We think this is a really interesting point and plan on doing a follow-up on our podcast, I’ll send you the link when we do!

Ultimately, I think there is a distinction between erotic energy and attention. Energy is not a fixed commodity that gets depleted when you flirt with someone else – in fact, most people report feeling MORE energy after a flirtatious engagement. But attention is more scarce – the amount of time we spend paying intimate attention to our lover. So if you are at a party with your spouse, and spend the time flirting with everyone else and ignoring your wife, yes that can feel like a “leak” or even a betrayal. But if you are out to lunch alone during work, and have a nice simple flirtation with a lady, then come home to your wife feeling great about yourself and a little turned on, perhaps you pay even more attention to her and bring your more confident self into your relationship. Does that make sense?

We’ll talk more about it on an upcoming episode and pass the link along once it is up!

We appreciate your listening and being in conversation with us – thanks!

Chris

I wanted to take a moment to respond to your followup show on flirting and boundaries.  Please pardon me if my response wanders a bit, but I will get back to the original topic.

I am a professional massage therapist and have been for over twenty years.  I am also a very earthy man with a healthy sex drive and consider a wide variety of women attractive.  From the beginning of my career, these two things came into conflict, until I had this wonderful realization.

Before going on, please allow me to reassure you that I have never brought my desires to bear on a professional client.  I feel that this would be taking advantage of someone in a vulnerable state where consent might be problematic, and would do so even were the legal implications less harsh than they might be.  At the same time, I have the great good fortune to have a large number of sexy women of all ages get naked in a small, private room with me, and be vulnerable.  Not only that, but they are asking me to touch them in ways that are often more intimate than they get with a lover.  I’ve heard things from clients that would make a sailor blush.

So there are occasions on which I get quite aroused.  And this is a blessing.  For me, arousal engages me emotionally as well as physically.  So, when I am carbonated, as a friend of mine would call it, I am intensely aware of every fact of texture, every sound my client makes, every movement she makes on the table.  I am emotionally connected to her in a way that leaves me open to sensing what is needed.  I am even more invested in giving her a pleasure-filled and safe experience that leaves her healthier, calmer and more in touch with her own body than when she came in.  In short, I give her a kick-ass massage.

Now, to how this relates to flirting and boundaries.  I am at the same time in a monogamous marriage relationship with the woman of my dreams.  Our relationship just works on every level I could describe from trust to division of responsibilities to values to the most mind-blowing sex I’ve ever had.

Early in our relationship, I described this phenomenon to my beloved, and explained that it was a piece of who I am.  I made it clear that there were hard boundaries around professional contact of that sort, but that I was a better massage therapist because I accepted, revelled in and channeled this wonderful energy to my clients.  And then I did the most important thing; I brought that energy home to our bed and made it about her, so that I might tell her about a wonderful connection I’d made and then tell her that as I was making up the sheets afterwards I’d had a strong sensory memory of my beloved and how excited I would be to share this with her.

It is a sign of the rightness of our partnership that she just gets this, is not threatened by it and in fact rejoices in my ability to share that loving energy with others while keeping our relationship unique and at the center of my life.

I suspect this would make your correspondent uncomfortable, and I’m not trying to diminish his experience, but I wanted to share another perspective with you, and if you so choose your listeners.  This is a wonderfully complex topic that lies at the heart of so much dysfunction in our loving relationships and if I can be part of giving people permission to feel what they are actually feeling, and to take joy from these wonderful bodies and hearts and spirits we have, then I have done a good thing in the world.