 Well, hello and welcome to Jonathan from the heart. I'm Jonathan as I have Jonathan as I comment I'm so excited to be shooting this short video for you today our topic how men can overcome The fear of intimacy now really quickly before we get started if you're brand new to my youtube channel Please hit the subscribe button hit the bell so you can be notified of new videos And also if at any time this video resonates with you please hit that like button And lastly these are my weekend videos I shoot out on my balcony similar to the videos I shoot my private group called midlife love mastery where I answer your quit your personal questions directly Through videos, so check out the link below to my VIP group. Okay, we're gonna talk about how men can overcome the fear of Intimacy and if you've been following my channel lately, I've been talking quite a bit about men who fear Intimacy they fear going deeper into the relationship and now many of you might be confused because men Oftentimes come on strong and they seem to be totally into you and then all of a sudden shift And you might be asking why does this happen? Well, the thing is when human beings human beings men and women alike seek Connection and they seek physical intimacy and Emotional intimacy as well not everybody but most people seek intimacy of some sort Most men tend to be more physical women tend to be more emotional and we seek connection The reality is is a relationship requires going much deeper Beyond the surface and what happens is when it reaches a certain point That might be the capacity of human being able to go deeper into a relationship to build the roots of a strongly All strongly rooted relationship, you know building something together. So why does this happen? Why does this happen and how can a man overcome this fear of intimacy? Well, I want to use a story from a movie called officer and a gentleman officer and a gentleman And I'm not sure if you've seen it, but if you haven't I'll give you the quick rundown of it It stars Richard gear and Debra winger. He's called Mac Zach Mayo she's called Paula and what happens is he's a He wants to become a naval pilot and he goes to training and during his training. He meets this woman They begin a casual relationship and she and he basically tells her this is a casual relationship up front Now what we don't see, you know And what happens is their relation to progresses and then he reaches a certain point where he ends the relationship Okay, now, why does this happen or why did this happen in this particular case? Well, when you actually see the backstory in the beginning of the movie, we find out that Zach wasn't raised by his mother He was raised in a foreign country. He was a I think he was a naval brat. I think that's what they call him And so he had a lot of trauma growing up and abandonment growing up So this is what was the initial cause of his fear of intimacy Now in the movie, you know at the end of the movie he gets the girl and everybody is happy and you've got to ask yourself Well, what happened? Well, there was a humbling moment in his life There was a humbling moment in his life where his best friend killed himself and in that moment he recognized what's really important to him and he overcame his fear of intimacy and then was able to lean into the relationship now Sounds great in a movie great in a movie, you know Jonathan All does it take is a humbling event for someone to change their fear of intimacy Well, like I said sounds great in the movie But in real life, it takes a lot more than that and I know this because I'm about to share my own personal story of What happened in my own life and this might give you some real context of what happens in the dating mating and relating realm And if you follow my work, my specialty is midlife Which is after baby making years and before retirement So the vast majority of people that I talked to are those that are in their 40s 50s 60s Okay, now that demographic Roughly about 75% of people who are in single hood seeking some sort of connection with another human being is divorced and divorce comes with it a Significant amount of there can come with a significant amount of trauma So when I think back to when I went through my divorce what happened is when my when my now ex-wife And I decided to split up. I had lost my quarter million dollar a year job I then got wiped out in the market crash of 2008 and I once had a seven-figured net worth I used to live in a 2.2 million dollar home and I was absolutely depressed. I was drinking I was doing cocaine. I was a train wreck and I was serial dating all that time I was feeding my I was self-medicating through the dating process of just connecting with people and then a minute I connected with someone I'd run away and I connect with another person and then I'd run away and I connect with another person And I ran away and this happened over and over and over again and quite frankly at the time I was completely unconscious to what was going on to me I wasn't aware that I had a fear of intimacy I wasn't aware that I was actually being inconsiderate to people This is why when a lot of you write comments on the post saying well, why do people even date if they're not even ready? Well, the thing is I thought I was ready I fooled myself to believing I was ready and I had all of these experiences happening These were all of my humbling events Humbling events. I had one after another after another but that didn't change me It required doing this one thing to be able to shift and overcome my fear of intimacy And that was to do the inner work to do the inner work to look inward and say What was the cause of all of this and how can I heal from it? I'm gonna repeat that what was the cause of this and how do I heal from it now? I'm gonna tell you something That took a lot of brain power to even recognize that happened Repeat that that took a lot of brain power to recognize that happened I use the term brain power and what I'm really saying is I finally When I stopped pointing the finger at other people and I saw these three fingers pointing back at me I realized I was the common denominator of every single one of my problems And when I came to that conclusion I go well, what can I do to work on this? Now if