enjoy authentic intimacy?
Is intimacy even that important
or is it just another buzz word
from our current pop culture?
Intimacy is one of the blessings of life. To experience intimacy, the human animal requires others with whom to relate.
Finding light friendships these days is fairly simple with the internet, cell phones, busy offices, and an exploding global population.
Yes, finding others with whom to relate is not a daunting task — so long as one is not too concerned with the depth and quality of the relationship.
by Dane Findley
how many of our friendships enjoy authentic intimacy?
Are Friendships Supposed to Be Intimate?
It has been relentlessly researched and proven that, ultimately, it is our relationships that determine our quality of everyday life.
Superficial relationships are easy to come by. Close relationships are less easy. Although, it depends on how you define “close.” The English language provides a peculiar lack of nouns to aptly describe the plethora of relational experiences.
“…how many times have you referred to someone as a friend, or an acquaintance,
when in truth they fall somewhere in-between?”
Narcissism and Intimacy: When Our Wounds Get in the Way
What makes all of this so textured and interesting, is that each of us has different relational needs.
For example — looking for a moment through the lens of psychology — we can see that narcissistically wounded people sometimes tend to be peculiarly better at relating with very young children and pets as opposed to fellow adults.
The reason for this is that babies and dogs do not have emotionally complex relational needs: frustrated, happy, sad, hungry, sleepy — that about covers it.
However, after the age of six, other humans want you to be able to sustain a genuine interest in their thoughts or feelings (and this is simply more than some people can handle comfortably).
Therefore, we tend to match up with friends and lovers who can communicate — slightly more or slightly less — at our own level.
Additionally, the number of close relationships needed to be happy, healthy and sane is also different for each person, depending on whether one leans more toward extroversion or introversion (extroverts get their energy from being around other people, while introverts recharge their batteries in solitude):
Included within the Longevity Lifestyle Kit is a companion guide that provides you with a fun and fascinating experiment to help you assess the current quality of your tribe. The exercises included within this e-Guide are revelatory! Purchase the guide separately, or save money purchasing the complete Longevity Kit — all 5 life-improving items bundled together, for the low price of $14.95.
28 Best Friends:
A Unique Social Experiment ~ Companion e-Guide, $4.95
This e-Guide help make the healthy relationships in your life more reciprocal and abundant. It has been proven that healthy relationships are the key to improved health and prosperity.
“…ultimately, it all comes down to your relationships.
Healthy relationships are what are most responsible
for bringing joy and prosperity into your life.
I use the 28 Best Friends guide as my ‘recipe’
for cultivating the relationships in my life that matter most!
I feel so energized about bringing more of myself
to the time I spend with my close friends and family.
As a read through the guide, I started wondering,
“Would I be in my friends’ 9-givers list?”
I hope I add something meaningful to their lives,
so hopefully the answer is yes!”~ Jared Knickmeyer, Estate Homes Sales Specialist
28 Best Friends will help you to craft a relationship list and a relationship action plan. With those two things — plus a positive attitude — you’ll be well on your way to improving your relationships, and therefore you’ll also be improving your health and prosperity, too.
28 Best Friends is an important part of a puzzle that any individual needs to put together for a successful life. Regardless of the length of your life, these steps will make your time on earth pleasurable for yourself and others around you.
This booklet is very hands-on, specific and logical. After the first reading, you might feel that the content is obvious and common sense. And it is! Things become obvious and common sense once someone puts them in the right order and presents them pedagogically.
The list of “questions to ask” provides solid grounding and opens your mind to reflect. I read that part several times to see if it fits my situation and life. After a while I realized that the questions got me thinking in the right direction. This is a great effect of this booklet. It helps you to reflect over your tribe. What more can be done? How can I expand? How can I contribute even more and better?
Do the exercises, even if your first reaction is not to. The effect after doing that is mind-blowing. Regardless of your tribe being super small or metropolitan. You need to see it on paper.
