While perusing around the Internet, I
was looking to to come to understand
intimacy better so that I can help to to under
explain it
to you
more efficiently.
And tripped across a great deal of landmine, and it's gonna be a whole series
of of things that are coming out. But,
yeah, we're gonna start off with
what in the world is emotional
intimacy,
and we're gonna be talking about that this week on episode 242
of the relaxed male.
This is the relaxed male,
a show that comes to you each week helping men to remove the nice guy from their life so they can actually live their life on their terms.
Join the host certified coach, Brian Goodwin, as he helps men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them.
Hey man. Hello and welcome to the relax mail. I'm your host Brian and I am a certified men's coach who assists men who are just neck deep suffering in their life. These are the men who are struggling with their relationships, trying to find a way to help their pride
be happy,
yet for some reason,
while they're doing that, they're making themselves more miserable in the process.
What are us men to do? How do you change your approach to your marriage? Why is this sacred institute so full of strife and tension?
Join me and discover how you can actually relax
and have the marriage that you want.
This is a marriage that is full of love, peace, and so much more. So
let's let's dive into this, man, because this is this is a interesting topic that I've tripped across. And when I say tripped across it, I tripped across it. I was like going, what? Because
depending on which site you jump to, there is anywhere from 5 to 10 different
types of intimacy.
You thought, well, I'm just trying to figure out how to be more intimate with my wife. I know. And then all of a sudden, all the know it alls that
like to run around and try to make sure everything's a lot more complicated than it really has to be come along with 10 different types of intimacy. There's the physical intimacy, which is the the, you know, the hubba hubba type of intimacy. That's the sexual, the physical touching
of of our of our spouse and our spouse physically touching us. Those the physical intimacy, which is a lot of what most guys think of when they hear about intimacy.
But there's also what we're gonna be talking about, emotional intimacy. And this is, this is a little bit deeper level.
Then there's intellectual
intimacy, spiritual intimacy,
experiential
intimacy, which I'm I'm having I'm still what I'm gonna be doing is I'm gonna be going through all these. So we've got at least 10 weeks worth
of topics that we're gonna be talking about here. So besides for experiential,
we also have social intimacy,
creative intimacy,
conflict intimacy.
Boy, if that doesn't sound like any oxymoron if there ever was 1, but, yep,
aesthetic intimacy and work intimacy.
So this is
yeah.
Wow. Just
blown my blew my hair back on on this is it's been
such a such an opening. Not
according and the 10 that I'm talking about, that comes from a website called Choose Therapy.
So we know what their direction is. They're about trying to get you into some type of therapist,
environment.
So and these and therapists and and psychiatrists and and these folks do like to make things a lot more
a lot more
complicated than it actually has to be. I mean, come on. They've taken masculinity.
They've taken men being men and made that a mental health problem
by calling it a toxic masculinity.
Well, no. We are we've had those discussions many, many times, and I'm sure we're gonna have those discussions a few a little bit more while,
the 3rd wave of of
of wackos who don't know what what to do
tries to subside.
So
I'm what I'm what I'm gonna be doing, I'll just go ahead and dump the beans right now.
And that is
for the next 10 weeks,
I am going to do
one topic of the different types of intimacy.
And I actually had a, had a,
an episode
planned for
for next week that's going to get shoved away,
way down there.
And that is taking your wife off the pedestal allows you to actually love her more. This is this is probably gonna get converted over into a
into a blog post instead of a, podcast. And then after the 10 weeks is up of me doing 10 of these different types of intimacy deals,
then we'll jump back over and I may go ahead and do another version of
the pedestal
and and how to how how taking your wife off of it will allow you to have a better,
better relationship. So,
yeah, that
yeah.
So this is this is kinda crazy. And so right now, I'm still kind of figuring out what
emotional intimacy is.
But from what I've seen and what I've come,
talked to people about or not talk to people, but talk to or looked and read and researched
on online. This is all according to the Internet type of stuff.
In a nutshell,
emotional intimacy
is how you and your spouse are able to emote with each other, how you're able to communicate and talk with each other.
Choose therapy says that it is the ability to express your feelings whether positive or negative and for this vulnerable expression to be received with validation and understanding.
Now if you know anything about me and how I what the philosophy I run under,
the problem that I'm having with this is one single word,
the validation.
You are not a parking ticket.
Okay?
I cannot take
you to a to a shoe store and go, can you validate this for me? I can't get you to validate it. Alright? I can't validate your emotions.
I can't experience your emotions. I can't feel what it is you're feeling.
And the same thing goes in the opposite.
You can try to understand, which is one reason why I kinda like the fact they received both validation and understanding.
