Re-Igniting the Spark (or Simply Lighting it in the First Place)

Younger men are always asking the questions: how do I get into my body, expand my masculine edge, make my relationships more erotic, and get rid of my sexual shame?

By mid-age, a man often condenses these questions into one: how can I re-ignite the spark with my partner, and feel her sexual devotion again?

The uncomfortable truth is that you can’t answer these questions with platitudes. It takes an appetite for understanding. If you want the results without understanding the work required—let alone without summoning the courage to do the work—then, honestly, I just don’t see it happening for you. Not consciously or sustainably, anyhow.

This is a challenging topic to write about, so buckle up. I’ve split this article into three separate posts, and in each of them I run through a number of stories and scenarios that dampen a couple’s spark, and how you can reignite it. These posts are written as if you’re in a relationship, but the same principles apply if you’re single.

In each post I’ve smuggled in some specific actions you can take. Our Mastery course material works in exactly this way: written introductions, stories and examples, plus exercises and reflection questions at the bottom. Enjoy the ride.

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Let Us Begin…

 

Being able to spark a sexual connection is core to the whole Ars Amorata message. With the passion and virility this skillset provides, and that hum of excitement as you walk down the street, you’re unstoppable, you’re alive. Without it, well, you know how that greyness feels. Fail to understand how to spark a sexual connection deep into your relationship, and, well, you will feel very unloved… or, you might just run around looking for hot women forever—the latest model—growing ever more jaded each time the spark inevitably wears off.

So how do you re-ignite the spark in a relationship that’s starting to flag?

Interestingly, you need mostly the same skillset to re-ignite your relationship as you needed to create a spark in the first place. Only for some men, it’s harder to bring the erotic into a place where a woman knows you: if she sees into your secret sexual crevices—the desires you really have under the surface—you stand to feel embarrassment, to lose face. It’s often easiest to self-reveal before an abject stranger. For other men, though, shaking off sexual shame was hard enough in the first place, trying to get through those early invitations and dates.

What is sexual shame, and how is it formed? Well, erotic energy grows in our bodies when we’re children. It’s nature. And our sexual life-force expands during adolescence to the point where we need to explore it. You know, in your room with the VPN or those magazines, long before your folks get home. Some energies are too vital to keep down.

All the while, we inherit vibes about sex from the culture around us, from the patterns portrayed by our parents. Judgment, ridicule, avoidance, many things. Sometimes, no-one has to say a word about sex, and the conditioning still transmits. I mean, just take a walk through your local holy building, and look upon the face of your priests. To counteract that silent shame, we develop our erotic lives in the dark. And like a plant in the dark, often it doesn’t quite know where to grow, or it grows unevenly. But grow, it must! Else we die…

A number of years back, a fellow participant on a leadership course revealed the solution to his depression. “For twenty years I flitted in and out of depression,” he said, “with suicidal thoughts, over-eating, drugs…” You know what got him out of it? He had a moment where he said “fuck it”: he came out of the closet, and proclaimed his draw to BDSM. From there, he took a couple of courses, hung out in local dungeons, spoke to others online about the scene. Within six months of this exploration he had enrolled a couple of subs—women who’d invite him to carry out his every kink and fetish in the safe space of the locked bedroom. His depression completely cleared.

In my coaching, it brings me a lot of energy to explore this topic of eros denied. In fact, I feel less of a coach and more like a doctor. It’s a nuanced game, finding how the pattern that stifles your sexual energy flow works. There are many issues, root causes, that coalesce to form a block. Our coaching work, and your ongoing self-exploration, is to clear this accumulated grime from the web of your subconscious… to feel and dissolve those patterns of hiding and shame that formed throughout youth.

So how do I reignite the spark?

Much of restoring a couple’s spark has to do with ‘polarity work’, really understanding how you can embody masculine or feminine. It’s not enough to just ‘know’ the concepts, there are practices you can do to ‘charge up’ your body towards the masculine pole, or towards the other.

But without a tour of your erotic psyche, many men never find the motivation to do the polarity work well: the sofa has a force of gravity, and we don’t find the source of our semi-malaise. Once we find and integrate the secrets and blockages that have us feel shy or ambivalent towards sex in the first place—or once we find the unacknowledged blindspots that turn our partners off—then we can expand the energetic angle of things. Once the shame and the clogs are removed from your sexual plumbing, let’s say, the rest of the practice is more easy.

