 A frequent question that comes across my desk relates to building intimacy with a man. And many women believe men are afraid to love and they're curious to know how can you actually build deeper intimacy with a guy and I'm gonna get right into it about men being afraid of love. I think one of the challenges most men have, especially for those of us who are baby boomers and Gen Xers. And I can speak from personal experience. When I was growing up, my parents, my father told me to stuff my emotions, stuff my feelings, not be expressive. And whenever I did act out in rambunctious ways, what was happening to me frequently, I was told to stuff it, to curtail it. I was hit. Why don't you think about this for a moment? For our generation, many boys were slapped or hit for being expressive to having a lot of energy and being boisterous around this energy. So I want you to think about this. For so many of us, we were taught to, we were told to repress our feelings and more importantly, we were actually, violence was used to curtail our feelings. And so I want you to think about this. This is true for men and this is true for women as well. We have a dysfunctional view of what real love is because it's very rare any of us were really raised with parents that were absolutely loving 24 seven that they were absolutely conscious that their words and behaviors could have some lasting ramifications on you when you became an adult. This is why I habitually talk about understanding childhood wounds and traumas as well as adult traumas. Okay, so put that in the box for a second because we oftentimes think of childhood wounds as being something severe like true abuse whether it was physical, whether it was emotional. And we're talking about oftentimes we think of severe cases. I wanna let everyone know right now or at least invite everyone to recognize that even if you had an ideal upbringing, idyllic upbringing, a really good childhood and you had really good parents you experienced to some degree some trauma in your childhood. And it could have been an innocent thing that your parents did and you're unaware of or maybe had issues with children that you went to school with. Okay, why does this relate? Because I want you to understand that intimacy for many of us is something that we weren't taught in other words to be vulnerable, to be authentic to be transparent in relationships. And I know this is really confusing particularly in the early stages of dating because men can come on with a sense of bravado a sense of being expressive of how you how you make them feel right in the early stages but that is driven by our biological need to connect with you at a sexual level to spread our seed. So in the beginning stages men might be expressing of their feelings about how you make them feel initially once you're in a relationship with them and I suspect this is the reason why this question came about is how do you build deeper intimacy in a relationship after that initial stage because the reality is is most men and women have this initial euphoria of connection and they never actually experience a deeper level of intimacy. What is intimacy? Intimacy is into me you see. In other words, I feel safe with you. I can share my greatest fear. I can share my shame with you and I can do it in such a way knowing you are not going to abandon me. See, here's the really tricky part for you ladies. I know you love the idea of the provider protector. You love that. You love that the man is chivalrous and he takes charge in everything but within that DNA of provider protector, we can't, we're not allowed to show weakness. And what is vulnerability? It's a reflection of an insecurity you might be feeling for any reason whatsoever by expressing that, by being vulnerable, by being authentic, by being transparent. We believe you are going to think less of us. See, so this is the dueling factions that's going on right now is that space between wanting to show up as a partner in that way that we've been biologically trained but more importantly, how to show up as a partner from an emotional perspective and most men don't give much consciousness around this. I know I'm a perfect example. I was raised with the blueprint and many of the men you're dating are raised with the same blueprint. Go to college, get a job, meet a girl, get married, buy a house, start a family. Your job is to pay the bills. That's what it is. That's what being a provider protector is, is paying the bills. And it was, I mean, and the stress of paying for everything for so many men can be absolutely overwhelming. And if we ever expressed our fears and our concerns, we were fearful that you would leave us. And so understand that our fear of love, our fear of closeness, our fear around real connection is sometimes predicated on the fear that you'll leave us if we are actually true and sharing our weakest, most vulnerable moments. See, to build intimacy first starts in the early stages of dating is to build a deep friendship with your partner. Now, why am I using the term friendship? Because it's something we can relate to. We can think about the other people in our lives who are friends. And I want you to think about what is friendship? Friendship means you can count on this person. That's what friendship, one aspect of friendship. You can share most anything to a person. That's what friendship is. Friendship is companionship. Friendship is connection. So it's important to understand that friendship is a building block to intimacy. And yet very few of you actually build a deep friendship with the person you're dating. Now, how is friendship built? It usually starts with social