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Intimacy is closeness between people in personal relationships. It’s what builds over time as you connect with someone, grow to care about each other, and feel more and more comfortable during your time together. It can include physical or emotional closeness, or even a mix of the two.

You’ve probably heard of intimacy in the context of s*x and romance. S*x with a partner can build intimacy, but it’s far from the only indicator of intimacy. It’s possible to have s*x without intimacy as well as intimacy without s*x.

Emotional intimacy is what allows you to tell your loved ones personal things that you might not necessarily share with strangers. Think of it as letting your guard down. As you learn that you can trust someone, you feel safe enough to let your walls down. Do you look forward to coming home from work so you can relax and be yourself with your partner? A good s*xual relationship is built on emotional intimacy and closeness. In other words, if you’re hoping to improve your physical relationship, you need to first work on your emotional connection. Focus on meeting your partner’s needs and communicating your own needs in a loving, respectful way.

In The Science of Trust, Dr. Gottman explains that couples who want to rekindle their passion and love need to turn towards each other. Practicing emotional attunement can help you stay connected even when you disagree. This means turning toward one another by showing empathy, instead of being defensive. Both partners need to talk about their feelings in terms of positive need, instead of what they do not need.

According to Dr. Gottman, expressing a positive need is a recipe for success for both the listener and the speaker because it conveys complaints and requests without criticism and blame. Dr. Gottman says, “This requires a mental transformation from what is wrong with one’s partner to what one’s partner can do that would work. The speaker is really saying, ‘Here’s what I feel, and what I need from you.’”



All intimacy comes down to a few key factors, including:

Trust

In order to share personal parts of yourself — like your most embarrassing secrets or your deepest fears — you have to be able to trust them. howing another person that you’re trustworthy can help them feel closer to you too.

Acceptance

You know you’ve established some intimacy when you feel like a person accepts you for who you truly are. When you first meet someone, you might worry that they’ll hear your “guilty pleasure” music playlist and think you’re weird. But as intimacy grows, you can rock out to your favorite boy bands and trust that no matter how weird you get, you’ll still be accepted and cared for.

Honesty

Honesty and intimacy feed one other. You often can’t have one without the other. You feel comfortable telling your partner exactly how you feel in part because you’ve become so close to each other. And in the same vein, every time you open up, you can grow a little bit closer. You’ll know your partner is willing to listen the next time you want to share something personal.

Safety

Sharing your deepest, truest self with another person can put you in a pretty vulnerable position. That’s why you tend to have your guard up when you meet someone new. You don’t yet know if they’ll support you as you are. So, intimacy means feeling safe enough to take the risk of putting yourself out there, knowing the other person cares enough not to let you down.

Compassion

Feeling cared about is a lovely feeling, isn’t it? You know your BFF will be there for you after a bad breakup. You know your sister won’t let a week go by without asking how you’re doing. Forgiveness and understanding can only exist with compassion between people. Compassion is a natural component of caring about one another’s well-being.

Affection

Caring about each other is one thing, but you also build intimacy by showing that you care. Affection can be physical, like a kiss between lovers or a hug between a parent and child, but it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes affection is in the unspoken ways you show up for each other, like when your friend spends their day off helping you move simply because they care.

Communication

There’s a reason why good communication is so often named as the key to a healthy relationship. When you make an effort to listen to someone and tell them how you really feel, you can build a deep understanding for each other. And the more you understand each other, the closer you become.



Source: Healthline

obunny obunny

“TO YOU” BY KENNETH KOCH
I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut
That will solve a murder case unsolved for years
Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window
Through which he saw her head, connecting with
Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red
Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years;
For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not
Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a
Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails
In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from
The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us;
I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields
Always, to be near you, even in my heart
When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you
Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to
The place where I again think of you, a new
Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow
Of a ship which sails
From Hartford to Miami, and I love you
Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun
Receives me in the questions which you always pose.

“WHEN YOU COME” BY MAYA ANGELOU
When you come to me, unbidden,
Beckoning me
To long-ago rooms,
Where memories lie.
Offering me, as to a child, an attic,
Gatherings of days too few.
Baubles of stolen kisses.
Trinkets of borrowed loves.
Trunks of secret words,
I CRY.

“I Loved You” BY ALEXANDFER PUSHKIN
I loved you, and I probably still do,
And for a while the feeling may remain...
But let my love no longer trouble you,
I do not wish to cause you any pain.
I loved you; and the hopelessness I knew,
The jealousy, the shyness - though in vain -
Made up a love so tender and so true
As may God grant you to be loved again.
“You and I Are Stars” BY ARRICUS
You and I are stars
Met once
In the gentle breath of a universe
Crossed for a moment
In the ebb and flow of dust and atoms

——daily share

“Sonnet 116” BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

——daily share

A million "I love you's" will never correctly deliver how much I cherish my love. In 2020, my gratitude for them had reached new levels as we were distance separate and overwhelmed by loneliness. Physical distace separate us from reaching out, touching or hugging a shoulder.

"For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings."

So how do you show gratitude？ How do you celebrate togetherness without gathering? I've been turning to read poetry which helps me remember what it's like to be in a physical world with my long-distance loved one. When loneliness comes, I put myself into poetry to seek for empathy to support me deal with this heavy moment.

It is okay to feel alone, especially when the seasons start to get a bit colder; the night starts to grow a little longer. Just reach out convey your care by sending a warming poem and start a conversation to connect .

Below, you'll find poems about love that are warming my heart. Spanning loss, celebration, and revolution, these poems remind me that we are all stronger together. Sit with them, meditate on them, and share them with your loved ones.



“SONNET 29” BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone be weep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.