow up as a boy, you will get, you will run into a lot of experiences in which it doesn't feel safe for you to be an emotional being, doesn't feel safe for you to be connected to your emotions.

It's not accepted. It's poo-pooed. It is basically you are made to feel lesser if you are connected to your emotions. And boys often very early abandon connection to any emotions except for anger and pride. They're allowed to show. And you know, sometimes like content men are happiness. Those are acceptable emotions for boys to show.

And those emotions actually incidentally, are the ones that are not acceptable for girls to show. So if you come out. And you're told that you're a girl, socialized as a girl, you are not supposed to be angry and you are not supposed to show pride. You are supposed to be in service of others. You are supposed to be happy, and you are also supposed to exhibit things like sadness and vulnerability and those type actually a lot more emotions then boys are.

Are really typically encouraged to have emotionality is almost weaponized against girls as if like we are inherently emotional. We can't control ourselves and we're just like all over the place. But it does mean that girls are also allowed to be more connected to their emotions in most circumstances.

Now, look, this is not, again, this is a broad sweeping generalization of socialized messages. Not what specifically is happening in your family experience, right. In your lived experience. So there's plenty of girls that were emotionally shut down as children also, but, and there's some boys that are actually encouraged to have emotions, which is wonderful, but because of those stereotypical gender socializations, a lot of times.

People who are socialized as boys grow up in an experience where it's hard for them to emotionally connect vulnerably, and they often feel like the easiest way to do that with their partner is actually through physicality, through sex. Sex is one of the places where. Boys and men are encouraged to be more emotional and to feel more connected.

Vice versa. For people socialized as women. It is, we are told from the get go and the world reinforces over and over that it is very scary to be sexual. It is very risky. You are either going to be a slut or you are going to be assaulted and you will somehow deserve it. None of that is true, but that is a message that we get constantly from media.

We get it constantly just sort of seeping into our brains from the culture that we are swimming in. That it is not safe to be erotic beings, so that's why there's some gender tendencies around whether it's easier to connect physically first and then emotionally, or whether you feel like you really need emotional connection in order to feel safe.

Being physical with someone, but that doesn't mean that that's always the case based on gender identity or sex or your type of genitals, right? It is not actually determined by your type of genitals. So it's also about your personal history, but it's useful to understand and ask yourself, what comes first for me?

Is it easier for me to connect physically and then feel emotionally close to someone, or is it. Do I really need to feel emotionally connected to someone in order to have access to? My sexy to feeling turned on or to feeling interested in sex. And if I don't feel emotionally connected, does it tend to shut me down physically?

So it's really useful to ask yourself that, to know that, and to find out and have a conversation if you have a partner or if you're dating people, to find out and have a conversation about. Them. When you get to a stage where that seems reasonable, where you're gonna start having sex with this person, knowing kind of what is it that helps them feel interested and ready for physical connection, what are their needs do?

What are their desires? How do they like to connect emotionally? What helps them? And I will say if you are in a couple where you know that you have differences here, one person wants to connect physically and then get the emotional connection, but the other person needs the emotional connection in order to have access to feeling safe enough for sex.

Here's the bad news and the good news. We have to take care of the person. You have to take care of the person who needs the emotional connection first. That sometimes sounds like bad news to people who wanna just connect physically, but here's the thing, it's not such bad news because your need to connect physically will get met much better if you are willing to do the emotional connection first, because that your partner actually needs that.

It is a safety issue for them. So when someone doesn't feel safe enough without the emotional connection, there's no getting around that you have to do the emotional connection for them to feel safe enough to actually feel authentically turned on without obligation. They're able to connect physically without obligation, then they're able to.

Not be shut down and to really feel authentically sexy and interested. You want that? You want your partner to want you, right? Well, they're only able to access their feelings of desire if they feel emotionally connected. So that means in those mixed partnerships. You gotta take care of the person who has the need for the emotional connection first.

So if you are the sort of physical first person, this is just kind of the way it goes. You can, the good news is though, that you can get what you want, right? You can get what you want when you commit to allowing yourself to really put some effort into connecting emotionally with your partner. But if you keep trying not to do it, and just to get your need met.

Without meeting their need for emotional connection, you are doomed to failure and it will feel like you can never get your need met. So in those mixed partnerships where somebody wants to connect physically first and somebody needs the emotional connection first, we have to go take care of the safety first, right?

Start with the emotional connection and here's what that means. That means attuning to your partner. I have a couple podcasts on that. Go back and listen to 'em. Attunement, being able to be vulnerable with each other. I know that's hard, but that is a skill that you can learn. I teach it all the time, so attunement, being able to be vulnerable with each other.

Clearing the air of resentments and dishonesty, right? Really being emotionally present with each other. Making sure you have lots of physical affection outside of sex. That's another way to emotionally connect with someone. Really listening to them, being interested in them, asking them questions about themselves, right?

Sharing things together. Find out from your partner what helps them feel emotionally connected. Ask them, right? Get curious about it and you need all of it. You can't skip any of those parts. You can't do like, okay, well I'll just do physical affection, but then that'll mean that I don't have to be on the hook for being vulnerable with my partner or sharing my real feelings.

Nope, doesn't work that way. Gotta do all of it. An emotional connection requires a clean. Open heart, and if there's a bunch of stuff in the way, we need to help you clear that stuff out so that your partner does feel safe to connect with you physically. And these are things that can really benefit from having regular conversations with your partner, where you figure out what it is that you both want and what's kind of in the way.

Right. If there are resentments, dishonesty, just places where you haven't been really talking or you haven't really been opening up with each other, you don't really see each other, you've got some beef from, or some baggage from some old arguments that never really got sorted out, that stuff is going to affect your sex life if you are in a partnership with anybody who needs emotional connection first, and that is a large.

Bunch of people. That is, I would say more than half, well, more than half of the people that I've met in my practice need emotional connection first, regardless of their gender. There are some people who feel ready to have physical connection regardless of the emotional connection. And that is fine. You can search for a partner if you're a heterosexual person.

If you're a heterosexual man and that's you, and you wanna find a woman who's just like that, I can tell you they exist. But it's challenging. There's not a lot of women who feel safe having a physical connection without any emotional connection because of the way the society that we live in. It can be more common for gay men.

To have success with that. If you just wanna have physical connections without emotional connections. But sometimes, you know, I've, I've talked to a lot of gay men who've also been like, I'm really tired of this. I. You know, maybe they've kind of grown out of it. They've become emotionally more mature and they wanna have an emotional connection, or it feels bad.

It starts feeling bad after a while just to have the physical connection without the emotional connection. So even two people socialized to really like, have a hard time connecting with their emotionality. You know, as you grow and mature and you start realizing that you wanna connect with your emotionality, it can really put you in a different place.

On that, and all of a sudden you're saying, I want emotional connection. So whatever your situation is, I wanna really encourage you if you are a physical first only person, to consider learning the skills of emotional connection with your partner. Because the more you do that proactively, the more you are going to get that physical need for connection met.

And that's gonna feel great to both of you. That's gonna feel great to everybody involved, which is what we want. Alright, my friends, I hope that's helpful. Feel free to shoot me questions if you have any, and I'll see you here next week. Hey, if you're curious about how you could have better sex and connections, go grab my free guide.

Find your Secret turn-ons. It's right on my website, www.laurajurgens.com, and the link is in the show notes. I'll see you here next time.