Transforming Marriage Through Emotional Intimacy

Can emotional intimacy truly transform your marriage? Join us as we, Julia and Jeff Woods, take you on a journey through our personal experiences, sharing candid stories of how redefining emotional intimacy reshaped our relationship. Jeff opens up about his early misconceptions, equating intimacy solely with physical connection, and how counseling broadened his understanding to encompass emotional depths. Together, we emphasize the importance of recognizing and meeting each other’s emotional needs, and how this awareness has enriched our marital bond.

Emotional maturity can be a game-changer in relationships, and we delve into our own evolution in this area. We recount moments of conflict that stemmed from emotional immaturity and how we learned to embrace constructive feedback and hold space for each other's feelings. Our transformative experience at the Breakthrough workshop played a crucial role, aligning our emotional intimacy with our sexual connection. This chapter sheds light on the brain’s remarkable ability to find solutions when prompted with the right questions, fostering healthier communication and deeper intimacy.

Consistency and structure are key to developing emotional intimacy, much like undertaking a home renovation project. We share our strategies for maintaining this connection through rituals like weekly chat times, revealing the trial-and-error process to find the most meaningful questions. From reflecting on past traumas to creating a language for challenging conversations, we discuss the ongoing nature of this journey. We encourage you to reflect on your desires for emotional intimacy and take proactive steps to cultivate it in your relationship, just as we did.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to hey, Julia Woods podcast. I'm your host, Julia Woods, founder of Beautiful Outcome, a coaching company focused on helping couples learn to see and understand each other, even in the most difficult conversations. On my podcast, I will share with you the real and raw of the messiness and amazingness of marriage. I'll share with you aspects of my relationship and the couples I coach in a way that you can see yourself and find the tools that you need to build the marriage you long for All. Right, welcome to today's episode.

Speaker 1: 0:35

I am so excited to have my husband, Jeff my favorite person with me today on this podcast and I am super excited to talk about this subject. So why? Well, because I believe that developing emotional intimacy in marriage is really not talked about. I've not heard or experienced anything on it in my searching and discovery, and it comes up a lot in coaching couples that I'm working with, and so I think there is a lot of miscommunication between men and women about emotional intimacy and I think that there's a lot of miscommunication in each couple in each marriage. That my hope is in this episode, as Jeff and I share our journey with developing emotional intimacy, which is rather new. It really has just been this year that for myself, I began to realize, wow, I really long for deeper emotional intimacy, and while I've known that throughout our marriage, it didn't become a possibility of something we could grow until this year because my beliefs were limiting it in ways I didn't even realize. And so I'm excited to have a conversation and explore this with you and help you, maybe let you in to our experience in a way that can help you.

Speaker 1: 2:11

So the first thing I want to do is invite you as a listener. If you're married or in a committed relationship, I want to invite you to use this question that Jeff and I are about to answer for us and we're not answering it, we're just giving you our best awareness of what we currently have. If you ask us in a month, we might describe it differently, and that's the beauty to write this question down and use it as a conversation starter with your partner at some point today if possible, and hear what each other has to say. So the question is what is emotional intimacy to you? So do you want me to go first? You want to go first?

Speaker 2: 3:06

You can go first, go ahead.

Speaker 1: 3:07

All right. So emotional intimacy to me is actually much more diverse than just emotional. To me, emotional intimacy is connecting deeply, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, in a way that you begin to experience thoughts, experience awareness that produces emotions. It brings about curiosity about, bring up some sadness you didn't know you did you had. It may bring up awareness of, of joy that you haven't felt before, but it's it's like a back and forth interaction, a conversation. That that opens up new discovery, that brings you to feel emotionally connected and for me it really brings about appreciation is one of the emotions I usually feel when I'm feeling emotionally connected. I find myself really appreciating the gift of who Jeff is and the gift of who we are together and what each of us brings up in each other and helps each other see. So that is my current awareness of what emotional connection means to me. What does it mean to you?

Speaker 2: 4:31

You mean emotional intimacy?

Speaker 1: 4:33

Yes.

Speaker 2: 4:48

Well, I think, for me it is a. I think as a male. I look at the word intimacy and I go to a different place and by definition, the word intimacy is a closeness or familiarity, a friendship into me, you see.

