7 Pillars Of Intimacy - Intimacy CheckIn Guide

Welcome, I'm Connor Beaton, and joining me today is my special guest. You want to introduce yourself, wifey.

Your wife, Vienna Farren, the one, the only.

Well, welcome to the show.

I actually could be the only Vienna Faren. It's possible.

I mean, I think you might be the only Vienna Farron. Yes.

Like, there are Viennas and there are.

Farrons, of course, but Vienna's there that are also Farons.

I don't know. I haven't found one.

Doesn't Faron Pharaoh mean. Doesn't it mean like pharaoh, like king?

It is Lebanese. And I was always told growing up that if you just trade out the H or the N for the H, you got pharaoh. So.

So it's. So you have to substitute a letter to be a king.

Well.

We'Ll just pretend there's some royalty.

All right. All right. So mystery will stay there. How are you? How's the Mindful MFT going?

Mindful MFT is great.

I am also great.

Yeah. We have had a busy 2019.

Yes, it's been very busy and really fun and exciting and great projects and retreats and experiences and all the things. And we're both pretty pumped for 2020.

We are. And I mean, I know I am. And I think, I mean, tomorrow's a big day. We're leaving on our honeymoon tomorrow. Yeah, we're recording this the night before leaving on our honeymoon. It's. What is it? Almost 7:30 at night. We have nothing packed.

I'm outing us right now in my phone.

Yeah, there's. There's nothing packed.

I'm directly outing us. We have, we are leaving for 16 and neither of us have one article of clothing packed at 7:30 at night.

And then you can imagine how excited I was to come home after a day of 10 clients to Mr. Beaton over here saying, hey, we need to record something.

Yep, we're going to record a podcast. So we're going to talk about the intimacy check ins. So Vienna and I have been leading a lot of workshops lately. And thank you to those of you who have managed to come out and join us for either the course or the workshops or the retreats that we have been putting on. And one of the things that we did recently was we led a couples class and we partnered with the class by Tara and Toomey, and we had a bunch of couples out and.

We created a little bit of an intimacy check in for you and your relationship. And do you think that single people can do this? Do you think they can do it on their own? They can look at a previous relationship? Maybe.

Yeah, I put this in my newsletter yesterday and I A guided sort of, whether in relationship or not, partnered at the moment that you can absolutely still do the check in and the exploration with, you know, potentially a former partner and really thinking about how you would have rated some stuff and how maybe they would have rated some things and using that reflection as an opportunity to take an honest look at some of the stuff in the past. So yeah, absolutely, you can.

And for all the couples that are out there, definitely you can use this format. It's. It's pretty powerful. We actually went through it, we've gone through it quite a few times now. And it's a great way to get a sense of like where the relationship truly is, where you are, where your partner is. And so let's. Should we walk them through? Do you want to give them any more context for like intimacy check in?

Yeah, I mean, intimacy check ins and really overall check ins are so important for couples to do. And it's really easy to forget to check in with each other because we're just looped into the day to day, the week to week, the month to month, and we get busy.

Well, I mean, I think we would do this at work. We have check ins at work. We have check ins with friends. And I think one of the crazy things about relationships is that because we live in such a. A wild time right now where things. I hear a lot of people complaining that they feel like life is moving faster, which is just like a really common thing that I hear people saying they have more, you know, social media news feeds than ever before. More tasks to do, more, just more everything. And so people are busy and I think relationships require us to carve out that intentional time to like really connect with our partner.

Well, I mean, I think, yeah, we can find every excuse and every explanation and every defense for why this isn't a priority. And the reality of it is is that you do need to just make intentional, deliberate time for this. We're all busy, we get it. And you have to decide whether or not you're going to show up to improve the quality of your relationship, you know, day after day after day. So, you know, this one is a specific check in in the realm of intimacy. And you and I talk about intimacy being.

