Dedication to Love and Intimacy: Reflecting on Relationships with Curiosity

There are many paths to love and deeper intimacy in relationships. The unique ways that people know and seek love can be expressed and celebrated in many beautiful forms.

There are different forms of intimacy, whether it be emotional, physical, mental, intellectual, creative, and social intimacy.

In relationships, the ways we’ve learned to seek love and intimacy can be become entangled with wounds, hurts, or traumas that may feel familiar, yet actually work against that genuine sense of connection and intimacy that we are looking for.

Systemic framework such as patriarchal norms, capitalism, and intergenerational trauma can absolutely be contextualized with compassion here.

There is utility in the ways that wounds create defenses for protection. It’s not a point of judgment or self-shaming, but to lean in with curiosity and accountability. Presence and intimacy can coexist with normal aspects in relationships such as conflict, miscommunication, and disagreement. It’s the way these occur and how the aspects are responded to that creates relationship patterns over time. This information can help to discern if the relationship is healthy or right for you. With trauma-informed care, self-trust and discernment can be repaired in a way that’s both empowering and affirming for a survivor’s reality.

While it does become dynamic and multifaceted within relationships, there’s no need to excavate or go digging in the past here, because dynamics tend to express themselves in the present.

A skilled relational therapist has an ear for it.

In a dedication to love and intimacy,

How do you give and receive love?

What deepens or disconnects your experiences with intimacy? Does it fulfill you in a sustainable way?

How has your culture(s) and communities influenced your beliefs about intimacy?

In what ways do you dream to be in relationships that honor your desires? What actions need to take place to bring these dreams to fruition?