A pleasurable read! There were so many gems for me to collect. Dane writes accessible yet simplified, and has a great sense and feeling for the topic. These skills come from life experience as well as having produced a lot of material in the subject. The content, length, composition and design is just perfect!
~ Shahram Khorsand, Sales Manager / CareFusion Sweden
If living a happy and healthy life is important to you — especially as you age — then you must pay attention to the relationships in your life.
Designed to help you do exactly that, 28 Best Friends: Your Own Social Experiment! is a practical companion guide to The Numinous Journey eBook and included within the new Longevity Lifestyle Kit:
While reading 28 Best Friends I got an a-Ha! moment — realizing that sometimes we experience unhealthy or unproductive relationships that affect our well-being. It is imperative to connect with the ones that matter and Dane profiles how to get it done beautifully and strategically in his book. Hands down, the book has the most effective tools in connecting with the ones that matter and eliminate the “junk” that affects us, preventing us from growing and living our best lives! For good friends and good times make Dane’s book your weekend read and improve your life!
~ Doina Oncel, Solutions Specialist for Non-Profits
Intimacy and the Language of Friendship
For all intents and purposes, there only seem to be three words in common use: acquaintance, friend, and best friend:
- ▸ how many times have you referred to someone as your best friend, only to realize that you’re leaving out several other “best friends?”
- ▸ how many times have you referred to someone as a friend, or an acquaintance, when in truth they fall somewhere in-between?
- ▸ what do you call a person who you make plans with, on occasion, but with whom you don’t regularly confide (they are more central in your life than the person you just run into from time to time and know peripherally. But should they share a “friend” label with someone you’ve confided in regularly for twenty years)?
I encourage you to pick up the Longevity Lifestyle Kit and experience the positive results it will have on your daily life. All five items in the kit are designed to work synchronistically. Each items serve a specific purpose, and combined they become super powerful. The anchor of the kit is The Numinous Journey, an eBook strategically crafted to facilitate an inner process that will help make your exciting new lifestyle habits “stick!”
Intimacy and Romance: a Different Ballgame Altogether
When romance is involved, one has a few more word options: girlfriend/boyfriend, wife/husband, fiance, spouse, lover, partner). Interestingly, we run into the same problem here: a husband of five years is still called a “husband” after fifty. Are our lack of words about our relationships a reflection of our stunted ability to communicate and exchange energy equitably with the people we most love?
Indigenous northern cultures had many different names for snow (depending on subtleties of texture, cleanliness, and use), then why does our everyday English language have so few words to describe varied degrees of intimacy in relationships?
What does the absence of these words say about English-speaking culture and how its members relate?
If you believe that language shapes the world, as I do, you may even ask: if we had a broader vocabulary for intimacy, how might our culture transform as a result?
The One-to-Ten Scale: Evaluating Our Willingness to Be Intimate
- ◕ on a scale of one-to-ten, “ten” being the most, what level of intimacy are you comfortable with?
- ◕ on a scale of one-to-ten, how able are you to sustain a deep and authentic interest in the feelings of other people?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below!
I encourage you to infuse your life with meaningful relationships that increase your prosperity and bring you joy.
First off, I must say that I’m absolutely loving the face fuzz buddy! It looks great on you.
Next, I had to laugh (really hard)when I read the response about how Ben Affleck described his friendship with Matt Damon. “Huh, wha…”
I would say that I am a extrovert with introvert tendencies. I love being around people, and I have a lot of friends – but, there’s nothing quite like some 1-on-1 time by myself either.
My husband is my best friend. We haven’t been out of one another’s presence since we met almost six years ago. Well, outside of his having to head into Atlanta for work a few days out the week, and when he goes home to visit his mom for Thanksgiving… other than that though, we are inseparable.
He has taught me the beauty and importance of intimacy. It’s because of what I’ve learned from him that I am able to be more intimate with others.
This was truly a great post, Dane! Thanks for bringing it to light in such a phenomenal way.
When asked about his close male friendships, I think it was Ben Affleck who once described Matt Damon as the person he would most likely phone-up to say: “I just woke up with a dead hooker in my bed!”