Now we've been talking about different types of intimacy, and this is a continuing series. And we're talking this week about what in the world is social intimacy. And we're gonna be talking about that this week on episode 246 of the relaxed male. This is the relaxed male. A show that comes to you each week helping men to remove the nice guy from their life so they can actually live their life on their terms.
Join the host of certified coach Brian Goodwin as he helps men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them.
Amen. Hello, and welcome to the Relax Mill. I'm your host Brian, and I wanna say thank you very much for taking the time out of your day and coming in. If you're watching us live, we are lit we are live. I have sent out the bat signal. Everybody knows you can come in, and you can listen to this episode live and in person, and that's what we're doing right now. I'm actually live over on TikTok. I'm also live,
and you through the podcast itself, and we're actually doing a live stream in the podcast. If you got a podcasting 2.0 app, like Podcast Guru, Fountain, something along those lines. You can also listen to it while you're out driving around. And this you can pick these any of these podcast 2.0 compliant apps up over at podcasting2.org/apps, and you can get a, get that
from, from there. And we they have, iPhone and Android models around, so you're able to hear this show and others that are podcasting 2 point o compliant at any time that you like. But now, we're jumping into and talking about what I've been talking about for the past, oh, 4 or 5 weeks now. About actually, 4 weeks now. Thinking back. About the 10 10 different types of intimacies
there are out in in the world. And, it's kinda surprising because I figured, you know, we had, like, emotional intimacy and physical intimacy, and that pretty much that was it. And whenever I saw this, this article from Choose Therapy about 10 types of intimacy, it kinda blew my eyes. I was like, what? And got to look and then they're the 10 types of intimacy are physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, experiential, social, creative, conflict,
intimacy, which sounds really weird. I can't wait till we get to there. I and then I get to look at that aesthetic and work intimacy. And I'm just right now not trying to claim that I am an expert on intimacies at all, but, just wanting to kind of experience, go through experience what these are about, see if maybe some of these might be, you know, a little bit made up or not, but we're just kinda running through and and checking these.
Kind of weighing them against the old b s filter and see, do they pass the sniff test? And so far, I kinda see where some of these are real. And the social intimacy is one of those that I've never put a name to it. I just thought we always just kinda called it a connection. And that's what social intimacy is. If we boil it all the way down, that is you being able to
have a friend. This your friends are your social intimacy because they what they make it out to say is if we look at the at the the ten types of intimacy that, is put out by choosing therapy, they actually say that social intimacy is being able to be open, honest, and to confide with another person. The ability to reach out and know that this person will understand you, not even solely
based on your verbal application, but will understand any underlying experiences, which is a tune body language. Social intimacy isn't only limited to long term relationships, it can also be experienced with your partner at work, a friend you met during a vacation tour between you and the barista with whom you order coffee with every morning. These are essentially, these are friendships. These are the connection the human connections that we that we are always struggling to have.
And it's amazing when you sit back and actually look at and examine what social intimacy is because it is probably the one skill that kids are born with inherently knowing. And then as we get older, we start to forget how to actually do that. The older you get, the fewer friends you have. And it's not because your or your friends all often die off. You stop feeding the friend relationship and going through the process of of making sure that that relationship stays positive and strong.
And that's sadly, a lot of it is because of how society runs today. Society loves to go through communicate, and talk through apps and through phones, and there's not as much face to face, 1 on 1, hands on types of relationships being built. Now, when you're married, yeah, you're going to have you start off with the building that social intimacy.
You find somebody that you kinda like, they kinda like you, so y'all start talking. And as y'all keep talking, that build that social intimacy builds up. But a lot of pop people today, they actually struggle with even getting social intimacy going. They have different names and labels for it in that, you know, they will say that they have social anxiety or they have some type of anxiety that keeps them from doing that.
