Intimacy: A Guide for Lovers How to Pursue Your Authentic Self and Achieve a Deep Intimacy and Passionate Love in You Life

By Bill Gardiner

     Extensive social research has consistently demonstrated what we all know instinctively--that having a passionate, intimate relationship is the most important thing people want in order to achieve happiness and fulfillment in life.  Intimacy: A Guide for Lovers  How to Pursue Your Authentic Self and Achieve a Deep Intimacy and Passionate Love in Your Life is a book that simplifies how to achieve this fundamental need.  It is a work to instruct and inspire individuals and couples in becoming the lovers they ache to be.

     It doesn't matter who you are, you were built to be a lover.  This groundbreaking book will help readers understand what intimacy is and how it is different than love.  The focus of the book is reducing intimacy to the simplest steps that we all need to practice in order to achieve a relationship that is passionate and fulfilling, i.e. one that is deeply intimate.  We all need intimacy in different ways and in different relationships.  The book simplifies the nature, types and steps of how to achieve intimacy in general but the focus is helping readers achieve intimacy in a primary romantic relationship. 

In order to be intimate with another person, you have to first become intimate with yourself.  This is a noble quest.  Self-intimacy, that is knowing yourself, is a fundamental need you have to meet before you will have the capacity to sustain a deep passionate love with another.  This book teaches you how to pursue and achieve your authentic self through developing this deep level of self-awareness.  

     Achieving your highest potential and self-actualization is a conjoint process of self-growth and having a passionate intimacy. This book also guides readers towards better social intimacy and world-centricity.  It has new information about reciprocity and compatibility.  It discusses roadblocks to intimacy and how to manage the vulnerability of opening yourself to another.  It spells out the processes of becoming an intimate lover, and discusses gender differences that relate to achieving intimacy.   It discusses sexuality, current trends, with shifting gender roles, and how to practice mindful sex.  It includes information on restoring intimacy that is absent, complacent, or damaged by infidelity.    It also discusses the process of intimacy over the course of a lifespan.

     Spirituality and sexuality are discussed in the context of the quest of achieving your highest self.  In this space, lovers achieve their greatest capacity to love themselves, their lover and all that is.  Compassion, non-judgement and love for all is the vision of the loving eye space—it is the vision of lovers.

This book is a scholarly work that presents the material in a non-scholarly fashion.  It is accentuated with examples from the author's clinical practice.  It has useful discussion topics at the end of each chapter to guide individuals and couples into deeper thought, awareness, communication, growth—and intimacy.  It also has suggested readings for each chapter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bill Gardiner
• Release date: Jul 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393768494

Bill Gardiner

Bill Gardiner has been a practicing Licensed Clinical Social Worker for the past 27 years.  He is passionately in love with his wife of 18 years and is the father of 4 children and 2 step-children. He began researching intimacy, and how to achieve it, 30 years ago and this has guided much of his clinical focus working with issues of intimate abuse and dysfunction, and building intimacy capacity in individuals and couples.  This book is the culmination of 30 years of research and clinical practice.

Book preview

INTIMACY: A Guide for Lovers

Copyright © 2020 Bill Gardiner LCSW

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

CONTENTS

Beginnings

Introduction

Post Script

Intoxicating Intimacy

Intimacy Defined

Three Types of Intimacy

Two Components of Intimacy

Factors That Limit Intimacy

The Steps/Skills of Intimacy

Step One: Self-Intimacy/The Quest for the Authentic Self

Step Two: Revealing Your Authentic Self

Step Three: Learning Communication Skills

Step Four: Attunement

Step Five: Reciprocity

Self-Intimacy: The Quest for the Authentic Self

Self-Intimacy

Mindfulness

Mindfulness Practice

Healing Shame

Facing Shame

Changing Negative Self-Talk to Positive

Eliminating Self-defeating Behaviors / Making Positive Changes in Yourself

Revealing your Authentic-Self/Practicing Assertive Communication

History of Talk Therapy

Four Types of Communication

Attunement: The Heart of Intimacy

Attachment

Attune and Validate First

Practicing Attunement Skills

Reciprocity: A Love Requited

Compatibility

Lovemaps

Spirituality and Intimacy

Intimacy and Sexuality: Intimacy Sex

Factors that Inhibit Sexual Feeling and Behavior

Desires for Sexual Variety

Initiating Sex and Managing Feelings of Rejection

Mindful Sex - Intimacy Sex

Deepening Sexual Intimacy

Restoring/Building Intimacy When it is Shallow or Blocked with Resentments, Trust Issues and/or Infidelity

