When I talk about intimacy with people these days, I often refer to the song LET ME IN YOUR ROOM by Halestorm and here’s why.
The room in question is the place we all keep the things we tell no one about for various reasons. It’s where we bury the past and hope no one notices the scars we hid in the darkness of ourselves. Our darkness is where go to create the light we show the world.
Our darkness is as sacred as our light is divine.
Intimacy begins and ends with the dark part of yourself you share with someone else.
Intimacy has nothing to do with having sex and often sex gets in the way of being intimate.
One of the reasons my third marriage failed was due to a lack of intimacy. The sex was great, however it was every pother part of the relationship that was not and it was because of a lack of intimacy.
There were things I shared with my 3rd wife that were not well received and the response I got was not the one you need if you are spending your life sleeping next to someone. At the same time she would reveal as little as possible about herself.
I have a hyper sensitive intuitive gift to begin with. When I am in a relationship that involves living together, there is not much that I don’t get a sense of or know in what is going on behind my back. It makes a relationship with someone who will not acknowledge the connection and what I am able to do extremely difficult. It’s why after 2 years I am still not in a hurry to date again.
By the very nature of what I do, people share intimate details of their life with me. You will notice in my writing I don’t mention names. I do that to protect these people. When I work with people they trust me with an intimate part of their lives.
It’s why as a Shaman I often use the metaphor of the Raven totem as it applies to the work I do. The raven is the holder of secrets.
IN the years I’ve been doing this I have heard every kind of horror story you would never want to hear. Part of what I do as an Empath is hold that emotional pain as we talk to give them clarity and an opportunity to change their view and heal themselves by doing so. Until they do the pain will always return.
One of the worst things we do as a people is holding the past against each other. It’s what makes intimacy so difficult to find for so many. Often we keep things from each other because of the way someone reacted at one time or another when we let that part of ourselves be seen. It keeps us in a fear state of mind and keeps us from trusting people.
You find intimacy when someone says “It’s OK, you need to get it out.”
Then they let you get it out and give you the hug you need to remind you there is nothing wrong with you at all.
Life happens and we all go through some sort of hell. Your idea of living hell and mine are sure to be different and it’s not a contest.
I am writing this parked at the local airport where I’m sleeping these days in a car I am borrowing to sleep in. Here’s the Brightside.
There is no one around and I can focus on what I am writing without interruption. It’s a small town and the place closes down around 9pm.
To me it’s a little slice of heaven that I allow to be just that, instead of seeing it as some hellish experience I am surviving. That is an intimate detail of my life in the moment as I write this.
The questions of the value of what I do and who I am are sure to come to mind for some as you read I’m a homeless business owner. SO what.
It’s this peace I have found in starting this business centered around what I do that brought peace to my soul and ended the conflicts in my life over the question of what to do with what I am able to do. I like to provide life experience on the topics I talk about.
To be intimate one must make oneself vulnerable to another or in this case the entire audience. For me it’s not that difficult to do because so many other people share so much with me about their lives and where they are in the moment I call the never ending now.
We ask questions about what people post on social media.
Why would you want the whole world to know that?
Why would reveal that about yourself?
What is wrong with you to tell the whole world that?
We condemn those with the courage to bare their souls to the people they call friends, connections, whatever the term is for the social media outlet of our choice. We condemn people for trying to live the labels we give them in our life.
I had a model who will remain nameless email me on Facebook one day after I had dropped her off my friends list. She was upset and made quite the grand showing of herself in what she had to say. When I tried to have a friendly conversation with her and get to know her as a person, it confused her.
She kept asking me what I wanted from her. I kept trying to find different ways of what it meant to me to be my friend.
I tell you about my life and you tell me about yours. I ask you how life is going because we are friends and that’s how I treat my friends, even if it is on Facebook.
We set different boundaries for intimacy based on venue. Do you tell your coworkers everything you tell your friends?
How about family versus friends?
Intimacy is also about trust. When you trust someone as a human being not a title of any kind, you will tell them exactly what’s going on in your life when asked. You trust they asked out of genuine concern. You trust yourself to open up because you trust yourself to know who to open up to. You feel it. You feel the compassion. You feel the concern. You feel they actually are trying to help and are asking for more details so they can figure out how to best help.
Trust goes both ways. If you don’t trust yourself to be able to feel who is trustworthy and who isn’t, you will always have difficulty finding anyone to be intimate with on any level.