And it is a a touchy thing to be talking about because boy, some people, when they find out that they have that social anxiety, they love to hold on to that onto that, that limitation because what what that is is you're running away from some just something else, a little discomfort. And, yeah, it is a little uncomfortable. You allow you're you're echoing that discomfort in your head. So you're that discomfort becomes very loud and you try to resist that emotion so much that
it becomes this cacophony. And, yeah, it becomes very uncomfortable. The problem is that it doesn't actually hurt you. It just is a uncomfortable emotion. Yeah. Your heart races and and you may sweat and all and all that, but that's just, again, you fighting the fight or flight, emotion reaction that your your brain wants to produce. Now one of the things that happens is when you don't have a strong social intimacy
skill, you're gonna be you're gonna have a lot more loneliness. There is a and it's not that you're not around people. It's just that you don't have that connection that you need. You don't have somebody that you can call up. You don't have for guys like to talk about the
the 3 AM list. Who's on your 3 AM list? Who's that inner circle? So that if you're, you know, at 2 states over 3 o'clock in the morning, do you have a friend you'd call up and go, dude, I need some help. Can you get me home? And they go, alright, man. Yeah. I'll get I'll I'll I'll get dressed. I'll be there here in about 5 hours, and away he gives. We have those friends,
and those friends are very dear to us. The problem is that many guys only have maybe one friend, one really freaking good friend. And that's something that I talk about often in that men need their community pillar to be extra strong. If they wanna achieve the improve their their mind, improve their body, and improve their soul, they have to have that community because that community is,
as Jim Rohn says, you're going to be the average of the 5 people you spend the most intentional time with. Actually, he says just the most time with and but I like to we do stuff intentionally. Over here at Relaxed Mel. So you're intentionally living life with the 5 at least 5 people. The more, even better. You're going to lift yourself up.
You know, rising tide lifts all boats, that type of stuff. When you're able to have a group of friends that you can turn to and you can talk with and you can open up about, this makes men better all around because they're going to you're when you've, align yourself with good, strong, masculine, noble men, they're going to be those guys who are just hell bent on hell you become the better man also. This is a a, an effect of masculinity.
When men show up, they the other men help him. Now, we don't do it like how women do. We women, they like to do a lot of the talking with each other, and that does help. And men, we do to do a lot of talking. I've got a, another podcast that I do with a couple of friends. And we sit around and we talk for 3 hours at a time, once a week. Every we we sit down with it's it's called it's called 2 grumpy vets and a duke, if you're if you're interested.
But that shows that you can have deep, meaningful conversations. And, but for guys, that deep being meaningful conversation doesn't have to be how you're feeling today. It can be, you know, so would you watch the, watch the football game yesterday? Yeah. I'm personally you know, I'm not a big football person, but
when guys are able to connect, they help each other just because they have that connection going on. That's one reason why young boys can sit there and punch each other in the nose a couple times and then pick themselves up off the ground, dust themselves off. And 5 minutes later, they got their arms around each other's neck acting like it never happened because to them, it's in the past. It doesn't matter. That that ability
to have the social intimacy. Yeah. Well, you're gonna have the the fights and things like and things like that. But what happens is and my thoughts on why that social intimacy skill fades away so badly as we get older is because we believe all the crap people tell us. Oh, you are just you're horrible. You're a terrible person. You are such a liar. You betrayed me. And all these other
stories that people share with us, we pick them up and go, you're right. I did. I I I failed you. I'm a terrible friend. I I didn't do I didn't rise to the occasion that you needed me to rise to. And so we tell ourselves that we're terrible friends. And so we stop trying to be friends with other people. We believe the other person has somehow come about and has betrayed us. Now did they betray you? Impossible. I can't I'm not there, so I wouldn't I don't know.
But a lot of times we tell ourselves our side of the story. We never stop by to find out what the other side of the story is. Because remember, there's 3 sides to every story. There's our side, their side, and the real side. And so we have to find out why why our our our supposed friend did what he did. Now once he tells you, you have the choice of going, that's a valid reason. That's not a valid reason. You hurt my feelings.
He can say, yeah. I'm sorry. He can choose I to I'm not saying I'm not sorry. And you continue on. From there, you can decide, I'm gonna keep nurturing this emotion or this relationship, or I'm going to drop this this relationship. And a lot of times, we'll drop a relationship and not try to to pick up a new one. And so as we grow up, you know, we have the our friends and our band of brothers that we go through high school with,
and then high school ends. Boom. All of a sudden, 90% of our friends are gone. We had one common bond with that, and that common bond was the fact that we were in the same high school. And then we've gone off. We've done separate things. We've created a few new friends, but nowhere near as many as we did in when we were in, you know, junior high, high school.
