Creating intimacy is a lot like building a house. We start with a solid foundation of truth, acceptance, and reality; we lay out the rooms of our desires, fantasies, wants, and needs; we frame the windows to our soul, wire in our emotional connections, add the hardware of values, joy, and sexuality, and join them all together to create a home. The raw materials for our building are drawn from a dialogue about what we want, need, and value about ourselves and our mate.
The dialogue of intimacy, as we’ve seen, is about knowing who we are and what we want from life together and making agreements based on realistic expectations and shared values. So that we can maintain an open and constructive dialogue, it’s helpful to keep some key points in mind:
1. Understand your fears so they don’t come out as blame or criticism. If we are afraid to be close for fear of rejection, or if we feel ashamed about needing anyone, we may use blame and criticism to distance ourselves as a protective measure.
2. Acknowledge what your partner is telling you before you make your point. Letting our partner know that we understand how he or she feels maintains our connection.
3. Discuss what you want and need from each other. Defining our needs helps us know more about how to satisfy them. It is also a way to work through the fear of depending on or needing anyone.
4. Build commonality through conversations about deeply held beliefs. Making connections through common values and concerns helps to build a stronger base.
5. Air complaints on a regular basis. Don’t let them build up too long or they will create resentment and distance.
6. Be in touch with your defensiveness so you can prevent it from disrupting your ability to solve problems. The more we know about how our defenses are working, the better able we are to prevent emotional distance. By being unable to listen and respond to what our partner is trying to tell us, we impede our ability to resolve conflicts.
7. Never assume. People often act on assumptions without ever giving the other person the right to deny them or correct them. Assumptions are often about our own issues that we are projecting onto our partner. Check out your assumptions by asking about them in the form of a question, such as: “When we were talking the other night about my past, it felt like you were being critical of me, even though you didn’t say it directly. Did you mean to be critical?”
8. Treat your partner with respect. Be civil and listen with an open mind.
One of the most important things we can do to develop intimacy is to learn how to listen well to what our partner is trying to tell us. If intimacy is like a house, we might say that listening is the door by which we enter. And active listening is more than hearing what our mate has to say; it’s letting him or her know that we have heard and giving feedback that validates what’s been said. Let’s say our mate wants to talk about a bad day at work. We can listen actively using simple responses: nodding, saying “Yes” or “Uh-huh,” or actually repeating back what we have heard (“It sounds like your boss said some harsh things in that meeting”).
Intimacy stimulates an entire range of feelings and moods. In healthy relationships, Often feelings may fluctuate from being in love to feeling annoyance or anger to not feeling much of anything. Life stresses such as work pressures, health issues, family crises, and difficulties with friends affect our mood states, evoking emotional responses. If we are to live in harmony with our partner, we need to be aware of how our fluctuating feelings affect our ability to love.
Comments