Intimacy in Relationships
This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.
This question was asked by a client of mine named Sue:
Sue told me she was feeling lonely and not happy in her relationship with her husband. She felt he spent too much time working or doing other activities he likes to do. And often when he was with her, he wasn’t really focused on her, although he was sometimes. She wanted him to spend more time with her, really focused on her, but didn’t want to stop him from doing the things he enjoys doing, and wondered what she should do.
My response: I think what you’re really wanting is intimacy. And the lack of intimacy in your life is what is resulting in you feeling lonely. The particular amount of time with your husband focusing his attention on you, is just a symbol of that for you. But you not receiving intimacy, has to do with you not having the channels open for receiving it, in other words, an inability to receive it. Intimacy can’t be gotten by controlling another person’s behavior.
This is actually an interlocking issue between you and your husband, because he also doesn’t have the channels for intimacy open. And so the solution is not to have him stop doing what he likes to do and focus his attention on you. Approaching this by trying to get him to focus more time on you is an attempt to control what can’t be controlled in reality, and it is a backwards approach to the problem. The problem is not about what each of you wants being in conflict, but it’s about your unhealed issues distorting each of your experience of reality in a way that proves your limiting decisions to be true. When people make a limiting decision, the unconscious mind gets invested in proving that it is true. That’s what causes people to keep repeating dysfunctional patterns in their lives, doing things over and over again that they know isn’t good for them, or getting into the same kind of dysfunctional type of relationship. In this case, the limiting decision, and what your unconscious is invested in proving, has to do with believing you are not lovable. And so the solution is to transform the unhealed issue.
When the limiting decisions in both of you that are closing the channels for you being able to have intimacy in relationships are cleared, than the issue of how much and in what way you spend time with each other will natural flow in a way that creates intimacy. The truth is that intimacy is something you both want, as it’s inherent in intimate relationships. When you get to the real issue, you find that what each of you wants is not actually in conflict with the other.
*Limiting decisions are decisions made usually before the age of 6 or 7 years old, that are some form of deciding that there is something inherently wrong with you, and/or some form of that life doesn’t work — Such as “I am bad,” “I am worthless,” “People can’t be trusted.”