Restoring Intimacy That Has Been Damaged/Working Through Infidelity

Attunement Sessions

Intimacy Throughout a Lifetime

Beginnings

To the loving eye, everything is real. This art of love is neither sentimental nor naive. Such love is the greatest criterion of truth, celebration, and reality. Unless you see a thing in the light of love, you do not see it at all. Love is the light in which we see light. Love is the light in which we see each thing in its true origin, nature and destiny. If we could look at the world in a loving way, then the world would rise up before us full of invitation, possibility, and depth.

The loving eye can even coax pain, hurt, and violence toward transfiguration and renewal. The loving eye is bright because it is autonomous and free. It can look lovingly upon anything. The loving vision does not become entangled in the agenda of power, seduction, opposition, or complicity. Such vision is creative and subversive. It rises above the pathetic arithmetic of blame and judgment and engages experience at the level of its origin, structure, and destiny. The loving eye sees through and beyond image and effects the deepest change.

—John O’Donohue

When I met Melinda, I was coming out of a twenty-year marriage to my high school sweetheart. I had helped many people through divorce as a therapist, but going through the experience of divorce for me was much harder than I expected. Traversing this difficult life transition was much harder when I encountered it in my own life—and it seemed to me that of all people I should have had some better awareness of how hard it could be! I remember the feelings that came when I thought about the fact that about half of marriages end in divorce and realized that lots of people had experienced this hard process. So many people experiencing such deep loss, pain and feelings of failing! And for me, there were added feelings of failure because as a therapist I felt I should have been able to achieve a healthy and satisfying marriage. That was what I wanted most!

Even though my marriage was successful in many ways I was lonely, really, for 20 years. I didn’t emerge from that marriage blaming my wife but focused more on what I had done or could have done different—better. I actually felt a lot of guilt for my part of a relationship that lacked intimacy. But it was during that long twenty-year period in the desert of intimacy that I began to formulate my ideas about what I wanted and what I didn’t have. I intuitively knew what I needed based on what I hadn’t achieved. I also began to become aware of the idea of compatibility. My girlfriend and I may have been compatible as seventeen-year old’s, but we grew into different spaces as we aged into adulthood. My clinical work also began to focus on helping people achieve intimacy in their relationships, and yet I struggled in my own.

I had met Melinda briefly a few times, but the magic started one night when we ended up at a club together with some other friends and family. Although I was still feeling some doubts and even had some trust issues with women, my heart was still burning to experience a passionate intimacy and deep love with someone.

She looked different that night in that club. The live music, which drew me to this place, provided the serenade to the onset of the big feelings of attraction I began to feel as I looked at this amazing, beautiful woman. If I close my eyes and think about it, I can still see her standing in this spot of that club where I saw her with new eyes and flushed with the feelings of the possibility of finding my imaginary girl. I wasn’t interested in a fling or a casual relationship. I wanted to find a girl whose inner beauty matched and balanced her outward radiance. It seemed like this girl standing there might just be her! I brushed away the thoughts that the likelihood of finding her was slim. I had dated some and lost some hope that my girl was out there, or at least that I could find her. However, I had not lost all hope and one of my mantra statements bubbled into my consciousness, and I reminded myself don’t block love.

It wasn’t a pick-up line when I approached her and said: Your radiance is blowing me away! I had nothing preplanned and was only expressing a statement of fact to her. As I would come to know, this girl was very intuitive and could sense my authenticity. And that night our dance together began…

INTRODUCTION

Imagine you live in a primary romantic relationship that always feels loving—where you always feel in love. Imagine always feeling desired, respected, understood, appreciated and safe—safe to reveal your deepest self to your partner, and safe to be your authentic self.

