What is it about increasing honor and decreasing anger that is so important in creating a healthy home? One word: Safety.

How many relationships can you count on both hands where you feel safe to open up and share who you really are and share your deepest thoughts and dreams?

Increasing Honor & Decreasing Anger = Safety

People are designed to hunger for intimacy and deep connection. God created us to connect with others and experience relational intimacy, especially in the key relationship with our family. This design causes us to have a basic desire for intimacy that can feel like a deep yearning.

If you are like us, you long for relationships in which you feel completely safe. You want to feel free to open up and reveal who you really are and know that you will be loved, accepted, and valued—no matter what.

Yet, many of us—especially teenagers—struggle with various aspects of intimacy because it requires openness, and openness makes us instantly vulnerable. We're not quite sure what they will say or do or how they'll use what they learn about us. This is why a lack of desire to connect—or an avoidance of intimacy in general—usually has more to do with attempting to avoid being hurt, humiliated, embarrassed, or just plain uncomfortable.

As a way to lessen the risks involved, we come up with many strategies to try to connect without getting hurt. We spend so much energy trying to hide. We put up walls and try to project an image we think people want so that when they look at us through the camera lens, they like what they see. We may keep parts of us closed and protected. We may ignore or deny how we actually feel. We may get angry or demanding as a way of distracting ourselves, or our spouse, from our own vulnerability. There are a whole host of options we may use to attempt to avoid relational risks. Unfortunately, these strategies usually limit the quality of the intimacy in our relationships because it's hard for people to get close to us if we're standing on the other side of a thick wall or a false mask.

In spite of the risks, the potential benefits of an intimate relationship are many. Intimacy creates the ideal opportunity to: love deeply and be loved; experience a significant sense of belonging; have a clear sense of purpose in life; have the ability to make a major difference in another's life; and have a way of fully expressing the best of who we are.

As a result, they will look for ways create that experience. In order for intimacy and deep connection to occur, hearts must be open. This is why in 1 Peter 1:22 it says, "Now that you have purified your self by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply from the heart."

Therefore, the typical strategies that people use to achieve intimacy and deep connection are to try to get open or to find ways to create intimacy. For a moment, think of all the ways you try to create intimacy in your marriage. We learn about each others love language and emotional needs. We partake in romantic activities like flowers, cards, candle-light dinners. We go on date nights with our spouse. We attend relationship conferences and read marriage books. We join small groups and talk about our marriage. And the list goes on.

While, on some level this appears to seem reasonable, in reality these are unnecessarily difficult strategies due to our inherent resistance to the dangers of emotional vulnerability.

An easier approach is to focus significant time, attention and energy into creating an environment that feels safe. We're not talking about safety in terms of do you feel physically safe. We're talking emotional safety—safe to truly open up and be known at a deep, intimate level.

The foundational component is a truly safe environment—one that is safe physically, intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally. As mentioned, people are, by nature, inclined to want to be open and connect. Logically, openness can be understood as the default setting for human beings. No state of being takes less energy to maintain than openness which involves being yourself and just relaxing. Maintaining defenses, walls, and fortresses takes tremendous energy. Working to get people to see you a certain way, by projecting images or trying to get them to like or accept you, requires significant energy. Simply expressing who you are and "being" does not. As a result, when people feel truly safe they prefer to be open and use their life energy to live and create and enjoy life.

When people are together in a state of openness, intimacy naturally occurs. In its most basic sense, intimacy is the experience of being close to another person and openly sharing something with them. This may or may not include words. It doesn't necessarily require work or effort. The mistake many make—knowing they want to experience intimacy and that openness is required—is to focus on trying to be open or to create intimacy. Either focus makes getting to true intimacy harder than necessary. The easier approach to intimacy is to focus on creating a safe environment for yourself, your spouse and your children. When each person feels safe, you will be naturally inclined to relax and be open. Then, intimacy will simply happen.

© Copyright 2006 Smalley Relationship Center

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