It’ll help to jump out of metaphor land and make this specific, so I’ll share some personal stories. Perhaps you can relate…

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1] Primal Attraction to Other Women

 

When I began my relationship, like most new couples, we were so into each other that there was never talk about anyone else. For nine months or so, while the hormones raged in their ascendency, there was no need to: nature made us feel wholely exclusive to one another. We floated along in our love-bubble. Then, things changed. My mind, and my gaze, wandered. My woman could feel that. Mistrust, jealousy, all flooded in. Were you just looking at that other girl?!

What do you do, when faced with such pointed ultimatum? Do you deny your attraction to other women (and watch your virility die down), or do you announce your attraction to other woman (and watch a heart break in front of your face)? Is there a another route? How to escape the straightjacket?

Well, after a little time, I accepted my ‘wayward’ attractions, and I shared them. With curiosity and with compassion. I took care to state how I was committed to her, and happily so, but that deep in our brain-stems we’re still mammals and lizards. I described how I believe attraction is actually archetypal—a portal to illuminating unmet needs—and an invitation for both of us to expand our repertoire of sexual play. Naturally, my statements were met with hostility. And later with skepticism. But with a good chunk of maturity and realism, my partner got the picture and (guess what?) confessed an errant attraction or two of her own. Breathing a sigh of relief, our connection got back on the tracks.

It was around this time that I came up with the feminine archetype challenge. A psycho-spiritual role-play for the bedroom, that blows power into the rest of your lives.

So I’ll circle back, for a quick moment, to the topics of childhood and shame. The clog in our sexual plumbing—the zombie in my closet— was that I felt primal attractions to other women, and I hid this. Natural eros, trying to flow through me, but covered by the seal of hiding. Within the sub-topic of ‘attractions to other women’, I hid a lot of pent-up energy from my partner… until I allowed this energy first out of the closet, and then to trickle into our intimacy.

I bet you can see that if you picked up some ‘nice guy’ programming—and if you habitually kept your teenage attractions secret from your siblings and parents—it might feel taboo, as an adult, to bring this conversation to your ‘queen’.

* * *

2] The End of Cutesy Names

 

Many invisible things happen during the course of a relationship, and the closer you become, the better your friendship, and the more chances eros gets weighed down. There’s just something about a stranger—the anxiety of getting caught—the salacious devouring of a new woman’s limbs. It’s just not so good for the pecker, is it, being called ‘sweetie’, ’baby’ and ‘teddy bear’?

I believe such pet-names, such familiarity, are needed for a healthy relationship. But every time your whisper nicknames to each other that are more cutesy, and you veer away from anything more exotic and lustful, you actively build new conditioning that makes eroticism harder to break through down the line. I’ll say more about this tomorrow, but for now a word of caution: ban any cutesy names from the bedroom for 28 days (and bring back the names you called her in those first 28 days), if you want any chance of reigniting the spark.

Exercise:

If you don’t have a sexual fantasy journal, now is a good time to keep one (and share it). Share what your erotic imagination most needs to see, hear, and do, to feel maximally turned on again. Borrow tips and suggestions from each other’s fantasy worlds, and treat each other with just a bit of the language and intensity you’re currently limiting to daydreams. Drop the childlike names, and apprentice yourself to the adult art of seduction.

* * *

3] Disembodied Sexual Fantasies

 

So here’s a little story of sexual conditioning—let’s see if you someway relate. As an only child, I learned to live in my head. Imagination and fantasy. I mean, I needed to escape the boredom. And the loneliness. So when my sexual energy switched on—and as a horny teenager this was a lot—I’d use that same childhood strategy of escaping to my head as a device to escape the tricky feelings of my body. Feelings I’d be embarrassed of if anyone found them out.

Here’s the structure of that repeated conditioning, a cocktail you can make too: 1) see a woman you’re attracted to, 2) stop breathing, numb your body, and draw your awareness up into your head, and 3) linger in your head thinking about sex, but not actually embodying any present-moment sexual energy. Bingo! A sure-fire way to have the sexual presence of a ghost, and to keep your primal nature a secret.

As I started down this journey of self-discovery, it wasn’t a surprise to discover that I used sexual daydreaming as a way to avoid feelings of both arousal and loneliness. What did take me a while to learn was understanding how I ran this energetic pattern, and how to reverse the trend. What is needed to remain in your body?

