How power affects emotional intimacy

A relationship based on love will advantage emotional intimacy; however, a relationship based on power will thwart any kind of intimacy.

Sadly, avoiders and controllers often play their games when it concerns emotional intimacy.

Avoiders will do almost anything to bypass this area. For them it is to be avoided at all costs, even if it damages their most important relationships. Normally, there are control and trust issues at work with these situations. These individuals are uncomfortable with any form of emotional intimacy and will do whatever they deem to be necessary to shut it down. And that will often include you!

Controllers, who can also be avoiders will switch the conversation and try to take over so that intimacy is crushed. Controllers are into power and power games, and they never want an equal relationship. 

Intimacy means that they have to be vulnerable and for them that is a powerless place to be. 

As in life everyone will need varying degrees of intimacy. Lots of people have a very large need for it in their relationships whereas certain couples exist quite happily with a low degree of emotional intimacy. Neither is good nor bad. They are simply different needs.

The problem arises when one person has a greater requirement that the other. Then the gap will be quite noticeable. If I am needing a high level of emotional intimacy, and my partner requires little there will be trouble in paradise.   

In my opinion, emotional intimacy can become a virtual minefield for many of us.  While we can be self-reliant and meet most of our needs this is one that does require another participant. It is hard to be intimate just with yourself. There can be self-reflection but that is not actually intimacy.

Emotional intimacy can also become a battlefield for lots of couples tugging and pushing each other’s buttons. In my experience, numerous people I have met are unable to form intimate relationships with another even though they appear very open and social.

Intimacy has less to do with how we seem to relate and more about how we truly connect. It is a deeper more honest connection which bypasses what I like to call “Pleasantville.”

In truth, few individuals can engage in this way or operate in this sphere. For the majority of us it is too confronting and being in that vulnerable place too painful. Our past hurts all come rearing up and cloud any intimacy from forming.  

It takes a special relationship to hold us safe and allow all those emotions to surface. People take for granted that couples share this emotional intimacy. This is not always true.

It frequently exists outside of the couple relationship and in some way the person in the relationship is supported by the person outside of the relationship.

Women tend to form these bonds and are more likely to receive their emotional needs from outside of their marriages. In general, few even see what is occurring. There is a strange blindness to this situation. Society rarely acknowledges that people even operate like this.  

The more emotionally intimate relationships we have the better for our emotional health and stability. With several intimate partnerships we have more resources upon which to draw, and more people that we can also support.

I believe many of us have struggled with this issue and have never been able to know why we felt the loneliness or disconnection. It is the lack of either the emotional connection or the emotional intimacy or both.

Loneliness occurs when we are not nourished emotionally.  This can begin when we are a baby and follow us throughout our lives.

In addition, we can inadvertently choose people who are emotionally unavailable. In some twist of fate instead of being drawn to the emotionally open we choose the emotional challenged! Our personality might even be one of the emotionally open and yet we continue to be with people who are emotionally absent. This is more common than we all realize.

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