Welcoming Emotional Intimacy
How do you welcome a man into your life, when you’re so used to doing everything yourself?
This is an extremely deep question when you’ve done everything on your own for so long.
Life has navigated you to this point in your life through the decisions you have made; be it through complete choice, or perhaps through it being thrust upon you and you did the best you could.
You may now find it guiding you in another direction, perhaps it’s time you allow yourself to be open to the possibility.
Let yourself live in this wonder for a little while.
How would it feel to be more emotionally intimate and connected in a loving relationship?
What would that be like?
How would that feel?
What difference would that make in your life?
Allow yourself to just imagine that.
Only when you can truly hold the energy of a true intimate loving relationship, will you be able to embody an emotionally intimate one.
So what is True Emotional Intimacy?
We can have it all if we’re willing to let down those walls.
Cultivating emotional intimacy requires you to look at any resistance that comes up in your relationship and be willing to ask yourself, “Why?”
It’s exactly in this space where we have an opportunity to grow. These are the places where you can open deeper to love and experience greater emotional closeness with your partner.
The biggest thing we need to accept is; we can’t have emotional intimacy with another until we have created it within ourselves.
Whether you’re already in a relationship or not, we are all “in relationships.” We are in a relationship with our parents, our siblings, our children. We are in a relationship with our customers, clients, employees, and also our boss.
However, first and foremost you are in a relationship with you.
And it’s in your most intimate relationships where YOU have an opportunity to have YOU reflected back to YOU most accurately.
That’s why it’s in your intimate relationship where you can experience the most pain or the most pleasure – it’s your choice.
The closest people in your life, see you.
They see your blinds spot, just like you see theirs. If you can learn to be sensitive enough and show others their blind spots and where they can grow, but with sensitivity and compassion, that makes for great emotional closeness.
It is in our relationships where we have the greatest opportunity to evolve and gain greater awareness of who we are.
LEARNING TO LOVE
It’s the journey of opening to emotional intimacy.
Experience will show you, Love and emotional intimacy is not a function of another.
What’s important to know is that LOVE, real love is ever-present.
It’s all around you. And emotional intimacy is always available to you. All YOU have to do is be open to it.
Think about it – you could be in a room filled with people that love and adore you. If your heart isn’t open, you won’t feel the love.
On the other hand, if you’re all by yourself and your heart is open you’ll experience a tremendous amount of love and emotional closeness with yourself.
It’s something you create from within, it’s always available and it’s up to you to create it.
ALIVENESS + CONNECTION = LOVE and Emotional Intimacy
The more alive you are in your body (not repressing your emotions) and connected to your vitality and health, the more you are connected to your authentic loving self.
This allows more of you to come forward and be expressed when you interact with others. Especially in your closest relationships. This builds love and emotional intimacy.
You’re not dumping all your unprocessed emotions and life challenges on them. Instead, you’re taking responsibility for your life and facing upsets with greater self-awareness.
WE need to understand that our relationships are a gift.
They are our opportunities to open to love.
And to hold our relationships as sacred.
You know matters of the heart are vulnerable, so you treat them with care.
Emotional Closeness Requires Vulnerability
In order to receive love and create the true emotional closeness you may be longing for you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable.
Vulnerable in a healthy way. Not putting your heart on the chopping block. Or loving so much that you lose yourself in your relationship. But you do need to expose yourself and let go of the armour that is keeping you from letting love in.
An emotionally connected partnership requires you to be vulnerable. And for many, being vulnerable is very scary.
Emotional closeness can make us nervous.
Especially if we don’t have healthy boundaries and can’t easily say what’s on our mind.
If you don’t know how to set healthy boundaries and speak your truth you’ll have a relationship where you feel like you’re walking on eggshells. I’ve been there – it’s not a fun place to be. That’s exactly the opposite of emotional intimacy.
What Causes Lack of Intimacy?
Fear of intimacy is very real. Falling in love is not for the faint of heart. And intimate loving relationships are where you’ll experience the most pain AND the most pleasure in your life.
So let’s look at some things that cause a relationship to lack emotional intimacy.
You can only share with another as much of yourself as you have access to. If you’re not emotionally self-aware and don’t know how to process your emotions, you won’t be able to create emotional intimacy with another.
Call it trauma or what you like, the fear of intimacy and the desire for true love – will take you on a deep journey within.
SO HOW DO YOU CREATE AND DEVELOP EMOTIONAL CLOSENESS WITH YOURSELF?
If you want to experience true emotional intimacy with another, you must first create it from within.
Ask yourself:
Do I have self-respect?
Do I trust my decisions?
Am I supportive of myself or critical?
Do I love and accept myself?
Are my emotions expressed or repressed?
If you have self-respect, you trust yourself, and are supportive rather than critical.
Accepting and expressing your emotions will help you create an emotionally intimate relationship with another.
When you have created that foundation within yourself, you are more likely to attract a relationship that will have great emotional intimacy.
This will allow you to experience a relationship filled with:
Respect and trustworthiness.
Mutual support.
Acceptance of each other’s differences.
Ease of Expression, especially with sensitive subjects.
Room to grow and personally develop.
Ultimately, if you’d like to have a healthy relationship you need to create emotional closeness first.
But even before that, you need to create it within yourself.
Only then will you experience what you've been longing for the most – true love.
These may seem like insurmountable steps to some, but when you tap into the desire you hold in your heart, you’ll realise how worthwhile it really is.
So open your heart and allow the beauty of getting to know yourself to entwine with getting to know the man/woman you are wanting to let into your life.
And while you soak in the feeling of the emotionally intimate relationship you have created, be open to going even deeper and truly connecting consciously where you're invited to show up as whole and complete and see the same in your partner.
See the relationship itself as a living, breathing entity.
A loving conscious relationship is a commitment to coming back to love in every moment.
Once your nervous system learns to stay at this higher level of aliveness and doesn’t need to numb itself by lying, breaking promises, or hiding feelings, the real magic begins to flow.
And remember, our most difficult relationships have the capacity to become our greatest teachers.
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