But it gets a little more nuanced. Of course, even though I had this pattern, I could still relate to women in the real-world—attract, date, and begin my intimate partnership. But deep into my relationship, after the initials highs had worn off, I realised I still cycled through remnants of this pattern. When I felt turned-on, a part of me might escape to a world of fantasy, rather than feel the sensations of arousal in-the-moment, and share them with the actual woman who loves me, and is—often—standing naked right before me. If I felt at some point lonely—and particularly when my woman wasn’t meeting some needs I (sometimes unconsciously) had, I would use a sexual daydream as a soothing balm. Isn’t it striking that even with ‘sex on tap’, my bodymind would still perform the same conditioned response of escaping up to my head, and creating a world of hopes and images, that had nothing to do with the moment?

Naturally, compared to this inner world of images, real life often seemed a flat. Yet when I returned to my body and to real-life, my fantasy images now seemed uninteresting. Fantasy vs. Reality. What a thing.

Now as we bring this article towards a conclusion, I wonder, reading through these stories and reflecting on your erotic conditioning, if you could describe a pattern of your own?

Now if this sexual conditioning is, as you say, a childhood-formed, Pavlovian, response, is there a way out of it?

My answer: yes. After an initial exploration to uncover the nature of your erotic wiring, and a freeing of any core blockages beneath, you do gain flexibility to change. My pattern does keep coming back me, though, but I notice that if I do just ten minutes of embodiment practice per day, I seem to limit 90% of the effects of the pattern. The rest is taken care of when we know how to turn each other on, or set up our love-making with a ritualistic start.

The key of releasing old patterns, of course, is knowing where to press.

* * *

‘I Could Never Do That…’

 

If the suggestions I’ve given you kick off a saboteur, a voice in you who thinks I could never do thatmy woman would never open up in this direction—then, in my view, you have a little preliminary work to do before going for the suggestions above. Letting go of fears, assumptions, how trapped you’ve become in the status quo. Or some of the safety and stress issues I’ll address in the next post.

Bringing your primality out of the dark does needs courage—I’ll attest to that. A leap of faith. Mutual trust. But watch if you get stuck in negative thinking: I could never do that; she will never be open to that. I hear you. But let me ask you: what else are you going to do?

It’s ok, if your erotic life has ground to a halt, and you’re feeling a huge mix of fear and shame about it. You might just need an inner emotional reckoning, an opportunity to build your own strength and clarity, first.

* * *

If You Are Single

 

I’ve written these posts as if you’re a man in relationship, but the same principles apply when single and dating. How can you re-wire your sexual conditioning now, and set up your intimacy to win?

Some sage advice:

1. Let her know, right from the first date, that you’re a man and that, unfortunately, you are unsuccessful in transcending your biology. Tell her you’re a man of your word—I’m asking you to trust me—that if I say I’m with you, I’m completely with you. But you will not be naïve and deny how nature works.

It’s still wise not to rub your attractions to other women in her face, making a big scene of celebrating others, unless doing so is something that turns her on.

2. Pay attention to the erotic, the little dirty things you whisper to her; your favourite teases and pokes, surprises and games. Keep notes (literally, a journal) of your favourite ones, throughout those days of being wild. For later in the relationship you can bring all these (remember how you used to talk to me?) back out just when fun risks being forgotten.

3. Learn to embody your sexual energy rather than numbing it when you’re horny or lonely, and use the fantasies of your mind as a way to come back to the sensations of the present moment. This happens through some simple techniques—daily disciplines I can teach you.

The more you embody the sexual energy innate to you—and the more you can keep embodying your sexual energy when a beautiful woman walks into the room—the more you will feel (and transmit) that much-vaunted ‘lower moving energy’.

* * *

Walking the Talk

 

These are just three tiny examples in the galaxy of reasons why, over time, your relationship’s erotic force will dry up. In the next article, I’ll give a few more.

If this message has stoked something for you, and you have a question for me, reach out and let me know.

Now, if you want to not only recapture some of the spark, but gain true Mastery in the erotic realm, join me for an exclusive, small-group, year-long apprenticeship, where you will learn to overcome these intimate these challenges forever.

And if you’d like me to walk beside you, week by week, as you untangle what blocks you from your dream erotic life, request an application for Mastery today.

My flagship Mastery programme is not just laden with ideas and information—like what you’ve read today. Instead, I will walk you through processes to feel all this, to become aware of and dissolve your blocks, and gain access to your authentic sexual power.

With your God-given erotic force now circling through you, we will then develop ways of mastering the scary conversations and bringing your seductiveness to your partner… or to all of the women you meet.

Have a look through Mastery, and request your application today.

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Jordan Luke Collier

Jordan Luke Collier has dedicated his life to helping create a solid learning community of men on a path to excellence with women...

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