A process of going innermost with oneself, sort of a process and a practice of going innermost with oneself and then deciding whether or not we choose to share our inner world, our inner thoughts, experiences, feelings with another. And so in that right when we think about intimacy, you know, there might be a few things that come to mind. It might be vulnerability, it might be connection, it might be be sex.

But what we've done is we've broken intimacy down into a number of different pillars that require our attention.

Seven pillars in total.

Seven pillars in total. And this list is not a comprehensive list. You know, there are other pillars to intimacy for sure, but the ones that we listed and wanted our couples to dive into were physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, experiential, conflictual, and sexual. Again, not a full comprehensive list. You may add others to it and maybe that's something, an activity, exercise of your own that you can do to think about. What are the other pillars? For me? Like, one might be creative as just an example of how I want to connect with myself and with you.

Yeah. And so we wanted to make this, maybe not as simple as possible, but we wanted to make it in depth enough that it's uncomfortable, which it is. We will have a little PDF for you on the website so you can check out this episode on Mantalks.com and there'll be a little downloadable PDF there for you so that you and your partner can go through this.

And you don't have to write down everything that we're about to say because we're going to give you some of the prompts for the seven pillars.

Well, yeah, they're just sort of the definitions of what they are. And so physical, the way that, that we defined it was affection for one another. It's not sexual. It could be hugging, holding hands, closeness, a sense of proximity with one another.

Should we tell them what to do with each one of these?

Not yet.

Ooh.

Well, okay.

I mean, sure, keep the people in suspense.

Being a fair, Keaton likes to jump ahead.

I do, I do.

Well, sure. I mean, I think if you want to venture back here a little bit right now, you can decide or rate yourself on a scale from 1 to 10 on how important each one of these pillars is to you as an individual. Right. So 10 being the most important and one being not very important at all. So I just told you physical so you can think 1 to 10. Where, where do I land? How important is that? Emotional is the ability to talk about your innermost thoughts, feelings, experiences and world with a deep sense of confidence. And so rate 1 to 10. Intellectual is exchanging ideas and thoughts that you think about and care deeply about with respect and admiration. So rate 1 to 10. Spiritual is the sharing in awe inspiring moments together. There may be shared morals, values, spiritual beliefs, religious Views, ethical code. It's having awakenings together. And then we have experiential, which is the sharing of experiences together without distractions. There's a deep sense of presence, thus required. Conflictual. We can face challenges together and turn conflict into connection. Understanding of new parts of self and other through the conflict. And then the last one is sexual. We've defined it as being fully sexually expressed, feeling a deep sense of safety in sharing desires and fantasies and hearing them.

Yeah, awesome. And I love the spiritual one. Right. Like having awakenings together. Like I think that a lot of people. And look, I don't think it needs to be like super woo woo. I think we can have awakenings together in the sense that when we become aware of parts of ourselves, deeper parts of ourselves, and we bring those forward in a relationship that is a form of an awakening. And our partner can share in that awareness, the awakening of awareness within us that we're experiencing. And that's a really powerful connector. Right. When we discover parts of ourselves that have been largely hidden from us about our past or the way that we operate, or how we've been blocking in intimacy or blocking in some form of fulfillment, that is something that when we share it with a partner, can really create a powerful depth of intimacy.

Yeah. So the second part of this exercise, the first part being just rating for yourself how important it is. The second part is your self rating of how well you are showing up in this pillar in the relationship. And the other part of it is rating your partner how well they are showing up in that particular pillar. And you know, we, we, we tend to put the asterisks in here to say, you know, your job in this space is really to be honest with yourself and with your partner. It can be uncomfortable. Right. Sometimes there's resistance. Sometimes we want to protect them by giving a higher number than maybe what it is that we're actually feeling or experiencing. And so our invitation for you is to actually rate it as transparently and sort of correctly, I guess, if you will, to where the relationship is at right now.