Imagine that you and your partner have a relationship that enables and encourages each of you to become your highest self, to achieve your deepest needs and experience a passionate love and fulfilling intimacy in your life with your chosen lover and soulmate.

If you haven’t consciously thought about such things you may want to give it a try. For most of us, having a deep intimacy in our lives is foundational and necessary to achieve happiness and contentment in life. That means without intimacy, your ability to be happy is diminished, and you will feel less fulfilled and content in your life. Even if you are successful in other areas of your life, to love and to be loved, and to know and to be known, are qualities of life that require a connection to a person outside of yourself and is more critical and crucial to experience overall happiness and satisfaction. Having a deeply fulfilling intimacy is probably the most important factor in determining your overall happiness— more important than many other things we seek in the pursuit of finding happiness and fulfillment.

It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter what your highest and most authentic self is, you are built to love and be loved. Your authentic self, waiting to be achieved, holds all the gifts you have to give to the world. It contains your exceptionalities and the ways in which you will be empowered to bless others with your gifts and abilities. This comes from your unique and authentic self. It doesn’t matter what your individual and unique gifts are (and yes, you do have them), what you have in common with almost everybody else is that you are also a lover and are meant to love. Regardless of your personality and those things that will ultimately define you, if you are like most people, you can only find your deepest satisfaction in life when you have achieved your authentic self and liberated the passionate lover you are destined to be.

To have a deeply satisfying intimate relationship and passionate love necessitates two partners that have evolved in their own self-growth to the point where they live in and experience the loving eye vision. This quality of self-awareness and self-progression supports a perception and world-view that allows and nurtures a relationship which enables each partner to attune to each other. In attuning to your partner this allows her/him to feel understood. Only in feeling understood do we feel really known. Most of us want to feel like someone really gets us or understands us. Attuning to your partner is how we meet this need, and ultimately meet our deepest need to be fully known and loved by another.

Such a relationship is enabled by a condition and feeling of love, understanding and safety between partners. To reveal one’s deepest wounds, insecurities, desires, aspirations, fears, jealousies and weaknesses is to make vulnerable our deepest self. Only then can we be fully known. Only then can we be fully understood and gotten.

To love is always to risk and become vulnerable. This can only happen effectively when we feel safe enough to reveal our deepest and authentic self to another person. This requires not only self-trust, but trust in another. We can’t do it all by ourselves. We ultimately don’t have control of the whole process. To give ourselves to intimacy and love requires a great willingness and ability to give up control of our partner. We can then inter the dance of vulnerability, reciprocity and deep intimacy as we share with our partner a climate of safety, understanding, acceptance, and reciprocate in sharing and revealing our deepest selves with our chosen lover.

This allows us to feel continually in love. And love allows it to happen— or be. The loving-eye space enables a relationship climate that is kind, authentic, nurturing, non-judgmental, passionate and compassionate.

Even if you haven’t thought this consciously or deeply about love and your desire to be in love, your feeling and chemical self already has. When I was in 1st grade I was enamored with a female classmate I thought was the cutest girl I had ever seen. I was seven. One day she whispered in my ear that she loved me with all of her heart. I felt a flush of something. My seven-year old self couldn’t introspect and understand. More instinctually, I just experienced it and the good feeling it left me. Too scared to reciprocate any kind of affection, or probably even any acknowledgement to this girl, I found satisfaction in riding my bike to where I knew she lived, hoping to just be able to see her. I had no awareness of anything sexual, but some feeling compelled me to want to be near this girl. Seven years old. Processes of attraction are already working in us 7-year old’s!

I’m 15 years old and have back-packed into a remote lake in the Uintah Mountains in Utah with family and friends. Although I couldn’t have understood or articulated it then, experiencing the wonders of creation, and setting up camp in such a remote, pristine setting heightened my feeling self. Being in this beauty-space somehow made me feel better—more alive. I still remember lying in my tent that night with nature’s peaceful ferocity all around me, feeling a strong sense of both wanting and someday having the experience of sharing such a setting with a girl. Now, adolescent feelings flush through me while feeling some hope of some kind of imagined closeness, and apparently some sort of implied relationship. My memory now only includes the feeling of longing, and some slight glimpse of experiencing this mystical connection to a girl, accompanied by potent feelings attached to that hopeful glimpse into my future.

