Intimacy and trust. The two key ingredients to a healthy, strong, loving and passionate relationship. These two items go hand in hand and are a catch 22 in relating. If you start to loose one the other is right behind it and vise verse, you also need one to make the other happen.
Intimacy is not just about sex either, although in our world today when someone speaks of intimacy they are speaking of sexual intimacy often. It is valuable to truly understand that intimacy is something that is needed to feel connected, understood, valued and secure in all relating.
Just this last weekend we had a dear friend come to the Orgasm Camp workshop and stay after for socializing and dinner. She is an Intimacy Coach and during our dinner preparations I was playing with our 15 month old son, Jessica (our friend) made the comment that she could tell that I was not just a parent to my children that I was also their friend. She stated that we treated the children like real people not “kids.” What she was seeing was the intimacy shared between parent and child. Something that I have been conscious of harvesting in my relationships with all six of my children. It is something that when I look out into the world I do not see in the paradigm of parent/child. The average parenting structure has the child as a lower species of human-hood, there are walls that are put in place, things that are not discussed because a child could never understand this or that and children are talked down to instead of communicated with in authenticity. Parents try to hide their own short comings and mistakes and even try to repair what they feel they did wrong in their youth by “protecting” otherwise known as controlling their own children from doing the same instead of openly communicating with them and building trust and intimacy. Here is where I strongly differ (granted I may be wrong in my beliefs but parenting truly is a science where we all wager our upbringing skills on a hypothesis), I believe in building intimacy and trust. This comes through authentic living which transfers as authentic relating even with my child. Never shutting down about where I am , what is happening, and never shaming or having misguided expectations. Recognizing that my child has to make mistakes no matter their age in order to learn and grow. Supporting individualism. Communicating life lessons at a level that each of my children can understand for where they are at, EVEN if that is having a sex talk with them.
Through this sort of authentic relating I have preventing many barriers from forming and have kept the communication lines open. So much so that my oldest two daughters (now 17 and 19) have had the ability to trust in me enough and know that we share the intimacy needed for them to bring difficult issues into the court, from the first time they had sex, to things they have experimented with, sexual trauma, jealousy issues, physical changes happening, and even their first G-spot orgasm. Most parents in todays culture would have a tough time hearing their daughter speak openly about the pleasure they experienced and how amazing it was during a G-spot orgasm, they certainly would not want to have to give further advise as to how to achieve this state again. Yet in my household, these two young women get the opportunity to grow, question, experience and be supported instead of being shamed for their sexuality as women.
I have always stated that I am a realist. I know that our youth is a time of great exploration and teenagers and young adults will certainly experiment and learn things from somewhere, so why not support healthy exploration backed by authentic, unconditional loving instead of shaming, guilting and disconnecting?
This same dynamic can be brought into our intimate affairs with a lover. How do we communicate with them? Do we allow them to be of individual thought, need and life experience without shaming, guilting or disconnecting no matter how they choose to show up in the moment or do we try and change them and make our expectations and needs greater then what they can deliver? DO we hold space for our lover to experience what they need in any given moment or do we demand for things to be as we believe they should?
I am not saying that we have to support without end a decision or action of a loved one, child or lover alike. I am not saying that we have to agree or even pretend to agree with them. What I am saying is that we need to open the channels of authentic communication and hold our hearts open in the most challenging of times. This is true unconditional loving, something that the majority of relationships have never experienced, because what we think is love is actually need, and in our needing we distort our partners, or anyone else that we are in a love based relationships with and put false hopes and expectations on them that they CANNOT often meet. We are dependent on them to make us happy instead of taking care of our own happiness. When our needs are suddenly not met and the veil of illusion that WE ourselves put there starts to come down, we loose trust and intimacy and point the finger at the other blaming them for the suffering that we are now feeling. This is where we loose ourselves further, often find that our relationship was built on sand with no stable foundation and question why we even trusted in this person.
Building true intimacy and trust is not easy but it is simple.
There are steps for building the foundation for authentic loving and relating so that we can have a sacred relationship with all the people in our lives.
Among these steps are:
▪ Conscious Living = Conscious Relating
▪ Appreciation
▪ Integrity in Action and Communication
▪ Holding Space
▪ Standing in the Fire
▪ Exploration
▪ Dedication to Life and Unconditional Love before the Relationship