23. 3 Secrets to Emotional Intimacy
3 Secrets to Emotional Intimacy
Tips to get the emotional connection you want.
Feeling got and understood by your partner really feels nice. This episode is all about how to feel close, connected and create more security with our partners.
In this episode we discuss:
Psychologist Jim Coan’s research on partner’s buffering pain
How to create emotional connection
Unhelpful behaviours in relationships
Stopping negative conflict
Ending problem cycles
Creating rituals of connection
Ideas for happy homecomings
Relationship Psych Episodes Discussed in this Podcast Episode:
Episode 22: maladaptive relationship behaviour
Episode 20: your brain on love
Episode 7: how to create emotional intimacy with your partner
To get the free guide How to Get Him to Finally Listen to You visit www.emberrelationshippsychology.com
This relationship podcast is not meant to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any medical, mental health, or relationship problem. It should not been seen as relationship advice for your specific relationship. Seek out couples therapy or marriage counseling by a practitioner in your area for advice for your specific problem.
Host:
Amber Dalsin., M.Sc., Psychologist. She does Couples Therapy in Toronto. She does virtual individual relationship counseling and virtual couples therapy.
Transcription (this is a close transcription. It may not be 100% accurate.)
3 Secrets to Emotional Intimacy
Tips to get the emotional connection you want.
Feeling got and understood by your partner really feels nice. You get the sense that someone is on your team, someone has your back. It feels good to have a sense that in this great big world, with all the things that could go wrong, you have someone who can brave the touch stuff with you and hold your hand.
When we feel close, connected and secure with our partners, literally their presence protects us from pain- even physical. It’s no wonder we crave close emotional connection with our partners. In a cool study by Psychologist Jim Coan he tested the impact of having your partner with you when you are in an MRI machine and may or may not be shocked when a little red light turned on. They found that the knowledge that this little red light may or may not produce a shock lead the women’s stress centers in their brains to become activated. Jim’s research showed that when the women held the hand of their partner while undergoing the experiment the stress center was not as stressed. Even better, the couples who had really strong relationships protected against the stress even more.
This reminds me of when I had Lasik eye surgery. I was really nervous about it. Although I knew many people who had successful undergone Lasik eye surgery, an I’m not really an anxious person, prior to my surgery I was visibly anxious. They asked me if I wanted an Ativan, I had never taken one before, but in this case, under medical supervision, it seemed like a good time to take one. They preformed the surgery on the person after me while they waited for the medication to take effect. When it came my turn to get the eye surgery, I was still visibly trembling. I’ve really got to give it to my eye surgeon, he was very good. He directed one of the assistants in the room to stop what they were doing and hold my hands. As the stranger I couldn’t see, because my eye lids were clamped open, touched my hands, I immediately began to relax. I used their sense of calm and the warmth of their hands to soothe me. This is a person I never met, and even if I walked past them on the street of downtown Toronto, I wouldn’t recognize them. This person literally served as a buffer against my anxiety. It makes me wonder how I would have done if my husband was holding my hand, if I even would have agreed to take the Ativan, because I have a sense, if he was there, I likely would been okay… but I can’t say that for sure.
What is my point here? The point, is that close physical touch with an emotionally safe and secure person, and even comforting touch with a stranger serves as a buffer against distress and physical pain. Not only does a safe and secure relationship help with emotional distress and pain, but it helps us heal physically and can prevent against diseases.
You are likely listening to this episode because you want the safe and secure connection, you want the emotional intimacy, but at times are baffled by how to get it.
I want you to imagine your connection to your partner as a rope. Each positive and trustworthy action they take, no matter how small, adds another fiber to the thread. Sometimes an action is so meaningful it ads many threads and other times it adds just one. In the same ways positives add threads, negatives remove threads. And if you’ve been listening you know you need more positives than negatives to stay neutral.
When our emotional rope with our partners is strong and intact they may do something irritating or hurtful, but because the rope is strong, it’s a momentary annoyance in the relationship. When our rope is thin or fraying, that same thing they did can cause a great deal of emotional pain causing a wave of emotions like alone, abandoned, unloved, or not cared about over us.