As I write this now I understand what was happening in these earlier developmental stages of my life, but I still marvel at having such powerful feeling experiences with attraction and desire at such early ages! It is obvious that biological processes predate cognitive awareness as it relates to attraction processes and drives in us humans. (Such processes occur with little to no cognitive awareness in many species.) Biological imperatives or drives are at work within us before we cognitively understand what’s going on.

So, even if you don’t know what you want regarding love, relationship intimacy and sex, your body already has a mind of its own (literally) and will seek to fulfill its own built-in directives/drives to reproduce and maintain survival. The good news is you were built to be a lover!

Biological and chemical processes create and determine factors of attraction, attachment, arousal, and commitment. Our social world is the stage in which we play out our lives and attempt to manage these biological directives. It is better to become aware of these biological processes that happen within us— knowing that this awareness does not supersede biology happening. It just allows us to understand our biological drives and make the best choices within that understanding. It also helps us rid ourselves of unnecessary guilt that often is part of inhibiting factors that block intimacy—and love.

Fortunately, we humans have a higher brain, the cortex, which gives us cognitive, reasoning, logic, self-awareness and self-control capabilities. These higher-brain features interact with the older more instinctual functions of the limbic system in our brains that among other things includes areas that process sensory information, pleasure and rewards systems, including sexual and emotional regulation. Fight, freeze or flight impulses arise from this more instinctual part of our brains. This fight, freeze, flight impulse can eventually complicate our desire for closeness and intimacy with another.

So, of course sex, intimacy, love and relationship are connected. To be sexual with another person is surely a physically intimate behavior. You can also have sex with someone and not know their name! When I speak of intimacy I am referring to a quality of relationship where partners are both physically and emotionally close. Intimate partners know and get each other. They understand their partner and feel understood by her/him. This allows and enables them to also love deeply.

Even the Bible relates and conflates these two aspects of intimacy. In Genesis, being sexual is referred to as knowing another. "Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain…" There is physical intimacy which sometimes includes sexual feeling and behavior. But when I refer to intimacy with a primary partner I am referring to a romantic relationship that is physically, sexually, and affectionately close, and one where each partner feels emotionally understood and close to their partner. Again, emotional closeness and understanding means my partner knows my entire authentic self. To be fully known and understood requires us to share our deepest fears, insecurities, hopes and joys, wounds and hurts, jealousies and feelings of inadequacy, desires, and what brings us passion and allows us to feel deeply and alive. It requires that we share and reveal every other feeling experience that is a part of our authentic selves and our interaction with the human experience. When a relationship’s intimacy is healthy, couples knowing each other is reciprocated in the magical process of intimacy between two known, understood partners.

Sexuality is the engine of intimacy within a primary relationship, but there are many other features of intimacy that aren’t about sex. Learning to manage our sexual drive is foundational to enjoying a satisfying intimacy. Sexual satisfaction of both partners is often a barometer of the quality of the overall intimacy in a relationship—especially if measured over time. There really isn’t anything better than having a sexual union within a satisfying intimate relationship.

Intimacy-sex is passionate, uninhibited, creative and fulfilling over a lifetime. It causes a safe and lasting attachment between lovers. Orgasm induces the body to release pleasurable, satisfying reactions and the attachment hormone oxytocin. Within the loving-eye space sexual passion is uninhibited and allows it to unfurl creatively throughout our lives. There is no better lover than one who knows and loves their partner—their intimate lover. There is no greater love than love experienced within a relationship of intimacy.