you're not familiar I wrote a book called what the heck is self-love anyway? What the heck is self-love anyway? There's a link below to get my book self-love the book Why I'm sharing this with you is my book is the journey of my personal development self-help and spiritual work to get to where I'm at today and by the way that included therapy that included over 3,000 hours of personal development workshops and trainings and books and videos I've been doing a deep dive into healing what was causing Much of the frustration and angst in my life So what I'm here to say is for someone to actually manner want to like to overcome their fear of intimacy to overcome their fears in life Emotional fears in life First you have to recognize that you have a problem. You have to recognize that you have a problem You have to recognize that you are the contributor To everything in your life You are the contributor to everything in your life. So first I had to recognize that And then it's then I had to ask myself well, how am I going to heal from this? How am I going to overcome this? How am I going to move past this and it was through all the books and readings and learning and one of my Favorite books and I invite you all to purchase this Please please please buy this book called the untethered soul by Michael singer the untethered soul by Michael singer Please by the way, there's a link to Jonathan recommends books below. Oh Really quickly my t-shirt says I've got your back So you can see this person's missing a back and this person's holding the back and my coffee mug today says stay Grounded stay grounded. So I hope for you you stay grounded. I'm here to say though How do we overcome the fear of intimacy? It requires doing this thing do this thing and it requires Awareness and then stepping into the healing process Now here's the challenge many of you have experienced men who come on strong They hit their wall, you know, they hit their fear of intimacy and then they run away and then they ask for you back Okay, it's like six weeks later 12 weeks later Some people call it the rubber band effect that meant once they realize that you've left there You're gone. They miss you and they want you back But here's the challenge with that What have they done in that time in between to heal what caused them? To run away to ghosts to disappear to take space if it's missing a person is not loving a person Let me repeat that missing a person is not loving a person when you miss someone That's not love when you want someone back because you're missing them. That's just trying to fill the void Like by the way, that's trying to fill the void, you know, you know that whole line from the movie Jerry McGuire You complete me. Well, that's just codependency Reaching in saying I'm I'm lonely and I need someone to come I you know, I want you back because I'm not feeling happy about myself This is why I'm coming back to the idea of self-love Which is really another term for self-worth self-confidence self-esteem self-reliance That's what self-love is it requires doing the inner work to actually prepare to lean into a relationship So by the way for all these men that come back and want you back It's great for about a week or two weeks three weeks But all the patterns that caused a lot of that frustration angst in the relationship and let me just share this with you Most likely when a guy reaches his point of fear of intimacy, there were clues along the way You just didn't pick up on it. He's going through a nasty divorce. He's got issues at work He has health issues. He has maybe family issues whether it's his parents. Maybe it's his children There's some sort of chaos going on in his life He might have gotten wiped out financially guy guy did by the way that Totally affected my self-esteem in the area of being a provider protector So then I had these conflicting things going on in my life, you know I I've got the instinct of being a provider protector, but I got wiped out financially What and then I was feeling shame around that what woman would want me if I can't be their provider protector and And a lot by the way, this is one of the most common reasons why men fear intimacy today is the whole notion of being the provider Protector especially here in the United States when less than 80% of people make a hundred thousand dollars a year The vast majority of people barely have three months savings in the bank So so why I'm sharing this with you is we might have this instinct to be a provider protector But an absolute fear that's stopping us from doing that because we may not have the resources to do it And these are opposing forces going on which causes someone to might lean into connection and sex But it doesn't but they can't go any further and I'm just giving you one example of where these conflicting forces come into play Ultimately for a man or woman to overcome their fear of intimacy their fear of getting close to someone It's going to require facing that fear head-on facing that fear head-on. I'm doing it like this. Okay head-on and Without awareness and without doing the inner work It's going to be very challenging for anyone to lean into deeper intimacy and again That doesn't mean you can't have a casual relationship with someone If you want something deeper then it requires someone to be in a safe space to do that And when I mean to say it requires both people to be in a safe space to lean into intimacy And sadly most people are leaning away from intimacy because They're not aware of it and they haven't done the work and that's how a guy can overcome the fear of intimacy or a woman as well All right, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Please post a comment below Let me know what you think of my shirt or my coffee mug. I Do my best to read everything and the questions again if you want to join my group check out the link to Midlife love mastery and I'm gonna wrap up this video as I always do first off give myself a big gigantic job The mirror hug of self-love I'm gonna reach into the camera and give you a hug I'm gonna ask you to turn to a friend a pet a teddy bear Or a pillow and give it and then my hug of love because hugs are a great source of love and we can all use More love in our lives. Thanks a bunch. Bye. Bye now