Personal development: The 5 elements of intimacy

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PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Sarbani Sen offers personal development advice on how to keep your relationship on track.

Even though you may enjoy supposed to be a romantic night out with your loved one, it is always good moment to look at your relationship and ask yourself the real questions. Am I growing in this relationship? Do I feel I am expanding and being even more of myself and the infinite possibilities of life or do I feel like I have to cut a leg off to fit in this relationship?

In 2017, consciousness and relationships are evolving and opening up. Today, most of us don’t want to reject any part of ourselves or our dreams. Once we step into the space of self-realization we don’t want our relationship to get in the way of that.

This is why new ways of being together emerge, as well as new ways of approaching intimacy. A few years ago, the founders of Access Consciousness, Gary Douglas and Dain Heer interviewed an old couple who had been together for 65 years and seemed very much in love even after all those years. They asked them what was their secret of harmonious togetherness and how they replied could be put together in the five elements described below.

  1. Trust
    According to them, trust actually means “knowing the person is going to do what is the best for them and the other”. It’s about looking at who a person is, not who you wish or hope they’re going to be.

You have two choices: choice A is to live with the person as they are and choice B is to leave.  Getting someone to change his/her behavior to satisfy what we think is right is choice C, which is not available in this scenario.

  1. Honour
    Here honour means “treating the other person and oneself with respect”, not ditching them or ourselves. Honour has to be based on who the person is, not who you wish they would be. And when applied to yourself, it means honouring who we are to the fullest, which is also a condition of a successful relationship. If you are pressuring someone to be other than who and what they are right now, you are not honouring them.

A quick test: How can I know if I’m honouring my partner and being kind to her/him? Always try to look at whether your comment will leave the person feeling better about themselves or not.  One question you can ask yourself, preferably before you speak, is: “Is this comment going to create more space and expansion in this relationship, or less?”  If it’s going to create contraction, then why say it ?

  1. Gratitude
    According to this philosophy, gratitude is what is recommended instead of love. Whereas love so very often leads to judgment, gratitude and judgment cannot co-exist. If there’s judgment in your point of view about your partner, gratitude cannot exist. One of the reasons that love leads to so much judgment is that it has so many definitions. This leads to conflict, confusion and misunderstandings in relationships.