Personal Intimacy (Idealistic, Combined)

Personal Intimacy is the capacity to learn with another vs. remaining unavailable. It is the desire to engage and share our selves with another so we can be uplifted by the experience. It is also the basis of having appropriate, integrated expressions of Feelings and Emotions that others can experience with us. It is not the drama of forcing others to experience Feelings and Emotions the way we experience them. Many of us get caught up in the fear that we will reveal too much of ourselves, and, therefore, others will reject us. Counterbalancing this is our desire to have people accept us. Some individuals have repressed their capacity to be intimate because they are afraid to express their Feelings and Emotions. They act either stoical or zany as a way to seem engaged without being engaged. When they distract themselves in this way they become self-absorbed and do not notice the reactions of others. This is much preferable when others are voicing their antagonism that no one is showing up.

Personal Intimacy requires the sharing of our selves so we can learn and grow with others. It is directly related to the degree of trust we experience with someone. When there is greater trust, there is greater Self-Revelation and more Personal Intimacy. When we learn what works we become more able to be confident in our ability to express ourselves and be present to our partner’s communication. Another aspect of this is that Personal Intimacy encourages us to be more fluid and adaptable with our partners by finding the best way to interact with them. When someone is afraid of Personal Intimacy they will typically minimize their self-revelation in the hope they will not be put on the spot. There are also those who do Personal Intimacy who choose partners who are less intimate as a way of protecting themselves from becoming committed. The more Personal Intimacy we develop, the easier it is for us to create safety and security for others to communicate their Truth to us without being as afraid.

Personal Intimacy is where we are attracted to individuals who are able to share themselves in a way where we can grow and create a feedback loop with them. Feedback loops indicate growth and adaptation to each other. When a partner seeks more Personal Intimacy and their partner is afraid of Intimacy, it creates breakdowns in the relationship. Intimacy and Autonomy can be used to counterbalance each other when one partner does the Autonomy and the other partner does the Intimacy. This is a codependent way of managing differences, and ultimately, we each need to embody both Personal Autonomy and Personal Intimacy. When this occurs, we keep growing in our ability to be Intimate, until there are no obstacles in our way.

Personal Intimacy is the capacity to act and respond to others out of Love in a way that deepens our connection with them. Personal Intimacy is distinguished from Idealization, because it comes from a personal and passionate commitment to meet and understand our partners where they are, as they are. Any Idealization diminishes the Love and connection possible. Therefore, Personal Intimacy creates more space for self-discovery and partner exploration. There is a reality to it, where we learn to grapple with problems (both Differences and Uncomfortable Similarities) and work through them in a Co-Measured way. Transformational Intimacy contains the ability to give what we can, when we can, while maintaining our Autonomy so we do not compromise or lose ourselves in our partners. Idealization does the opposite by placing people on a pedestal where we worship them as we imagine they are. When we idealize, there is no growth or evolution because our perspectives are fixed. As we become Personally Intimate we free ourselves from our conditioning, which allows us to choose how to meet our partners in a way that deepens our connection. What we most want to know is that our partner will be able to grow with us in any circumstance.

Since this attraction is also a skill, many individuals have had various experiences of what Intimacy can be to them. Usually it is defined in terms of a type of connection: where we substitute the behaviors of another trying to make us more safe and secure (Protective Love) as Intimacy, or we believe that when others assist, control, or manage our lives it is done out of a sense of loving us (Directive Love). Finally, we hope that our partner is choosing us because we know how to relate to each other in a Co-Creative, loving manner. We can get into Quid-Pro-Quo exchanges of Intimacy when we have been hurt in the past and are not willing to trust our partner’s intentions. The core issue is whether we are able to respond to our partners and recreate their experience in a Common Ground, so they know they are not alone.

We could also be repulsed by Personal Intimacy particularly when it is over-sentimental or lacking any authentic, emotional connection. How our parents treated us becomes the basis for either trusting how others relate to us or feeling repulsed when they go through the motions without a connection. Our romantic relationships particularly become conditioning situations when we feel violated, not listened to, and even abused. In this situation, it is hard for us to trust that others will be there for us. In our society, there is an ongoing and ever-increasing amount of pain experienced by both sexes. This is showing up now as individuals actually choosing not to be in relationships because they get hurt. What we need to start to understand is that we need to remake these negative experiences and reframe the fears that come up in order to attract more intimate partners. Creating greater intimacy with friends will lead to greater intimacy with partners.

