Intimacy | Relationships
Intimacy, What Is It?
Intimacy is a process not a thing. It takes place over time and is not stagnant. In fact, any kind of stagnation in a relationship kills intimacy. Intimacy can also take many forms. One form of intimacy is cognitive or intellectual intimacy where two people exchange thoughts, share ideas and enjoy similarities and differences between their opinions. If they can do this in an open and comfortable way, then can become quite intimate in an intellectual area. A second form of intimacy is experiential intimacy or intimacy activity. Examples of this would be where people get together to actively involve themselves with each other, probably saying very little to each other, not sharing any thoughts or many feelings, but being involved in mutual activities with one another. Imagine observing two house painters whose brush strokes seemed to be playing out a duet on the side of the house. They may be shocked to think that they were engaged in an intimate activity with each other, however from an experiential point of view, they would be very intimately involved. A third form of intimacy is emotional intimacy where two persons can comfortably share their feelings with each other or when they empathize with the feelings of the other person, really try to understand and try to be aware of the other persons emotional side. A fourth form of intimacy is sexual intimacy. This is the stereotypical definition of intimacy that most people are familiar with. However, a this form of intimacy includes a broad range of sensuous activity and is much more than just sexual intercourse. Its any form of sensual expression with each other. Therefore, intimacy can be many things for different people at different times.
How to Develop Intimate Relationships
Awareness be aware of yourself and start where you are and not try to start some other place. Start with the form of intimacy where you feel most comfort. If a particular form of intimacy is difficult for you, whether thats intellectual, experiential, emotional, or sexual, thats not the place for you to try to start to develop an intimate relationship with another person. If youre more comfortable with intellectual intimacy, start by sharing thoughts, talking with another person about their opinions and ideas. Once comfortable in an intimate relationship on that basis, then other intimate areas can be approached and developed.
Knowledge every intimate relationship does not have to include all the different aspects or types of intimacy thats been mentioned. Many compatible and satisfying intimate relationships can exist in any one of the four areas or any combination of those areas.
Reading Resources the following books are suggested for people wanting to develop their potential for intimate relating:
- The Art of Loving
There are times in all relationships when things don't run smoothly. Often, these is because people have conflicting expectations, are distracted with other issues, or have difficulty expressing what is on their minds in ways that other people can really hear and understand what is being said. Sometimes they just don't know what to do to make a good relationship. The following material is about ways of enhancing relationships and working with common problems.
Emotional Support
Let's begin with emotional support vs. emotional demands. Emotional support for each other is critical. This means giving your partner a feeling of being backed, supported; you're behind him or her no matter what. This does not necessarily mean agreeing with one another all the time. Realistically, no two people will agree on all occasions. What it does mean is treating your partner in a way that says, "I love you and trust you, and I'm with you through anything." Emotional demands can damage the relationship. Insisting that your partner spend all of his or her time with you, insisting that they give up their friends or that you both hang around only your friends, insisting that you give approval of the clothes they wear, making sure that you make all the decisions about how you spend you time together and where you go when you go out, making them feel guilty when they spend time with their families, making sure you win all the arguments, always insisting that your feelings are the most important... each of these is an emotional demand, and has potential for damaging the relationship.
Emotional support involves accepting your partner's differences and not insisting that they meet your needs only in the precise way the you want them met. An example might be when want your partner to show love for you by spending free time with you, sharing and being open, paying attention to your concerns and needs. Of course these are important activities, but your partner may often show his or her love by doing things, like sharing home responsibilities, bringing you gifts occasionally, discussing the day's events or books and movies you've shared. Find out how your partner chooses to show his or her love for you and don't set criteria which mean that your partner must always behave differently before you're satisfied. Remember, too, that the words "I love you. I like being in a relationship with you. You're important to me." are not demands and need to be said occasionally in any relationship.
Time Spent Together and Apart
Time spent apart and time spent together is another common relationship concern. You may enjoy time together with your partner and your partner may want some time together with you, but you also may enjoy time alone, or with other friends. If this gets interpreted as, "my partner doesn't care for me as much as I care need" or "I resent the time my partner spends alone because they don't want to spend it with me and they must not really love me," you may be headed for a disastrous result by jumping to a premature conclusion. Check out with your partner what time alone means and share your feelings about what you need from the relationship in terms of time together. Perhaps you can reach a compromise where you get more time together but leave your partner the freedom to be alone or with others times when it is needed, without your feeling rejected or neglected or thinking of your partner as selfish, inconsiderate, or non-caring. Demanding what you want, regardless of your partner's needs, usually ends up driving your partner away.