And this is where we really actually need to if we go into college, then, yeah, we start building another set of friends because we have another common bond that we're all used to going through, and that's the college. And if you're in like a fraternity or something like that, then a lot of times you actually get lifelong friends from that because you still have that common you're never out of that that fraternity.
You're just you're just continuing on through life with being a member of that fraternity. And so you you're often able to stay closer friends to that. Now these days, whenever I was growing up and back in we're here back in 1992, you know, when we had horse drawn carriages and stuff. We, we didn't have, we didn't have the Internet.
Now, we had something that was the Internet, but you were you had to be in college and you had to have be in that particular field to get to play on, on the, the ARPNET and and use, the Snoopy browser and things like that. But we didn't have it. So when it was time for us to leave, we tried to collect as many phone numbers and and and, add mailing addresses as we could. But as you moved
time and time again because when you're young, you are always moving. You're you be in one place for maybe a year, and then, oh, it's time to move over here. And you're there for 6 months, and then you're over here for 6 months, and you're in another place for another 6 months. And you bounce around your until you decide that you're gonna set up roots in wherever place you're at. And then by the time you're going, hey. I wonder what will happen to old old Billy Joe Bobson.
And you go and look through and it's like, oh, I don't have his address anymore. I lost it someplace. And you never realized that you lost it. So our ability to maintain relationships dwindled drastically. But then we, again, we start to make a few more, but our friends always become very our friends groups have always stayed very small after we get out of college. But that is because we if especially if we got married, all of a sudden, we're putting all of our friend energy
into our wife. And that's good because our wife is a friend. She's our wife pride primarily, but she's also our friend. But us guys also need guy friends. And a lot of times, we don't wanna put that extra energy because all of a sudden, you have to be a little vulnerable when you're coming out to being a friend because you have to start talking about things. And you have to try to figure out what do you have in common with this other guy that you kinda want to be want to be a friend with.
While once you start having those discussions, you start to find out, okay. This person's a good guy. This person really did. He turned around just just used the bit information you said and and sabotages the the work you were doing. So you you realize, okay. I don't want him as a friend. I don't wanna do any more friendships. And so we start to really hold him back until maybe you've got one friend through life. And that's not a that's good to have at least a friend, but
it's better if you can get 6 to 10 friends. 6 to 10 of those really close friends that are are needing to show up when you're in trouble, needing to be there to lift you up when you're at your wits end. You're trying to get something going and it just is not wanting to work. So what do you do? How do you do that? That takes again, that takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of effort to be able to get to the point to where you're you're running a
running a good band of brothers. And it takes a lot of, a lot of effort and, and trial and error too. Because we we have those perceived, portrayals. We have those ends of relationships. And then we put all our our social intimacy, power, and energy into our marriage. And that works for a good deal of us until the marriage falls apart. And then we realize we don't have any friends. And that's where the loneliness really sets in because we don't have any connection with somebody in common.
So, how do you go through the process of building your social intimacy? And this is something that is important for anybody and everybody who is walking around on earth today because we have to have friends. We gotta have friends. If you're running around going, I don't need friends. I you are limiting yourself. You're limiting your potential. You're limiting your life. If you're sitting around, running around going, I don't need to have a good friend to to get my hold my back.
You also are denying yourself all the fulfillment that you that you are seeking, whether you realize you're seeking that fulfillment or not. You're running away from the the bumps, of feel good, feel good times, and you're wandering around in that in that valley. Yeah. There's times that you're gonna find a good peak of of feel good because you succeeded on doing something all by yourself.
But to be just how much more joy would that be if you were to actually take the time to share that good time with your friends and to have them celebrate with you? So to build social intimacy is going out and make a friend. Do do that hard thing. That is probably the hardest thing us guys will ever be faced with whenever I'm talking with my with my clients and they're first starting and we check and see where you're at on your on your your man's community pillar.
