Sacred Relationship in the Real World: Communication and Integrity as the Foundation of Sexual Energy Exchange

When we go on this journey of building a truly deep and unshakable divine union with our partner, we will find the greatest magic in building sacred relationship is beyond the initial new relationship energy of the honeymoon phase, when it’s fun, exciting, and we’re thrilled to have this new person because we’re overcome with Eros love. It’s after all that, when the endorphins wear off and we see, not just a real whole human through the veil of what they were willing to show us in the first place, we see their shadows which mirror ours, and their wounds which often conflict with our own.

Even the most well meaning, growth mindset people will experience this. From this point forward please know that even though I am an androgynous bisexual in a hetero marriage & Dom sub dynamic I use the terms masculine and feminine as archetypal energies, not static gender terms. Much like when I write about kink or sex, I do not write as if the top is always the man, or the dominant partner. Or that a woman is automatically the bottom or submissive. This is especially the case for queer relationships. So allow yourself to find yourself on whatever you or your preferred partner align on that spectrum. 

I digress, when I met my partner, I was a healing man who’d spent years building a sense of embodying what it means to be the safe nurturing sacred masculine who respects boundaries and the sanctity of consent.

 While my wife was an intense “don’t fuck with my peace”, boundary setting, powerful divine feminine energy. And we still experienced the natural tidal wave of coming together, experiencing bliss, then having our world rocked when the veil of our best selves lifted, we saw through our masks, and had to navigate my shadow masculine & her wounded dark feminine coming out. We discovered that some of our greatest wounds opposed, mirrored, and even triggered each other. 

This isn’t just something within spiritual language and twin flame concepts of the masculine and feminine, it’s also grounded in psychology. Gabor Mate once said that we choose the person whose wounds reflect our own, because if we can heal together, they’re the person who will love the parts of us we thought were un-lovable. 

I’ve come to find though, healing isn’t always a linear straight line as we work to become the true selves our souls are drawn to. It’s a spiral which constantly has us revisit old ways of thinking and being. I had 2 things happen last month that really felt like full circle spiral moments. Maybe you'll see yourself on either side of them.

What unfolded wasn’t an intentional ritual. It wasn’t spiritual fireworks through holistic practices. It was something much harder and yet, much holier: choosing presence over old patterns.

 As you read, I encourage you to think, What is your relationship with impulsive lust? 

And what do non negotiable things mean to you in the early stages of a relationship versus far into a long term relationship and even marriage? 

First, I’ll share the light example that played out over probably 20 minutes before I got the message loud and clear. 

A moment of presence in the dark

 I was about to go to sleep when my wife giggled, nudged me to show me some silly kink related video on TikTok, which at first I simply also thought was funny. Then out of nowhere, It triggered an old impulse I acted on, before I could stop to think. I leaned in for another kiss before sleep, then another, and found myself trying to seduce her at 2 am, when I was about to go to sleep, just before any of that.

She reminded me she was simply wanting to feel the trust and safety to show me something even slightly sexual or talk about sex innocuously without me taking it as an invitation for more. 

We talked it out, and after I heard her without making it into a needless fight based on deflection or defensiveness, I breathed a sigh of relief and closed my eyes, grateful for the conflict that doesn’t exist when a couple hears each other before it escalates. All the fights that don't need to be arguments in the first place, when a couple, rather - the more masculine partner (although this is especially true for men), hears their partner and says “I hear you, I want you to feel safe to set a simple boundary. I’m sorry, I’ll be more mindful of that next time.” Because the reality is, the world is full of high conflict relationships where the feminine either considers bringing something up 4 times before they do, or not at all, because they’re so used to expressing a concern and being met with defensiveness and gaslighting, escalating into conflict over things that could’ve been a simple conversation. 

After I fell asleep, I woke up an hour later to her rolling over to snuggle in and lay on me for a while, falling back asleep with her head on my chest.

The next morning I got up happily, without feeling the old pattern of beating myself up, feeling down, or day-after-a-fight tension, because a little moment of impulsiveness driven by old conditioning led to her feeling heard, then leaning in for a snuggle, instead of an argument and a fight.

