This is the closing writing of a six part essay series written in 2024 and fully updated in July of 2025. The full series is linked at the bottom of each essay. To date, these are my favorite writings that I have published. I hope you find them of mutual benefit.
You cannot be desirable to others if you cannot safely feel desire in your own body.
That’s the root of all my work in somatic practice. Desire isn’t a mood. It isn’t a passing thrill or a dopamine spike. It isn’t found in energy work either.
It’s a physiological state.
A posture.
A hum in the bones.
But so many of us outsource desire to the people around us, looking to them to generate the aliveness we’ve never felt safe enough to find on our own.
We date the stormy person to feel something. We orbit victims instead of healing the child within us. We hook ourselves to other people’s needs, crises, or chaos—because our own emotional waters are too cold, too deep, too wild.
This series has been about one thing: how to make real life feel truly alive. Not the performance of a life, not the spiritual bypass version, but the layered, rich, full-bodied experience that we long for when we think of desire in the truly erotic sense.
Desire is old.
It’s not airbrushed. It’s not medicated into a low boil. It’s complex, vulnerable, disruptive—and when it arrives, we often reject it. We say it’s too intense. Too unpredictable. Or just not enough.
We push it away. And we do the same with people. Because we think the world is supposed to be comfortable and disposable.
I often repeat the phrase “being realistic about your options isn’t settling” and I suspect very few people are able to grasp meaning there.
We live in a plastic water bottle world.
What If No One Else Is Coming?
Try this: imagine that the people in your life right now are it. There’s no upgrade waiting. No fantasy partner about to arrive. No people ordering dating app to load into your phone. No ideal boss, best friend, or mother figure just around the bend.
It’s them—or it’s solitude.
How would that change you?
Would you soften toward the father who never apologized but keeps showing up in his own annoying way? Would you listen more carefully to the friend who isn’t spiritual but always makes you laugh? Would you stop ghosting the man who actually wants to see you—just because he doesn’t quote Jung or hate his ex?
Would you work a little harder to build something with the people you already have?
The Third Way
The biggest shift I ever made in relationships came from asking this:
Is there a third way to relate—one that works for both of us, not just one of us?
Not “my terms or no terms.”
Not “they get what they want, and I carry the cost.”
Not “here is my method manual”, while I secretly perform control.
A third way.
You see, you can win every argument and still lose the relationship. You can be technically right and still end up alone. You can follow every boundary meme online and still feel emotionally starved.
Setting terms that only serve you or what you think is best, is just control. Silently agreeing to terms that only serve them is just abandonment.
But when two people decide to build a relationship on terms that honor both of them—even if those terms are clunky, messy, or evolving—something else becomes possible.
That’s where desire grows. In that creative in-between.
That’s where you avoid a dead bedroom.
That’s where my clients who are still having great sex and care about how the other person feels after the ten year mark exist.
Boundaries Shouldn’t Be Walls—They’re Invitations
Cutting people off isn’t a boundary. It’s quitting. And “framing” your exit with perfect therapy language doesn’t make it less dramatic—it just makes it polished. Ask me how I know.
A true embodied boundary isn’t a wall or a rule; it’s a signal. A line you hold while remaining in contact.
I tell my kids: you can set a boundary, but not its consequences. You can say you won’t visit your mother-in-law for Christmas—but don’t be surprised when she leaves you out of the family cruise. You can cancel on a friend three times because you are burnt out —but don’t expect to be at the top of their invite list. This isn’t punishment. It’s just the natural shape of human behavior.
And yet, you don’t need to cut people off. Sometimes bandwidth is low. Sometimes healing takes longer than expected. Sometimes people show up late, but they do show up.
If your boundaries are embodied—not egoic—you’ll be able to hold your shape while letting others re-orient. That’s what keeps real relationships alive.
When I Realized I Was Quitting People, Not Growing With Them
There was a time when I couldn’t express a single need in relationship without either shaming myself or the other person. I made requests like they were courtroom declarations. I was so polite, so composed, so fake regulated that the person across from me felt like they were being cross-examined instead of invited.
I had been in relationships where needing anything was used against me. So I learned to stop asking.
When I finally quit those dynamics, it felt like freedom. But it wasn’t growth. It was just a clean break. And that’s not the same as creating something new.
Now, I try to stay longer. Long enough to learn. I give people more chances, but with more space. I check my own patterns. I stay curious longer than is likely logical. I ask if I’ve been clear, if I’ve offered real collaboration, if I’ve stepped into my own boundaries with generosity—not with vengeance.
People are afraid, confused and burnt like toast. If you can’t wade into muddy water you’ll always be isolated on the shore watching everyone else participate in life in a way you might judge but don’t really understand.
The Art of Embodied Boundaries
These days, I feel more grounded in my limits. I know when to say no. I know how to say it without scarring the connection. I know how to let people go if I have to—but I don’t weaponize that choice anymore.
And no, I don’t always get it right.
Relationships still catch me off guard. I still flip sometimes. I still fumble. But I apologize when I did nothing wrong.
But, I let my mentors hold up a mirror when I need it. I stay in the arena.
I also find that mostly just being myself and watching my own energy and body is enough. I don’t have to perfect, I just have to kind of keep the lights on until it is very obvious to me and the other person what’s real.
That’s all we can do. Avoid fantasy. Avoid our karmic patterns. Stay in the arena. Stay in relationship. Stay in process.
Your People Come With Patterns
If you date straight men, you’ll meet familiar patterns. Women spend a lot of time outlining common male behavior and assigning value to it. Some men will keep referencing exes. Some men will treat time together like a favor they’ve granted you. Some will confuse availability with low value. That doesn’t make them unworthy—it just means they’ve been conditioned.
Women carry patterns too, we just hear about them less online. Hormonal shifts. Performance pressures. Shifting roles. Self-silencing. Anxiety. Weaponized emotional states. And they show up in relationship, often in frustrating, contradictory ways.
The question isn’t: Do they have patterns?
The question is: Do they ease with closeness and safety?
Can You Build Something With This Person?
That’s the one question. The final question.
Can you create something of value with this real person?
Not “Are they perfect?”
Not “Do they meet all your preferences?”
Not “Do they make your life easier?”
Definitely not do they follow all of your rules that you wrote in therapy.
Only, can we build something?
Because relationships aren’t pre-assembled. They’re forged in trial and error. In mess. In moments of misalignment and grace. They’re constructed from tiny seeds—not found.
And in that construction is where real desire takes root.
Thank you for being here for this series. If you’ve made it through all six parts, you’re already practicing something most people never do: staying present.
Now go build. With weird people. With grace. With your whole body.
This is where it gets good.
Read the full desire series: Week 1; Week 2; Week 3, Week 4; Week 5; Week 6
I write primarily to support my small business, christinaelaine.com
I am a somatic coach, writer, and curriculum creator writing about the interior life of modern relating, weekly on Medium & Substack. I also host interviews on YouTube.