Emotional intimacy is something that most everybody longs to experience. The feeling of a significant connection to another living being is an essential ingredient of your emotional and spiritual well-being. However, despite the importance of emotional intimacy to one’s emotional and spiritual well-being, creating and maintaining emotional intimacy with your partner can be oftentimes confusing, even a confounding proposition to undertake.
Just what is emotional intimacy? Emotional intimacy is a type of connection that exists between two people. People create emotional intimacy through open and honest communication—specifically, by expressing to your partner thoughts and feelings about who you are, how each of you experiences the present moment with one another, and fulfilling the emotional needs of each other.
Does such freedom exist in your relationship(s)—the freedom to openly express yourself without fear of judgment or retaliation? If so, what have you and your partner done to create such an environment? If open and honest communication does not exist in your relationship, what do you and your partner do to censure open and honest communication?
Did you notice that in my explanation of emotional intimacy I emphasized that emotional intimacy is the result of sharing how each person experiences the present moment. This is a specific critical skill that can greatly enhance the quality of your relationship(s). Being able to effectively reveal yourself by expressing how you’re experiencing the present moment is what enables your partner to know you, understand you, and most importantly be there for you. That, my friend, is what brings two people closer and closer together—knowing who your partner is, knowing what is important to your partner, and the willingness to let your partner express those things to you!
Your ability to express your thoughts and feelings about how the present moment impacts you enables your relationship to continually renew itself and deepen the sense of involvement you feel with your partner. Emotional intimacy deepens only when you are willing to share who you are and be open to your partner expressing to you who they are? So when you experience your relationship as being stale, when you experience yourself drifting away from your partner, when you find yourself longing for the type of connection with your partner that is nurturing, take the risk of creating a dialogue with your partner that enables each of you to reveal yourself to the other.
Bridge Builder’s Tips
1) Reveal yourself to your partner by expressing how you’re experiencing the present moment.
2) Keep it safe for your partner to express their experience of the present moment to you.
3) Honor rather than judge what your partner reveals to you about themselves and the present moment.
4) Acknowledge how you’re affected by what your partner reveals about themselves to you.
5) Express your appreciation to your partner for their willingness to risk exposing who they are to you.
6) Reciprocate with your partner by revealing who you are to them.
Want to learn more about how to create (and keep!) intimacy in your relationships? Listen to Dr. Kate\’s next Real Answers Radio Show at 12pm EST on Thursday January 15th.
This article reposted from Alive and Well News
Very valid, pithy, suncccit, and on point. WD.