Letting People Matter

Have you ever experienced a relationship where your partner said again and again that s/he loved you, yet left easily, and in a heartbeat without looking back? This kind of experience leaves the one left behind feeling confused, hurt, angry, shocked and just plain displaced.

If a loved one is able to leave that easily without remorse, it suggests that they were not entirely attached to their loved one. If someone is truly emotionally attached to a loved one, they cannot leave in the blink of an eye. Leaving would create great pain, and a sense of profound loss which they can anticipate emotionally,and as a result, they are far more motivated to work through emotional difficulties to make a relationship work.

Truly loving someone means letting the person matter. Many avoid this depth of heart opening and intimacy, because losing a loved one from this depth of attachment creates tremendous pain. So, many people protect their hearts and never let themselves open into full emotional attachment, and therefore, never truly let their loved one really matter.

Many people suffer from attachment disorders. Many people have had parents who cannot open into full emotional attachment with their children. As a result they experience chaotic attachment, where sometimes the parent seems to love them, be present to them, be with them, pay attention to them or listen to them, and other times, the parent is not present, is self-absorbed, in unfairly angry at the child, does not pay attention to the child, does not listen to or hear them or overpowers the child with their own wants and needs. If we have not had the experience of a secure, constant, deep emotional attachment when we are young, it is very scary and difficult, if not impossible, to build a secure, constant, deep emotional attachment as an adult.

Letting someone matter requires have a sense of depth and security within our own heart. We need the room in our hearts to let someone in and hold them in the moment and over time. Choosing to MAKE someone matter through conscious actions and thoughts takes a sense of consciousness and a strength of heart. Conscious thoughts and actions, regular rhythms of communication, and regular times together accented through healthy times apart help create a container that holds both the relationship and both people in the relationship.

This kind of container is needed to give space for both the relationship and the people in the relationship to grow. It is a sad paradox that many people are afraid to get boxed into a relationship for fear of losing their freedom and not being able to grow, when in actually, a healthy container holding a relationship allows for both connection and independence, and ultimately personal and relational growth.

When relationships are treated less consciously and intentionally and more randomly, the relational container has holes that leak out energy and the individuals and the relationship may not feel as safe, solid or held.

When people come from backgrounds that lack emotional constancy, there may be comfort in the familiarity of chaos and a fear of the constancy/commitment of a stable, lovig bond. Being able to develop and sustain intimacy requires a sense of trust,constancy and connection that is nurtured through actions and invested time.
If this is unfamiliar, we need experiences that introduce us to the reality that true intimacy, while vulnerable, can also be safe, nurturing and secure.

To really love someone is to both LET them matter, and to act in such a way that you MAKE them matter.

Copyright 2011 Linda Marks

Exploring Intimacy: A New Book by Suzann Robins

I met my colleague Suzann Robins in two worlds we both travel in: the worlds of body psychotherapy and the world of integrating sexuality and spirituality. It seems fitting that her new book, Exploring Intimacy represents the juxtaposition and integration of these worlds. Suzann also integrates these two more contemporary bodies of work and world views with more traditional schools of thought about psychology, health and human development.

The subtitle of the book is "cultivating healthy relationships through insight and intuition." I might add my own subtitle: "developing an integrated framework to understand the evolution of relationships, energy and connection in today's world."

Suzann does a remarkable job of outlining an evolutionary timeline of the history of thought, the history of medicine and the history of holism, and brings them all up to date with an understanding of energy medicine, emotional intelligence, intuition, gender energy and the spiritual dimensions of intimacy and sexuality.

At the very center of human experience and human relationships is our life energy, a vital force that seeks movement, connection and expression. I love the way Suzann defines emotion or "e-motion," as "the actual energy charge in motion," and also a basic part of a sixth sense, intuition, "and intuitive intelligence that formulates ideas about other people and our reactions to them."

She continues, "Perceptions formed through our sense of intuition relate to our ability to 'read' another person's energy fields, which is different than how a body is positioned in space. We detect location, orientation and movements of the body through the nervous system, especially visually and within the semicircular canals of the inner ear. Reactions to others occurs within the internal systems of the body's mind. Different streams of information combine to send signals to the brain."

The more levels of perception we are consciously aware of, the more completely and subtley we can read other people, express ourselves and relate and connect with them. When we add the less commonly acknowledged lenses of the heart and the kinesthetic felt sense to more commonly acknowledged lenses of visual cues, sounds, and thoughts, we gain a more complete experience of ourselves and others.

When we add the energy dimension to human psychology, we unite an understanding of the body and the mind. When self-actualization expands to include the transpersonal as well as the personal, Maslow's hierarchy of needs can be updated to provide a more comprehensive progression towards an integrated self.

For the past two years, I have taught a class at UMass Boston on how to create mutually empowering relationships. We look at the history and evolution of relationships since the founding of the United States, explore the wide variety of approaches to counseling that have evolved over the past several decades, and in the case of tools from other than Western cultures, longer than that, and try to describe a contemporary model of healthy relationships that incorporates the challenges we face as we grow beyond our past models in climate of constant change.

Suzann's book could be a wonderful textbook for my class, skillfully integrating past and present,
with an eye towards the future, and encouraging us to know ourselves both more broadly and deeply, so we have the space and perspective to more deeply connect with others as well.

This book is fascinating for students and practitioners of psychology, energy medicine and counseling, and provides a template for what it means to be a human being, on ones own and in relationship.

Exploring Intimacy: Cultivating Healthy Relationships through Insight and Intution
by Suzann Panek Robins
Rowman and Littlefield, 2010