How to Nurture Honestly Intimate Relationships?
by Nurturing one’s emotional health.
- Start with yourself. You can’t open up or be intimate with other people unless you can be intimate with yourself. Self-esteem is a necessary component of intimacy.
- Be Honest. Protecting an image takes a heavy toll on your health and relationships. Withholding and lying is the primary source of modern human stress, the primary cause of most anxiety and of most depression. Honesty, as a way to reduce stress, makes life work and heals the past
- Be Open. Intimacy calls for authentic sharing. If you’re a mother who sees the onset of a relationship problem with your child, open up a little. Share with your child your thoughts, dreams and even your fears. Likewise, set the mood for honest reciprocation of feelings.
- Build Trust. When you’re entrusting your self, your secrets and dreams, to another person, trust is imperative. Be sure you are also trustworthy. For example, when a family member or your partner confides his/her feelings to you, and the next day everyone gets to know about the details through you, the person who has confided will naturally start withholding details about himself/herself. Respect of privacy and confidence is the key.
- Give your Time. And remember, it’s a two-way street. It is not fair to engage another person too much in your own interest so that he/she has little time left for her self and others.
- Learn to Listen. Display openness and generosity of one’s self with regard to time and attention to what the other has to express in words and in action.
- Talk it out. Plant the seed of intimacy, initially, by talking. Talking is cathartic. Catharsis is one method to derive emotional satisfaction. Sometimes, we just need to talk out our feelings, and we get a certain relief in doing so. Refusal by another to even start listening to one creates a feeling that the person is not important, and thus, already sends a blow to one’s self-esteem.
- Let your Feelings and Intuition work. Don’t only listen to the words. Feelings and intuition are powerful means of communication. Sometimes, words can even hinder expressions the depth of one’s feelings. The more intimate you are with a person, the more you understand his feelings and actions, even without his having to say it our loud.
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Post Commentsandie
On July 7, 2009 at 12:36 pm
i always believe honesty is the best policy, yet a lot of people do lie, they just cant help it.
Stuart A. Kaplowitz, MFT
On July 7, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Well said! These are some valuable and insightful points.
Stuart A. Kaplowitz, MFT
http://www.encouragingyourlife.com