Because you can
come to some sort of an understanding
of what your spouse is going through. You can go through a bit of an understanding. You can come to understand
what she what your wife is feeling,
why she is feeling that. You can have those those discussions. You could have those topics. And as long as you're okay with her
having the emotions that she's having, you can get to that understanding.
And that's the problem that a lot of folks have is that, 1, they don't want to get
that deep into understanding
because
their wife being upset causes them anxiety. They're oh my. She's she's not happy with me. I'm not gonna get sex ever again. She's gonna get mad. She's gonna leave me. She's we're done. We're and we're our brain wants to spiral out of control,
and that's never the case.
So there are there's a few
part
few parts of that definition that are agree, but that validation part just
makes me cringe
because that is the exact opposite of what I'm trying to teach you guys. You cannot be validated
emotionally.
I just need to be emotionally validated. You can either validate my feelings. No, man. I can't.
Your wife can't. The only person that can make sure that invalidate
do I am I really feeling sorrow right now?
Is you.
What are you feeling right now? Are you feeling happy, sad, horny,
mischievous?
What?
You tell me
what you're feeling because I can't validate it,
so you have to express to me what it is. If you're stomping around kinda moping and and stuff, are you angry, or are you sad and you just stomp around when you're when you're upset and you're sad?
I don't know.
But a lot of people
do have
their own actions and own own means of of interacting with each other,
and these emotions
are that we are emoting
shine through. And these the way we express our emotions
becomes the circumstances that we're operating ourself in. This becomes the
element
that we base our model on.
My wife has given me scowls and hadn't talked to me in in 45 minutes.
She's she's mad at me, but she won't tell me why.
Okay? Then, 1, you assume she's mad at you.
You may have a good idea that she's mad. You can't don't know for a fact if she's mad at you, but you get an idea of whether or not she is mad at you or not,
and you won't actually know until she tells you. And then by this, she's gonna tell you what it is she's feeling,
and it may not even use the word mad.
She has just got her feelings hurt because of something you said. Or at least for my wife, that's normally what the problem is is she says, I say something, and,
you know, it goes it goes
astray.
Because our problem is is that we
we struggle with what the person says. Our circumstances
are
often taken so personally.
And I'm gonna tell you kind of a, kind of a an embarrassing,
event that happened a couple years ago.
And me and the wife were having a little bit of alone time together,
And she was about she was
working working with me.
And she did something
that, for me,
it was just the fact that she just sighed, which is odd. She just well, it's not odd. I've heard her side before, but
while we were while we're we are being being intimate,
physically intimate,
she
she just as she was
doing her thing, she went
and I turned that into meaning that
she was
disgusted with me, that she didn't really didn't wanna do this.
I bought into the my own personal story that this is not something she wants to do.
And because that's what I did, I lost my erection. I lost it all. It would just went and she was like, what happened?
And I had to come up with a story.
I wasn't being physically intimate with her at that or mentally or emotionally
somewhere, I didn't have the level of intimacy with her because I didn't actually tell her,
oh,
you sighed and I got stuck in my head.
And that is
that's something that if you're doing if you're going to be emotionally
intimate with your wife, that's something you should be able to say. And that's the big problem that keeps us right on the level of superficial
and just well, just right under superficial. We've gotten just a little deeper to superficial, but not back down to the depth
of the heavy romantic
couple that we once were.
So we are now
circling
each other, trying to play
catch up, if you want,
with
without actually being
as open as we can be. And this is why being emotionally intimate, or at least from what I understand, being emotionally,
intimate
is so tough because
we take everything that happens to us so damn personally.
My wife, sighing
at an inopportune time,
took a while for me to get out of my head
and back into the present,
which probably caused her to get out of to to get into her head, wondering if she did something wrong. And it's not that she did anything wrong. She just sighed.
I'm the one that was in the wrong because I'm the one that made it mean something
something
was off.
And we do this all the time. Our wives will make some comment, and we wanna make it personal.
She says it in a tone, and we wanna make that tone personal.
She walks across the room in some way or and we wanna make that personal. Oh, she it's something about me. No. It's about her walking across the room, man. It has nothing to do with you.
She's crying.
Has nothing to do with you. You did not piss her off. She watched the damn commercial that was sad, and it caused her to go boohoo.
Be okay with her emotions.
That's the biggest part, especially for us recovering nice guys.
Being okay with our spouse
having emotions
to begin with
and then allowing those emotions to be,
if we can do that, we are
miles
ahead,
and we can allow
so much more to happen in our relationship. We can grow and get
deeper into our discussions
simply because we have decided, hey, you know what? Our wife can have whatever thoughts she wants to have,
and it does not affect me. She can have
feel whatever she wants to feel.