In this diagram we can see that there are four ways to develop Personal Intimacy as an attraction. The initial, less-expressed way of doing this is through role-playing or sex. These are patterns of interaction where our Instinctive desires and/or conditioning push us to engage others in ways where we are not initially comfortable. Usually we experience this as awkwardness and fears that others will misinterpret our actions. The more Self-Acceptance, or Personality Self-Rejection we are conscious of, the more we will work to uplift our Personal Intimacy opportunities. The key issue is whether we want to grow and become more available to others so they are invited to share themselves with us. At this pre-personal level, if we are willing to grow, we constantly seek ways to expand our activities and options with our friends and partners. What we are doing is becoming acclimatized to being in situations where we do not have to react to change. The more we can become aware of our discomforts and learn to respond to them by engaging others on a deeper level, the greater our growth in Personal Intimacy. Otherwise, we are forced through our unwillingness to deal with change to keep our experience of imaginary intimacy where we project upon others that they are there to take care of us. This is why so many individuals who are completely disconnected from others do not even see or understand their isolation.

When individuals grow, they start with Intellectual Intimacy where they attempt to understand their partner. In the pursuit of this goal, they match actions or stated intentions with their professed values and goals, looking for inconsistencies. There are two reasons for this: 1) They help their partner be more consistent, and, 2) They prepare themselves for potential betrayal. Intellectual Intimacy evaluates the nature of the relationship as an ongoing test of fidelity and integrity. What they most want is to be able to anticipate what their partner needs and how best to guarantee their partner or friends will stay with them. They do this by proposing plans and seeking confirmation that their partners or friends would find interesting and supportive. Any diminishment of a partner’s interest sets off warning bells. As soon as they realize they cannot understand what their partner is doing, they experience fear that the relationship will eventually break up. As long as their partner is not really growing, individuals with Intellectual Intimacy can make it work. Unfortunately, if their partners begin to grow in unexpected ways (such as wanting to be more Passionate, Playful, and Spontaneous) is going to create reactions and fears.

Other individuals build energetic connections through Emotional Intimacy. What they seek is a partner that responds to them with Enthusiasm and Grace. They seek to evolve themselves both with emotional breakdowns or breakthroughs, which are indications that they are deepening their understanding of themselves. How they experience intimacy is in terms of layers and building greater depth. This means that they naturally love individuals who are self-revealing and do not hide behind superficial facades. This makes Intellectual Intimacy individuals, because of their directness, more attractive to Emotionally Intimate individuals. The challenge occurs when partners and friends have different cycles in exploring each other’s reality. For Emotionally Intimate individuals, there is a natural curiosity that drives this type of individual to create a similar Context with how they feel related to how their partners or friends feel. Whenever this Context has a breakdown or falls out of alignment, the Emotionally intimate individual needs to recreate the connection on either a deeper level, or they cannot connect at all. Another difficulty related to this is how quickly these cycles occur because an Intellectually Intimate person wants to grow in small steps, while and Emotionally Intimate person seeks long term stability which is then punctuated by quick transitions to the new possibility. Differences between these perceptions have to with the way they process their experience and can absorb and/or be transformed by the process of change.

Ultimately, Personal Intimacy is about connection and participation. Each partner needs to be Autonomous, determining what they can contribute, and in what timeframe. This means that the needs of the partner cannot be allowed to trump the capacity of their partner to serve them on their own terms. We call this process Co-Measurement where each individual measures what they can provide and provides only that, without compromising who they are. The usefulness in this approach is that it allows a relationship to be self-sustaining and self-generating because any demands on a partner that cannot be sustained ends up in closing down or minimizing the interaction between both parties. The most useful perspective to have when you are building Intimacy with a partner is that whatever they can contribute to you is a bonus and not a right. In order to balance and create fairness so that Intimacy continually expands in a relationship, are a few simple guidelines: 1) whatever a partner shares with you in confidence is not to be shared; 2) whatever they share with you should never be used against them; and 3) we should never impose our standards or beliefs upon a partner for they are the only expert in their own life. Ultimately, Intimacy grows because we refuse to withhold our experience with partners and friends. The more secrets we have, the more difficult it is to be Intimate.