So, is intimacy just another way of talking about love? No way. Love is a simply but majestically a feeling. Love is not an action word or verb. Our language confuses love as something we do: I love you. Love is not something we do, but something we feel and experience. When we say we love something or someone we are actually saying we feel a deep feeling about that thing or person. Loving another deeply and completely is sublime and deeply satisfying when experienced within a healthy intimacy. Feeling love is the feeling experience in a relationship. It is the feeling we all seek and want to last throughout a relationship. Love provides the emotional grounding of a relationship and promotes doing the behaviors we associate with loving another. Intimacy is the quality of the relationship characterized by a complete sharing of two selves reciprocating openness—a revealing of the authentic self, and safety—providing a safe environment for your partner to reveal themselves fully. Intimacy, therefore is a measure of how well partners know and understand each other. Intimacy in a relationship supports the feeling of love between partners. A deeply intimate relationship can enable a passionate love within intimate lovers. This is love’s deepest ecstasy and brings the satisfaction and fulfillment we all seek.

This big love is powered and enhanced by the polarity of the relationship. Sexual magnetism or polarity is caused by the differences in masculine and feminine energy. It’s built into us—it’s biological. It inflames feelings of romantic love. It can sustain a burning love throughout a lifetime.

Intimacy is again the state or quality of a relationship characterized by a continuum of closeness and understanding, i.e. how well you really know and understand another person. You can experience a shallow intimacy with another or a deep intimacy/knowing of another—or somewhere in between. It’s not an all or nothing experience, but something we can experience on a range of potential closeness—a range of depth of intimacy. The more partners in a relationship know and understand each other, the deeper their intimacy is, and consequentially the more satisfying it can be.

We work on or practice intimacy skills, i.e. behaviors that foster intimacy in a relationship. We feel love. Doing the skills or the behaviors that foster intimacy in a relationship enables increasing feelings of love. Loving feelings motivate us to want to continue to practice the skills of intimacy. This is a magical cycle experienced in a deep intimacy characterized by feeling love and choosing behaviors that deepen love. When practiced and achieved over a lifetime partners experience love and intimacy’s deepest and most satisfying ecstasy!

However, doing the skills of intimacy doesn’t seem to be our default or instinct. While our biological drives propel us towards relationship, reproduction, commitment, community and love, our individual responses are typically and instinctually self-protective. Hiding, distorting or protecting our authentic-selves within an intimate relationship diminishes intimacy potential. Yet, such behaviors or responses are more instinctual. Opening one’s self to intimacy requires us to become vulnerable. Our instinct is to protect the self. To be deeply intimate and to love deeply requires two partners who can be totally open and vulnerable. That invokes natural protective feelings and we experience fear—fear of being completely open and vulnerable. Fear of not being loved back sufficiently. Fear inevitably can block or diminish intimacy, and love.

This is where we begin to have problems in the pursuit of intimacy. The cycle of love and intimacy can reverse in relationships mired in fear and/or power-struggles—where individuals are trying to change their partner into what they think will make them happy. When reversed, rather than love promoting behaviors of intimacy (which empowers more feelings of love), the intimacy cycle is characterized by discontent, and a withholding of love. We usually refer to this behavior as putting up a wall. Withholding love diminishes the desire to want to do the behaviors that promote intimacy. Without doing the behaviors that promote intimacy we feel less loving feelings towards our partner. In this negative cycle of intimacy couples develop feelings of resentment towards each other. Resentment is poison or cancer to a relationship. If this negative cycle of intimacy continues long enough a relationship is doomed. There can be enough resentment in a relationship which can preclude intimacy, even if partners begin trying to reverse the cycle towards being loving.

It is therefore important to learn about the skills and behaviors of intimacy early and begin practicing them consistently. As an adult, the earlier you decide you want to pursue becoming a lover, i.e. a deeply loving person, the earlier you can begin attaining the growth that allows it. It also means that you can avoid some of the difficulties that you can encounter if you try to engage in being a lover before you have learned how to attain it.

The attraction-phase of love is that initial limerence stage in a budding relationship. Some minimize it and relegate it to infatuation or puppy-love that you will grow out of. The attraction-phase is actually an important part of a relationship where intimacy can begin, propelled by a strong feeling of attraction towards your partner. While it is powered by the polarity of attraction, it usually starts as more of a desire to get to know and be physically present with your partner. It’s important to have a strong and energizing attraction-phase in your relationship, but it is something that won’t last. The intensity of the attraction-phase will diminish over time. It isn’t something you grow out of, but something that you can grow through. It can help in providing a strong foundation in a relationship. It exists because the polarity between you and your partner is new to you both. It doesn’t exist as intensely over time because eventually partners are no longer new to each other.