I got up, left her in bed, took the baby & the dogs for a walk, came home, and enjoyed a wonderful day with my beloved and my family, with the events of the night before simply being a reflection of growth, rather than something that bled into the next day. 

The irony is, I used to boast when we were first together and say: “We don’t fight, we just talk things out.” 

 That was real. When we came together we were respectful, we honored each other's boundaries, heard and listened to each other before an upset or expression of big emotions escalated to a fight. We had a consistent spiritual practice which included deep conversation, moon rituals, heart connecting, breathing together, and other things that simply happened intuitively. That was in the honeymoon phase, when we were giving each other our best selves after years of self work before meeting. It was easy in theory to do physical spiritual practices early in the relationship, though in practical reality, we had barely even begun to feel the tip of life's dick yet! 

The truth, we hadn't scratched the surface of our masks, our shadows and our muck under the surface, or faced the remarkable amount of things we’ve gone through in the first couple years of marriage. From a tough pregnancy leading to health scares and a premature baby, sleepless nights, weeks and months of irritability, me realizing in the throes of her post natal healing and abstinence, that (TW) I’d been conditioned to sex addiction from a young age, and going from a non monogamous open relationship in the beginning - to focusing on monogamy and each other. This was all woven into the alchemical combination of a strong divine feminine - feminist woman, with a man on a path of healing his shadow into sacred masculinity. 

This is all synchronicity, really. My mentor in my shamanic Trolldom practice and I had just spoken about breaking cycles earlier that day. We were talking about inherited generational trauma, karma, hamingja (family legacy and inheritance) and the spirals we move through as we heal. She left me with a simple prompt, watch for the pattern. 

Not a specific event itself, rather, the way a pattern may show up can sneak by us, but the moment where an old self might rise will feel familiar, and you’re given the chance to show up differently when we’re drawn to the familiar ways we’ve always acted. This can be hard when we’re trying to break the habit of being our old selves. 

I didn’t have to wait long.

That night it came knocking, and whispering out dated impulses in my ear. Not in words, but in familiar habits. Impulses that used to run me. Moments I would have called normal, even romantic, without stopping to consider the context, reading my partner’s state, or even my own enough to know if it was appropriate before acting. This time, I didn’t mistake the impulse for normal, I saw the pattern, saw her feeling a lack of safety. I paused, and I softened.

That small moment became the spiritual work. It wasn't eye gazing or breathing together, it was simply healthy communication and the humility to see the test in the spiral the moment was offering us. 

Re defining our values when we’re deep in the trenches of committed relationship

A few weeks later, after one of those days where one argument lead to ego and defensiveness from myself, turning into hours of conflict, we uncovered that we’d been sitting on unspoken resentment since shifting from an open relationship to focusing on each other in a monogamous relationship, shortly after we got married and had our baby girl, who’s the youngest next to the two older kids we each had when we met. 

Imagine distilling 80% of your conflict over two years into one root issue that had become the shadow of miss-trust, resentment, and disconnection.

Although the details of this huge conflict and eventual breakthrough are personal and have no place in my writing, the core element was that I thought it was simply a phase we’d grow out of when our kids were older, and kept saying so out loud, more often than I realized. Where for her, it was finite. Having a child beyond our 2 we had when we got together was not part of the picture when we imagined our kitchen table polyamorous life, and our baby changed that for her. Only she had no idea how to bring that up as a clear boundary and a shifting of her values not as temporary, but definitely, because for me it was something I’d laid out as a “non negotiable” when we met, that open relating is not something I could compromise on. What I did not expect until we were in the moment of a breakthrough was what came through when my body acted before my brain, taking her hands and saying “I can see that was hard for you to bring to me, and how heavy it’s been for you. Here, let me take that from you. That might have been a non negotiable before, but I'm not compromising anything if the choice is a full rich relationship with you, or having you feel the way you do”.  

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking open relating at all. It works for some, and not for others. And it can be one of our values that shifts over a lifetime rather than being a static framework for how to live life. 

This isn't about me, though. I'm simply a vessel for this message, conveyed through experiences. I want to invite you to pause here, and consider what things you've been sitting on in your relationship, that you perhaps haven't had the courage or humility to address to one another and speak out loud. 

