JoAnneh Nagler - Naked Marriage: How to Have a Lifetime of Love, Sex, Joy, and Happiness

Advance praise for JoAnneh Nagler and Naked Marriage

Nagler infuses exquisite sensitivity with courageous honesty in this wise counsel about the most intimate matters confronted in marriage. Rather than a guidebook for falling in love, Naked Marriage implores the willingness necessary for staying in love.

Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein, Director of Jewish Community and Bronfman Center for Jewish Life, 92nd Street Y

Although a plethora of books offer the alluring but ultimately false promise of eternal marital bliss, Nagler actually delivers a sensible, engaging, and remarkably pleasurable blueprint for creating intimacy in our long-term relationships.

David A. Levy, professor of psychology, Pepperdine University

Nagler tells us how to stay close and intimate in simple, direct, easy-to-put-into-practice suggestions which really work. I recommend this book to everyone who wants their long-term relationship to remain satisfyingly wonderful. Ms. Nagler will show you that hers has, and yours can, too.

Isadora Alman, MFT, CST, author of What People Keep Asking Me About Sex and Relationships

Having been an attorney for over thirty-five years in the world of family law and the dissolution of marriages, I found Naglers book to provide pro-active and provocative tools for couples who want to rediscover and sustain a relationship full of devotion, respect, kindness, and life-long love.

Amy Rodney, family law attorney

Naked Marriage exposes our most intimate vulnerabilities and then leads us to a warm, non-threatening instruction on sensual partnership. We all know the challenges we face in marriage, so I deeply appreciated JoAnnehs step-by-step approach, keeping strategies simple and offering personalized, loving assistance. Though the book focuses on intimacy, many of the practices will work for other life challenges, too, but probably best to wear clothes for those. I loved this book!

Samantha Krawitzky, MD

Copyright 2018 by JoAnneh Nagler

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Nagler, JoAnneh, author.

Title: Naked marriage: how to have a lifetime of love, sex, joy, and happiness / JoAnneh Nagler.

Description: New York, NY: Skyhorse Publishing, [2018]

Identifiers: LCCN 2017058358 | ISBN 9781510733596 (hardcover: alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Sex in marriage. | Sex. | Intimacy (Psychology) | Married peopleSexual behavior. | Married peoplePsychology.

Classification: LCC HQ31 .N245 2018 | DDC 306.7--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017058358

Cover design by Jane Sheppard

Cover photo credit: iStockphoto

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-3359-6

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-3360-2

Printed in the United States of America

For Michael: for your devotion, your faith in me, and your willingness to build our marriage with passion and adoration as its guiding stars.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

M y husband and I have been married twiceto each other. Two weddings, two marriages, and two very different experiences of being in love.

When we married the first time we ran our ship aground on many of the usual things that make a marriage fail: we couldnt communicate our needs in a constructive way; our money and debt issues pressed us into a corner with each other (which made us feel trapped); our sex life deteriorated; and we began to feel boxed in, misunderstood, and hurt.

We thought we were going to be different from all of the other troubled couples in the world. We hated to fight and hated to raise our voices, so we just avoided the hard subjects. Issues with sex, money, affection, time, how we were communicating, and our life choices all got swept under the rug. We knew we loved each other, so why rock the boat?

The times we attempted to talk to each other about what wasnt working disintegrated into stand-offs. I would bring up an issue in the worst way: speaking like a therapist and making pronouncements about what we should do. My husband would shut down and literally not speak to me for days. The message I heard from his silence: If you want me to love you, dont bring up that subject. Since avoidance was a dynamic in both of our upbringings, we were perfectly poised for the poison of that stance to ruin us.

We had no capacity to look difficulty in the face, to turn its dimensions over in our hands, to ruminate on it long enough to thoughtfully come up with a productive next step. And when that began to affect our intimacy, we had no strategies to return to each other when our ship started taking water over the side.

Our sex life started to suffer. We couldnt come to each other with respect and ease and freedom, so we were at odds. I would press for more sex, believing that would solve our distances, and my husband would resist me, feeling the weight of my desperation.

After three years of living together and four years of marriage, we were heading into a divorce.

We separated, and I moved four hundred miles away. Over the next several years, we saw each other dozens of times, trying to make our relationship re-cement itself with sexual experiences and long-distance longing, but we were getting no closer to solving what needed to be solved.

We both went out into the world and tried to date, tried to have relationships with other people. But we kept coming back to the love we had for each other, to the inexorable desire to talk to or see each other. It was an excruciating ping-pong ball experience for both of our hearts, and it ended with us vowing never to speak to one another again.

Then something changed. We both became willing. Maybe it was recognizing how truly rare and amazing it is to be completely drawn to another human being; to love and trust another person over time. Maybe it was a bit of wisdom that came with being older. Certainly, there were some practical things. I had to learn to live within my means and still be able to explore my creative life. He had to make peace with the way he chose to live in the worldas a teacher and an activistand be willing to fund his life with the cash he had, not adding the weighty pressure of borrowing to the mix. And we both had to learn to speak up, even about difficult things.

One day, several years after our divorce, I invited him to lunch. What the hell, he said, lets have dinner. We did and had a terrific time. When I got back home he called and said, Weve been here for each other for better or worseeven through a divorceand I want to try getting back together. I paused, took a big breath, and said, Okay. Lets go to therapy.

After about twenty minutes the therapist looked at us and said, Ive got couples who are much worse off than you two are and theyre making it, so whats the holdout?