Most of the time, they're like, oh, well, I got one. I've got 2 good friends. Alright. Well, the assignments you sure are gonna have by the time we next come, you know, within the next 2 weeks is I want you to find a new friend. Don't have to be a great friend. Don't have to be a super awesome friend, but I want you to make a new friend. And to watch guys go,
oh my gosh. What? You want I I don't I don't know how to and your our brain will just spin up and just go off in a overdrive going. All of these are all the reasons why you aren't gonna be able to find a friend. Nobody wants to be a friend. And our brain will beat us up because our brain loves to play dirty. Alright? Loves to make sure to dig us down so and keep us down so that we stay comfortable.
You don't want comfort in your life. You want results. You want to step through the land of discomfort. That land of comfort and, on the other side, what you want is separated by a very thin veil of fear and discomfort. The price it's gonna take for you to get your dreams is that discomfort. And the part of the one of the easiest ways to experience discomfort and to and to understand that that discomfort will not hurt you is to make a friend.
How do you go about on making a friend, showing these, the friend that who you are and what you can do and and and to build the level of trust and intimacy that is needed to have this just acquaintance go from an acquaintance to a friend, to a good friend, to a really good friend, to inner circle 3 AM type of person. So do that. Now some of the problems that we also have is when especially when it comes to social intimacy with marriage is that you have to continue to feed that social intimacy.
Now, a lot of us will work on that social intimacy. It's called dating. We will date our our our fiancee our the our girlfriend and our from our girlfriend, we become the fiancee. Our fiance becomes her wife, you know, typical, you know, progression through through the steps. The problem that we have is shortly after we say I do, we have that little honeymoon period. It's all great and wonderful,
and then life kicks in. And so we're we do life. We have kids, and all of a sudden we have kids in life and bills and mortgage payments and everything else that comes stomping around. And we stop dating our girlfriend. We stopped dating our fiance. We stopped dating our wife. And so our
level of social intimacy with our wife starts to drop, starts to fall. And all of a sudden, we're instead of having this hot, you know, this hot babe in bed with us, we've got she's she shows up to bed with, in sweatpants and a and a and a sweatshirt and and, you know, 4 other layers of clothing because, you know, she's cold all the time, and you're sitting here sweating in your underwear and
try you wonder why there's no intimacy there, why there's no connection. All of a sudden, you find yourself wandering into the world of the roommate syndrome, and you've got a great roommate. Y'all can pay the bills like nobody's business, but there is no spark. There's no the sex happens on rare occasions. Maybe maybe it's, maybe it's you're on the lucky side and it's once a week. Maybe you're on the normal about the average of everybody else, and it may be about once a month. That is
where we have to take the time to step back and stop going. Alright. Let's, what what's keeping keeping us from having the joy that we want? What's keeping us from enjoying the the the life and the marriage that we are we're craving for? And that is we have to step into developing and regrowing our social intimacy. And the way you do that is actually
not hard. It's a challenge. It's still it's nowhere it's as as challenging as going out and making a new friend. But this time, you're taking somebody that you know and somebody that y'all had some fights with. You've had some arguments. You've had hurt feelings. Y'all y'all accused each other of different things at different times. And so there's a lot of damage that's been done to the social intimacy register that you that that you have.
So how do you rebuild the social intimacy with your wife? You start by asking questions. That's always the answer. If you're wanting to grow in any type of intimacy, it starts with the questions. You get to understand your why? Don't worry about you. Stephen Covey said it best. Seek first to understand before being understood. So if she's angry
and you finally get her to talk about it, you don't go, well, you're you're wrong. That's not how what I meant. It's like, okay. Why did you think that I said that? Have the discussions. And if you're wondering, if you're just trying to build intimacy and you're trying to have a discussion and you're not sure what to talk about because a lot of times we'll get around to it was like, well, what are we gonna talk about? I don't know.
And the only thing us guys are thinking of is, well, I could ask her about sex, you know, and let's let's bring up the end. But it's we we beat ourselves back on that whole thought of of having sex. We deny ourselves that. Even that very thought because, well, we don't want her to think we're just some sex crazed maniac. Well, she's lived with you for 10 years. She knows you're a sex crazed mani maniac.
