The Web address of this
two-page article is http://sfhelp.org/08/intiimacy.htm
Continued...
Intimacy and Your Gender
Even if Jerry and Sharon’s true Selves were
solidly in
charge and they were fluent in the seven problem-solving skills,
this typical
couple might have a
(values) conflict: Sharon might have a higher need
for intimacy than Jerry. If they...
-
acknowledge that without blame, and...
-
genuinely respected each other as equally-worthy persons,
the couple could focus their mutually-respectful attitudes and skills
on finding a workable compromise - like agreeing to disagree on their
priority-clash for the sake of
overall re/marital and family harmony.
Books like John Gray's "Men Are From Mars,
Women Are From Venus," Deborah Tannen's "You Just Don't Understand," and
many talk shows and pundits agree. Part of our "battle of the sexes" is the
different rankings typical males and females inherently give to intimacy and
other things. With exceptions, typical male brains seem to need
more physical intimacy (intercourse) more often, while standard female brains rank
intercourse lower than sharing emotional and
bonding, caressing,
closeness, empathy, caring, and companionship.
Anne Moir and David Jessel's
well researched book "Brain Sex
- the Real Difference Between Men and Women" offers a clear explanation for
why our
exist and persist. It clearly answer's Henry Higgins'
musical plaint "Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?" Our brain structures,
glands, and hormones (often) implacably prevent it, seasoned well by ancestral
and social imprinting.
This wired-in gender-difference in priorities (need
intensities) guarantees conflict, making your relationships
endlessly "interesting." Possibility: for whatever reasons, Sharon’s subselves
were urging Jerry to "Be More Like a Woman" - i.e. to want to shift his
natural priority from physical intimacy toward the emotional/spiritual intimacy her subselves desired.
Not likely....
Intimacy vs. Personal Privacy
Your
relationship is a ceaselessly-evolving mosaic of compromises and balancings.
Every day, you mates (and others) are semi-consciously balancing your needs
for enough vulnerability, trust, honesty, and disclosure (intimacy) with your need to be
an individual with clear boundaries (privacies), integrity, and a unique
identity.
Sharon’s subselves declared “If you’re a healthy, devoted
husband, you won’t need to keep anything from me.” That's a classic
manipulative
which inadvertently promoted the distrust-resentment gulf growing between
these committed partners. Jerry was
understandably uncomfortable with her "challenge," and didn't know how to
respond to it.
Every couple negotiates their own balance
between tolerating some personal privacies that aren’t shared, and risking
honest disclosures of thoughts, feelings, fears, fantasies, needs, and the
like. Few of the hundreds of client couples I’ve met were
of this balancing, or had the motivation, vocabulary, and skills
to find and keep their balances well enough.
Do you
mates agree that it’s normal and healthy
for re/married spouses to not disclose everything to each other?
Reflect on what your parents modeled about this.
If you have marital
heroes or mentors, what do you observe about their balance of intimacy vs. personal privacy?
Imagine saying something
like this to your mate: “I hope you’ll trust me with your most personal
thoughts, feelings, needs, fears, and dreams, but I won’t demand or expect
you to want to disclose everything. I need the same attitude and flexibility
from you.” Are you partners clear enough on your mutual stance on this?
Meditate on this:
“If I told you
(your partner) everything
about my past and present self without any reservation, what would I risk or
lose?” Typical risks are experiencing
rejection, scorn,
and regret. Typical losses are personal identity
and
self respect, trust, and
personal security (“I can withhold certain things from my mate if I need
to, without excessive shame, guilt, anxiety, or loss.”)
Your options here range between...
-
denying or
ignoring this intimacy/privacy balance to...
-
discussing it honestly as partners
to...
-
obsessing and fighting about it, like Sharon
and Jerry were.
If you two can’t agree on whether marital
non-disclosures are OK or not, I suspect (a) false selves are at work, and (b) you can
profit by helping each other upgrade your thinking and communication skills
via teamwork on
By the way, notice the distinction between the
principle of personal
and privacy, and an acceptable range
of topics you can tolerate your mate not disclosing. It may be OK to
not talk about your earliest sexual explorations, but not OK to
withhold current sexual fantasies and feelings for another person.
Three keys
to your find your balance here are (a)
your true Selves in
(b) meditation
and intentional
and (c) communication-skill fluencies.
We’ve explored four
aspects of
your self and mutual
intimacies here:
-
increasing self-intimacy by
empowering your respective true Selves; and...
-
improving inner and mutual
by
learning seven
together; and...
-
learning and accepting your
gender-differences about needing and tolerating intimacy, and…
-
evolving
respectful, compatible balances
between vulnerability and personal privacy-boundaries.
Here are
11 ways you can use these factors to improve
your personal and re/marital intimacies...
