The Seven Levels of Intimacy: The Art of Loving and the Joy of Being Loved (7 page)

 

 

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tree with strong roots can weather any storm. In our relationships, the question is not, Is there going to be a storm? but, When is the next storm getting here? And when the next storm gets here, it’s too late to sink the roots. When the storm hits, you’ve either got the roots or you don’t.

Relationships are exactly the same. When a storm hits your relationship, you’ve either got the roots to weather the storm, or you don’t.

Different people respond in different ways to the storms in their relationships. Some people run. We are all capable of this type of cowardice, and when someone acts in a cowardly fashion we are rarely able to change his or her mind. Others madly scramble about in an effort to sink roots. This is a natural and noble reaction. Still others pull up the roots that they have spent the years of their relationship sinking. This is madness, but crisis makes many temporarily insane.

What are the roots that will help our relationships weather the inevitable storms? Communication, appreciation, respect, a mutual willingness to serve, annual vacations are just a few. But there are too many to name; the list is endless. As with diets, there are hundreds of them, thousands of them. Which one works? Almost all of them will work for almost all people. Diets don’t fail. People fail at diets. We get lazy and neglect the basic resolutions.

You may not know what the storm looks like, but you know the storm is coming. Now is the time to prepare.

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he roots that will help our relationships weather the inevitable storms include everything from taking walks together, date night, regular vacations, and praying together, to gratitude, respect, healthy confrontation, and discipline.

There’s something powerful about exercising with your significant other. It may not be practical to do it every day, but should be possible once a week. It is powerful because in that simple activity you are both changing, growing, and exploring your untapped potential. The more activities you can do together that help you achieve your essential purpose, the more attuned you will be to the-best-versions-of-yourselves and the more you will be attuned to each other.

It is so easy to get carried away in the concerns of our daily lives and neglect each other. What’s wrong with having a regular date night? Our lives are constantly gathering a momentum of their own; let’s stop from time to time and make sure we are not rushing east at a thousand miles an hour looking for a sunset. The idea of a regular date night might seem regimented to those of us who like things to be a little more spontaneous, or perhaps that is just an excuse for our inability to commit to anything even as simple as dinner and a movie on a regular basis with the most significant person in our universe. The truth is, most relationships could use more one-on-one time. It’s there for the taking, but we have to want it. We have to value time with our significant others above all the other things. We have to be willing to make sacrifices to make it happen. Life is choices. We have to choose that one-on-one time.

And I know how old-fashioned it may sound, but if we are really serious about experiencing intimacy with another person we need to share spiritual experiences; we need to pray together. Do you have any idea how few couples pray together? If you want to put your relationship in a whole different stratosphere, pray together. I’m not talking about going to church on a Sunday. You sit there and he sits there. You listen and pray. He listens and prays. You do it together, but not really. You haven’t got the foggiest idea how God is challenging him to change and grow, and he hasn’t the foggiest idea what is in your heart. But secretly you both like it this way, because this way you don’t have to be accountable to anyone. You are, of course, accountable to God, but it’s not like having someone living and breathing right beside you to help and challenge you to grow. So when I say we need to pray together, I mean we need to openly share our spirituality with each other. There may be great differences in the ways each person approaches this area of his or her life, but part of the great adventure of intimacy is learning about how we approach God and the things of the spirit.

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ou will never be happy until you learn to make gratitude part of your daily emotional and psychological diet. You will never have a great relationship until you learn to truly appreciate the wonder of another person. And you will never experience the depths of intimacy until you grow to be thankful for the opportunity to share the journey with another person.

My friend Hal Urban, a teacher in northern California high schools and the University of San Francisco for more than thirty-five years, tells a great story about making gratitude a habit.

“How many times a day do you complain?” he begins one of his classes by asking. There is some grunting and groaning, and then he asks his students to go the next twenty-four hours without complaining about anything. No complaints, valid or invalid. (The first reaction is usually a complaint about the assignment.) Each student is asked to carry pen and paper for twenty-four hours and record every time he or she complains, and about what.

The following day, Hal asks each student to guess how many people were able to keep from complaining. Each student writes a number down on a blank piece of paper, as does Hal. In a class of thirty students, their predictions run somewhere between six and twelve. Hal’s prediction was always zero. For the first twenty-three years he used this exercise, he was always right. Today, through his seminars and presentations, Hal has challenged more than seventy thousand people of all ages to try the exercise and has found only four people who were able to go twenty-four hours without complaining.

But that isn’t the end of the experiment.

Hal then asks two simple questions: What was the purpose of the assignment? and What did you learn from the exercise?

From class to class and group to group, the same answers almost always emerge. The first answer is usually “You wanted to show us how much we complain.” And the second answer is usually “I learned that I don’t really have much to complain about. What I complain about is stupid.”

We all complain too much, and yes, our complaints are mostly insignificant, showing a monumental ingratitude for the incredible opportunities we have and the wonder of life. Whom do we complain to the most? The people we supposedly love the most. Whom do we complain about the most (either out loud or to ourselves)? The people we supposedly love the most.

Our complaints are poisoning our relationships. Try going twenty-four hours without complaining.

