What can you do when the feelings are missing that you know would naturally be there? Read on…
Tom writes:
My love life works well in fantasy. But as soon as it goes into a real situation, I get a feeling like apathy or lack of interest. I look at the woman and feel nothing – suddenly I am empty. All the attraction is gone. This is very frustrating because I really want a good love life! I assume there is something in me that causes loss of attraction. But how can I work with the absence of a feeling? And how can I work with something in me that causes this, when I can’t feel that either?
Dear Tom:
Thank you so much for this interesting question.
Barbara McGavin and I made this big discovery, when we were struggling with our own difficult issues, addiction and depression: It is possible to work with something you can only guess must be there.
We created ways to use Focusing to be with what isn’t here… yet.
Of course it IS here… because it is affecting your life!
But it is not yet felt. It needs to be invited into feeling.
Here’s how you would do that:
- Sit down to do Focusing. Get centered and grounded and present, be your big spacious Self. “I am here.”
- Remember the last situation where this loss of attraction occurred. Be aware in your body, especially throat, chest, belly.
- Now say: I am inviting something in me that doesn’t want to feel anything with a woman. (I am assuming that in this situation that is natural to feel something, there is a part that is shutting down the feeling. But see if you think that is right.)
- So you make that invitation, (or change the words so they fit better how it is for you) and then you keep feeling in your body and you wait.
What comes might happen very slowly and be very little. It might just be an image, like “There is a vague sense of a wall.”
This needs patience AND it is really worth doing. This part that stops you from feeling attraction is having a big effect on your life… so it is important to invite it into a safe space. (If it thinks it will be criticized or forced to change, it will not come.) I hope this helps.
