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.
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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.