Intimacy with Self & Other

Cultivating Intimacy with Self & Other

“Despite how open, peaceful, and loving you attempt to be, people can only meet you as deeply as they’ve met themselves.” - Matt Kahn

Intimacy has been described as meaning “into-me-see”. The desire for more intimacy usually stems from a longing to be known and seen. Often, someone will seek support in this area because of a deficiency in connective or sexual aspects of their romantic relationships. These issues typically develop because of prolonged alienation or neglect of self, which may have its roots in things like childhood family dynamics, belief systems, personal trauma, energy blockages, etc.

However, we cannot share with a partner the parts of ourselves that we have yet to personally discover. For this reason, Joy’s approach to supporting individuals or couples who seek to enhance or develop their emotional, sexual or relational intimacy begins with:

• cultivating a foundation of self-knowledge, through personal investigation and exploration;

• learning to communicate to the self in a spirit of openness, respect and care; and

• establishing self-care practices that feel nourishing, in order to meet a romantic partner from a place of wholeness.

THEN, once an individual has established better personal intimacy, the next step is:

• learning how to share that self-knowledge and those discoveries with a partner in a way that feels both safe (to everyone) and expansive;

• cultivating healthy communication to enable the exploration of various aspects of relational intimacy together; and

• establishing a deeper and more authentic connection from a place of wholeness and enjoyment or desire, and not deficiency or need.

• Shifting from objective driven to presence based sexual intimacy