Hal’s gratitude assignment has a second part. After the discussion, he hands out a piece of paper that reads, “I’m thankful for…” across the top. Below it are three columns. In the first, labeled “Things,” the students are asked to list all the material things they are glad they have. In the second column, “People,” they are asked to list all the people in their lives, past and present, whom they appreciate. The third column is simply labeled “Other,” and in it the students are asked to list anything that doesn’t fit into the first two columns.

The third column always perplexes them at first. The students ask Hal questions, and in turn he asks them questions. Before long the “Other” column is being filled with things like freedom, opportunities, friendship, intelligence, love, peace, health, family, talents and abilities, faith, God, beauty, kindness, and so on.

Part Three of the assignment is to read the list four times within the next twenty-four hours: after lunch, before dinner, before going to bed that night, and before going to school or work the next morning.

The next day, when the students arrive for class, they just look different. There are more smiles, bigger smiles; their eyes are open wider, and their body language is livelier. Hal says, “When we focus on what’s right instead of what’s wrong, life improves considerably.”

What has got your attention?

What are you focused on in your relationships?

Over the next three days, try the assignment. Try not to complain for twenty-four hours. Take a blank piece of paper and make your “I’m thankful for…” list, but add another list to the back of that page. Make a list of all the things about your significant other that you are grateful for.

Next week, make a copy of the list and mail it to that person. Yes, mail it. Even if you live in the same house and sleep in the same bed.

Gratitude changes our lives. It changes the way we feel about ourselves, the way we feel about life, and the way we feel about others.

If we can summon the courage to speak our gratitude to others it will give them the encouragement they need to keep striving to become the-best-version-of-themselves. I have found that both children and adults beam when we catch them doing something right and praise them. There are 6 billion people on the planet and I suspect that 5.9 billion of them go to bed every night starving for one honest word of appreciation.

Learn to appreciate and praise those you love. We all need encouragement. Becoming the-best-version-of-ourselves can be a daunting task! Commit to complimenting your significant other for something you appreciate about him or her at least once a week. Make gratitude one of the roots that allow your relationship to grow strong.

I grew up in Australia and I was twenty-two years old before I experienced my first American Thanksgiving, with a large family in Medford Lakes, New Jersey. When it came time for each person around the table to say what he or she was grateful for, my eyes began to fill with tears. To hear each person express gratitude, from infant children who were just learning to speak, to grown men and women experiencing the pressures of daily life, was awe-inspiring.

Giving thanks warms the soul and reminds us that life is an extraordinary privilege. Joy doesn’t come from having, but from appreciating what we have. You can possess all the treasures, pleasures, and blessings this world has to offer, but if you don’t appreciate them they will never bring you any real satisfaction.

Joy is the fruit of appreciation.

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eethoven. What comes to mind when you see or hear that name? What thoughts, ideas, and feelings does it conjure for you? When you think about who Beethoven was and what he accomplished, are you filled with a sense of awe? I think of his music and how it touched people in a very new and exciting way, and of its power to reach across the centuries and continue to touch and inspire people. Beethoven is synonymous with genius, excellence, brilliance, and the rare beauty of fine music.

Beethoven’s home in Bonn, Germany, has been preserved as a memorial museum for more than a hundred years now. In one of the rooms is the very piano that Ludwig van Beethoven composed most of his greatest works upon. It is in a roped-off area carefully out of the reach of the thousands of eager visitors who pass through the museum every day. The piano alone is estimated to be valued at more than $50 million.

Years ago, a group of students was visiting from Vassar College. When one of the students came to the room that held the piano, she stopped and gazed at it with great desire, and couldn’t resist the temptation to ask the guard to allow her to play it for just a moment. The guard allowed himself to be influenced by her generous tip, and let the young woman beyond the ropes.

Sitting down at the piano, she then proceeded to knock out several bars of the Moonlight Sonata. When she had finished, her classmates applauded, some sincerely and others in mockery, clowning around.

Stepping back through the ropes, the young woman turned to the guard and said, “I suppose over the years all the great pianists that have come here have played the piano?”

“No, miss,” the guard replied. “In fact, just two years ago I was standing in this very place when Paderewski visited the museum. He was accompanied by the director of the museum and the international press, who had all come in the hope that he would play the piano.

“When he entered the room he stood over there, where your friends are standing, and gazed at the piano in silent contemplation for almost fifteen minutes. The director of the museum then invited him to play the piano, but with tears welling in his eyes Paderewski declined, saying that he was not worthy even to touch it.”

That is reverence, a deep respect that causes us to stop and look beyond appearances and discover a greater hidden value.

When was the last time you gazed with reverence at the one you love?

Have you stopped recently to consider what your journey would be like without that person?

We brush by dozens of people on the street every day and we congregate tens of thousands at a time for sporting events; have we, perhaps, become immune to the absolute wonder of the human person?

The reflective heart and mind has reverence for people. But when we are caught up in the hustle and bustle of our busy lives, we become self-centered, obsessed with the urgent, and we lose that wonderful childlike ability to experience wonder, awe, and reverence. Something is lost when we misplace our ability to experience these things.

When we take time to reflect on the beauty of nature, the extraordinary wonder of the human being, and the great mystery that we possess the ability to both love and be loved, our natural response is reverence. From this reverence is born the respect that is an indispensable ingredient of all successful relationships.