The big take away. Non negotiables are great for early dating as part of our vetting process to weed out the people that are really not meant for us. 

Once we’re in a very established long term commitment though, with sacred relationships, marriage and children, values must become negotiables, in order for the relationship to have the flexibility to grow with us over time. 

Even in an established BDSM dynamic where I’m her sacred masculine Dom and she’s my divine feminine sub, there should always be room to re negotiate values, rules and boundaries. It can never be "my way or the highway". 

Since then, the re-ignition of our passion and care for each other has been palpable, and I’m so grateful to her for having the courage to trust in my devotion to her. 

We must remember that being in love and divine union is like swimming in the ocean of source with our beloved, and marriage or whatever established dynamic contract is the boat we think will keep us safe. Most people make the mistake of thinking that either a marriage or BDSM contract, with a ritual followed by a ring or a collar will be a boat that carries them across the ocean safely. When we fall into this trap, we miss the point entirely. 

If we want to build and continue to cultivate over time, a solid foundation of sacred space between us and our partner, the values we base our relationship on can not be set in stone. Rather, flexible and negotiable over time as we evolve and grow with our partners.

Like the spaces between wood framing intended to give the house room to shift and breathe with the weather. Because marriage or an established dynamic will not carry the relationship by itself. To love someone is to love a flower, or a tree, exactly how it is, appreciate how it grows in its own dirt. To pluck the flower or criticize the tree that grows at a weird angle, is to be attached to a certain version of it. People are the same way. We will grow, change shapes, shed our leaves and have some twisted branches in a lifetime with our partner. We will drift into different currents, sometimes not being part of the same wave, or drifting towards a different island. Genuine love is simply choosing to love our beloved anyway, when they change, adjust their values, to meet your life together, respecting and holding space for each other to evolve without holding onto a picture of who our partner used to be, things and elements that used to exist in the relationship, or elements in it that we always thought would be there. 

For me, in all of my ups and downs with my twin flame partner, wife, and sacred submissive, the thing that has built more healthy dominance, trust and desire in us towards each other, and the safety and trust for us both to surrender into our roles, has been about choosing integrity over lust. Facing the mirror in each other, and choosing presence over the pattern of unconscious impulses and old ways of being.

And sometimes it’s scary! 

There will be times when things get tough beneath that surface level bs, times when we ask ourselves if our person is even as compatible as we thought they were, or when we question how someone who sees you so deeply, gets you so soulfully, can also be so frustrating and such a colossal pain in the ass, and that's love! 

Love alone won't carry you though. It's not merely a noun, of a thing that just exists in the universe. It's also an action that's constantly in motion which we have to participate in. There's no boat. We have to surrender to the fact that we're floating in a vast sea together with our partners, swimming and floating together while holding hands like otters do, sometimes saving each other from drowning, and other times giving our partner the space to drift away and find their own current, while they get lost in their own passions knowing full well they might not be the same when they drift back. The true surrender is letting all of that happen within our relationship, and to keep choosing each other instead of trying to hold them close.

It’s also natural if you have an absolute brat who loves to test the limits of her dominant partner’s patience by getting on his last nerve on purpose just to end up with a few spanks later on. But the difference between an unhealthy relationship that struggles with conflict, verbal abuse or control - and a healthy dynamic which may include a little kink or elements of dominance and submission, is the consent, trust, safety, and surrender. And yes, even married people can participate in kink. It's not just for the fringe singles, unmarried or non spiritual people. With big emphasis on trust and surrender, the only reason anyone should want to engage in the surrender into submission of energy & power exchange with an assertive dominant energy partner is that they feel safe, and trust the aura of the healthy sacred masculine who embodies presence over ego. 

If healing, recognizing and doing shadow work is about shining a light on each other’s shadows and making the unconscious conscious, then THIS, is the whole point of the mirror of sacred union. The fire of twin flames that either lights our shadows and brings out our gold beneath the ashes, or burns us up before we make it through the dark nights.

This is What Sacred Relationship Looks like, and is. It is one that transcends normal connections, with a deep spiritual bond where you come to see the divine in each other. 