Your Partner's Family
For some people, dealing with their partner's family is difficult. You may wonder how you can have a good relationship with them, or if you want to. Let's assume at the very beginning that most parents are concerned about their children. They do want to stay in contact with their children. They do want to see them, visit them and have continuing contact with them. However, a problem sometimes arises when these parents forget that their children are separate individuals and that they now have separate lives and that they must make their own decisions. Some family members volunteer a lot of uninvited advice or try to tell you and your partner how to run your lives. One way of handling this is to listen respectfully, let them know that you care about what they think and what they would do, but not make any promises to follow their advice. Just simply listen because they have a need to say it. If they attempt to pressure you into agreeing with them, you must be firm in saying, "I respect your views and ideas. Thanks for letting us know how you might deal with it. We'll think about that when we make our decision." You might need to say this a number of times before the family members finally get the message that you're going to make your own decisions even after hearing their advice. It will also be important that you and your partner be in agreement that you will deal with unsolicited advice in this way so you can support one another in the face of what could be some very intense "suggestions."
Friends
There are some people who seem to believe that "If I'm in a relationship. I have to give up all my personal friends unless my partner likes them as well as I do." Giving up your personal friends should not be a requirement of being in a relationship. Neither should it be assumed that your partner will like your personal friends as much as you do, so insisting that your friends should be their friends might not be reasonable. Just as with other areas in a relationship, who you and your partner spend time with together can be negotiated. You might ask, for instance: "Which of my friends do you enjoy seeing and which would you rather I see alone or at other times when I'm not with you?" There is certainly no reason to inflict upon your partner a friend who she or he does not enjoy.
You can see those friends somewhere else or you can see them at home at a time when your partner is out doing something else. You do not have to give up your friends who mean a great deal to you. Being forced into giving up friends usually leads to resentment. It's important to talk with your partner about friendships with others, to negotiate them and to recognize that each of you need to continue your friendships even when you are intimately involved with one another.
Money Matters
How do you and your partner make decisions about handling money? Are decisions made individually or mutually? How are the priorities set about how money is to be earned? Spent? Who pays the bills? How much money goes into savings and for what purposes? How are "big ticket" (tuition, childcare, rent, car payments) items decided on? Does each member of the partnership control her or his own money or is it pooled? Is each partner expected to add to the mutual income? If only one is to work, how is it decided who it will be? If you find that you and your partner have differing expectations, it makes sense that you will have to make time to talk about them after stating your feelings, wishes, and desires and listening carefully to those of your partner. Decisions that might be easy to make when you're making them only for yourself might be more difficult when they involve someone else and the best solutions might not be those you think of just on your own. Discussion and cooperation may not provide any magic solutions to difficult financial problems, but knowing you and your partner agree about how to approach the situation will relieve at least some of the stress.
Coping with Changing Expectations in the Relationship
Relationships change over time. This is neither a good nor a bad thing, but it is a fact. What you want from a relationship in the dating stages might be quite different from what you want after you have been together a number of years. Changes in other areas of your life, outside your relationship, will have an impact on what you want and need from the relationship. You need to be sure you and your partner make time to discuss your expectations and negotiate responsibilities. The most important thing is that you need to do a great deal of careful, respectful listening to what each wants, and a lot of careful, clear communication about what each of you wants. Change of any sort tends to be at least a little stressful, yet because it is inevitable, welcoming change as an opportunity to enhance the relationship is more fruitful than trying to keep change from happening. Planning for changes together can lead the relationship into new and exciting places.
The word "open" is really used a lot. Many of us first heard it when we were very small and someone was hovering over us with a spoonful of strained food in their hand and urging us to open up wider. You've probably heard "open up" in many ways too, over the years. Open your hearts, open your minds. Its used in many, many ways. Probably most people would like to be more open than they are right now. We know it feels good to share with others. Its really a nice feeling to get things off our chest, to get them out in the open. We sometimes use our friends and families for this purpose. If feels good to talk to somebody about things were concerned about. Its good to be able to trust somebody.
What do we really mean by becoming open? Well, trying to talk about yourself in such a way that something of the inner person, that is you, is communicated to others might be one way of being open or at least thinking about being open. That inner person is a complex person who has a variety of thoughts and also feelings. So, wanting to share with other people these inner feelings and these inner thoughts is one way of becoming open. Being open is a kind of invitation to others. What you share about yourself should encourage others to come in, so to speak and make contact with you. To involve themselves with you. Being open is difficult. It makes us feel vulnerable, psychologically naked and usually anxious. But it also is important in terms of really letting others get to understand how we think, how we feel and what we believe. We often hide our inner thoughts and feelings because were concerned how well excepted theyll be by other people. But we also shut out other people from knowing and accepting us by not being open. We also are really saying we dont fully accept ourselves if we wont be open with others. Were denying ourselves that chance to speak out, to declare our inner thoughts and feelings.