Intimacy-building Options
1) Co-commit
to doing
together. See these
links and/or the related guidebook “Who's
Really Running Your Life?"
for concepts, options, and resources. With each of the following options,
first assess whether your true Selves are
or some other subselves.
2)
Periodically
reflect on your joint
, as judged by your actions.
Then work toward an effective strategy to avoid or resolve
and associated relationship
It’s hard to satisfy intimacy needs
if you don’t want to make
(vs. find) undistracted couple-time and self-disclosure high priorities.
Making (vs. finding) such times is specially challenging in typical
multi-home stepfamilies.
3)
Co-commit to doing
together over many months. Put special effort into practicing
More than any of the other skills, this one – if based on
mutual respect and compassion - makes self and mutual disclosures
safe.
That helps to build
Practicing the seven skills
with your subselves improves your inner-family relationships, too!
4)
Read, discuss, and apply these options for improving your
marital honesty (trust).
5) Read,
discuss, and adapt these
premises about
solving relationship problems to fit your personalities and
situation. Then add these options
for resolving marital problems.
6) Evolve
(a) a shared definition of
“marital intimacy” and (b) a related vocabulary so you can discuss it clearly
together. Distinguish between emotional/spiritual intimacy and
sensual and sexual intimacy. Then use
your definition to...
7)
Periodically do an “intimacy check” with each
other. Ask yourself and your
mate “Are my and your needs for intimacy filled well enough?” Do that when your Selves
are clearly in charge, to avoid protective
Option: use this marital inventory and/or
values-worksheet together to help answer
that question.
8)
Use
your
and other
communication skills to discern whether significant intimacy "problems"
are a surface need or a
Then decide
who’s responsible for filling these needs: you, your mate,
or both of you?
9)
Compare your respective
attitudes about keeping things “secret” from each other – i.e. honoring
personal boundaries. If your attitudes
differ significantly, study these options for resolving
Note that the word “secret” is often associated with
lying, dishonesty, deception, distrust, and guilt. “Privacy” has a
different flavor. Keeping “secrets” implies the withholder doesn’t feel
safe to disclose the truth.
10)
Broaden
your appreciation of normal gender
differences by reading the books by Tannen, Gray, and Moir and Jessel mentioned above, and discuss them together.
Option: read them out loud to each other. When you have, see if anything
shifts in your needs for self and mutual intimacies. Note that typical
subselves are
which
will shape your intimacy needs, priorities, and tolerances.
11)
Read,
discuss, and patiently apply
the other marital
here,
or the related
resource
The Re/marriage Book.
Improving each of these relationship factors
will automatically enhance your self and mutual intimacies if your true
Self is guiding you.
12)
Read
and reflect on these
“Friendship,” and
“A Credo for My Relationships.”
13) If you patiently try these options together and still have
significant "intimacy (and other marital) problems, use these Project 7
worksheets to discover if either of you mates made unwise courtship choices.
Whether you did or not, consider using qualified professional
counseling to help
identify and fill your respective primary needs.
In
case you're wondering - "Jerry and Sharon" worked hard at their version of
these options over many months, had a mutually-wanted "ours" child, and
reaffirmed their commitments to each other despite stormy resistances from
Jerry's daughter and her Mom (his ex)..
Recap
Intimacy refers to our quenchless hunger
to "know" and "be known" (and accepted and
respected) by beloved and respected
others. "Knowing" includes our current emotions, physical feelings,
thoughts, values, perceptions, memories, attitudes, dreams, fantasies,
fears, goals, and hopes. Being vulnerable means to disclose these
personal factors honestly to another and risk their scorn, discounting, misunderstanding, or indifference -
i.e. pain.
True (vs. pretended, intellectual, or
pseudo) intimacy between partners requires each to first be intimate with
themselves - i.e. to be self-aware. Wounded
of low-nurturance childhoods are often used to
these core personal factors, which cripples their ability to be empathic and
honest with themselves and each other.
If one or both of you mates feel you don't
"know" (a) yourself and/or (b) your partner enough, and/or you don't feel known and
accepted enough, you have internal and mutual intimacy “problems” – unmet
needs.
|
Major blocks to enough self and mutual intimacy are
false-self dominance + ineffective communication + ignoring or discounting gender
differences on intimacy needs +
over personal privacies.
|
This article closes with 13
intimacy-improvement options, based on
empowering your true Selves.
If you have a emotional “intimacy problem” as
Jerry and Sharon did, you can reduce it together safely if you both
want to! Bonus: doing this may improve your
sexual intimacy
too.
Review the Status Check that opened
this article, and reflect - did you get what you needed from this article? If
not, what
you need?
What have you learned from reading this? Who's
these questions - your wise resident
or
Note the
guidebook for Project 8:
The Remarriage Book
- master common stressors together. (Xlibris.com, 2002) It
integrates many articles and
resources in this series, most of which apply to any committed couple.
+ + +
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