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 – 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.