intimacy

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Wearing A Bit Of Disguise For The Sake of Being Open

Self-Care Tip #110 – Find your masquerade and let it teach you how to be open.

We often talk about taking masks off.  About being open and “face” our lives with courage.  However doing that isn’t always as easy as saying it.  Sometimes doing the opposite makes it easier in preparation for when we have courage to try again.  Sometimes putting the mask on makes it easier to more completely know and be known.

On Twitter today, this came from bigfishtopdogs Theresa BradleyBanta:

Here’s my #FF. These people rock! They engage!
And there was my name.
I wondered why we can say these high-fivers so spontaneously on Twitter from people we know only a few pixels deep.  I “met” Theresa BradleyBanta on her blog site bigfishtopdogs.com only a few days ago and she’s already telling people that I “rock!”  It is so cool!  (Just as an aside, she rocks too.  Her site is all about coaching and mentoring on entrepreneurial endeavors.)

Getting that fresh compliment almost stung when I realized how I preened underneath it.  Here in the real world, I don’t know who to show my feathers to.  My reply to Theresa was

Wow. How come I can’t hear anyone say that in “real life?”.  Twitter is like a smokey dark room where anything can happen.

Sometimes people think of hiding behind things as a way to do indiscrete lascivious acts that you wouldn’t want to do if you were identified.

I propose that a little hiding is a good thing for ourselves.  To get up close and personal.  To share over-the-top compliments and receive them.  It doesn’t mean something bad unless we use it badly.  I propose that when we disguise a little on occasion, we might remember how to act more freely when we are in the open – how to, when we try again.

Having the courage to try again and again to connect gets easier when we have fun reminders as to why we want it so bad.

Question:  What have your positive experiences been when you were a little less inhibited?  If fantasies could come true, how would you like it to carry over into your “real” life?  Please tell me your story.

 

 

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Keep it In The Relationship

She is a level-headed woman generally.  Objective by nature.  But now she asks, “What should I think?”  No longer taking birth control because she says she doesn’t need it.  They aren’t having sex.  Her husband uses porn and now openly gawks at other women walking by.  She says she doesn’t really care.

When a couple stops touching, the relationship is virtually over.  Few people revive their intimacy after too much time without sex.  Not everyone will believe this and may think it is too primitive for a true relationship of love.  But that’s the stats folks.  What to do if you physically can’t have intercourse?  Figure it out.  Must touch for intimacy.  Sounds like a bumper sticker.

Reminds me of a mighty river that suffers interference of dams and rerouting waterways.  Eventually a dry riverbed that once roiled with current and depth is left baking in the sun.  Even Paul the Apostle who never married recognized that if you aren’t physically intimate with your spouse, your nonphysical connection is also lost.

Physical intimacy is of course only one paradigm of intimacy.  And just about any one can say that, “Sex doth not a love make.”  Nor am I talking about finances, floss left in the shower, or how someone squeezes the bottle of toothpaste.  But whatever the many reasons are explaining the space on the couch, it ain’t good.  

So what did I tell her?  I certainly didn’t tell her “What she should think.”  I did review that we can’t trust our feelings.  “That’s true” she said.  “I hadn’t thought of that.”  Feelings lie all the time.

Question:  What do you think?  Agree or disagree.

Self Care Tip #59 – Keep it in the relationship.  Be a friend to yourself.