Intimate Getaways Part I: Risks & Rewards

But I really want to be a stand for couples who have resources, using those resources to deepen their love. And this is one of the risky, high stakes, high reward ways to do that.

Hi, welcome to Sex Love Power. I'm your host, Michelle Lisenberry Christensen. This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love and sex that help powerful women and those who love them to create the intimacy and intensity they.

Really want in bed and in life. Together, we navigate the tensions between our.

Desire and our devotions, between our wildness and our security with our eyes wide open. This podcast is designed to help you create more closeness, ease, pleasure and justice in your relationship. And we do it by blending wisdom from the fields of sexuality and spirituality, trauma and self regulation, and intersectional feminism. I'm so glad you're here.

All right, I want to talk about intimate getaways, and this is kind of ridiculous right now. It's 4:36am and I'm here in Seattle. We got home Saturday night from our latest adventure to Croatia. So it's really timely for me to share with you why I think it's so important that couples carve out the time to be together, to get a completely different environment and to have some novelty and adventure. And so I'm going to share with you over two episodes what we've done. In this episode, we're going to talk about what we've done and when we did it and why and how we make it work and what it does for us, and kind of an overview of what it takes. And then in the next episode, I'm going to share with you the nuts and bolts, the steps that it takes to prepare for this kind of adventure, what it takes for us, what it might take for you, the kinds of resources that go into it, how I manage all of my mental resources and how Kurt and I manage the money and time and energy, how we get set up, some of the things that we've learned, most recently about setting up and setting out on the trip, and some things about re entry and recovery that I think are really applicable for people, no matter what you're doing, whether you're traveling as a whole family or just the couple or really engaging in anything out of the ordinary. I think in our culture at large, re entry is under emphasized and under recognized, and so it can really bite us in the ass. So that's what we're doing over the next couple episodes. So let's jump right in right now with what I'm talking about when I say intimate getaways. It's been a value of ours for, well, since long before we could do it. You know, we had little bitty kids. And when your kids are little bitty, Kurt and I felt that we didn't want them to have that uprooting of their security to even stay with other beloved family members for more than a night or two. But short trips we've taken since, probably the first one was when Cooper was about two and a half. My sister supported us to go away to the San Juan Islands. And then another time we went to a work thing for Kurt in Portland just overnight.

And my sister and brother in law.

Made this amazing video of Cooper, a man about town. He's like 2 and just running around.

Baking bread with them.

And I think he made great memories. And so did we. So part of this is I want to encourage you to take some things that feel kind of risky, that might feel scary, or push your buttons, and it might be different for one of you than it is for the other one in terms of leaving kids that, you know, you might still be breastfeeding even, or who might not be sleeping through the night. And it feels like a lot. But it has been really important and valuable for us and I don't think scarring for our children. So we don't get that message that often. And so that's why I want to be a stand for. Yeah, get away when you can. And of course follow your intuition if your kids are okay with that and if they're really, really not, they then don't. But I also remember a girls trip that there were seven of us, I think, wonderful friends from college and two of us were still breastfeeding and had.

To pump and it was definitely still worth it and great for our kids. These are, those were older nurselings, you know, like over the age of two, I think. But they were still, you know, kind of feeding at night and they did all right.

So the bigger trips, I want to draw a distinction between weekends away girlfriend getaways, you know, overnight with your partner at a hotel and the odysseys that we've gone on. I mean, I guess an odyssey to me is more like three months or something, but taking a week or 10 days or we just took 12 days, which was perfect. And I'll talk more about why next week because it takes more than 12 days to do a really good 12 day trip. So I'm talking about a bigger getaway with your partner. And for us, that has really meant finding the time to be able to get onto a different continent. And Change languages and change scenery entirely. So here's our track record. It took us a number of years of parenting before we started doing this again, but my parents kind of kicked it off. And I have to say, all of this, this entire conversation, is born out of privilege. And I don't mean to be completely blind to the fact that not everyone has the resources to do what we've done. When I point to these possibilities, I'm inviting people who do have money, family support and work flexibility that allows you, would theoretically allow you to do this. I want to nudge you in the direction of doing it, and I don't want you to feel badly that not everybody can do that. And I don't think it would help me if I felt badly that not everyone can do it. When we claim our full aliveness, we have more available to share with others and more capacity to look beyond the end of our nose. You are not more self absorbed for taking a trip to Europe than you would be if you stayed home with your nose to the grindstone. I argue that I am less self absorbed, less inured to, for instance, right now, the pain in my heart and in the world over what's happening in Afghanistan at the time of this recording. So I'm more available to be aware of and to feel what's happening for other people and to do something about it when my tank is full. And what fills my tank, personally in a way that nothing else does, is new horizons and new ocean waves laughing at my ankles. Beaches, beach time and sunshine are a big, big deal for me. So the first time Kurt and I left the kids for I think five days was, I'm not going to get the year right. But about five or six years ago, Facebook always reminds me they sent us on a bear safari.

