Growth Goal #2: Intimacy (not the same as intensity)

Goals for Emotional Health or Maturity:

#1) Understanding, Desiring, and Pursuing, Integrity.
#2) Understanding, Desiring, and Pursuing, INTIMACY.

Growth Goal #2 towards Emotional Health, is being able to accurately define INTIMACY, in order to walk on a healthy path towards developing/maintaining intimate relationships. We must also learn to discern the difference between Intimacy & Intensity. Intensity is not required in order for intimacy to be present.

The Vacillator “Love Style”, one of the “Attachment Injury Styles” is the person who is constantly pushing you away while at the same time, pursuing you to engage. The person with this kind of love style is someone who craves connection but will often confuse intensity with intimacy, thinking they are one in the same.

We are all craving some sort of emotional connection and intimacy… Human beings were created to be social beings, not isolated ones. But it is important to know the CORRECT definition of intimacy, and what it is we are really desiring:

From Wikipedia, “Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability and reciprocity. As a verb, “intimate” means “to state or make known”. (Intimacy is getting to know one another at a slow pace). To sustain intimacy for any length of time requires well developed emotional and interpersonal awareness. Intimacy requires an ability to be both separate and together participants in an intimate relationship. This is called self-differentiation. It results in a connection in which there is an emotional range involving both robust conflict, and intense loyalty. Lacking the ability to differentiate one self from the other is a form of symbiosis, a state that is different from intimacy, even if feelings of closeness are similar.”

The vacillator, however, wants NO differentiation. Any feeling of being separate means they are not close and things are now “all bad” (black and white thinking). When there is no intensity in the relationship, they feel no connection or “intimacy”.

It is important to note, however, that TRUE intimacy involves self awareness and self differentiation. It is not necessarily an intense gaze, conversation, and connection, ALL the time. It requires a healthy balance of rationality/thinking, and emotion/feeling.

Other Interesting/Helpful Information in understanding Intimacy (also from wikipedia!):

“From a center of self knowledge and self differentiation, intimate behavior joins family, close friends as well as those with whom one is in love. It evolves through reciprocal self-disclosure and candour.”

“Poor skills in developing of intimacy can lead to getting too close too quickly; struggling to find the boundary and to sustain connection; being poorly skilled as a friend, rejecting self-disclosure or even rejecting friendships and those who have them.”

And on physical/ sexual intimacy:

Marriage Retreat: How We Love, January 2010

I remember leaving a workshop led by Milan and Kay Yerkovich a few months back and thinking to myself, “These two are seriously going to SAVE marriages”… SO, I am happy to announce that they will be in town this January 2010! Check out the below links for more information on how to sign-up.

Marriage Retreat: How We Love
Speakers: Milan and Kay Yerkovich
Date: January 15-17, 2010
Time: Begins 4pm, Friday (ends lunchtime, Sunday)
Where: Santa Cruz Mountains

Retreat website, hosted by ALCF: 2010 Marriage Retreat

For further information on the Yerkoviches and their ministry, visit their websites:

http://www.howwelove.com/
http://www.relationship180.com/

Fatherlessness & Four Pillars of Relationships

Fatherlessness is the most harmful demographic trend of this generation. It is the leading cause of declining child wellbeing in this society. It is the engine driving our most urgent social problems: crime, adolescent pregnancy, domestic violence against women, child abuse.

I heard the above on a series by Chip Ingram titled, “Portrait of a Father”. I would say Fatherlessness is not just about having an absent parent. I believe it includes any father who did not play his role – and instead misused & abused his power by control, abuse (physical, sexual, psychological, emotional), or neglect. Of course, there is no perfect father and everyone makes mistakes. So I’m talking more about the man who intentionally leaves or hurts his child. This is fatherlessness.

As I think of a child who grows up without a “healthy” father image, I think of a young man or woman who may not have a healthy or accurate image of what s/he needs, or what constitutes a “healthy relationship”. I think of a man/woman who may not have the best boundaries or understanding of one’s own self-worth and self-respect, even one’s own desires/needs as humans. There was no “standard” growing up – and if there was anything, it was a horrifyingly distorted image. So, I thought of 4 important requirements in relationships, and I dedicate this post to the young man or woman who wants an idea of a standard to compare to, when thinking about a life partner:

In order of priority, I believe it is about 1) Trust, 2) Respect, 3) Love, 4) Connection/Intimacy

To Complete or To Complement?

As much as I liked the movie Jerry Maguire (1996), and the cute memorable quote “You complete me”… it definitely stays in the fairytale romance camp, and not necessarily in reality.  As much as a hopeless romantic as I confess I am, my passion for vision and mission-driven living (and yes, loving) probably gains one extra point in that internal battle.

Given that, I wanted to share some thoughts about what, to me, might be a great match for 2 people to partner together in life.

It isn’t about finding two halves to make a whole… because then one person is looking for the other to fill them, satisfy them, and complete them, when the truth is – another person just cannot do that.  Yet, it also isn’t necessarily about finding two “wholes” to make a larger “whole”, because, well, there just aren’t 2 perfect people – no one is perfect.

So what’s the best mix?