activities. It starts with hobbies. It starts with mutual interest. It is in the doing of things together that it's a building block to building trust with another person. See, intimacy is all about trust. And trust isn't about fidelity per se, although that's an important component. Trust is, can I count on you to care about my feelings as much as I care about my own feelings? That is where true intimacy lies is in the experience of trust. Yet many of you are dating without actually feeling like you can trust this person. So how do we build those blocks of trust? Okay, first we just said, it is through the doing of things together. This is why long distance relationships are incredibly problematic. Because when you do things together, it's in a bubble and then you go back to your respective homes and you're not actually still building when you're apart and you're relying on the telephone as the bridge to build intimacy. And what happens in many cases, many of you are experiencing what's known as artificial intimacy. You're built, this artificial intimacy, as most of you, it's predicated on how's your day going, did you have a good day? I hope you had a good day, it's talking about your day. But you're not actually building something in the doing because there's a big difference between someone telling you how they feel versus treating you, how they treat you when they're in your presence. This is why so many of these shows like 90 day fiance blow up because they've had these incessant communications over the phone. They think they've built intimacy and when they're actually together, you're experiencing how this person treats you in real life, in real time. And are they treating you from a sense of trust? So another factor in building intimacy, I talk about this habitually in my coaching practice is something I call radical honesty, radical honesty. In fact, this is the building block to deeper intimacy. This is talking about the nooks and crannies of who you are as a person which includes sharing fear and insecurities. You got nothing to lose to talk about in the beginning to some degree. Now, some of you might be saying, no, I don't wanna tell my insecurities to a stranger but at the same time, your fears around relationships are predicated on those wounds that you experienced in childhood or also those adult experiences. And this causes many men to shut down. I want you to think about this for a moment. You've been married for a decade or so. You thought it was gonna work out and maybe the woman ended the relationship. In fact, 70% of divorces are initiated by women. So I want you to imagine the emotional effects to a man. Here's a person that they trusted was gonna go the distance. By the way, they may not have had intimacy in their relationship, but all of a sudden, the person they thought they were gonna go the distance with, whether they were happy or not, ends it. That creates a psychological wound within a man. And God forbid the woman cheated on him. That's a significant wound on the man. And by the way, ladies, I know you experienced this as well. So this isn't one sided. But so these men are now gun shy to deeper intimacy. That's why they're afraid of love because they've been rejected once before and nobody likes feeling rejected. By the way, there's no such thing as rejection. When a person chooses to end a relationship, if it's not right for them, it's not right for you either. And by the way, each one of you listening, you are a whole complete human being. Yes, you're a work in progress. You're a work in progress. So maybe what you're working on didn't really fit with this person in the relationship, but do never, never take rejection personally. In fact, I invite you to look at what the quote that says rejection is God's protection. In other words, you're not further subjecting yourself to something that isn't going to work out. Okay, so coming back to what, how to build deeper intimacy. We talked about radical honesty. Do you know, Brene Brown talks about vulnerability is true, it's being vulnerable is true courage. In other words, sharing your deepest shame with someone. See, it is through the communication of our fears and insecurities that we actually build deeper intimacy with someone, especially when you're with a person who's an emotional grown up. Now, this is the tricky part. The vast majority of human beings have weak emotional maturity and weak relationship skills. And this is true for men. And yes, this is true for you women as well. It is an equal percentage of both genders. I know you like doing this. Men point the finger at women and women point the finger at men. Men complain about women habitually. They don't have an agreeable personality. They're complicated. They're irrational. They lack a sense of logic. Men complain about women or they're gold diggers. And you women complain about men. They're commitment phobic. They're emotionally constipated. They're emotionally unavailable. This is the reality that we're faced with. The vast majority of human beings are rather emotionally wounded. Their relationship skills are weak. Their communication skills are weak. Ladies, just because you have a capacity to vomit your feelings doesn't mean that you're good communicators in your life. I've only experienced one really good, well maybe two good communicators in my life from women. And so why I'm sharing this with you is I wasn't a good communicator a decade and a half ago. I was good at sales. So I had some basic skills on listening and I had some basic skills on asking questions. It was through my experiences within relationships that I actually was able to communicate in a