Speaker 2: 4:54

Yes, so intimacy, um, I think at first I would always think of it as a in a sexual matter, like it was. We're intimate. You know, I'm saying, and I didn't really kind of put intimacy in other regards, in other areas of my life, and I think through counseling and so forth I began to realize I can have intimacy with myself, like in the terms of just when I'm out in nature, there's something that there's a connection there for me.

Speaker 2: 5:20

When I'm doing something I love sports there's a connection there for me. But I think what I've realized, or what I have begun to realize, is that there's other areas that I can have an emphasis on a closeness to outside of a sexual intimacy. There's also the emotional intimacy, which is that closeness of just being with, obviously, your thoughts.

Speaker 2: 5:50

You know your, your, your current state of being, your current reality, and you know having that emotional intimacy with our children and our grandchildren and our friends our family that is becoming more and more aware for me, as I'm learning what it actually is to be, I think, cause I think, as men or I'm speaking for me, as, as, as a male, I struggle, struggled with getting in touch with my emotions per se. I, you know, know I would be very, um, um quiet or very like now I'll say shut down, but maybe it would be shut down in a lot of ways with my emotions um. So for me it is, it getting, it's getting closer and having a familiarity with my emotions and with the emotions of the people that I'm with, yeah, is how I look at it, or is where I'm learning about it, as, as my personal definition, it could be different for anybody and everybody, but but yes, that's my thoughts on that.

Speaker 1: 6:57

Yeah. So it feels a little foolish that to me, that after 33 years, you and I just ask each other this question a couple months ago and it was just an assumption, I think, on my part that you and I thought emotional connection was the same thing question. One of the things I ask is on a scale of one to 10, how emotionally connected do we each feel? And your number was far higher than mine and you said to me, you kind of I said what is creating that sense of emotional connection? And you said well, you know, we were hugging and we were touching and I, you said a really kind thing to me and I feel emotionally connected and for me I felt like well, that is like physical connection that to me means sexual intimacy and it was powerful to hold a space for that for you creates emotional connection and I see that it does for me as well.

Speaker 1: 8:03

I had really locked emotional connection into conversation and I still tend to do that, but you're helping me expand my definition and the possibility of what emotional connection can look like.

Speaker 2: 8:18

But it's not even really just about a conversation, because we can talk about like the weather, or we can talk about something else.

Speaker 1: 8:28

it's a more intentional conversation yeah so um where we're talking about what we're feeling or what we're thinking or things that evoke it's a sense of feeling, the intimacy creates curiosity yeah and for me, I definitely lumped sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, probably as one under the same genre, and I don't know, maybe other guys feel that way too.

Speaker 2: 8:54

I was just for me, that's what that felt like. So, yes, my, at the time, at that, in that moment, when you asked me the number, it was high because there was a physical, there was an affirmation, there was all these things that I make me smile, that would create that intimacy, that closeness, per se um, so when you I think I think you said that two or three, it was like you know, drop mic, or you know, like what you know, like why am I at a seven or eight and you're at a three?

Speaker 2: 9:33

and so there invokes that curiosity to understand like, okay, we're not on the same brain, brainwave.

Speaker 1: 9:45

Yeah, and yet I think it helped because I started realizing that when we do have physical connection, when we do, you know, these things that release oxytocin I do feel happy, I do feel joy. So could that be emotional intimacy? And you know we're going to talk here in a few minutes about kind of where that started opening up for me. So, you know, the next thing that we wanted to talk about is what brought us to start developing emotional intimacy.

Speaker 1: 10:17

I think for 33 years of our marriage, we just took for granted that there's emotional intimacy and there's physical intimacy, and, like every couple just has it. And yet, you know, I spent so much of our married life complaining about the lack of emotional intimacy, my experience of the lack of emotional intimacy, but I took for granted that it was something that wants to be developed, and so I started listening to my complaints and looking at getting a lot more honest and realized that I was tolerating low intimacy so that I could keep complaining about you not being emotionally intimate with me. And I really got sick of my complaints and realized that I was tired of complaining about something and instead of complaining about it, would I actually want to develop it rather than just complain? It's not there.

