Navigating Intimacy And Passion For A More Fulfilling Marriage

Ever wondered why some relationships thrive in emotional closeness while others struggle to maintain even a semblance of connection? Discover the intricate dynamics of the "Triangulation of Love," where intimacy, passion, and commitment play pivotal roles. Through personal stories, we'll unravel the complexities of intimacy and how disparities between partners can lead to misunderstandings and long-term impacts, especially when one feels criticized or rejected early on. We tackle how these differences manifest across various relationships—be it romantic, familial, or platonic—and explore the underlying reasons for these gaps.

Join us for practical advice and heartfelt anecdotes aimed at nurturing intimacy and ensuring it's a reciprocal journey. We highlight the significance of recognizing when your partner might be holding back and how to gently open lines of communication. By sharing relatable scenarios, from sports rivalries to drink preferences, we encourage listeners to reflect on their own relationships and embrace open dialogue. Tune in to gain fresh perspectives on fostering deeper connections and cultivating a safe environment for emotional vulnerability.

Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships


Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 500,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

For those who are familiar with the, what's the technical name of the commitment?

Speaker 2: 0:08

Triangulation of love.

Speaker 1: 0:09

The triangulation of love. So if you are a listener and you're able to like Google stuff, go into Google, type in the triangulation of love, hit images and it should be a triangle. It has intimacy at the top top, commitment in the lower right and passion in the lower left, and what I really want to talk about here more than anything is intimacy. So, on a on a one to nine scale, nine would be the top of the triangle, one would be the bottom bottom. When you measure a couple, you don't aggregate their results.

Speaker 1: 0:48

Each individual person keeps their results and it is absolutely possible, if you're following what I'm saying, if you're looking at the picture or if you're just otherwise not looking at a picture but trying to visualize Think of a line that intimacy is a straight up and down line. Higher is better, lower is not better, lower is worse, it's bad. It's altogether possible to have one person in a couple, in a marriage, in a relationship, even a friendship or a parental to child relationship, where one person has a very high intimacy score, which means that they feel that they can bear their soul, they can expose themselves, they can be their true self around this other person, to this other person, they can tell them anything that person's going to have a very high intimacy score because they feel fully accepted and then the other person is like a two or a three they cannot, or at least they don't feel that they can bear their soul.

Speaker 1: 2:03

This can often relate back to in many cases you'll find the man not always.

Speaker 1: 2:09

It's certainly possible that this is flip-flop the woman would be high in intimacy, the man would be low. I feel that if you were to try and aggregate a lot of these and do some metadata analysis, you'd probably find the majority of the cases where there's a high discrepancy in intimacy between a man and a woman, it's typically probably going to be the man much higher than the woman in most cases, and a lot of times this can relate back to men. We can be very opinionated about what's good, what's bad, what brands, what sports teams, what cars are good, and to us it does not compute that somebody else can have a different opinion, and especially early in marriages and relationships, we can then criticize the other person for having a different opinion, something as simple as a preference for Coke or Pepsi, a preference between the sports team or that sports team. If you live down in Alabama and you have a couple where you know one person roots for Auburn, the other roots for Bama, like they might need to just start their-.

Speaker 2: 3:16

Fighting words.

Speaker 1: 3:17

Yeah, they might need to start their marital therapy like just from the get-go, and so you're often left. You can can also be. You can also have a situation where early in the marriage the first year or two it is the case where the man is not accepting and the woman may never recover from that. Even if he matures later on and becomes more accepting, she may not feel it or, because of all the rejection or criticism she faced in the first year or two of marriage, she still may not want to bear her soul Years later, decade later, because she's like nope. I remember 10 years ago when I said I like Pepsi and I got an earful for an hour over it, and I remember I would do stuff like this to you, maybe not over drink preferences, but just random crap. You know, if you screwed something up just a little bit, I'd go on for like an hour and you would often point out like chill, I already said I'm sorry, I can't go back in time.

Speaker 1: 4:22

And I would often be like, oh't, go back in time, and I would often be like, oh yeah, it's true, I'd be like, all right, well, I want to rant for 30 more minutes, but I guess I'll not.

Speaker 1: 4:34

So it's important when you are thinking of intimacy in terms of, can I bear my soul to this other person, can I tell them anything about me and they accept me? Make sure that's a two-way street. And if your spouse, if you suspect that they may not be bearing themselves to you, I actually think you could probably go to them gently in conversation and say hey, you know what Am I blocking intimacy? Are you scared to bear yourself to me? Are you scared to tell me about yourself and whatever I've done to cause you to feel like you can't do that? I'm truly sorry.

Speaker 1: 5:18

I want you to know that I want to accept you. I want to accept all of you, just the way you are.

Speaker 2: 5:26

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:27

And I believe that conversation would probably go a long way.

Speaker 2: 5:31

For sure.

Speaker 1: 5:35

It would be a wise thing to do.

Speaker 2: 5:39

And it helps to have self-acceptance, yeah, for sure, and the self-acceptance when we can look at ourselves and instead, you know, as women, a lot of times we'll look at ourselves and say, oh, if only this area of my body were skinnier or this area were bigger, instead of just looking at ourselves and loving and accepting our body for how it is, as an example for men, it's our calves it's your calves and biceps our calves are not big enough upper body strength according according to the body esteem, the body esteem scale, um.

Speaker 2: 6:16

But the yes like, the more likely we are to see things within ourselves. That is a that should change. That's more likely to translate into how we see other people, and I noticed this a lot with our daughter. So I've had to be really mindful, as she gets older, of noticing how I talk about myself, because she picks up on it and she'll. I don't want her to think, oh, maybe I should, because she's heard me talk before about like, needing, like, oh, I want to be on a diet or whatever. And then she started using those words. This was probably about a year ago and I was like, no, you don't. But it makes you have to look inward and say how am I showing those people around me that I can love and value and cherish myself and that also helps us love and value and cherish others. If you enjoyed this clip from it Starts With Attraction, then click here to watch the full episode.