Archive - June, 2010

How Many Types of Intimacy Do You and Your Partner Share?

June 24, 2010 in Marriage-Family, Therapy-Psychology with 4 Comments

It is more than likely that when you ask someone about intimacy, only 2-3 types of intimacy are discussed…3 is pushing it for many people. People talk about physical/sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, and I often hear about spiritual intimacy a lot as well. When intimacy is only focused on these 2-3 types it can be overwhelming for a relationship, putting lots of pressure on 1-2 types, while ignoring all the other types of intimacy that is available to a couple.

What happens if your emotional or sexual intimacy is not firing on all cylinders at the moment in your relationship? Does that mean that you don’t share intimacy with one another? Or that you can’t look towards other types of intimacy while you are not connecting in other areas?

When I’m working with couples I often like to give them a handout that talks about the varying types of intimacy that can be present in a relationship, while taking a look at what some of the barriers to that intimacy may be. (This is a handout that was passed down to me in training, and there is no data on it in regards to the resource or book it came from. So if you know the source, let me know.) Couples love having something tangible to look at and discuss when it comes to intimacy. It often gives them a sense of relief knowing that there are many types of intimacy available in a relationship, and it often gives them goals and action steps to strive towards in their intimate connections with one another.

Here is the following list of the types of intimacy, along with some common blocks:

12 Types of Intimacy

  1. Sexual Intimacy: Sharing passion and physical pleasuring
  2. Emotional Intimacy: Being tuned to each other’s wavelength
  3. Intellectual Intimacy: Closeness in the world of ideas
  4. Aesthetic Intimacy: Sharing experience of beauty
  5. Creative Intimacy: Sharing in acts of creating together
  6. Recreational Intimacy: Relating in experiences of fun and play
  7. Work Intimacy: Closeness of sharing common tasks
  8. Crisis Intimacy: Closeness in coping with problems and pain
  9. Conflict Intimacy: Facing and struggling with differences
  10. Commitment Intimacy: Mutually derived from common self-interest
  11. Spiritual Intimacy: Unity shared in religious expression
  12. Communication Intimacy: Mutual understanding and affirmation

Blocks to Intimacy

  1. Expecting feelings of intimacy to just happen
  2. Blaming each other when it doesn’t happen
  3. Superficial Communication
  4. Devoting most of time and energy to job, children, home, career, etc.
  5. Too much togetherness–smothering
  6. Withdrawing affirmation, caring behavior, support
  7. Not Using Platinum Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

If you sat down with your partner, took a look at the types of intimacy, how many types do you think you and your partner would agree that you connect on?

What are the common barriers to intimacy in your relationship?

What If? The Scariest and Most Crucial Question in a Relationship

June 18, 2010 in Marriage-Family, Ministry-Theology, Therapy-Psychology with 5 Comments

I feel like I do some of my best thinking and reflecting while out on a run. And while I was running yesterday a few stanzas from the Coldplay song, What If? really stuck out to me…

What if you should decide
That you don’t want me there by your side
That you don’t want me there in your life

Ooh ooh-ooh, that’s right
Let’s take a breath, jump over the side
Ooh ooh-ooh, that’s right
How can you know it, if you don’t even try
Ooh ooh-ooh, that’s right

Every step that you take
Could be your biggest mistake
It could bend or it could break
That’s the risk that you take (Coldplay, What If?)

The song stuck out to me for several reasons…

  1. There is a great amount of relational anxiety in the relationship being described.  The artist doesn’t know if the person will be there by their side…it’s an option the other person has, completely out of the control of the other.  The artist doesn’t know if they will “bend or break”…and there is an element of risk involved.  The risk involves anxiety, but to not push through the anxiety may forfeit the opportunity for the relationship and for growth.

  2. As people we love the words and songs of poets and artists.  We love the songs about relationships, especially ones that involve an element of risk and not knowing.  We wonder, “Will that person be there on the other side” in the romance movies we watch and the songs that we sing.  BUT, we don’t like to have this experience ourselves.  It’s all fine and dandy to sing about and to watch on the silver screen, but when it comes to taking these risks and venturing forth through the anxiety in our own relationships, we often choose to sit on the sidelines, seeking comfort and security.

  3. This is the predicament of all relationships.  At some point you will have a choice before you…two options (marriage and sex therapist David Schnarch refers to it as Two-Choice Dillemas).  Do you stay in the place of comfort and safety which is actually a threat to your relationship, or do you venture out into the unknown, facing the anxiety, hoping for growth in the relationship.

These reasons make us all ask “What If? in our relationships, our families, our faith, our vocations and more.

I love how David Schnarch puts it:

How do you find the trust to go “exploring” with your spouse? Many couples think it’s based on safety and security, which means staying in the comfort cycle. Trust can be based on a pact you’ll never leave the inner circle (comfort/safety), or developed from a trip through the growth cycle. But the trust that results is totally different: before you’ve ventured into the outer circle (growth), trust is based on blind faith. It lacks the safety and security of knowing how you’ll do when “what if” happens; it is an uneasy trust, an untested trust. What’s actually required is the leaf of faith, because real safety follows rather than precedes your first trip through the growth cycle. Trust based on shared mutual experience and hardship–watching what your partner and you do under pressure and adversity–is solid and resilient. (Passionate Marriage, David Schnarch)

So hold onto yourself, face your anxiety and take the leap knowing that if you don’t, then you may also forfeit any opportunities for relational and spiritual growth.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself. Freedom succumbs in this dizziness. Further than this, psychology cannot and will not go. In that very moment everything is changed, and freedom, when it again rises, sees that it is guilty. Between these two moments lies the leap, which no science has explained and which no science will explain. (The Concept of Anxiety by Soren Kierkegaard)