It doesn't affect me.
Those emotions are her emotions.
I can be sad,
and she doesn't have to validate that I'm being sad.
I don't have to go seek her out to validate I'm feeling sad. I know I'm sad. Alright?
I know I'm frustrated because
I didn't get the garbage out in time.
I know I feel ashamed because my wife just told me for the 4th time this week that I need to take the trash out, and I didn't, And I failed at it, and the trash ban's already come. So I've got a whole lot of the trash for another whole other week?
That's all on me. That's nothing that she's done. She just tried to remind me. And I wanted to make it as her nagging as her thinking that I wasn't being
being adequate
in my, in my responsibilities.
So if you want to have more intimacy, if you wanna have more
emotional intimacy,
then the key is to stop taking things so darn personally.
So how do you tell if you are if you have emotional intimacy, maybe you've achieved it and you just never even realized you were there. If you can feel like you can tell yourself
or you can feel like you can be yourself, tell yourself.
Be be yourself around your partner without feeling judged or misunderstood.
Well, you're gonna get them misunderstood from time to time, but, because we have different thoughts.
But,
again, we
I I I love the feeling judged part because, you know,
we love being judged whether we like to admit it or not. If I was to go up to my wife and say, I think you are the most
incredible mom ever around,
my wife would be okay with that. If I went up to her and I gave her the judgment of you are just the worst
mom around,
she wouldn't like that. We like good judgment.
We don't like the bad judgment. The positive judgments laid upon us will take them all day long,
but the moment you don't you throw a negative judgment upon me. Well, how dare you judge me? You don't know me. You can't judge me. Buckle, buckle, buckle, buckle, buckle. Well, funny, you were just accepting all the judgment,
of how good of a,
a dad you were. You were taking all your son's accolades just a moment ago. Those are judgments
without feeling
wrongly judged is the way some people people should actually phrase that because, yeah, you love being judged.
You wanna have all the good judgments heaped upon you without the ramifications
of getting the negative judgment,
which is just that's a little hint that I'd love going on. Anytime I hear somebody go, well, you can't judge me. Well, it's like if I told you you were a good person, you'd be alright with it. So why can't I throw the bad stuff at you?
So another
way you can tell if you have emotional intimacy is you feel safe and secure sharing your deepest thoughts and feelings with your partner.
Can you feel
or can you share with your wife
how frustrated
or
how lonely? There's a better one because that in it opens up a little bit of vulnerability that you have to, you have to share.
How lonely you feel
because
you and her haven't had sex in 3 weeks.
How
unsure of yourself
you feel.
Can you have that sexual discussion?
Having said talking about sex with your wife is anxiety inducing.
And that's,
according to a lot of this, it is because we struggle with emotional intimacy.
You have a strong desire to please and support your partner and feel strong connection with their well-being.
Now see, this one this one right here,
I would disagree.
Do not people please. That have a strong desire to please and support your partner. Now you would like to make your partner proud,
maybe,
and you wanna be able to support your partner, but to please them, that's that's
venturing down people pleasing, and that's rather dangerous
because you can't
control another person's emotions. That's what pleasing a person is. Can I make them happy?
No. You can't.
Your actions might cause them to smile,
but you're not going to control them.
But we do wanna have a strong feeling of connection
with our spouse.
You frequently find yourself daydreaming about being with your partner or sharing special moments with them.
When you're first married,
yeah,
after about year
15,
you're probably not gonna have as much daydreaming.
Because when I hear daydreaming, I'm thinking we're off in fantasy land and we're finding different and creative ways to do the horizontal mambo with our wife. That doesn't happen quite as much. You don't find yourself just going, well
oh, well,
you know, if I really think about it, though, I mean, yeah, you still do because I still
want to walk
the Camino de Santiago with my wife
one day. Now she doesn't think she's going to, and
there's a chance she won't, but that's something I would my daydreaming
consists of where me and her are able to take 6 weeks
to 2 months
to walk the full length to Spain to,
Camino de Santi or not Camino,
Santiago de Compastella
and and have a and have a fully
stamped out,
communal passport
and all that. I think that that would be a great
couple's
challenge
that that we I would love to go and do with my wife.
So, yeah, there are I guess you do still have daydream
emotions and things like that that that go through.
You feel safe sharing your private issues and concerns with the other person.
To a point, yeah, I would say you feel you can feel safe
sharing them,
but you also are okay with them having
whatever emotion they wanna have. Because some of the things you feel wanna feel safe sharing with them
might upset them.
