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Losing Direction: When Intimacy Avoiders Lead You Astray
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Partners who desperately want intimacy often push it away. It’s easy to lose direction with them. They demand more openness from their partners but then
You and your partner formed a relationship likely for many reasons. One of the strongest might have been the desire for a deeper and ongoing connection with another human… a connection that allows you to be spontaneous, real, supported, sexy, and adventurous.
At the time, you hoped you had created a connection that would lead to a richer life.
But it’s possible that you and your partner might have lost your way after the initial euphoria of being together. Many factors are involved in getting lost. One of them is losing sight of your core values in the busyness of everyday life.
It is rare for most people (including me) to reflect very often on core values. That's an indicator that we rarely spend much time thinking about the purpose of our own life or relationship.
It can be a mind-bending question, “What is the purpose of my life?” or “What is the purpose of my relationship?” So it is understandable we avoid it.
But there might be a way of generating clarity with just two questions.
The two questions can expose your core values. And your core values are really your compass, your North Star, and your beacon, while traveling on your life and relationship journey.
Here are the questions:
- Who are the people you admire the most? They can be living or dead, real or fictional, ones you know or only have heard about. Make a list of these admired people.
- Why do you admire them? List the qualities of each person that are so admirable.
Then look for the overlapping qualities across those people. Reduce the list to the 3-5 most important qualities.
These will give you a pretty good idea of your personal core values.
This is a good exercise for you and your partner to do and share with each other. Think about these qualities on a regular basis and reflect how much you are aligned with them as you go through the day.
When you and your partner get into disagreements, or are faced with big decisions, put them into the context of “How would I apply my core values to this discussion, decision or situation?” If the values are relevant then you will have increased your clarity about how to respond or what to decide.
If you don’t create clarity with these qualities, then redo the exercise.
Is it easy to live aligned with your core values? Of course not. But I think one of the reasons the people on your admired list are there is that they embody their core values in how they live.
There they are – two powerful questions. Who do I admire? And why do I admire them?
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Thanks for your work, yours & Ellen’s. My husband & I, now retired, had a workshop or two when we were in private practice & it was foundational in our work. We still use these skills when family or others are struggling to make a relationship better. Jackie & Phil Solem
Thank you for this excercise and insightful technique to be guided by our core values. I have tried it and will use it because it makes sense and helps us to reflect when we need to make decisions.
Thank you for your insightful postings.
JInet
Thank you for sharing these! What I love most is that these questions sort of relieve the pressure of deep introspection by placing the focus outside of our selves. Unlike I a lot of the (stereo)typical counseling questions- “and how do you feel about that?”- your questions allow for the creative mind to pitch in. And unlike a lot of couples counseling assignments, I would actually look forward to working through these questions with my partner.