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Emotional intimacy - The Essential Daily Requirement for the health and longevity of your relationship.

Written by: Malti Bhojwani

Article Overview: “Into-me-you-see” Without intending to stereotype the genders, as soon as I sent out a “survey” and asked people to share their views on intimacy, somehow most of the women sent in their feelings of what Intimacy means to them on an emotional level and most of you guys out there sent me stuff that made me blush.

Emotional intimacy - The Essential Daily Requirement for the health and longevity of your relationship.

So what is emotional intimacy?

As a verb "intimate" means "to state or make known".

“Into-me-you-see”

Intimacy requires an ability to be both separate and together participants in an intimate relationship. This is called self-differentiation.

A professional’s definition:

Intimacy means that we can be who we are in a relationship, and allow the other person to do the same.

“Being who we are” requires that we can talk openly about things that are important to us, that we take a clear position on where we stand on important emotional issues, and that we clarify the limits of what is acceptable and tolerable to us in a relationship.

“Allowing the other person to do the same” means that we can stay emotionally connected to that person who thinks, feels, and believes differently, without needing to change, convince, or fix the other.

Intimacy is not the same as intensity, although we are a culture that confuses these two words. Intense feelings — no matter how positive — are hardly a measure of true and enduring closeness.

In fact, intense feelings may block us from taking a careful and objective look at the dance we are doing with significant people in our lives – Harriet Lerner PH.D, Psychologist and Psychiatrist, author of “The Dance of Intimacy”

What is not as easy as it sounds is, navigating the delicate balance between separateness and connectedness. It is an art that we all need to cultivate if we want to remain intimate with our partners.

If you use the analogy of “dancing” when you start to change your steps and your moves, and your partner picks up your nuances, and starts to dance with you, that is making responsible and lasting changes that enhance your capacity for genuine closeness over the long haul. It is not about changing the other person, which is not possible; it is though about changing yourself. What you are willing to accept in the other person and how autonomous you are willing to be in the relationship.

Often, we fear being independent at the risk of losing the other. We have to have faith that the relationship is serving them as much as it is serving us. Human beings are self-preserving, we automatically choose the option and path that leads to an easier way to preserve a way of life that works. The fear of losing the partner is often mutual. And when there is love, our need for each other is usually mutual. So, have faith in the love.

Are you still in love with your partner?

Have you stopped talking and sharing your days with each other? Has silence crept in?

Have you stopped touching and feeling each other with genuine desire. Is the passion alive?

Do you kiss passionately like you once or is it now replaced with occasional pecks?

Are you listening to each other?

Are your own responsibilities greater than your partner’s responsibilities?

As a result, is one of you left feeling unappreciated?

Have you stopped eating together? Or do you eat in front of the TV?

Do you find yourself calling your partner names to them and complaining about them behind their backs?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, your relationship is lacking intimacy.

Relationships quickly deteriorate into a boring, cold, and lonely existence for one or both mates when the couple loses emotional intimacy in the relationship.

The relationship can grow silent, angry, or resentful. This is where extramarital affairs can begin or when divorces occur. When emotional connectedness, also known as emotional intimacy, deteriorates the consequences are detrimental on the relationship.

Maybe you have heard a close friend or family member confess…I feel all alone in my relationship. What this person is saying is I am hurting, I feel lonely, I feel depressed, I feel angry, I feel resentment toward my spouse. I feel insignificant and unloved.

You have the ability to rediscover the desire and passion for each other that was once burning if you take the first step to make a difference. However, you cannot work on the emotional intimacy for a day and expect lasting change, you must work each and everyday from this day forward. You must feed your relationship every day so it does not starve.

Why remain in a loveless or sexless relationship, when a few changes, can save your relationship and renew desire for each other.

I am going to share with you a magical secret. Something you wish you knew long ago. Something that I usually only share with my clients if they specifically showed a need for it.

It is so simple and many of you guys out there would be wishing you had this sort of “cheat sheet” on all the girls you ever went out with – it would have guaranteed you more “action” on your dates. ☺

So here they are,

Love Strategies

Think of a time you felt truly and completely like you were being loved.

Was it something you heard, saw or felt?

A couple, John and Jane went in to see a hypnotist for some marriage counseling.

They were feeling like they had lost the magic in their relationship and they were a couple that were once “madly in love” with each other.

So the Hypnotist asked John first to think of a time when he felt like he was truly and completely being loved.

“Think of a time, perhaps in your childhood”

Was it something you heard being said to you? A touch? A gesture?”

John answered that he felt loved when –

1. He heard the words, “I love you John” He loved hearing his own name being uttered out loud.

2. He also felt loved when he was cooked for, when he knew that the woman he adored, cared enough to go to the shops, buy ingredients, chop, marinate and spend time and effort in the kitchen for the sheer pleasure of satisfying his palate.

