Continued fr5om p. 1

      Beside psychological wounds and ineffective communications, another factor to consider is...

3) Intimacy and Your Gender

      Even if Jerry and Sharon’s true Selves were solidly in charge and they were fluent in the seven communiucation skills, this typical couple might have a priority (values)  conflict: Sharon might have a higher need for intimacy than Jerry. If they...

• acknowledge that without blame or guilt, and...

• genuinely respected each other as equally-worthy persons,

the couple could agree to disagree on their priority-clash, for the sake of overall marital and family harmony.

      Part of our "battle of the sexes" is the different rankings typical males and females inherently give to intimacy and other things. With exceptions, typical male brains seem to need more physical intimacy (intercourse) more often, while standard female brains rank intercourse lower than sharing emotional and spiritual bonding, caressing, closeness, empathy, caring, and companionship.

      Anne Moir and David Jessel's well-researched book "Brain Sex - the Real Difference Between Men and Women" offers a clear explanation for why our gender differences exist and persist. It clearly answer's Henry Higgins' musical plaint "Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?" Our brain structures, glands, and hormones (often) implacably prevent it, seasoned well by ancestral and social imprinting.

      This wired-in gender-difference in priorities guarantees conflict, making your relationships endlessly "interesting." Possibility: for whatever reasons, Sharon’s subselves were urging Jerry to "Be More Like a Woman" - i.e. to want to shift his natural priority from physical intimacy toward the emotional/spiritual intimacy her subselves desired.

      Not likely.... You can't change primal male-female preferences, but you can understand, accept, and adapt to them as partners!

Intimacy vs. Personal Privacy

      Your relationship is a ceaselessly-evolving mosaic of harmoniues and conflicts (differences). Every day, you mates and others are semi-consciously balancing your needs for enough vulnerability, trust, honesty, and disclosure (intimacy) with your need to be an individual with clear boundaries (privacies), integrity, and a unique identity.

      Sharon’s subselves declared “If you’re a healthy, devoted husband, you won’t need to keep anything from me.” That's a classic manipulative double message which inadvertently promoted the gulf growing between these committed partners. Jerry was understandably uncomfortable with her "challenge," and his subselves didn't know how to respond to it.

      Every couple negotiates their own balance between tolerating some personal privacies that aren’t shared, and risking honest disclosures of thoughts, feelings, fears, fantasies, needs, and the like. Few of the hundreds of client couples I’ve met were aware of this balancing, or had the motivation, vocabulary, and skills to find and keep their balances well enough.

      Do you mates agree that it’s normal and healthy for spouses to not disclose everything to each other? Reflect on what your parents modeled about this. If you have marital heroes or mentors, what do you observe about their balance of intimacy (disclosure) vs. personal privacy?

      Meditate on this: “If I told you (your partner) everything about my past and present self without any reservation, what would I risk or lose?” Typical risks are experiencing shame, guilt, rejection, scorn, and regret. Typical losses are personal identity (enmeshment and codependence), self respect, trust, and personal security (“I can withhold certain things from my mate if I need to, without excessive shame, guilt, anxiety, or loss.”)

      Your options here range between...

• denying or ignoring this intimacy/privacy balance to...

• discussing it honestly as partners to...

• obsessing and fighting about it, like Sharon and Jerry were.

If you two can’t agree on whether non-disclosures are OK or not, I suspect (a) false selves are in charge, and (b) you can profit by helping each other upgrade your thinking and communication skills via teamwork on Lesson 2..

      By the way, notice the distinction between the principle of personal boundaries and privacy, and an acceptable range of topics you can tolerate your mate not disclosing. It may be OK to not talk about your earliest sexual explorations, but not OK to withhold current sexual fantasies and feelings for another person. Three keys to your find your balance here are (a) put your true Selves in charge, (b) meditation and intentional awareness, and (c) communication-skill fluencies.

    We’ve just explored...

• each of you partners increasing self-intimacy by empowering your respective true Selves; and...