Speaker 2: 11:20

I would think it would also be something that you and I have talked about a lot, and specifically about me, and may come off negative to the listener, but it actually created a lot of curiosity. That was emotional maturity. Actually created a lot of curiosity and that was emotional maturity, emotional immaturity, which I feel like I have a lot of emotional um, up until now, emotional maturity to grow into because of just not wanting to go, which is a topic for another podcast, obviously, when we begin to talk about emotional maturity. But my emotional maturity shows up in a number of different ways Emotional, immaturity, immaturity, yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:04

Shows up in a number of different ways, and so it created a lot of like strife. I was easily hooked, and that would just tell me that my maturity level in that moment wasn't. My emotional immaturity was not where I wanted it to be.

Speaker 1: 12:25

Can you give some examples?

Speaker 2: 12:28

Well, I think it's like you know someone says something and you go to a place of like, okay, I wonder what happened. You look for the gold in the feedback. I don't, at times up until now, look at the gold in the feedback and that sometimes would create this. You know, oh, screw them. Or you know, you kind of automatically write them off the list, more or less, and that wasn't really that's not the mature thing to do. You know, could you find something in that conversation that I was having or that emotional connection that I was having that would be some gold, Just like I could have easily gotten emotionally immature when you told me you were a two and I was a seven. Um, I could have like, oh, that's that's. You know that's shitty, you know that's kind of like crappy. And then realizing that, okay, so it creates more for me.

Speaker 2: 13:25

In that moment my emotional maturity rises, when I become just curious as to what is actually going on. Is it true? I'm asking myself those questions and I think I was raised in a way where emotional maturity wasn't really prevalent. It was kind of like what's the word I want to look for here? But it's more of like sky is falling, and so when you have that pressure, that sky is falling mentality. You just get loose with your tongue, you get loose with your emotion, you get loose with just your thinking in a negative way.

Speaker 2: 14:10

It's a downward spiral and to me that was the emotional immaturity. Is that downward spiral I would get into when it came to you or others, or family, or conversations, or even actions? Yeah, you know, I would just completely, just spin out and that wasn't. That isn't where I want to be and where I want to go. And the emotional maturity continues to be challenged, because I think everything in life is a mirror and so when I see things and I begin to ask well, I don't, I don't tend to ask for feedback which tells you something right there. But when I do get the feedback, you know where is what's the gold in it? And that gold could be very rough to hear yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:59

Another thing that we would talk a lot about is I would ask you if you could hold a space for what I was feeling, because if I came to you in upset, or I came to you about something I was upset about, you would tend to respond emotionally and maturely in regards to shutting down go to shame.

Speaker 2: 15:21

Yeah, my first line defense is go to shame.

Speaker 2: 15:23

It's about I make it about me up until now, yeah, up until now, I make it about me in that moment. That's the sign of a emotional, immature individual is that I make everything about me, versus sitting with what is going on for you and realize like, hey, it's not all about me. Um, and I feel like sometimes we do, we deal with that a lot, especially if our parents like there's that, that, that scenario that we tend to go through in our head, like just the um, lack of curiosity that happens in those conversations with our parents. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:01

So I think that's a very important point is that when I talk about how this developing emotional intimacy began, it actually began several years ago when I started recognizing that what I was longing for was emotionally mature conversations. So I started asking, you know, for emotionally mature conversations, which began to bring you to say what is an emotionally mature conversation? And you were willing to own that. Okay, there's immaturity. And I was willing to look at where am I being immature? So that kind of began the conversation. And then I started recognizing how much I complain about it versus developing it.

Speaker 1: 16:44

And we host Breakthrough, which is a couples communication workshop that I do three times a year and every time that we host it and I lead it, you know, jeff, and I walk through the whole process with all the couples there in regards to when you come to breakthrough, you pick a specific conversation that you want to break through to deeper levels of connection and then you have couples connections throughout the event where you're actually having the conversations to break through. So Jeff and I have always participated, and we always will, because it's really, really valuable for us to do this. So, jeff and I have always participated and we always will, because it's really, really valuable for us to do this. And so, when we were thinking, we had an event at the end of April and we were thinking, what do we want our conversation to be? And I asked if we could. What Jeff thought about the conversation we wanted to break through was how to increase our emotional intimacy to the same level as our sexual intimacy. And we went with it. That was what we did, and so it began to develop a lot in both of us as we prepared, as we got ready for breakthrough, and we were thinking about it. And you know, that's the beauty of how the human brain works is, if you ask your brain a question, your brain works really hard to start collecting information to help you find a possibility. And so both of our brains were doing that.