When I first got into concepts of practicing  sacred sex through a holistic lens, I was jumping to connect with my partners in deep spiritual ways I never had before. And I found it was easy to do in the early part of the relationship before masks were off and shadows were out. To my partners, I was the spiritual guy with a growth mindset who wanted to breathe and meditate together. Then over time after the realness of the long term relationship, a paradox occurred, where my partner was not interested in forcing spiritual practices with a husband who was stuck in the shadows of unconscious cycles and acting out old wounds and patterns that only surfaced after the honeymoon phase was over. 

So this is the thing I’ve come to learn. 

Most people think tantra, sacred relationships, sex magic is about eye-gazing, breathwork, and soul-melting orgasms, or practicing kink filled sexual scenes just for kink’s sake. I learned the real foundation of tantra, seidr, sex magic, healthy surrender into submission, and the very essence of sacred relationship, comes in the moments of struggles with our partners when we stare into the mirror of each other’s shadows and choose consent and safety over lust and domination. Presence over ego. Love and the relationship over being right. And choosing each other where we are now, over what we may have thought or said we wanted earlier on in the relationship. 

It’s not always embodiment practices like breathwork, brow melting meditation, eye gazing, sitting cross legged in a heart to heart yab yum pose, or soul-melting tantric ecstatic orgasms.

Sometimes it is! When we have a foundation of healthy communication, integrity, and trust - holistic embodiment practices are like sex. They're this physical way of connecting even deeper when we already know that our heart is safe with the other person. And other times it's talking about sex without needing it to lead somewhere, or simply having heathy communication at all, where one can express a concern to the other and have it be an opportunity for growth through a simple talking point instead of another battle to fight. The very foundation of sexual energy exchange, is healthy communication on both sides. And working through our gunk as we become mirrors in a relationship. 

It's a LOT of muckiness, healing old karma & hamingja, and getting more to a point of really authentically hearing each other more than ever, and so worth it. 

So let this be a thread to sit with.

When we’re doing deep work, the lessons don’t end after we get them. They come back as tests. As whispers. As old emotions with new masks.

Lean into the uncomfortable patterns. And you’ll become a healthier partner and person for it. Genuinely authentic sacred relationships are built on the foundation of presence, not just doing spiritual practices. 

Sacred relationship isn’t the absence of old patterns, it’s the courage to meet them differently. The real sexual energy exchange and magic isn’t in the ritual. It’s in the moments we pause, soften, choose presence, and choose love.

Don’t curse the Fates when the pattern returns. See it for what it is: another turn of the spiral. A door to opening into the lesson. A chance to embody the new you you’ve worked so hard to become, because each time the spiral returns, we climb it a little higher. And when you do, the spiral always returns - but each time you climb it, we meet life and our beloved with a little more love, a little less muck, and a little less bullshit.

So when the spiral returns, as it always does - sacred relationship is about how we meet it.    Do we fall back into old impulses, resenting our partner and giving in to fear - or do we soften into presence, choosing love over ego?   

Each time we choose differently, the foundation grows stronger.

And here’s the beautiful paradox: the same foundation that holds a marriage or long-term partnership together also holds a collar, a scene, or a Dom/sub dynamic. The real difference isn’t in the ritual or the roles — it’s in the trust, safety, and devotion beneath them.

That’s the heart of Sacred BDSM, which I’ll be opening more in my third piece, after we go on a journey together into folklore and up the mountain of healing ourselves, for as I said earlier in this passage - after we come together and reveal our shadows and wounds to each other, there is a period were we must heal both with our partner and with ourselves, before we can spiral deeper into trust and surrender to our beloved. For now, let this stand as the bones and soil of Sacred relationship: presence, communication, integrity, and the courage to keep choosing each other, again and again. 

ᛖᚷᛏᛒᚨᚹ

May you walk in spirit, keep being a Nurturing Warrior - And Love your Wyrd

Hakin      

This essay is part of my Pillars of my Practice series: A journey through Sacred Relationship, Sacred BDSM, Ancient Sex Magic, and Soul Purpose as I walk my Norse Trolldom path.