Kim Anami

3 19

The key to all successful relationships

The mighty trust.

There are few things more precious, essential and foundational in intimate relationships.

I know you thought I would say: “Sex! It’s number one!”

Except that the very best sex, the most gourmet sex, is borne of deep trust.

Feeling safe is what leads to deep surrender, which is what leads to life-changing sex and orgasms.

This is the super fuel of your relationship.

Without trust, you have nothing.

Anais Nin has a great quote about the dissolution of relationships:

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.

It’s a slow demise and it accumulates over time. A small misstep here or there is forgiven, but they snowball into riffs.

Trust is eroded.

After a while, the “spark is gone” and the “sex isn’t like it used to be.”

And no one can quite put their finger on why.

In my own experience, when I look back, I can pinpoint moments in time where trust was broken to some degree.

And there a crack began.

With each stretching and breaking of trust, the crevasse deepened.

Until it got to the point where to touch each other, we’d have to reach so far, that it became a strain.

In North America, we place a bizarre, fucked-up importance on white lies.

Most people want to “keep the peace” more than they want to confront the truth.

The deepest source of truth is being honest with yourself.

You can’t be honest with someone else if you can’t identify your own truth first.

It’s the crux of everything.

This self-dishonesty can be unintentional.

Because we all have our blind spots.

But the body doesn’t lie.

Eventually, if the untruth, the haze, the obliqueness, if carried on for long enough, begins to show up in the body.

Headaches. Low libido. A “growth” on a sexual organ.

Sustaining a lie is exhausting.

Your body registers the true cost.

And of course, your libido is your oracle.

So when you feel your relationship straining under the weight of avoidance, take stock:

1) Seek objective opinions.

Be it a friend or a coach or a counsellor, try to speak without censoring. Let someone present a mirror back to you of what you are saying.

On some level, we realize our own truth and often say it out loud. But we still don’t fully absorb what we’ve just said.

A good coach or friend—and let me define that by “someone who calls you out on your bullshit” and not someone who strokes your ego and perpetuates your lies—will give it to you straight.

Listen, most “friends” won’t do this. I’ve fired a lot of “friends” over the years, because I want people around me who call me on my bullshit.

I have that now—a small cabal of people who are super-insightful and can skillfully reflect back to me.??f you don’t have it, go and buy it. Find a counsellor or coach who can cut through your own bullshit.

Someone has to.

I did this for years: paid for honesty. ??There’s no shame in it.

It’s a rare commodity.

One worth investing in.

??2) As hard as it is, trust that the truth will set you free. 

Have that hard conversation with your partner about the things you haven’t been saying. ??People fear that if they say what they really feel, the relationship may end.

And it might.

But more importantly, your trust in the love and benevolence of the universe, and your ability to manifest even more beauty and ecstasy, needs to be bigger than all that.

You have to trust that your truth will navigate you through anything.

And lead you to a higher state of everything.

3) Make it a state of your relationship. 

Ideally, your intimate relationship has as a primary value: honesty.

You help each other illuminate and call each other out on your own blind spots, with love and ruthless compassion.

You have a commitment to work on this stuff collectively—to confront and eradicate all the little things each of you does to sabotage the relationship, that pull you away from the delicate, soft space of undefended love.

We all have these things.

And unless you have a conscious strategy for stalking your own and each other’s demons, your relationship is doomed.

Sound dramatic?

It is.

And it’s true.

Cause I’ll give it to you straight. 🙂

~Kxx

Image: Sam Taylor-Johnson

The salon next up this year is Coming Together for Couples, which will dive into all of these issues. It begins in May. Check out the free video series preview here.