My mom was like, we bought this.

Thing at an auction and we think.

You and Kurt would love it. So go and we'll keep the kids.

So we flew to Anchorage and my parents kept the kids and Kurt and I went out to a little island off Kodiak island in a bay called Yuyak Bay and watched bears for a week and there were eagles and we were just out there in the wilderness and it was amazing. And of course it was a little bit roughing it. So it wasn't posh and it wasn't super sexy, but it gave us a lot of time together and it gave us a lot of wilderness time. And I had this experience of coming to identify more with what was over there on the other end of my gaze than what was over here with the looking. I knew myself as that place, that water, that sky, that forest, those rocks, those animals. Remembering it now brings it back. Having that much time out as any of you who have backpacked or spent multiple days all out of doors in the wilderness have experienced, there's something that shifts inside our systems. So that's a really great kind of adventure to go on. The next thing that we did was In April of 2017, we flew into Paris and out of Amsterdam. So Kurt and I had our first little European adventure in, like, 20 years together and just saw those cities and relaxed and we had, you know, maybe eight nights, and we just picked two destinations. We kept it pretty simple because when you're trying to relax together, going at a breakneck pace, touring is not consonant with that intention. And the next year, we went to Granada and Tangier in the south of Spain. We went to Granada and then we crossed the. Oh, my gosh, it's 4:30 in the.

Morning, the sea there, and went over to Morocco just for a couple of nights.

And I would love to spend more time in Morocco, but we just again, kept it simple and got to the closest point in Morocco and then flew back from Tangier to again, the city's escaping me in Spain.

And then flew home.

Then the following spring break. So these are all spring breaks. And my parents took the kids each of these times. The following year, we took the kids and went to Tokyo, the four of us. And that was a wonderful adventure, too. We just went to two cities in Japan again, tried to keep it simple, but definitely did a lot of sightseeing and things keyed to the kids.

On that trip.

We did take one day and get a sitter. So through an agency there in Japan, we got somebody who was vetted and experienced and was wonderful. And the kids had one of their favorite vacation days without us. We. They actually repeated something we had done together. Went up to this bamboo forest where there were monkeys and had their own adventure. And then Kurt and I could go somewhere they didn't want to go, just to a hot spring where people were naked all together. And that sort of scandalized our children.

And we got to go on a big hike that they wouldn't have been.

Up for as well. So there's a way that inside a family trip, you can also make space. And before I had kids, I would have thought, like, why on a vacation with your family, would you want time away from your kids? What kind of horrible parent are you? And now I see that the kids don't Actually miss you. And as a couple, replenishing in that way is really vital and makes us more present for our kids when we get back. So the next thing we would have done would have been in April 2020, we had a trip planned to Thailand with the whole family. And that trip got sidetracked entirely by the worldwide pandemic. So we still would like to go to Thailand with the family.

We still have airline credits, and we'll.

Be rescheduling that one for sometime in the next couple years then. Kurt and I have had an amazing summer this year because my mom came down, my sister has a farm now in eastern Washington, and my mom came down and did cousin camp with my kids and several of my nieces. And so we had occasion to go for a couple of days to Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho with our new boat and just relax.

Waterfront. It wasn't an ocean, but it was delightful and really up Kurt's alley to.

Be able to go fishing every day and just be out there in the.

Northwest wilderness from the base of a very comfortable cabin.

So we did that in July. And then, you know, abundance of abundance.

I've had to work through a lot of, like, really, do I get to have this about this?

But we went to Croatia and spent one night in London on our way back to visit clients of mine and friends in London. So that trip is our most recent adventure and it was absolutely amazing. I think I would love to have a home in Croatia one day. And the culture, the climate, the geology, the history, the food, you know, I eat in a very specific way, very.

Clean protein, grilled vegetables, salad.

And that was always available. Every restaurant could accommodate that just about. And so it was very simple. I prepared a lot of my food anyway, but it's very simple for me to be able to go out to dinner with Kurt. And then of course, he loved that.