What’s interesting is that emotional pain activates the same part of the brain as physical pain. So when we say we have hurt feelings, we literally do hurt.
When our rope is low on threads and we experience emotional pain, humans have natural responses to this: fight or flight… like the flight/ flight/ freeze response you likely learned in high school science. What is the fight response? It is demanding, controlling, attacking, criticism or literally pursuing by following your partner around the house. The flight response is shutting down, stonewalling, physically leaving, and trying to self protect.
Based on how we were raised, our early experiences, and our gender, we are more likely to behave in certain ways in the face of emotional pain.
In the previous episode, 22 on maladaptive relationship behaviour we discuss how our early experiences shape us and steps to change it, so if you want more, go check it out.
It’s normal for couples to have conflict from time to time, to avoid each other on occasion, and even normal to have the occasional big spat. However, the couples that restore their balance, and add more threads to their rope will likely do better over time.
Lets talk 3 secrets to creating emotional intimacy.
You might have already guessed, add threads to your emotional rope.
This means kind words or actions that your partner perceives as caring. This might also mean finding kind or neutral ways to make reasonable requests of your partner to meet your needs. The more couples can come together and put threads on the rope, each tiny positive action adds up, creating a strong rope over time, a rope that can buffer against the occasional mishap.
In the episode, your brain on love, Episode 20, we review neurochemosignals and love, and why doing these nice thread creating actions in the beginning is easy. As relationships progress, and the more conflict there is, the more we need to intentionally do the nice things to build the rope, create the connection.
If you and your partner are STUCK in a negative emotional cycle, it’s time to notice how your fight or flight response is behaving.
Are you demanding, controlling, attacking, criticism or literally pursuing by following your partner around the house. Or more shutting down, stonewalling, physically leaving, and trying to self protect. Most people do a bit of both, but most times we have a predominant style. To create emotional intimacy it can be helpful to identify what behaviours are getting in the way. When you can identify your behaviour you can experiment with alternative ways of being to see if that helps bring your partner closer or pushes them farther away.
If you’re like a lot of my couples, you likely would prefer you partner just change. If they could only stop shutting down, stop leaving the conversation, or stop being disrespectful then you wouldn’t do that you thing you do. But since you are listening to this podcast, I encourage you to notice, how do you behave, and how could you try something different. I know it’s way easier said than done.
Create happy homecomings
What does that mean? A happy homecoming is how we greet our partner when we meet up at the end of the day. And if you are both working from home due to COVID, you might need to be creative in how you create an end of day routine that is positive.
Most of us want to know our home is safe and we look forward to going there, but too often, when we are in conflict without partner, we can dread going home to face them. Think about making your home inviting. A simple thing to do, is greet your partner warmly, wait a few minutes before addressing a displeasing topic. I have seen this simple action transform relationships. Once couples who once operated like two passing ships in the night started ordering a meal deliver service and preparing it together and putting on music, doing this together before discussing any action items or grievances with the other person, another couple agreed that whoever is home first, when they hear the other person get to the door, they stop what they are doing and go to the door and hug the other. These couples have worked to create join rituals, and these rituals add threads to their ropes.
The overarching theme of this episode is to think about adding threads to your rope. Think about how do you increase the connecting experiences. Now you might feel inclined to turn to your partner and say “you need to add threads to my rope” in a critical way… but stop, don’t. Think about being constructive and saying something different with the same message, for example, saying you need to add threads to my rope is deconstructive, but saying I like when we are happy together when we get home I would like us to create a ritual that brings us closer at the end of the day, I think that would add threads to my rope. That is constructive. If you need some help thinking about how to say things in a more constructive way, check out the free guide on www.emberrelationshippsychology.com, how to finally get him to listen to you. The 3rd exercise provides a template for how to say things in a constructive way.
Sometimes relationships aren’t fair, and either is the division of emotional labour. But if you are listening and interested in the buffering effects of a positive connection with your partner and dreaming of more emotional intimacy, there are some things here that might be worth at try. For more on emotional intimacy check out episode 7, how to create emotional intimacy with your partner.
This podcast is not meant to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any mental health or relationship problem. Please see a psychologist, or marriage and family therapist in your area for more help for your specific problem.