When your relationship moves beyond the attraction-phase it doesn’t mean you are no longer attracted to your partner, it means your relationship has endured long enough that you are no longer in the initial phase of your togetherness that is energized by a different brain-chemistry that is caused by the newness of the relationship. As the attraction phase wears off, due to increasing familiarity, you can still be attracted to your partner. However, because your relationship is no longer new, the feelings may be less powerful and/or spontaneous.

As the attraction phase of new love wanes, we find that by implementing the skills of intimacy we can retain some of the energy and the delight of the attraction-phase over the course of the relationship. Because each person’s life- journey will inevitably take them into periods of angst, and seasons of difficulty, growth and change, there will always be new vulnerabilities and challenges in life. When we can navigate life’s changes in an intimate state with our partner, we continually experience the vulnerability and new space that inspires the attraction-phase. It is not the real high of the attraction-phase but it can be stimulating and satisfying throughout the longevity of the relationship.

Intimacy skills practiced throughout a lifetime allows a safe and nurturing climate where partners continually experience the difficulty of vulnerability, and the safety of understanding and acceptance that allows new growth. Partners continue to grow and deepen in their own self- growth, and so does the relationship.

To experience deep intimacy and love requires a great leap of trust and offering of one’s authentic self—a deeply vulnerable state. Again, we instinctively fear this kind of vulnerability. We hope for reciprocity of this openness and willingness from our partner to reciprocate an equal amount of engagement in the process of intimacy and love with us. We encounter the fear that we will give more than we receive—that we will love more than we will be loved. These fears can block our capacity and willingness to engage deeply in an intimate relationship. Fear, then can become a major impediment in our ability to feel the love we desire consistently. Many couples who may have experienced a deep intimacy and loving relationship often burn-out before they achieve this state. They burn out because one or both partner’s fears step in and block their full capacity to be vulnerable and enter the dance of intimacy and love fully and authentically.

It is important during the attraction-phase to begin practicing the skills of intimacy. During this heightened feeling-state, you are more motivated to get to know your partner, and your natural instincts to protect yourself are lowered. This is actually an altered state. It’s caused by biological processes. Your body produces and releases a stimulant during this phase that is pleasurable and energizing. You are in a more natural state to implement the skills and behaviors of intimacy during the high of the attraction-phase as you are more instinctively driven towards intimacy, with your usual protective barriers temporarily lowered.

For males especially (at least historically), the attraction-phase can be reduced to a hunt or pursuit-mode where sexual conquest is the main objective. This is perhaps an inevitable diversion to the greater challenge or pursuit of creating a deep intimacy and satisfying loving relationship. The allure of sexual pleasure, without the complexity of commitment and intimacy is compelling for many. For those who may get side-tracked by confusing sexual pleasure without intimacy for the deeper need of intimacy, love and commitment, such diversions can be the very experiences that teach them that what they really need is greater than sexual conquest alone. A pursuit of sex without love or intimacy will most typically leave the pursuer feeling hollow and alone—eventually. Sexual hyperactivity and addiction are sometimes the result of this kind of pursuit. Sex alone is a shallow substitute for the deeper need we have to be known, understood and in love. A real lover understands this instinctively.

This diversion to intimacy emerges from a reality about the attraction-phase in that during this period some of our more cognitive, rational, logical thinking and awareness is temporarily suspended and we think with our hearts. We engage with the big feelings of the attraction-phase so deeply that we can make decisions that are actually not prudent or wise. Making lasting decisions in the high of the attraction-phase can often be disastrous!

Understanding the attraction-phase and its powerful forces will help you move more slowly and methodically through the highs, utilizing the energy of this phase to deepen your intimacy and feelings of love, and helping you determine if you and your partner are truly compatible.