Its up to you to decide just how youre going to talk about yourself and what youre going to say. Telling somebody where you bought those new pair of shoes might be one way of being open. However, it might be more meaningful to share why clothes are important to you. What is it about those pair of shoes that is important to you? Another example might be saying that school or work is terrible, its horrendous. Well, maybe its more important to share why youre saying that about school or work. Thats at a little deeper level. There are probably more risks attached to sharing that. Probably most important is an immediate here and now honesty that goes along with being open.
Keep in mind also that being completely open with everyone in every situation may be very inappropriate. You may want to be more open with your spouse or close friends, but not with your boss or people you dont know as well. You may choose not to be open with people you dont fully trust, because to be open is to share vulnerable information about yourself. And if you dont fully trust how someone else will use that information about you, you may choose not to share it. Also, some people may be very uncomfortable with too much openness and you may not want to be as open with them.
Openness is making your outer world as similar to your inner world as possible. When youre feeling jealous, happy, anxious or sad why not share with other people what youre really feeling, that is jealous, happy, anxious or sad. We call this being congruent. That is letting what shows, your expression, frown, words represent what you actually feel and think. That takes hard work and a lot of honesty. A caution about being open is that sometimes we can be too open. In the name of being open we say everything we feel or think to others. But fail to be sensitive to others feelings about our openness. We may make them feel very uncomfortable or say something that hurts them. Being open also carries a responsibility with it and that is to be aware of others reactions to us and to respect their reactions. This may mean not disclosing everything with some people out of respect for their feelings.
Becoming open also means becoming open to what others are saying and sharing about themselves. Learning to be a good listener. An example is someone talking about doing badly on a test. Try to be open to what that person is sharing about their feelings. Be sensitive to their feelings. Understand its importance to them and their trusting you with this feeling or their this thought. Trust will be very important for you also in what youre willing to be open about. By building mutual trust you and your listener will share a great deal more, so be sensitive to others and try to be open and receptive to what their sharing with you. By being sensitive to others youll avoid making three common errors. You will not share your feelings or thoughts too quickly and thereby push your listener away. You will not bore your audience and you will not have someone listen to you too long, without giving them hints about the kind of listener you want them to be.
Barriers to Developing and Maintaining Intimate Relationships:
Communication one barrier is when a person enters a relationship with some mistaken notions about just what intimacy is, or misjudges the needs or the thoughts of the other person in the relationship. Communication or the lack of communication would be one of the main barriers to the foundation of an intimate relationship.
Time intimacy takes time to develop and a person who is not willing to allow for time for an intimate relationship to occur will not be able to develop that kind of relationship.
Awareness it is necessary for a person to be aware of him or herself and to realize what she/he has to share with another person. People who are not aware of themselves frequently are not able to be aware of other people, at least not in terms of the potentially intimate aspects of the other person.
Shyness reluctance to share oneself with another person can keep an intimate relationship from developing.
Game Playing people who act in stereotypical roles or try to play certain kinds of games, even if theyre intimate-appearing games (such as romantic games) cannot develop an intimate relationship with someone else simply because they are not being themselves. Game playing can be a detriment to the development of intimacy and can develop only when two people are being himself or herself in a significant way with another person.
Here are five ways for you to be more open:
First, you might make your outside behavior the same or congruent with you inside feelings and thoughts. Remember we were talking about that.
Second, focus on feelings. Its usually easier to share opinions or thoughts about something. Everybody has an opinion. Its harder to share feelings. Be in touch with how you feel. Share openly the feelings as much as you can. Some feelings cover or come from other feelings. Anger may come from hurt. We might find it easier to show the anger. However, if we work really hard and try to understand the hurt, if we share the hurt and are open about the hurt we are actually being more open at a deeper level.
Third, try to change your questions into statements. We sometimes have an attitude or feeling about something and were afraid to share it, were afraid to be open. Instead we ask a question. We might say for instance, "do you love me?", when instead we want to say I love you. Change your questions into statements you can make about yourself.
Fourth, try to make your communication in the first person. Begin with sentences with I instead of you. You might say, " I feel happy that youre here," instead of asking, "Are you glad that youre here?" Begin your sentences as often as possible with I. Finally, try not to say, "I dont know." This generally means I dont want to think about it anymore. Youre probably getting to a level of being open that makes you anxious. Decide what it is and whether you can really trust it with the other person or persons.
Fifth, some ways of being open are more helpful than others. When youre angry for instance theres a difference between throwing a book across the room and talking out your feelings. Both are certainly ways of being open about the anger. However, if other people are with you, talking to them about your anger is probably easier for them than ducking from a book you just threw. It might also be more helpful. Remember also, that the extent to which others are open with you will depend on how open you are with them. Many people find that most of the relationships that they're involved in become much more important to them the more they to be more open in them. When we stay open to learning, new experiences open up for us. Perhaps the same can happen for you.