Lessons of Personal Intimacy

The less seen we are by others the more we possess a desire for Personal Intimacy. The more we are operating in Personality Self-Rejection, the less we outwardly want others to know how much we care about them. On the other hand, through Self-Acceptance we begin to love ourselves and want to express our Love and Intimacy to others without their reacting to it. This is difficult when Personality Self-Rejection needs to insulate and isolate itself from this affirmation. This means we have to process both Self-Acceptance and Personality Self-Rejection to fully come to an understanding what is our natural level of Intimacy with a partner. In this process, we become more internally congruent which also ends up reducing our need to externally idealize our circumstances. Therefore, the main benefit is to accept our own natural goodness rather than believing in our programming about what goodness should be. In fact, any “should be” conversations are an indication that we are still caught up in idealization lessons. What we do not actually realize is how idealization repulses others that are not idealizing. This is probably an argument for if you are idealizing you need a partner who is idealizing in the same way to make it work (as long as it does).

Ultimately, by owning our choice about how to show up with partners, we create a distinction between our personality needs and our creative, transpersonal desires. Any Co-Creative individual knows the difference between Projections of desires on them and a partner who owns their desires. In fact, when a partner is not conscious of how their desires are impacting their partner, it is a major red flag that indicates that there is not Co-Measurement in the relationship. Another benefit from operating in a transpersonal way is that we no longer take on the issues of others in order to feel like we are able to contribute or that we need to prove ourselves to our partner. This means that Intimacy is not about proving how good we are, but how well we can track our circumstances and relate them to our partner’s situation. The lessons we are learning together is what makes the relationship valuable, not how we take care of each other’s needs. Needs are fulfilled because we are increasingly becoming abundant and we wish to share ourselves as much as possible.

How Attractions Reflect Our Awareness

Self Love is different than Personality Love. Personality Love reinforces limited ideas of who we are. Self Love is based on the constant discovery of new ways of being. Personality love limits options and possibilities by attempting to categorize everything. This happens because our desire for safety and security keeps us from taking the risks that would truly empower us in life. Self Love needs no reassurance, control, or caretaking because it operates from the inside out. We experience Self Love by actively loving others. Personality love is based upon scarcity because it requires love from others for us to accept that we are lovable. The more we embody our Self Loving capabilities, the easier it is to see where we are limiting our connections with others based on unconscious attractions. Let us learn how to neutralize all unconscious attractions so our Self Love can grow and mature. Conscious attractions support our creative connection to our Self, which makes it possible to create conscious connections with others. The way we accomplish this is to learn to love our Self as we are and release all Attachments, Positions, and Projections about who we need to be to get Love.

As long as our masculine and feminine perspectives define us, we need others to complement our need for them by needing us. We are comfortable placing demands on our partners only to the degree that we know our partner needs us. This is especially true around the issues of Attention, Acceptance, Approval, Availability, Adoration, Admiration, and Appreciation. These are called the “seven A’s” because they represent a way to measure what we give and what we get, but they also act as an inner guide to how we have denied ourselves in our life. For example, if we grew up discounting our self for the lack of Acceptance, Approval, and Adoration we received, it is likely we want our partner to make up for what was previously denied to us. The problem is they will never be able to support us in these ways enough until we are willing to accept ourselves in this manner. In other words, until we accept ourselves as we are, it is impossible for others to make up for this deficit. If we do not approve of ourselves, how can others approve of us? All seven “A’s” reflect demands we place on others that can never be fulfilled unless we take ownership of giving them to ourselves.

Consciousness Reflects Attractions demonstrates how different qualities reflect different levels of attraction. This diagram provides a roadmap to the third neutral point of view that uplifts us out of unconscious attraction polarities. While these qualities are still identified with feminine or masculine aspects, they provide an indication of how we can complete our attractions. In this way it is a checklist to make sure that we are fully connected to our Creative Self. Every quality that we deny becomes a way we demand our partner to provide to us. It is also important to realize that when we desire our partner to be one of these qualities, it also usually indicates that a part of us is not able to embody what we are seeking in our partners. In other words, we are seeking them to offset what we have yet to manifest in our own being. The more conscious we are of this process, the more it provides a support framework for honoring in our selves what is needed to grow. As we evolve in our understanding of attractions, these qualities will become more obvious. We can facilitate a general understanding of owning our attractions by seeing if we understand the definitions proposed for each of these qualities.

