Fast & Furious Lives

We wake up in the morning, walk into the kitchen and thanks to a timer we have a pot of hot coffee waiting for us. We pop a frozen waffle into the microwave and in about 1 minute we have breakfast. We race to work where computers help us get our jobs done faster. At noon, we drive through and pick up lunch in less than 5 minutes without ever getting out of the car. We don’t have to wait until we get back to the office to start making phone calls, we just pick our mobile phones and start talking.

After work, we pick our children and take them straight to soccer practice. On the way, our children do their homework in the car. While our children are practicing their soccer techniques, we pull out the laptop and connect to the internet to check our email. After practice, we race home and pull out a ready made meal from the refrigerator for dinner. We scarf down our food and then sit down to relax in front of the television. A remote allows us to change channels every few minutes and thanks to Tivo we can skip commercials and watch 3 hours of television in about 1.5 hours.

Everything about our lives is fast and furious. It is more than a busy life; it is a fast and furiously busy life.

Intimacy takes time and cannot be rushed! We don’t have time to talk to our spouses for more than 5 minutes. We don’t have time for sex and foreplay. Many husbands and wives struggle to squeeze a conversation between activities. Some people claim they talk more to their spouse on the mobile phone than in person.

 It is difficult to slow down in the midst of our fast paced lives. We rush everything and everyone. How many times do parents tell their children to “hurry up!” Likewise, many couples rush through intimate opportunities and deny each other the time needed to build intimacy. Living fast and busy lives often creates barriers to building intimacy with a spouse.

Unreasonable Expectations

One of the most common barriers to intimacy is unrealistic expectations. The longer you know someone and the more intimate you become with them the more likely you are to expect more out of them. We often expect the most out of the people that we feel the closest to.

Imagine that you have a flat tire and you are stuck on the side of the road. You see a stranger and a really good friend drive by. Who do you expect to stop and help you? Most people would expect their friend to stop and help them, while they would easily excuse the stranger for driving by without helping them. Why? Because we expect more out of people that we know.

Unfortunately, the closer you get to your spouse the easier it becomes to expect more out of them. If we are not careful, it is easy to allow our expectations to rise to beyond what is reasonable. For example, after many years of marriage it is common for couples to expect their spouse to understand what is bothering them without saying a word. If you have ever used the phrase, “how many times do I have to tell you” then you have reached the point of expecting your spouse to know something without you telling them. More simply put, you expect your spouse to read your mind, to think like you and to know what you want.

The problem with high expectations is what happens when your partner no longer meets those expectations. Failure to meet expectations often results in frustration, disappointment or possibly anger. The more your partner fails to meet your expecations the more tempting it is to lose respect and trust for your spouse. As you lose respect and trust for your spouse, you are less likely to allow your spouse past your safety zone and into your intimacy zone.

It is a real challenge to feel close to someone who does not meet your expectations. It is difficult to open up and create an environment for intimacy when you possess negative feelings towards a person. Unreasonable expectations creates a barrier that makes it difficult to draw closer to your partner.

Intimacy – The Cure for Loneliness

Once upon a time, I lived a very lonely life. I had friends and I always hung around a lot of people, so I was rarely alone. And yet, even in the midst of a crowd I felt lonely. I joked and laughed with my friends, but I still felt all alone. My friends were very good friends and I felt close to some of my friends. Nonetheless, I still felt lonely.

 One day, this beautiful person walked into my life and I felt an instant connection. I grew closer to this person and eventually we were married. I discovered intimacy and my lonely feelings disappeared. True intimacy with the right person removes the lonely feelings. The mental and physical intimacy provided a cure for my loneliness.

There is something special about bonding mentally and physically with another person. You identify with them, you relate to them and you discover that you are not alone. You remove the barriers that keep people safely away from you and you allow that special person inside. Once that person is inside your barriers, you realize that you are no longer all alone. You have another person that you can trust, that you can talk to, that you can hold and you bond with that person.

Marriage is not the cure for loneliness. Just because two people are married does not mean that they are experiencing true intimacy. Many married couples have fallen out of intimacy. In many cases, the longer a couple is married the more barriers they encounter or build to hinder intimacy. Marriage is a contract, an agreement between two people that is often celebrated in a marriage ceremony before family and friends. Marriage is a classification used by the government and society to define a relationship between two people. Traditionally and according to common law, marriage is a union between a man and woman, where union often implied the physical joining of a man and woman.

The cure for loneliness is experiencing mental and physical intimacy with another person. Most people begin by developing a mental connection with another person and then explore the possibility of a physical connection. Once a couple is comfortable with that mental and physical connection, it is common for them to explore marriage as the next level of commitment. Once married, many couple will push the physical or sexual intimacy to deeper levels, which is typically referred to as the honeymoon period.