She just doesn't have the level of intimacy going on that she wants to reciprocate that sex crazed maniac energy. And so, I actually I have a I have a list. You can go over to, to the, the show notes and there'll be a a link to that will allow you to start getting curious. There's 800 questions about everything and anything you could possibly think of and and have a have a good discussion with your wife. You can start off with just asking one question.
And then from there, ask another question at that pertains to what her answer is. And keep asking those questions because eventually, what's gonna happen is she's going to go, okay. Well, what about you? And then you have the chance to be able to reply. But you don't shoot her thoughts down. You just accept her thoughts for being her thoughts, and that's all they are. That's just just her thoughts.
You have your own thoughts. And so you get to start having those discussions and you start opening up the different little hidden rooms that your wife's mind has. And you start discovering. I mean, I've had a lot of of fascinating discoveries come about with my wife within the last year of me just making sure I get curious about something I did that ended up pissing her off.
You know, that's the one of the biggest points. If you can accept the fact that, yeah, she is going to yell and scream and call you some ugly names and you don't take it personally, guess what she's going to do? If you don't run off and hide and you just stay there and just kinda take it like like a man, you find that you can start asking questions and you can come to understand
why she felt the way she did. And a lot of times, it's because she was afraid at some time in her life that something bad was gonna happen, and you and your actions just brought that fear back. It's that simple. And it's not that you're going to ever get rid of that fear, and it's not that you even have to tiptoe around that fear. But the fact that you are now able to understand where she's coming from
allows for the connection to come together. Because, yeah, you're gonna have fights. You're gonna have arguments. You're gonna be yelling and screaming at each other from time to time. And that's fine because when it's done and it's over with, come back together and start reconnecting. And that's when you start having the repair that you want, that better connection, the better understanding, the better intimacy
of of physical intimacy and emotional intimacy. Because when you come together and you start repairing, that's what you're repairing is the emotional intimacy. You need the old emotional intimacy to understand to be able to get to the point where you get the physical intimacy. But also part of it is the intellectual and the spiritual and the experiences that you have in your life.
Understand your wife's experiences, understand and let her have the opportunity to understand your experiences. So you're sharing your life with her. And then one of the biggest things you can do is just if you're scared to take a step, accept that you're scared. Do it scared and go on. You're gonna are you gonna mess it up? More likely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're gonna, you're gonna screw it up big time, especially the first couple, three times you try.
And that's because you've not ever done it before. Did you start riding a bike perfectly the moment you started riding the bike? No. No. You've probably pushed off and fell over. You probably got a scraped knees, a couple scraped knees, a couple scraped elbows, maybe even chipped a tooth, got a road rash, scar on your forehead, you know, when you meet crayon to cross the, after trying to do a jump, we we do that. Alright? You fail
so that you get better. And so you get back on to you get back up onto that horse and you keep going. And that's when life gets good, life gets better, and your relationship becomes stronger because you have taken the time to be uncomfortable. You've taken the time to come to a better understanding. And with that, you end up finding that your life is so much better for it.
And that's what I'm wanting to help you with. And if you are struggling with that in any way or you wanna have a better relationship in your life, I actually encourage you to go to relaxedmail.comforward/ lovebirds. And that's all one word, no spaces or hyphens or anything like that. Just go in go there and set up a time. We'll see how well we can work together.
We can see if I can assist you on taking you to that better level, the level of relationship that you are are craving, helping you get change your mind and change how you look at what your relationship is so that you can actually see that your wife, that beautiful woman who was just ravenous in bed is actually still there underneath those 4 layers of clothes. She is there wanting you to show up because you're not actually showing up anymore either.
So, guys, wanna say thank you very much for, for watching. Thank you very much for listening. And, guys, if y'all again, if y'all wanted to get a little extra coaching or see what how I can, help you out, go to relax mail dot com forward slash lovebirds and love to talk to you. So guys, with that, I wanna say thanks very much for listening, and I will talk to y'all next week. Till then. Bye.