Speaker 1: 18:15

And as we met for the different sessions throughout Breakthrough, I had a pretty massive breakthrough in that I wasn't Jeff, wasn't like being much different than I experienced him to normally be, and yet I was feeling high levels of emotional connection. And so it really blew my mind, like it interrupted a lot of beliefs, hidden beliefs I didn't realize I had about what I thought emotional connection needed to look like. And so in our conversations at Breakthrough, I give you conversation starters to help you walk through, breaking through, and so as we were working through those conversation starters, I began to explore more of the beauty of how Jeff saw things and opened up my mind even more to what emotional intimacy could be, emotional intimacy could be, and it just like I was blown away is all I can say and had a significant breakthrough in realizing that emotional connection didn't have to look like a back and forth conversation and that in a lot of ways it had been me that was blocking the emotional intimacy from us experiencing emotional intimacy in our marriage because I needed it to look a certain way. But as I sat there with Jeff on our picnic blanket and was just able to hear his heart and just appreciated so much of how he was serving at Breakthrough, and I just saw him in a new way and felt deeply emotionally connected and it's opened up a lot higher levels of emotional intimacy between us since that.

Speaker 1: 20:08

And just the question of like, how could we increase our emotional intimacy to match our sexual intimacy, which we have worked on really, really hard in our marriage? We'll talk more about that in a few minutes. Growing sexual intimacy has been a major conversation throughout our marriage and when we thought about what, if it's possible to raise our emotional intimacy to the same level our sexual intimacy, it just opened up a whole new world of possibilities. And that's the beauty of breaking through a conversation is it breaks through to new levels of possibilities. So what would you say, jeff brought you to want to develop emotional intimacy in our marriage brought you to want to develop emotional intimacy in our marriage.

Speaker 2: 21:01

Well, for one, it was just the awareness of what I didn't know, and I didn't know Like I didn't. Again, it was more for me, an unawareness of what emotional intimacy is, I think. I mean, you've always said that you know to be, to be known and to know and to be known is really what, to me, the emotional thing is, because it's it's you seeing me and you listening to me and you being with me in that moment and not fully like having an. I don't know if I've had an appreciation for that, so it was just an awareness of, like that I have a need, I have a need in that. So I was unaware of that need.

Speaker 1: 21:58

Do you think, do you have a memory of what brought you to be aware of it?

Speaker 2: 22:02

I just think our conversations of not knowing I think transparency was how important it was to you. I was just unaware of the necessity or the need, need, a desire of, like you said, like an emotional conversation, like what's that? I mean like I had really no clue. Um, all right, I had a confirmation bias of that. This is going to be a long, deep conversation and yada, yada, yada, and realizing that's not really what it was.

Speaker 2: 22:38

So I was probably resistant to it because of what you thought it was what I thought it was what my judgments of it was, and you know, that's still something that I still get to wrestle with and be in attention with. And you know, um, because there are moments where I don't feel like being emotionally intimate and I think there's also times where it's like, hey, I can't, I'm trying to process something, I need to come back to it, you know. So we allow space in that it's not forced, which is what I think, which is what I think it was, which is what my judgment was Like okay, this is a forced conversation that I'm not into. Yeah, cause if you're going to force me to do something, I'm probably very reluctant to do it. I'll, I'll smile and grin and bear it, but just know, inside it's like what the heck, you know, like I don't want to be here, I don't want to be in that moment. So it is that, you know, having that grace Because I think there is probably a lot, I would think a lot of men speaking for me, that was something that was.

Speaker 2: 23:55

You know, we didn't. We never, I never saw that side of my own father and I don't know if my kids saw that in me personally as they were growing up. I would like to think they see it differently now, as we have an adult children, that I want to be emotionally connected to them and hear them. But it was just something that was just. I never saw it in my life and so it's hard to. If you don't see it, it's hard to really understand it and don't learn. I mean, it takes time to really get into a rhythm with it. You know which kind of takes, you know where. Um, you know for me we have kind of set up situations.