There was also great bakeries and gelato stands and that sort of thing too.

But we have had a wonderful time in Croatia. So what it does for us to go out and have these adventures, it relaxes and it recharges both of us. We take the time to read, to nap and catch up on our rest and to think bigger. You know, our thinking just expands when we don't have day to day responsibilities. And let's face it, if you take your kids with you on a trip, you still have responsibilities. If you don't, we really didn't have responsibilities.

There was nothing we had to do.

The other thing that it does is it takes us to New horizons. We get new input, new stimuli. We went out to this cave that has been inhabited on and off since before the last big warmup post ice age. So when the entire Adriatic Sea was just a valley and the shore was way down at the tip of Italy, and there was no water between Croatia and Italy, they were both just mountains. And the perspectives that we got from listening to the history and what they've found in this cave just completely shifted our view of the arc of the story of humanity. You know, really let us, in a very visceral way, raise our sights about who we are and our place in this universe. It was just phenomenal. The other thing that it does for us as we remember why we fell in love, you know, turns out the grumpy Tuesday morning part of us is.

Not as lovable, as chill to be with, as the part of us that has been on vacation for five days and is out on a ferry with the wind blowing through our hair.

You know, part of the reason that you fell in love with each other is you were young and relaxed and you were in courting mode, and you can get back there, but you've got.

To drop some of what's on your mind in the everyday world.

So being able to do this once a year really helps us keep our finger on the pulse of how cool we are. Both really, like, we can fall in love with ourselves again as well as each other and remember how playful and relaxed we are. We were driving on our way to the airport from Split, Croatia, and I was grieving the end of the trip.

But we had a cab driver who.

Had this playlist of live Bee Gees songs, you know, from one concert, who knows when, you know, late 70s, early 80s maybe. And listening to the Bee Gees play.

All these songs I love but don't listen to very often. And dancing in the back of this cab, I was just loving being me. And it felt like the perfect celebration.

Of our trip and cap off and just way to savor it and let it go. And so that's part of the invitation as we take these intimate getaways, is we get a new intimacy with ourselves and just, like, remember our most alive selves. And then finally, it helps us imagine different future possibilities, like where we might live, lifestyles that we might enjoy, you know, what we could do with ourselves after this chapter that we're in right now of really working and parenting in a very intensive way. So it does all of that for us and then for our kids. Now Kurt and I have the privilege of Having parents. Lucky for me, my mom is only 19 years older than me, so we.

Kind of got to grow up together in her twenties.

And then even though I didn't have kids until I was 34 and 38, respectively, with each of our kids, my parents are young enough and vibrant enough, have enough energy and leisure. They just retired a couple years ago, and they're able to take our kids and willing and have the resources to do that. And we're so grateful for that and so happy for them and the kids. So if you have that opportunity, then it gives your kids an intimacy with their grandparents or a different kind of family member that they wouldn't otherwise have. So it's a win for the kids as well. Yes, my kids lost their parents for almost two weeks. And, yeah, they were a little homesick for us and we were missing them. And they're okay. That's a reasonable hardship, if you can even call it that, for kids to go through and is actually enriching in some ways. And they gained a lot of independence. My daughter colored her hair, which I.

Probably would not have let her do at nine. You know, like Kool Aid or something, in a couple of strips of her hair. My son got to do some manual labor for his grandpa that we don't have around here, and I think we all grew through the experience, so it.

Does a lot for the whole family when mom and dad get away together. In the next episode, I will go into some of the different ways that I've coached clients to create this kind of getaway. If they don't have, if their parents are too old or not in the picture or not appropriate to leave kids with, how can you still do this? Because there's lots of different ways. It just may take some creative thinking. So what it takes for us to create this adventure together and what it might take for you. I'll go into more practical details around this in the next episode, but I just want to give this overview before we wrap up today. There are financial costs, of course. Plane tickets to Croatia, accommodations, souvenirs, food, ground transportation, tours, all of the gear that we tend to need to buy before we go. Child care, pet care. There are a number of financial costs, and you can start to plan for those, and I have some great resources for you on that. Then there's your planning, time and energy, what it takes to research where do we want to go and where's the best place to stay, and the time that we have to put into finding the just right Airbnb. I mean, I Hit it out of.

The park with the places that we stayed in Croatia. I'm so thrilled.

And, you know, the places themselves are a big part of the experience for me and a big part of our memories. And the people who hosted us and the new friendships that we've built is just phenomenal. But it takes time and energy to do that planning. And then there's the goodwill that you are asking of other people if you're getting help to go from the neighbors.

