When we reveal ourselves to our partner and find that this brings healing rather than harm, we make an important discovery — that intimate relationship can provide a sanctuary from the world of facades, a sacred space where we can be ourselves, as we are. . . . This kind of unmasking — speaking our truth, sharing our inner struggles, and revealing our raw edges — is sacred activity, which allows two souls to meet and touch more deeply.

Even when your relationship is painful, even when you feel hurt, you can practice opening your heart. You can practice love. This is the foundation of Intimate Communion: to practice opening your heart in every moment, including when you feel hurt. Rather than turn away or close down, you can practice loving.

remember, trust blossoms in the absence of control, and vibrant relationships should feel like a balance of freedom and home. your partner should accept you as you are but also help you feel safe enough to do the deep work of healing and growth not because they want to change you but because their presence energizes and inspires you to flourish into greater emotional maturity

I TRUST YOU: There are fewer things more sacred than trusting someone with your life. When you’re in a relationship, this is an essential truth. Here’s a bit of advice from Georgianna Donadio, Ph.D., “The best time to share your feelings (is) just before or during close intimacy. At that time, levels of oxytocin, a hormone that enhances feelings of trust, love and intimacy, are elevated, making it the best moment to love talk with your partner.

You will only be happy in intimacy if you choose a woman who is your sexual reciprocal as a partner. And you will only be able to survive such an intimacy if her dark and light sides are equally embraceable to you. It takes time to develop such skill and strength, but in doing so you learn to provide your woman, as well as the world, with a man whose gifts are uncompromised by fear of feminine power and chaos.

Changing your ways, changing those surrounding you.
Changing your ways, more than any man can do.
Open your heart, show him the anger and pain, so you heal.
Maybe he's looking for his womanly side, let him feel.

I LOVE YOU: Even the toughest man will melt a bit when his partner professes their love for him. They love hearing we love them. Also, they like hugs, kisses and cuddling too. Even a nicely-worded email or text message will work

You can share many aspects of intimacy — business, friendship, parenting, and sexual passion — only if you choose a single priority to the relationship and allow all the other activities to align themselves around your main purpose for being together.

bring to mind the feeling of being with someone who loves you, while calling up heartfelt emotions such as gratitude or fondness. Next, bring empathy to the difficulties of the other person. Opening to his (even subtle) suffering, let sympathy and goodwill naturally arise. (These steps flow together in actual practice.) Then, in your mind, offer explicit wishes, such as May you not suffer.

If you decide, however, that the purpose of your intimacy is the passionate transmission of love, the rejuvenative healing of sexual energy, and the cultivation of heart through your mutual commitment to spiritual awakening, then be careful. Don’t force your woman to be your on-call accountant.

we feel so safe with the ones we love that we often share with them our tension, our stress, our fear, our sadness, and even our anger but let us remember to also give them the best version of ourselves, our joy and happiness, our excitement and peace, our attention and care

You can share many aspects of intimacy — business, friendship, parenting, and sexual passion — only if you choose a single priority to the relationship and allow all the other activities to align themselves around

do not heal in isolation. Connecting with others is how we develop compassion for others and for ourselves.

We all have made the mistake of thinking someone else can be our healer, our thriller, our filling. It takes a long time to find it is not so, mostly because we project the wound outside ourselves instead of ministering to it within.
There is probably nothing a woman wants more from a man than for him to dissolve his projections and face his own wound. When a man faces his wound, the tear comes naturally, and his loyalties within and without are made clearer and stronger. He becomes his own healer; he is no longer lonely for the deeper Self. He no longer applies to the woman to be his analgesic.