Determining if you and your partner are compatible is also a complexity in achieving a deeply satisfying intimacy. Some features of compatibility change as we mature and grow. Compatibility with another is unfortunately something that is immutable, and ultimately out of our control. Just like the intimacy you share with your partner, compatibility is something that is experienced on a continuum. You may be very compatible with a prospective partner, or not very compatible, or somewhere in between. You typically can’t make an incompatible partner turn into a compatible one. You can’t change your partner to fit you. This is because it relates to our authentic selves. It is our unique authenticity that determines both who we are, and who we are compatible with. Determining overall compatibility with someone else is sometimes a complicated endeavor.

Ultimately, there are people that you are compatible with, and others that you are not. Two people that are incompatible (not compatible enough) will not be able to experience as deep of an intimacy, even if they are doing the skills of intimacy. They may experience some level of comfort, security, love, commitment and even longevity in their relationship, but they will inevitably not experience the kind of deep connection that allows a fulfilling intimacy. This is why many relationships that are formed before individuals have grown sufficiently will not find deep love and intimacy—or a compatible mate. Incomplete individuals lacking self-awareness will attract other incomplete souls lacking in self-awareness. This is not a good state to find someone with whom you are really compatible.

Before you have done your self-growth and know yourself, you will surely be attracted to partners that you are not ultimately compatible with. You will be attracted to the incomplete parts of the other person that somehow mirrors your own incomplete development. Incompatible partners will eventually wound and reject each other by being themselves.

Similar to how we all have a unique fingerprint, each of us has a unique love-map. A love-map is like a personal imprinting or template in your mind that prescribes or dictates what you are attracted to in a primary partner. It is not just an attraction to physical features, but includes what you find attractive in terms of personality, character, behaviors, etc.

Your love-map is unique to you and comes from biological and sociological sources and influences. It has elements that are unconscious to you. It has features that you are cognizant of, and others that you feel, but may not understand. Becoming aware of your love-map is important as it relates to compatibility in partners. It is also important to become aware of the unconscious and feeling aspects of your love-map. Making your unconscious attractions and feelings conscious helps you avoid relationships that are harmful, unhealthy or just incompatible.

During the attraction-phase it is easy to become confused about compatibility with a potential partner. The highs of the attraction-phase can feel like compatibility. When we are in the attraction-phase we typically offer our best self to our partner. This isn’t necessarily deceit or inauthenticity, but the energy of the attraction-phase promoting us to be our best self. However, this is usually not our whole or complete selves. Experts in sexual addiction suggest the attraction-phase lasts about 18 months. There are actually many variables that influence the longevity of the attraction-phase, but it is important to understand this period and not make decisions too soon before you have attained enough intimacy with your prospective partner to really know if you compatible together.

A typical pattern that individuals encounter in their quest for love and relationship begins in the attraction- phase. We encounter another person and some mutual attraction is experienced. We enter the attraction-phase and begin the pursuit of a deeper relationship and intimacy. We experiment with opening ourselves—with becoming vulnerable to another, and inevitably we experience some wound due to our unprotected and open state.

Romantic love is conditional love. Both partners bring expectations of what a relationship and what their partner is supposed to be like, whether they are aware of them or not. When these expectations of your partner are not met, you feel some level of rejection. I am not getting something in this relationship that I want. This causes us to shut down to some degree in response to our instinct to protect our self from such hurt. With our protective walls in place, we then continue to pursue intimacy in a state that is not conducive to real intimacy.

Wounded and protected individuals seek intimacy, expecting the right partner to heal their wounds and deliver them into the bliss of love they desire. It doesn’t work that way, but most of us try. After many attempts at relationship and intimacy, and after acquiring additional wounds and the consequential protective measures (walls), many eventually concede it is not possible to have and keep the kind of relationship they are seeking. Many settle for intimacy-substitutes which offer some satisfaction, but not the ultimate satisfaction of a deeply intimate and loving relationship.

These are some of the factors and complexities of creating and maintaining a passionate and deep intimacy that will be addressed in this book. If it seems impossible, most of us have experienced that feeling at some point in our lives and in our attempts at relationship. I have. The good news is it is possible. It is possible if your pursuit of intimacy is guided by awareness, understanding and the willingness to risk and try.