• improving inner and mutual communication effectiveness by learning seven skills together; and...

• learning and accepting your gender-differences about needing and tolerating intimacy, and…

• evolving compatible balances between vulnerability and personal privacy.

      Here are 13 ways you can use these factors to improve your personal and shared intimacies...

Intimacy-building Options

      1)  Commit to doing Lesson 1 together. See the online study and/or the related guidebook “Who's Really Running Your Life?" for concepts, options, and resources. The goals are to get to know your amazing subselves better. integrate (harmonize) them, and to free your true Self to guide them (you),

      2)  Periodically clarify your personal priorities, as judged by your actions. It’s hard to satisfy intimacy needs if you don’t want to make (vs. find) undistracted couple-time and share honest self-disclosures.

      3)  Commit to doing Lesson 2 together over several months. Put special effort into practicing empathic listening. More than any of the other skills, this one – if based on mutual respect and com-passion - makes self and mutual disclosures safe. That helps to build trusts. Practicing the seven skills with your subselves improves your inner-family relationships, too!

      4)  Read, discuss, and apply these options for improving your marital honesty (trust).

      5)  Read, discuss, and adapt these premises about analyzing and solving relationship problems to fit your personalities and situation.

      6)  Evolve (a) a shared definition of “marital intimacy” and (b) a related vocabulary so you can discuss it clearly together. Distinguish between emotional/spiritual intimacy and sensual and sexual intimacy. Then use your definition to...

      7)  Periodically do an “intimacy check” with each other. Ask yourself and your mate “Are my and your needs for intimacy filled well enough?” Do that when your Selves are clearly in charge, to avoid protective reality distortions. Option: use this marital inventory together to help answer that question.

      8)  Use your dig-down and other communication skills to discern whether significant intimacy "problems" are a surface need or a primary need. Then decide who’s responsible for filling these needs: you, your mate, or both of you?

      9)  Compare your respective attitudes about keeping things “secret” from each other – i.e. honoring personal boundaries. If your attitudes differ significantly, study these options for resolving values conflicts.  Note that the word “secret” is often associated with lying, dishonesty, deception, distrust, and guilt. “Privacy” has a different flavor. Keeping “secrets” implies that the withholder doesn’t feel safe to disclose the truth.

      10)  Broaden your appreciation of normal gender differences by reading the books by Deborah Tannen ("You Just Don't Understand"), John Gray ("Men are from Mars..."), and Moir and Jessel ("Brain Sex"), and discuss them together. Option: read them out loud to each other. When you have, see if anything shifts in your needs for self and mutual intimacies. Note that typical subselves are male or female, which will shape your intimacy needs, priorities, and tolerances.

      11)  Read, discuss, and patiently apply the other marital articles here.

      12)  Read and reflect on these wise guidelines, “Friendship,” and “A Credo for My Relationships.”

      13)  If you patiently try these options together and still have significant "intimacy (and other partnership) problems, use these worksheets to discover if either of you mates made unwise courtship choices. Whether you did or not, consider using qualified professional counseling to help identify and fill your respective primary needs.

      In case you're wondering - "Jerry and Sharon" worked hard at their version of these options over many months, had a mutually-wanted child, and reaffirmed their commitments to each other despite stormy resistances from Jerry's daughter and her Mom (his ex)..

Recap

      This Lesson-4 article offers...

• an example of a marital "intimacy conflict";

• a status check to help define your level of intimacy with a partner;

• definitions of relationship intimacy and personal vulnerability;

• perspective on how psychological wounds, communication skills, and your gender can affect interpersonal intimacy;

• perspective on intimacy and perso0nal privacy; and...

• 13 options for improving your intimacy with a partner

      Review the Status Check that opened this article, and reflect: did you get what you needed from this article? If not, what do you need? What have you learned from reading this? Who's answering these questions - your wise resident true Self, or ''someone else''?

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Updated  June 23, 2013