Who take care of our cats to.

The family members who are taking care of our children, to the friends that we would have stayed with.

There were Covid issues, but you're kind.

Of cashing in some goodwill, and that's one of the things we have to do. And then I think something that really stops a lot of people from creating these intimate adventures together is that there is an emotional risk for your family. A lot of parents don't even consider getting away. They just. A brick wall goes up when they think about traveling without their kids because they think of emotional risks to their children. Oh, what if something happened and I was on the other side of the world? Or, oh, she's going to miss me so much. Or, you know, they're not ready yet. So it is an emotional risk. It is a learning opportunity. It is a growth opportunity, and your kids may experience some pain momentarily or longer term. My daughter definitely cried a couple nights before we were leaving. She was so sad.

I'm going to miss you.

You know, it was bedtime, she was tired anyway, and she was going to miss us, and I was going to miss her. And. And I actually went into kind of.

A panic, fear, little emotional experience myself.

Just thinking about leaving her and thinking about how much I love them both and how much I appreciate my parents taking them. It was a little much for me.

And I had a little emotional challenge. So those are some of the things that you're opening the door to by.

Making these kinds of plans. And then finally, maybe the biggest one of all is the emotional risk of going away alone together as a couple. Will you actually reconnect more deeply, or will you find that you're just not that into each other? Will you fight more? Will the stresses and the pressures of getting through.

We had a beautiful little fight at Heathrow on our way back. I'm on one side of a thing that reads your passport, and Kurt's on the other side, not having come through yet.

And I'm trying to tell him how.

To do it, and he's like, you're not in Control of this, Michelle. You can't even see what's going on. So I kind of jackassed myself and he kind of had to tell me down.

I.

My feelings hurt. So we had to work that out.

And that will happen, you know, or.

I remember navigating through the subways in Tokyo, the four of us.

There's intensity. And wherever there's intensity, your teamwork may.

Go through some stress.

And some couples are so afraid of that. What will we do with the space to be alone together? What will we do under the pressures of. Of an environment where we don't speak the native language? What will we do in this situation? And what will we learn about ourselves and each other that can be scary. I don't want to downplay it. It's a risk, and nothing ventured, nothing gained. I brought back this beautiful little cat.

Actually, from that cave I told you about.

The caretaker there at the cave was this beautiful woman who in the winters.

On this remote island of Korula, sews.

Little cats and stuffs them with lavender and embroiders. Amazing art on them.

And so one that I have here in my office has little fish and ocean waves embroidered on it. And I could put a picture on social media of this as I share about this episode.

And the other side says, no risk, no story. You know, if you go fishing, you might catch what you thought you were going to catch, or you might just get wet. But if you don't take a risk, there will be no story to tell. So I share all of this, and it feels vulnerable to me. I'm afraid of being judged for what we do. And I hope it's relevant for you. And I'm afraid that it's not a relevant topic for everybody. But I really want to be a stand for couples who have resources, using those resources to deepen their love. And this is one of the risky, high stakes, high reward ways to do that. It's one of the things that has made the biggest difference in my intimate relationship. Kurt and I have been married 21 years this summer, and we're so glad that we carve out the time and the space to be alone together every week on our date nights and every year for a week or so. And we're so grateful to be in this chapter where that's working and possible. And, you know, when our kids are teens, they're going to need some serious supervision. Right.

I'm not going to leave them home alone for a week to burn the house down or get themselves in trouble.

It's going to take some real planning and resources and it's worth it. So that's a wrap for this episode. I'm so grateful that you're still listening and I look forward to in the next episode sharing with you the nuts and bolts of how I travel and what I've learned about traveling in a sane way that creates peace and leaves me not needing a vacation from my vacation after the vacation, you know, but able to come home to work and family and life joyful and with a full tank instead of exhausted by the rigors of the travel and the re entry. So we'll talk about resources, we'll talk about managing money while traveling in a foreign currency, we'll talk about setting up well for your trip and we'll talk about reentry. So I will see you then. May this serve your love and your relationship with yourself. May the ideas I've shared today expand your aliveness and may you love love. Because if you love love, love loves you too. I'd love to hear what you're taking away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? My free Conscious Couples Circle is the.

Place to continue our conversation. You can share your experiences, ask questions.

And get more actionable ideas for creating.

The love and sex you deeply desire.

In ways that evolve you both.

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