Intimacy in Marriage – See Your Own Beauty

Intimacy is created through sharing all of yourself with one you love.  There are many expressions of intimacy and we all have different levels of awareness and willingness to share who we are.   Some, maybe most of us have lost sight of the light and the beauty within and it feels as if we never really knew ourselves at all.  How can we reveal what we do not know?

I do not think, as one often hears, that we cannot love someone until we fully love ourselves or that we cannot create intimacy without fully knowing ourselves.  It is in honestly coming together with another admitting we don’t fully know and love ourselves that helps to reveal our essence.  Saying “I don’t know” is a position of honesty, humility, and vulnerability that allows learning and connection to take place.  Evolutionary growth is an interactive process between an organism and its environment.  We can help one another grow and mature. We shape and influence one another for better or worse.

Yet we still must take full responsibility for our own development.  I have observed that women learn to hide their light and beauty from others and from themselves in particular ways.  Beauty is hidden because of fears, beliefs, and assumptions.  You are taught to believe that it is not OK to shine too brightly for fear of what others might think of you.  You have come to believe that you need to compete with others and so you compare and judge and often find yourself lacking.  So you hide your beauty in various ways; through negative emotions, through behaviors that keep you too busy, through excess focus on appearance, or through neglect of your bodies, minds, and souls.  Men, of course have the same struggles but it plays out in somewhat different ways, such as the quest for power, and accumulation of possessions that you hope will earn you respect and admiration.

Please spend some time reflecting on the following poem by Derek Walcott.  When you cultivate ways to feast on your life you will become full and find you have much greater depth to share with the one you love.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes;
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

Executive Marriage Coach – The Secret to Changing Your Spouse

The secret to changing your spouse

We have all heard that you can’t change anyone but yourself.  That doesn’t stop most of us from trying however.  The ways in which we do try to change our spouses always seem to backfire because the underlying message is “you are not good enough”, which is what they already feel anyway so the natural response is defensiveness.

I have come to believe that while we can’t force, seduce, or manipulate anyone to change; we can create conditions that provide the support and freedom for people to change, if they decide to.  Changing is a process of healing and becoming whole.   Consider this quote from Marianne Williamson: “We heal when we feel forgiven.  We heal in the presence of compassion.  If you really want someone to change, the miracle lies in your ability to see how perfect they already are.  We miraculously heal in the presence of someone who believes in our light even when we are lost in our darkness.  And when we learn to see others in the light of their true being, whether they are showing us that light or not, then we have the power to work that miracle for them.”

Understanding what Marianne is saying and putting it into practice requires that you first realize that you too are perfect in your true self.   You need to reconnect with your own light and see yourself with compassion.  This requires conscious and deliberate spiritual practice.  In the words of Marianne again, “Spiritual practice is key to our power as light-bearers, for we cannot extend peace if we do not cultivate it.  Our thoughts and attitudes need persistent training in a world so intent on convincing us that we are who we are not and that we are not who, in fact, we are.  The thinking of love is completely opposite the thinking that dominates this world; that is why we must be constantly reminded of the light”.  Do a simple daily practice of intentionally reminding yourself of the light within you and within your spouse and then act as if you really believe it.  Keep practicing if you don’t see changes because most of the time healing takes loving consistency and honesty over time.  In any event, love is its own reward.

Executive Marriage Coach – How to Stretch your Love Capacity

Why won’t you meet my needs? A client recalled this lament from his wife, which in essence was the accusation: “you have the ability to meet my needs, you’re not doing it, and furthermore you’re not doing it on purpose”.   Upon further exploration it became clear that in spite of this man’s efforts to meet his wife’s needs he could not satisfy her demands.  She had taken on the role of victim and projected blame onto him.  He, in turn, felt helpless and stuck and projected blame back onto her for being impossible to please.

This situation illustrates a common struggle in marriage relationships.  The real problem is a misguided assumption that one’s spouse is responsible for and capable of meeting our core needs and fulfilling us.  That is not possible any more than any other external source can validate us, fulfill us, and make us whole.  Wholeness is a journey that happens from the inside out and is both an emotional and spiritual process.  We must own that responsibility for ourselves and open ourselves to love from within, from our spiritual source.  Then we can effectively give and receive love in our external relationships.

This client came to see that once he got clear about the issue of responsibility there were several commitments he was able to make to his wife.  These are commitments to support her in her journey towards finding wholeness at her own pace, to be engaged and present in the relationship, to create a loving space for her to learn, and to not blame his wife for what she needs.  Paradoxically letting go of the expectation of meeting another’s needs allows us to be instrumental in helping our partner get those needs satisfied.  This may not result in what you hope for from your partner but it is worth doing anyway because in the process of keeping these commitments you will be stretched and increase your capacity to be a loving human being.

Executive Marriage Coach – Enjoying the Fruits of Love

What a weekend!  A friend of mine was telling me about the wedding of his son and new daughter-in-law this weekend.  He had several good observations.  One was the joy and pride of seeing his son grown into a mature young man making a commitment to a lovely young woman.  He talked about the joy of being a father and how important it has been just to be a loving presence in his son’s life. Several of his son’s friends seemed to be missing that from their own fathers and often sought to engage with him for some sort of recognition.  My friend also shared how great it was to welcome a daughter into their family, noting they only had two sons.  He said his wife gave a moving toast as she said this young woman had not become their daughter-in-law but their daughter-in-love.

My friend’s story resonated with my own experiences of being the father of two girls who have grown into lovely and strong women.  For me and my wife, being a loving and consistent presence in their lives has been wonderful for us and provided fertile soil for them to grow in. They have both found strong and loving men to marry and are now starting their own families.  It is very satisfying to witness and be a part of.  We have now entered the delightful stage of being grandparents.  Our first granddaughter is now 19 months old and this weekend our younger daughter gave birth to her first child and our second granddaughter.  It is wonderful.

There is nothing better than indulging deeply in the fruits of love.  My friend and his wife and I and my wife have been blessed no doubt, but we are not special people with unusual gifts or talents.  The fruits of love are the result of planting the seeds of love early and often and then cultivating and nurturing those seeds into maturity. It is simply engaging in the practices of love on a consistent basis over time that yields results.  Of course some have more difficult circumstances than others, but you can always choose love and choose to be present in the lives of those you love.  I encourage you to be in it for the long term.  The fruits are delicious.