The conditions for deeper connection

If you’re applying the same methods you use to succeed at work to your relationship, it’s not going to work to get you the connection you crave.

If most communication with your partner involves logic, efficiency, and being ‘right,’ you will kill the connection (and her desire for you).

Why?

We need to feel safe in order to want to connect and to open physically.

But the body and our emotional world cannot be reasoned into feeling a certain way.

More logic, more force, more efficiency only serve to cause more contraction.

Logic and being ‘right’ can feel combative and provoke a fight, flight, flee response.

When this is provoked, there can be no desire on a basic physiological level.

Intimacy is about feeling safe enough to be still together. To know we can be near another person and not be harmed.

So the key is to first create safety with your partner - it’s not a linear path and it can be messy - the opposite of efficient and logical.

This is done through validation and empathy, for example.

Through ‘being with’ what is arising without needing to ‘logic it away’.

What this looks like is saying things like:

“So what I hear you saying is...”

“Tell me more...”

“It makes sense why you would feel that way...” (if you understand her world enough such that it really does make sense to you)

“What kind of support would you like right now?”

If you think this kind of connecting is ‘weak’ or you have resistance to it, consider this:

Life would be meaningless without our emotional world.

It deserves more respect than we usually give it.

Stop and think for a moment - what is your real attitude toward emotions? Critical, dismissive?

Why?

Because you’re running the unconscious script that what matters most in life is productivity and money? Being the ‘best’?

But what does your heart ache for quietly ever day? Beyond a certain level, it’s not more money.

It’s more sex and more connection.

It’s more love.