DISCUSIÓN DEL OBJETIVO GENERAL

There are essentially four types of Heart-to-Heart Talks:

1. Nurturing processes pour love and appreciation on a relationship like water and sunlight on a garden.

2. Clearing processes express what makes you anxious, angry, or afraid. Once you have “cleared the air”—and, more important, your mind and heart—you can see new possibilities that may have been obscured when your vision was clouded by these emotions, so sometimes it’s best to start with a clearing. Always follow a clearing process with a nurturing one.

3. Discovering processes promote understanding, enabling you to learn more about yourself or your partner.

4. Affirming processes build one another’s self-esteem, self-respect, and confidence.

Following are instructions for having your own Heart-to-Heart Talks:

• Choose a quiet place to talk where you won’t be interrupted.

• Face each other if you can. It’s ideal if you can sit with your knees almost touching.

• Read the guidelines on page 146 aloud together.

• Decide who will be the speaker first and how long you want to allow for each person’s responses. (Most people can “empty out” their responses in about two minutes.) Consider using a timer to alert you when time’s up.

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• To do the process, the speaker completes the lead-in phrase as many times as he or she can, using whatever first comes to mind. A partner listens, offering only

“Thank you,” “I understand,” or nodding.

• When the first speaker is done, switch roles.

• If you are feeling anxious about doing this, it is useful to begin with a clearing process, expressing your fears or concerns: “A reservation I have about doing this is . . .”. This lets you both air your concerns about the talk itself so you can remove any obstacles that might get in the way of you participating fully.

• As you are speaking, your mind may draw a blank and you won’t be able to come up with anything. This is perfectly normal. Just say the lead-in phrase and complete with the word blank. For example, “Something that really gets me hot is

‘blank.’ ” Then just try again. Something invariably comes to mind, even if you have to say “blank” a few times first.

• Breathe deeply and fully.

• You may find that you want—or need—to have a more detailed conversation about the subjects you’re exploring together using this process. It’s true, Heart-to-Heart Talks are ideal for identifying these areas, but they are not the time to veer off into discussion. Wait until after you’ve concluded your Heart-to-Heart Talk to pursue conversations for seeking solutions, brainstorming, negotiating issues, and so on.

• Finish with a hug. y

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KR Mmm-hmm. Again, I guess I should say I’m not on the record with these as my own turn-offs, but here’s a demo: “Something that turns me off is Barney music playing while we’re making love.”

LC “Thank you.”

KR “Something that turns me off is heavy cologne.”

LC “I understand.”

KR “Something else that turns me off is being grabbed out of nowhere—

although grabbing is okay once I’m pretty turned on.”

LC “I understand.”

KR “Something that turns me off is unrelenting rhythmic stroking.”

LC “Thank you.”

KR “Something else that turns me off is when a lover goes straight for my clitoris or vagina and ignores the rest of me.”

LC “I understand.”

KR All right, so if we were to complete, you would go next. That’s the basic structure. But there’s a larger structure, too, of using certain kinds of Heart-to-Heart Talks to bracket the more difficult ones.

LC The only thing I would suggest is that whenever you do a clearing Heart-to-Heart Talk, put a nurturing Heart-Heart-to-Heart Talk after. So if you’re going to talk about things you don’t like about sex, you follow it up with things that you do love about sex. If you’re going to do a clearing Heart-to-Heart Talk about your concerns about your sex life, follow with a nurturing talk, and you can also finish up with a discovery process about your dreams and your visions, or your yearnings about sex, or how you’d like it to be.

So there’s this balancing act between expressing what might be considered

the more negative aspect, balancing it with the more positive aspect.

Because if all you do is talk about what’s wrong, it gives you a skewed view of reality.

KR Do you advise people about a certain way to invite someone to participate in a Heart-to-Heart Talk? Sex is a scary subject for some people, and they may feel nervous even about asking a partner to have this conversation.

Can you make some recommendations?

LC You suggest it as an invitation rather than, “I need you to do this with me.”

KR Not, “We need to talk.”

LC Right, definitely not “We need to talk.” But it’s an invitation, it’s something you’d like to share for—and the reason you give is something that they would want. It’s like, “I would like to have this Heart-to-Heart Talk so that we can be better lovers with one another.” Or “I’d like to have this Heart-to-Heart Talk so that we’re more passionate and we have sex more often.”

But it has to be like a little carrot. What’s the invitation? What’s the reason that they’re going to be motivated to do this? Because there is this kind of

built-in emotional barrier about being really honest, and people need to have incentives. So that needs to be explicit in the invitation. And also to frame it as an experiment: “Let’s do this together and see how it feels,”

not “I think we should do this because it’ll help.” It’s kind of like, “Oh, I heard about this, and I think we could try it and see if it really does help us feel better when we’re making love with one another.” And your partner goes, “Hmmm. Well, maybe. Okay.” People will respond differently to an invitation and an experiment than they will to “We have to do this or bad things will happen.”

“Let’s do this