Melanie and I sat down with my wife Violet, and what started as a conversation about relationships quickly became something we probably should have talked about years ago. We found ourselves wrestling with one of those uncomfortable truths that couples dance around: what happens when one person is committed to healing and growth, and the other just isn't there yet? More specifically, we dove into what it actually looks like for women to do their own work around opening, processing trauma, and reclaiming their sexuality.
This conversation really came out of my own experience as a late bloomer. I had a partner early on who had sexual trauma, and we had a pretty okay sex life, but she couldn't orgasm. I made up all these stories about not being good enough, not knowing what I was doing. Then my next partner didn't have that history, and suddenly everything was different. That's when I realized it wasn't all on me. There's work both partners have to do independently.
We talked about how men need to learn to lead themselves first, figure out who we are and where we're going. And there's a correlate for women around learning to open, regardless of their partner's leadership. That capacity to open, especially when there's trauma in the picture, isn't something we can give our partners. They have to cultivate that themselves.
Violet and I also got into how sex is this incredible healing tool when both people have done their work. How emotion comes through during intimacy, how the heart and the cervix are linked, how important it is for us as men to hold space for all of that without collapsing or making it about us. And I'll be real with you, learning to stay present when your partner is triggered or crying during sex, that takes practice. It takes us being comfortable with our own emotions first.
The short version? Both people need their own practices, their own groups, their own work. That's what makes thriving relationships possible. And when you've both done that work, the sexual connection gives so much more space to everything else in the relationship.
If you're looking to go deeper in your own journey, whether that's around presence, intimacy, or just becoming the kind of man who can hold space for all of it, check out what we're up to at evolutionarymen.com.