Can you share with them
and they get upset and you be okay with the fact that they're upset? You're not going to try to fix
the problem.
You don't feel alone. You feel supported like someone has your back. That one's important. That one I get, and that one I agree a 100% on.
Can you feel
connected to your spouse?
Do you feel connected to your spouse?
Do they support you? And what's your definition of support and understand is completely different than what theirs is,
but at the same time, do you feel supported?
Like someone has your back. You know your wife has your back.
Okay. Then you're you're
you're on
you're on your way.
To know that your lover and or friend will come and listen to you without judgment,
at least most of the time.
Okay. Yeah. That that's a that's an important one because
emotional intimacy
is based on discussions,
are based on on questions, based on the
the
questions that you ask. And if you'd like to have more questions, you can always go to relax mail dot com.
And, there there's a button for 800 questions.
Hit that button and and put in your email address, and you can get a
deal of 800 questions that you can ask your ask your spouse.
And these are some decent questions. I mean, I don't think I don't know if I haven't rated them or had anybody rate them from, you know, like, 1 to 10, but I think there's a good mix of really good ones and pretty good ones
in there. So you can find definitely find without a out of 800, you can definitely find a few that you can have deep meaningful conversations
with.
So there's
can you
have deep conversations with your spouse?
Yes. That would be an emotional intimacy note.
If something,
if something is bothering you about the way your partner or friend is treating you, you are usually able to talk about it. And seeing that that usually or at least most of the time
bothers me because that gives them it gives somebody a way out. No. Well, sometimes I'm able to.
Well, that's it's there's some time maybe there is their definition the usual.
So are you able to tell your partner this what's bothering you? Yes or no?
You always have someone to share both your ups and your downs with. That's, again, that's
where where you
and your band of brothers comes into play.
But for your wife, man, you really wanna just share your ups with them and
let your your downs be shared with your band of brothers. This is again, you wanna have a band of brothers. That strong community,
pillar is crucial for us, man.
You deeply care about them and know they feel the same about you.
Well, you won't know for sure for sure, but you have a dang
good impression that they do.
You can easily shift from light conversations
to deeper conversations. That's always good. Are you able to feel empathy for your partner and or friend?
Well, that's that there's nothing wrong with feeling empathy. That is you
having an emotion
about what they're saying, that you're empathizing with what they're saying. It doesn't mean that you feel they're
an empath, you know,
I don't buy the empath thing. Oh, I could feel what they're feeling. No, dude. You can't feel what they're feeling.
And sadly, a lot of a lot of women think that. They think, oh, I'm a I'm an empath, and they will advertise themselves as a, as an empath. And,
no, you're not.
You have emotions
that are your emotions. They're not your not the person you're talking to.
You just happen to have a very wide range of
emotional
definitions
that you can share with them. And a lot of times people go, yeah. Yeah. That's me. I I feel that. Okay. Good. Good. I'm glad you feel that. You're able to be present without being distracted by other people. That one's a tough one. And if you can do that, yeah, dude. You've got a lot of emotional intimacy going.
When your partner or a friend is suffering, your heart opens up and you feel deep compassion for you feel compassion for when your love love or your wife is suffering.
If you have any of those, then great. Awesome. Thumbs up. Give yourself a high five.
If there if you'd have a few of them, well, that's probably about normal.
And so
you have some place to work. You have some place that you can improve with. And a lot of it is just, can we trust our spouse
with what we say, and can we trust ourselves
with how our
spouse is gonna respond?
If we can do that,
then the rest of it's piece of cake. We can tell our wife that we're
leaving leaving the company
without having a a backup plan
yet, and you will be okay with the fact that she's going to wig out for about 3, 4 days until you find another job.
You're okay with with that.
So, guys, with that, I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna let you go. This is kind of a these all the for the next 10 weeks, we're gonna be throwing around these overviews of what
emotional intimacy,
intellectual, spiritual, experiential,
social, creative, conflict, aesthetic, and work. And, eventually, we're gonna get to physical intimacy because hell, we all like sex. Right? So we're gonna really look into this. We're gonna get to understand the different types of intimacy, and you're I would love for you down at the bottom,
either send me a boost if you're on a podcasting 2.0 compliant app. You can send me a boost with your comment, or you can actually send the comment down and below by going to,
going to the the show notes for, episode 242.
And
let me know what you think which which of these
different types of intimacy level,
intimacy types
do you think that
I believe are
valid? And which ones do you actually think are just complete and total bull? I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts on here, and give me a reason why I'd love to hear from you. So, guys, with that, I'm gonna go ahead and let you go. Thank you so much for listening. We will talk to y'all next week. Till then.