Boundaries, Boundaries, Boundaries…Boundaries

June 11, 2010 in Therapy-Psychology with 1 Comment


“Without truth there can be no intimacy, because without truth you wind up sharing lies or delusions. Without intimacy there can be no relationship. When two partners share their true selves, protecting self and others by the correct practice of boundaries, the miracle of spirituality is present.” (The Intimacy Factor, pp. xvi)

Those words are from Pia Mellody, renowned clinician in the area of codependency and boundaries in relationships, childhood trauma, and many, many other things. I had the chance to see her speak last week and was so blown away by her three hour presentation, Coming into Balance: Addressing Issues of Value, Power and Abundance….that I still can’t stop thinking about it.

If you are looking for a wonderful book to read, I recommend, The Intimacy Factor: The Ground Rules for Overcoming the Obstacles to Truth, Respect, and Lasting Love

“Without boundaries, there is no relationship. Without relationship there is no intimacy. Without intimacy there is no love, and without love the spiritual path is hidden from us.

Boundaries create the experience of truth and respect in which love can grow. We recognize that our inherent worth cannot be taken away from us by the display of our authentic selves. We are human and only that. We are born with inherent worth and it coexists with all our human flaws. (The Intimacy Factor, pp. 118)

College Students and Empathy: Can Social Media Create a Bystander Effect That Can Inhibit One’s Compassion?

June 2, 2010 in Technology-Social Media, Therapy-Psychology with 9 Comments

Compassion on the Decline Among College Students

A new study finds that today’s college students are not as empathetic as college students of the 1980s and ’90s.

University of Michigan researchers analyzed data on empathy collected from almost 14,000 college students over the last 30 years.

“We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000,” said Sara Konrath, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research.

“College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.”

If the data in this research is accurate enough to extrapolate across college students in general, then I consider myself really blessed to have served alongside some of the most compassionate people during my seven years on staff as the college pastor at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. So in my own experience this research doesn’t match my reality, but then again I was serving as a college pastor where students were striving to serve God and to serve others in a myriad of ways.

In this 30 year study, researchers have hypothesized several reasons why they think college students in the last 10 years are less compassionate, and less able to empathize, than those students in previous decades.

  1. “The increase in exposure to media during this time period could be one factor,” Konrath said.
  2. The recent rise of social media may also play a role in the drop in empathy, suggests O’Brien.  “The ease of having ‘friends’ online might make people more likely to just tune out when they don’t feel like responding to others’ problems, a behavior that could carry over offline,” he said.“
  3. College students today may be so busy worrying about themselves and their own issues that they don’t have time to spend empathizing with others, or at least perceive such time to be limited,” O’Brien said.“College students today may be so busy worrying about themselves and their own issues that they don’t have time to spend empathizing with others, or at least perceive such time to be limited,” O’Brien said.

One of the questions that I asked in the recent post, Technology: Connected, Yet Lonelier Than Ever, was:

I wonder if technology and social media has compressed our relationships into a process that we can barely recognize?

So on the one hand, there is something cool and convenient with clicking a button online that brings us into contact with a person. But on the other hand, the ease and convenience has disconnected us from the process of relationship making.

Has all the technology relationally disconnected us in a sense, replacing the processes (befriending, getting to know each other, sharing life, etc), where instead we just value the end results (number of followers, blog traffic, etc.)

Can social media allows us to keep others at an arm’s length from one another? This can definitely happen in real life as well, but I wonder if social media can exacerbate the bystander effect when it comes to empathizing with others and being compassionately involved? (For a look at some of the more infamous examples of this effect, check out 10 Notorious Cases of the Bystander Effect.

Of course, I could now show you all the wonderful examples of where people have used social media as a means to demonstrate compassion to others. Think of the earthquake in Haiti. The floods in Nashville. The protests in Iran. Etc. Etc.

I guess the question for researchers (and for us) is, are we able to move beyond showing our compassion to others through a click of the button (though there is nothing wrong with that and I hope people keep doing that), and move into situations that may demand more of us than clicking buttons and counting followers?

Maybe this is why each of us plays a various role in the body of Christ? When the body of Christ is working together harmoniously (some online getting involved, others ‘on the ground’ in person involved, others sending money and resources, etc.) it is an unstoppable force.

The Continuing Work in Haiti

June 1, 2010 in Ministry-Theology, Technology-Social Media with 1 Comment

This last February I had the opportunity to travel to Haiti with Adventures in Missions and some really amazing people. You can read some of the posts that I wrote about that experience here. I was hoping to get back to Haiti by this point, but I had to decline a chance to head back there this last week…but some great people did get to go, and I want you to get a glimpse of what they have been up to.

I received this note from Mark Oestreicher:

we’re launching the church to church partnership program. it’s an opportunity for american churches to have a 1:1 partnership with a haitian church for prayer, encouragement, assistance and trips (to bring people to haiti to help in rebuilding). we have about 1000 haitian pastors in a database now, and will be working to pair up those who show a great desire to serve their communities. part of this effort (and what would be wonderful if you could mention) is that we’re trying to raise $35,000 to fund the salaries of 3 haitian church leaders who will run this program from the haitian side (bringing oversight, administration, communication and accountability).

Here are some links to see what they are up to/and what they have been up to and how you can help out.

The Giving Project
Facebook Group
Twitter Feed