Here’s an axiom about achieving intimacy with another: In order to be intimate with another person you have to first become intimate with yourself. I call this self-intimacy. It may seem funny to talk about getting to know one’s self, but that is really what this first, foundational step to achieving intimacy is about.

Do you always know what you are feeling? Do you always know when feeling is actually influencing your choices and behaviors? Do you know where these feelings are coming from? Gaining emotional awareness and honesty is necessary if you are to achieve intimacy with another. Emotional honesty means a person has developed the emotional awareness and maturity to experience and manage their core feelings, not the feelings we often use to cover our real feelings.

Deficits in self-intimacy are usually why achieving intimacy in a relationship becomes dysfunctional. Learning and practicing the skills of intimacy, including developing self-intimacy is in our control and most individual’s capacity. Usually when intimacy is shallow, it is because of one or both partner’s lack of self- intimacy and growth. Sometimes it is due to incompatibility in partners, but usually we have to look further back to the development levels of each partner as the problem in attaining intimacy. We can’t know who we are compatible with until we know ourselves and live from the essence of our authentic selves.

Becoming self-intimate or emotionally aware means that you become aware of your authentic and deep feelings. This sounds easier than it is. We all develop ways of pretending to ourselves regarding our feelings. Sometimes our cognitive brain interprets our feeling self in a way that protects us from our real feelings. These are called defense-mechanisms and we all have them and employ them. Sometimes, and perhaps usually, we apply them unconsciously. Defense mechanisms offer decoys to our real feelings and authentic self. Learning what your real emotional-self is experiencing is what self-intimacy is.

We don’t choose our feelings. Most often feelings just happen. Feelings arrive on our daily landscape based on both biological and sociological influences. Sometimes we experience feelings because of our biology. Sometimes we feel what we do because of what is happening in our lives— and often due to both factors. Feeling processes in our brains happen automatically and faster than our cognitive processes. We feel, and then we think. Feeling influences cognition/thinking and decision making. Thinking shapes and influences future feelings.

Emotional self-intimacy means a person is aware of, understands and gets themselves. They understand their real emotions and make superior choices based on that awareness. Being emotionally-honest means you have done the self-work to see through your defense mechanisms, and operate out of an awareness of your authentic feelings. This is part of the quest of finding and living from the core of your authentic self.

Self-intimacy also includes becoming healthy in your body and learning to love and accept your physical self. This doesn’t mean attaining some perceived perfection in your appearance, but achieving a healthy body that you can love and appreciate. This can be as big of a challenge as developing emotional self-intimacy for some. To become a passionate lover, you will need to pursue both emotional and physical self-intimacy, and continue this quest throughout your life.

If you are reading this book, chances are you’ve already discovered that creating a romantic, intimate relationship can be kind of hard–or tricky at best! And what’s more, you’ve probably also realized that you haven’t had much help or training to prepare you for this most important part of your life.

As indicated earlier, it’s true that the single biggest factor that will determine the overall happiness in your life is the quality and depth of your primary intimate relationship. It’s also equally true, that most young couples have had virtually none, or very little useful help in achieving this. So, ironically, as a culture that values education, we do very little to give young people help in this most important area of their lives. You may be able to calculate complex algebraic problems, or understand the processes of photosynthesis, or recite an understanding of history of the Renaissance, but be mostly unaware of how to form and maintain a healthy relationship!

We leave this duty to families, religious affiliations, and other more value-centered functions of our lives. While we’ve actually seen declines in divorce rates over the past decades, changing features and trends of relationship and marriage are probably more influential in these declines. I’m still convinced the functions of helping people understand the features of relationships and achieving intimacy are not being properly shared with young people undertaking this very important endeavor in their lives. We can do better at helping others achieve a satisfying intimacy. That is what this book is about.

As a therapist with over 25 years’ experience working with people in the area of intimacy dysfunction, marital and family relations, and issues of sexual dysfunction, I realized a long time ago we have cultural deficits in the area of helping people understand and achieve intimacy in their lives. My own experiences with attempting to be intimate also allowed me to understand how unprepared I was for this most important component of my life!

My experiences with relationship counseling led