3. When someone ran their hands through his scalp, his hair. Almost scratching with nails, through the top of his head, the neck, the sides of his head, he felt cared for, nurtured, loved…adored.

Jane was asked the same question and she said that she felt truly loved when -

1. She heard the words “you are so beautiful, Jane” whispered in her ear. Her name being said to her made her feel loved.

2. When she was given thoughtful gifts, flowers or chocolate, basically when someone spent their precious time and money on her. She wanted to know that they were willing to give up something precious to make her feel good.

3. When she was held firmly around her waist and kissed on her neck. Especially from behind her. Her waist is a pressure point that made her feel sexy, feminine, beautiful and desirable. She felt like she could lose herself in wild abandon and relish in the sensations of pleasure and hedonistic satisfaction when held that way.

When either of them felt, saw or heard these things, they were like “buttons” being pushed which made them feel loved. When they first met, as most new loves, both were randomly doing everything for the other as you do in the early stages of a relationship.

So, by default, they happened to press the right buttons as well, unknowingly, of course, like a child pressing all the floors in the elevator and hitting the right floor in the process.

So, by “mistake” John was holding Jane’s waist facing her, from behind her, he was holding her hip too and her shoulder too, but he got the waist sometimes, just like even a broken clock gets the time right twice a day!

Jane too was hitting the spots when she ran her hands through John’s scalp and his back and arms as well, she too like the clock, got it right a few times a day.

The thing though is that after a relationship gets over the honeymoon stage, we humans tend to become comfortable and then we relax and revert to either not pressing buttons, or maybe pressing our own “buttons” on our partners.

So what was happening in John and Jane’s case is that, of late, John was saying, “I love you” to Jane and he even cooked for them some nights. And Jane would hold John around the waist and buy him stuff. Both of them were “missing the spot”

Think about having an itch on your back and having your hands tied up holding a heavy box in front of you, and you ask your partner to scratch it for you and they just can’t seem to scratch the itch, missing it by centimeters all the time! Very very frustrating!!!!

They had both reverted to their own “love strategies” and unfortunately this left the other feeling totally unfulfilled, lonely and unloved.

If you knew how easy and almost effortless it would be to make the person you love feel good, wouldn’t you just do it? Especially when you were aware of the god feelings it would invoke in the other and therefore infuse back to you?

It sounds so easy and almost mechanical, but it is so effective and not doing it is so detrimental to the relationship.

So if you were to take one thing away from this article, find out what your partner’s love strategies are.

Tip for the wives out there that some of us were given a few years ago by a workshop trainer:

Treat your man as if he were a tree. You and your children, sit under the tree in its shade. Nurture the tree, and it will grow, give the tree space to spread its branches and ground its roots, and it will bear sweet, luscious fruit and a thick and protective shade the fruits will fall for our children and us and we get to bask in the love and security of the shade.

Nurture the tree!

And guys, find all our buttons and press them often. Make us feel that you are thinking of us all the time, even if you are not. Schedule little surprises for us to let us know we are the centre of your world.

Why? Because, if you give a woman a little, she will shower you with love and affection like you never knew she was capable of.

Another wise man I know held out a bunch of pens and pencils to me and asked me to take one. I did and then he handed me the whole bunch telling me that in his years of experience with women and couples, he knew without a doubt that, if a man gave a woman a single gesture of love, she will reciprocate by giving him her all.

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Home > Work-Life > Malti Bhojwani > Emotional intimacy The Essential Daily Requirement for the health and longevity of your relationship

Article Tags: analogy, closeness, dance of intimacy, delicate balance, differentiation, emotional intimacy, emotional issues, harriet lerner, intense feelings, intensity, intimate relationship, long haul, nuances, objective look, participants, psychiatrist, psychologist, rsquo, span style, style font

About the Author: Malti Bhojwani RSS for Malti's articles - Visit Malti's website Malti Bhojwani, 38 is a Sydney mum, trained life coach and in NLP. She possesses a great sense of humour with which she touches lives across the world. Seeing someone take responsibility for their life by declaring what they want and then working towards it, is what she thrives on. Malti coaches using powerful techniques to help discover strategies and create new ones much after they complete coaching with her. Join her facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Multi-Coaching-International-Life-Coach-By-Phone/66609363618 and follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MaltiBhojwani Click here to visit Malti's website More from Malti Bhojwani TrustFaith vs FearDoubt TRUST YOUR PARTNER IMPLICITLY OR dont be in the relationship When you FEEL good not just think positive you attract more good stuff into your life Emotional intimacy The Essential Daily Requirement for the health and longevity of your relationship DO YOU NEED A RELATIONSHIP TO BE HAPPY

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