Levels of Intimacy – Members Content
Emotional intelligence refers to a person’s ability to understand their own and other people’s emotional life. Some people are very bright academically but can be quite inept when it comes to relationships and self-awareness. Others have a natural ability in this area. Nonetheless, it is possible for us all to expand and develop our emotional life skills.
Emotional intelligence has two aspects:
- Understanding self includes knowing our emotions and being able to manage them.
- Understanding others includes the ability to recognise other people’s emotions and manage our relationships with them.
No matter what career or life pursuits you have, enhancing your emotional intelligence will expand your capacity for successful living.
The Importance of Dialogue
People change throughout their lives. Every day we are experiencing, reacting, responding, and being shaped by our life’s events. As we change and evolve as people, if we don’t dialogue regularly with each other, we will quickly lose touch and our intimacy and knowledge of each other will decline.
One of the best ways to ensure that every new experience becomes a growth opportunity for your relationship is to establish a habit of sharing the key experiences of your life regularly. Key experiences does not mean every intimate detail! Successful couples do not attempt to share everything in their life; rather they share the most personally significant details.
Levels of Intimacy
There are five levels of intimacy when we communicate:
- Cliché makes up a lot of our polite conversation, e.g. “It’s a nice day for a walk.”
- Facts are easy to share but reveal little about ourselves, e.g. “I went for a walk today in the park.”
- Opinion reveals a little more of ourselves but keeps the self-revelation superficial, e.g. “I think that Hyde Park is a lovely place for taking a walk.”
- Emotions are unique and very personal. When we share our emotions we are revealing our inner lives. It includes our emotions, dreams, hopes, fears, wounds and failings, e.g. “I felt energised and renewed when I went for a walk in the park today.”
- Needs represent the deepest aspect of who we are. One of the best ways to identify our needs is to reflect on our emotions: Pleasant emotions result when a need is met, unpleasant ones when a need is frustrated, e.g. “I needed to work off the stress of the office and reconnect with the beauty of the world. That walk was like therapy – I felt great afterwards.”
It’s easy to share facts and opinion with each other. It’s much more difficult to share at the deeper level of emotions and needs. Yet this is what builds a truly intimate relationship that can withstand the challenges of life.
Emotions are the symptoms, the indicators, of an emotional need or spiritual desire.
Stories of the Heart
I used to think I was a good communicator because I was very verbal; I have no trouble finding something to say! Yet often my communication with my husband would run off course and we would end up arguing or he would just shut down and become withdrawn. I would then blame him for being unmotivated and controlling in our relationship. I thought he was the problem!
In fact, I was the problem. I was a selfish communicator. I was so wrapped up in what I wanted to say and in believing that I had a right to be heard, I overlooked the needs and emotions of my husband. I was using him to gratify my need to express myself and have someone validate my emotions and point of view. No wonder he shut down – it’s exhausting to have someone demand that you be on call for their needs!
When I came to realise that I was not a very good communicator, it was humbling. I realised I had not been very deep in what I revealed about myself, and I certainly hadn’t been a very good listener. I started to use the SmartLoving dialogue tools to bring a bit of discipline and structure to my communication. At first my husband resisted – he had been so burnt by previous experiences that he really didn’t want to go there. But I found that I could still use the tools myself and it was very effective. I worked on being other-centred and respectful. When he did something that upset or annoyed me, instead of criticising him I used L.I.F.E. to share how I felt and made a simple request. He has started to open up a bit more now that he knows it is safe and that I will keep my communication honest and respectful.
It is truly important to develop and grow closer through meaningful dialogue at an intimate deeper level baring self to your partner which really as stated, make you know one another and become “more intimate. “