much healthier way. The first relationship was with, I was with a therapist for over six years. I mean, we're in a romantic relationship. She through her probing drew out my communicative side. See ladies, if you wanna build deeper intimacy it starts by leading by example. But Jonathan, why isn't the we women have to do all the work in relationship? Because intimacy, because you're better equipped to share your feelings than us men. We were taught to stop our emotions and feelings. And I know you ladies and when you were little girls were the same thing in many cases. But you tend to be more in touch with your feelings because you tend to have more estrogen in your bodies and we have more testosterone. Testosterone stuffs our emotions and feelings and estrogen heightens the awareness to this. Now what's interesting within men as we age our testosterone levels drop and our estrogen levels do begin to increase not at your level, it's down here for us. So you actually can help create intimacy in the relationship. I said as a moment ago, you lead by example. You lead by example by being expressive of your emotions but many of you have duct tape over your mouth. And so you sit there and tell me you're good communicators and yet you're fearful to open up and share your feelings because you're afraid he's going to run away. Well, it's might be true, he might run away. When I wrote my book, what the heck is self love anyway journey of personal development, self help and spiritual work. Chapter one is speak your truth, deal with kindness in chapter nine says if it's sincere and from the heart you can't say the wrong thing to the right person. When you're with the right person, they hear you, they understand you, they see you. And even if it's something that they don't like they dive into the relationship when you're with the right person. And you see the reality is is most of you have a broken picker have a broken picker part of it is because you're to some degree a bit broken as well. You see relationships isn't so much about a journey of where going the distance with someone. First, it's learning to have a relationship with yourself. That's the most important part of this journey because let me just say this at some point one person is going to die before the other. That's just a reality. So the person who dies first gets off easy in a way. It's the person that has to go on. And so many of you who are widowers know what I'm talking about. You might have had a significant relationship that ended because of a disease, an accident or something. See, we all have to learn to love ourselves. We all have to learn to be in relationship with ourselves. And when you're in a good relationship with yourself and you meet someone who's also in a good relationship with yourself, then you can share the union of that together. But if you're showing up wounded, hurt, jaded, bitter, and if he's showing up wounded, jaded, hurt, bitter in relationship, you feed off of the initial euphoria of the connection, but it's gonna be challenging to build deeper intimacy with one another. So this is why I invite you always, habitually on my channel to do the personal development, self-help, spiritual work, therapy, to heal your past, to heal those past relationships, to be clear of your past relationships, not still charged by your last relationship. Sadly, many of you are still rather charged by your past relationships. And then you have this judgment about men in particular, that they're worthless, that they're commitment phobic, that they can't build intimacy. Let me just share this with you. I do believe a significant percentage of men are really good people. And I think of those good people, there are wounded people that struggle with opening up emotionally. And at the same time, there are also really good men that are capable of opening up. They just need the right guide to get them there. And I know you might be frustrating going, I don't want to be the guide, but at the same time, think about this. Building intimacy together builds the deep roots of trust that helps your relationships withstand the storms. And most importantly, it starts by showing up as a full and complete sense of self, just recognizing that we never finish the journey. It's all part of this process. But at the same time, when two people show up fully whole as individuals, then they're really prepared to go the distance. And hopefully if they're lucky, they pass away at the same time. That's probably the truest form of love, thinking of the movie, the notebook as a possible example of that. By the way, is this sinking in, is this resonating? Please let me know if it is. Please share this content. Please tell your friends. Send them to my website, jonathanasley.com. Have them click the group coaching button so they can join my group called Midlife Love Mastery. Or this is a group where you can have direct access to me on a regular basis via Facebook page. And we can connect. And when you post questions, I shoot videos based on what you asked just like this video today. All right, I think this will be a great place to wrap up. I'd like to hear your thoughts. Please post a comment below if this resonated with you or if you have something to share. And I'm gonna wrap up this video as I always do. First off, give myself a big, gigantic Jonathon Bear hug of self love. I'm gonna reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay. I'm gonna ask you to turn to someone, a pet, a teddy bear pillow, and give Iter them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love. And let's face it, we could all use more love in our lives. Thanks a bunch. Bye-bye now. Bye-bye.