Yeah. So once you've gone through all seven of the pillars, once you've gone through physical, emotional, intellectual, et cetera, and you've given yourself a rating and you've said okay for physical, you know, hand holding, some physical touch at home, maybe I'm like an 8 or a 9. Right. And then you rate your partner and you give them their rating and you go through each of them, then we recommend that you sit down with your partner, have the conversation. And I mean we kind of made a game out of it, to be honest. Like, when we actually do this exercise, we've kind of like made a game out of it. So we'll reveal our rating at the same time.

So like three, two, one, eight.

Oh, man.

Yeah. And, and just kind of like have some fun with it, make it a little bit light because otherwise, you know, it can, it can become like a very serious thing to like, go through. And I think the one, one of the rules that we instituted was no arguing about the rating when you're going through and leave the inquiring until the end. The next rule is rather than saying, what am I doing wrong? Or why do you think that I'm so crappy at that? Come from it in a positive way.

Empowered.

Yeah, in an empowered way. And actually say, what could be better in physical intimacy? What could be better? Or how could I do that better? Or how can I show up better for you or for that type of intimacy? And in this way, it's less about the shame or the guilt or what you're doing wrong unless there's some very specific behavior that you as a couple need to talk about. But for the most part, you want to come at this from an empowered way and an empowering way for one another.

I think, you know, notice some of the discrepancies in the numbers. Notice how some of the numbers feel, right? If you rate yourself low, if you rate a partner low, what it's like to have your partner maybe rate you low. And yeah, like, see if there are gaps, right? Maybe you guys are, you know, one, you know, one number away from each other, but you notice that you step up or you step down together, know, ask that question of which pillars are most important to you, right? Because maybe we're doing some well, but maybe they're not the ones that are actually that important to you. And for the people who are, who are single, you know, reflecting back on a dynamic that, that you once had and really, again, trying to take an open, reflective approach to, you know, how well did I show up and what would the other person say about me? And take that feedback, right? I know it's a little bit funny to, you know, rate yourself from somebody else's perspective, but if you, if you try it, you, you probably are going to get pretty close if you were listening to some feedback from before. And so using that as a, you know, jump off point for reflection, journaling, and then intention setting around how we might show up for intimacy in these pillars a little bit differently or how we can sort of listen to a future partner and really ask for that feedback.

I think the last thing that maybe I would add to this is when you're going through this exercise, when, when you're revealing and going through the ratings and sort of sharing your. Your experiences with one another, make sure that you're sitting facing each other. You know, if you're in the same room, if you have to do it over video because you're long distance, that's a different thing. But if you're in this, in. If you're in the same room, make sure that you're sitting facing each other, that you're like, in a good place, the kids are to bed, that kind of stuff. So that you have some privacy and that you're prioritizing this experience.

Yeah. And the last thing that I would say.

Oh, oh, last one, last word.

Is that instead of trying to improve all seven of these pillars, I would recommend choosing one pillar and maybe one pillar a month. Right. And just saying, like, okay, like, the ones that are really important to us are, you know, 2, 5, and 7. And then choosing one that could really use your attention and, and thinking about in the same way that Connor said before, like, what are the things that I could do to improve this. This pillar? What. What can I do that is better here? And making that list of. Right. How we can actually bring attention to that pillar of intimacy. And so just choose one, bring attention to it, and then check in with each other weekly to see, you know, is that. Is that number budging? Right? How. How am I doing? How are you doing? How are we doing? And just take it slow and don't overwhelm the system.

So share with us online. Tag us indifulmftand talks. You don't have to share, obviously your ratings unless you. Unless you want to. But it might be. It might be good to just kind of like, share your experience online so that other people can go through and do the exercise. Because one of the biggest challenges, obviously, that a lot of couples face is that they don't take time and they don't prioritize checking in with one another in a. Especially when it comes to intimacy and these main pillars. So thanks so much for tuning in today and until next week, this is Connor Beaton and Vienna Farron signing off.