On the Instinctive level, Acceptance, Approval, and Attention all reflect the ability of others to meet us. Inwardly it reflects our ability to meet and love our self as we are. Acceptance represents the feminine polarity where we learn how to see and acknowledge others where they are. By accepting another person, we are able to put ourselves in their shoes and honor their on-going commitment to us. Approval represents the masculine polarity where we acknowledge others for their contributions. It is a confirmation that their choices are supportive to us. Attention represents the merging of Acceptance and Approval in a way that lets us place our awareness on another so that they experience our commitment to being with them. Attention can only be given when we are conscious in our self of where we are. These qualities indicate that we have internal dualities between our physical Sensations and Feelings that are predefined in terms of good and bad ways. The less we are able to neutralize these dualities, the more we need others to validate us in these ways. We neutralize these dualities by creating the experience of Acceptance, Approval, and Attention within our self consciously, which lets us transcend the unconscious level.

On the Intellectual level, Mystery, Mastery, and Availability reflect the way we grapple with our power relative to the power of others. Inwardly it reflects our capacity to personally transform problems into solutions. Mystery represents the feminine polarity where we can engage a process without having or knowing a goal. Mystery has no time frame because it is an open-ended process of discovery. Mastery represents the masculine polarity because it has a goal and is measured by the speed with which we meet that goal. Mastery relies on the use of tools and techniques to be able to recreate past successful results. Eventually we are able to predict likely outcomes in advance because we have learned to better assess the situation at the outset. Availability represents the merging of Mystery and Mastery, where we respect time, but are not defined by it. Availability is the openness to reassessing where we are in each moment and change course if there is some other higher way to contribute by doing so. The higher vision of Availability is to be as transparent as possible so our resources and those of others around us are well utilized. Mystery, Mastery, and Availability are all opportunities that can polarize us if we feel things are not being approached properly. Mystery relies more on the emotional responsiveness, while Mastery relies on mental responsiveness. Availability, where these two can unite, requires us to appreciate our emotional and intellectual resources and also requires that we are fluid and flexible enough to serve whatever the circumstances. When we become polarized within ourselves, we become unavailable to others. This is because we believe we are not able to share resources at that time. All three of these qualities polarize us on mental and emotional levels where our Thoughts and Emotions are incongruent. Wherever we are unable to be present with ourselves, we judge others in a dogmatic and distancing manner. We can learn to be present with Mystery by embracing chaos. We can learn to be present with Mastery by embracing our own internal order. It is only when we make ourselves transparent and available to others that we begin to see how we can operate well with them.

It should be noted that the lower nine attraction experiences are dualistic and personality based, which simply means they reflect places where we are not complete in ourselves. The more we complete these, the less they have a say on the choices we make in partners. Trust, Unity, and Love, on the other hand indicate that we are operating on a Creative level and are complete within ourselves. We see this when we can operate from these experiences without being conditional with others. It also reflects that the more we give, the more we get.

The seven A’s plus Mystery and Mastery are all needs that we cannot honor in ourselves when we are operating at a personality level. This is why we falsely believe we need others to make us who we are. It also substantiates co-dependent patterns where we define ourselves in terms of others.

On the Idealized level, Adoration, Admiration, and Appreciation are all ways that we distance ourselves from others using polarized Feelings and Emotions. Inwardly it reflects ways we can be out of balance in our relationship with others. We need to develop the skill to use these qualities to actively connect with others, rather than disconnect and idealize. Adoration represents the feminine polarity where we want to see the best in others and encourage its fulfillment. Adoration deals with holding another in high regard because we appreciate their higher Intent or commitment to us. Admiration represents the masculine polarity where we honor the results of another over a period of time, particularly when they had to persevere in adversity. Admiration is an “in the moment” assessment of their current commitment to fulfill the goals that we all have. One way we know when we are seeing Admiration in action is when a person does what they say they will do. Appreciation is the merging of Adoration and Admiration such that we experience grace and gratitude for being a part of the process. Appreciation is the primary way to unify both Adoration and Admiration so that we can meet others where they are without pushing them away.

We appreciate others when their qualities or gifts inspire and uplift our own contributions. We cannot truly Adore, Admire, or Appreciate another person without being able to Adore, Admire, and Appreciate ourselves. This is because we can never give something to someone else unless we already possess it ourselves. On the other hand, when we seek Adoration, Admiration, or Appreciation to compensate for a lack of these in ourselves, it polarizes us on both feeling and emotional levels and, if we do not believe we have earned these qualities, we cannot accept them. For most people, this is a personality belief that we can only receive what we believe we have legitimately earned. For this reason, many of us sabotage our success if we believe that it might lead to us receiving something we do not deserve. Of course, there are those polar opposites who believe they deserve more and can never live up to their fantasies. What we need to learn at this level is that what we are unwilling or unable to unify in ourselves becomes a repulsion that we repeatedly attract in our lives.

On the level of Conscious Attractions, Trust, Unity, and Love allow us to operate in a non-polarized manner because we are no longer defining ourselves by what is external to us. Instead, our attractions arise internally by choice. Trust represents the feminine principle of receptive engagement or Being able to be vulnerable in the face of the unknown. The feminine principle is to accept whatever is and make the best use of it. Trust represents the capacity to de-centralize and let circumstances invoke new possibilities. Unity represents the masculine principle of economy of effort or Becoming. It is doing more with less by consistently synthesizing and producing the best result. Unity reflects our ability to centralize and bring order to whatever situation we engage. Love is the unification of Trust and Unity reflected in simultaneously Being and Becoming— Beauty, Truth, and Goodness in everything we do, think, and are. Love is where we choose to contribute and create with others to serve Universal Intent. It is also manifested in all growth and evolution and in how we attract people who mirror our incomplete lessons until we take responsibility for the attractions we have. While all our previous attractions reflected a polarized out of balance situation which we were externally addressing through our choice of partners, now we no longer feel compelled or defined by our outer attractions to others.

We heal our unconscious attractions by unifying our Sensations and Feelings, Thoughts and Emotions, and Feelings with Emotions. At the core of all unconscious attractions are disconnections in these three frameworks: Beauty, Truth, and Goodness. We need to experience how holding our Sensations separate from our Feelings keeps us from Beauty, both internal and external. Our appreciation of Beauty needs to begin from the inside out, which requires Body Wisdom. We need to recognize that controlling our Thoughts and differentiating them from our Emotions actually sabotages our self-awareness and self-acceptance of our Truth. Our appreciation of Truth needs to become transparent so that we no longer elevate or deflate the Truth of others relative to us. Finally, we need to balance our Body Wisdom (which represents Beauty through our feeling of wonder) and our Concrete Knowing (which represents Truth which has at its core the aspiration to be fulfilled) to know and experience our own natural Goodness.

The more we come to honor the sacredness of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness and can express each in a non-polarized manner, the less conflict we will attract in our relationships. In effect, there will be no reason to make our selves or our partners wrong. This natural harmlessness opens up higher forms of connection and attraction that dramatically supersede any lower attractions. Why would we seek Excitement when could have Aliveness and Beauty? Why would we seek Intensity when we could have Wisdom and Truth? Why would we seek Repulsion when we could have Awareness and Goodness? These questions are at the core of choosing how we want to live our lives and which kinds of partners we want to live with.

This opportunity reflects our commitment to heal our Excitement so that our Aliveness becomes embodied. The same shift from Intensity to Embodied Wisdom and Repulsion to Embodied Awareness is required to be able to engage Conscious Attractions. Until we accept and embody our attractions they define the relationships we are in and the choices we can make. Let us transcend our addictive desires and personality fears that keep us stuck in relationships where we cannot grow together. Are we a prisoner to these sensory distortions or are we willing to meet others in a way that would expand our relationship possibilities?

This question is critical to our ability to move into an intuitive, creative way of being. What it requires is that we be Self aware enough to recognize the difference between our programming and who we are as Creative Beings. The simple answer is that our programming is that which makes us feel Safe and Secure. Our Creative Self helps us to reorient our perceptions to create a life of freedom and forward thinking. This small step will lead to profound changes and understanding of our Self. Are we daring enough to confront our own personal unknown? Trust and Unity are both inward and outward experiences because we need both of them within us to be able to create them outside of us. Creative Self Love is the primary conscious attractive agent that works from the inside out. The more we are able to love others, the more we are able to experience the love naturally within us. This experience supports us in trusting others and being unified with them even if these individuals are unwilling to be fully present in the same way with us. The lower nine aspects reflect ways we have to become more conscious that what we are seeking in a partner needs to be honored within ourselves first. Which of these nine frameworks do we still externalize our unconscious attractions so as to make up for a lack of internal embodiment? Which poles and levels do these mainly reflect? The answers to these questions provide a roadmap to healing our unconscious attractions.