Speaker 1: 24:48

Yeah, we're, we're holding a space for it in a way we didn't. And there's something you said that brought up for me a much more distinct, succinct definition of emotional intimacy is intimacy is into me, you see, and emotional intimacy is allowing you to see what I'm feeling, allowing my feelings to be known to myself and to you, and you know. That really brings us to the next point, which is how have we been developing it and what is the journey of developing it look like? And for me, in January, a big piece of it was reading a book called the Voice of the Heart, which I've listened I've mentioned on a past podcast as well by Chip Dodd, and it is the most powerful thing I've ever read on what, how to develop your emotions and how your emotions are actually designed to call you to life. So the intimacy part for you and I I think at this point, a big piece of it is looking at. Okay, I'm willing to tell you what I'm feeling. It's not right, it's not wrong. This is what I'm feeling, and how is that emotion meant to call me to life?

Speaker 1: 26:05

I think in the past, we would feel lonely or we would feel sad, and we only knew how to take it to its impaired state where it felt like a problem. But now we're growing the emotional maturity to take ownership of. Okay, I feel sad or I feel lonely, and I can either let that feeling of loneliness take me to apathy or I can let that feeling of loneliness call me to life, into the intimacy it's designing, it's meant, it's trying to call me to, and so there's a new whole awareness of what's available in our emotions and the ability to the power of feeling them so they can call us to life, and so I feel that has been a huge part of the development. I read that book. I know we had a little bit of tension because I was asking you to read it. I was so excited to apply this to our conversations and I know you've just started it. Anything for you that you would share as you have started reading that book?

Speaker 2: 27:18

I mean, yes, I'm, I'm just started, chapter one, to be exact, but I think the biggest thing that stood out to me was, you know, as water reflects the face, the heart reflects the man, and that is something that I've just kind of been sitting with, that, over the last few days. Even just that proverb, that has really been interesting. So, yes, there's a lot to uncover and, to be honest, there's a lot that I may not want to uncover either. Uh, so past trauma, or which is what came up for you. You know, like you know, you and I believe I'm correct you and your sisters, two of your sisters, begin to read this book together.

Speaker 2: 28:02

The three of you and um just was a lot of, because not only were you able to read it, you're actually able to really read it, you're able to share what you're reading, what, what you're coming up with with with them, and so they've been like a, a resource or a blessing in it, because you're able to process, because obviously they grew up with you, you know.

Speaker 2: 28:23

So there's a lot that you can uncover and, yes, it might uncover that father, father, mother wound which it has in you, and I can see where it begins in me. Um, and there's this things there that you don't, you don't want to touch, and and then and question is like, well, why don't I want to touch that? Like what is about that that I don't really want to know or don't want to touch or don't want to go there? But I think for me it's really like understanding as I read it, like okay, with my own kids it's, it's where, where is that at with them? Like where is where am I at with them in this in terms of what have they grown up with and what do I need to investigate in that? Somewhat.

Speaker 1: 29:16

Yeah, it's a powerful book and I know many couples have. It's been a powerful resource in their marriage to create a language and to create a process of working through challenging conversations. So I highly recommend it. It's brought us to, it's brought me well, not it this developing emotional intimacy, the things we've shared so far I mentioned. It's really brought me to look at my belief system and what I believed emotional intimacy was, what I believed Jeff was capable of, what I believed Jeff was willing to offer, what I was blocking in emotional intimacy and like if I could open up the possibility of what it was, how might Jeff actually be really offering emotional intimacy? And I didn't, you know, hadn't seen it before then, and so it's creating a lot of emotional connection. What would you say has been your journey? Obviously, you're also reading the book, but what else would you say has been your journey in the developing of emotional intimacy?

Speaker 2: 30:45

Well, the journey still continues and the journey is always, probably going to be ever going. It's not one of those things where, oh okay, here's the formula, I got the formula. Now, let's okay, I'm good, you know, there's not, there's no formula to it. It is messy, messy, ugly.

Speaker 1: 31:00

Beautiful.

Speaker 2: 31:03

Yeah Well, I haven't, you've got, I've not gotten to that place, to where it's beautiful. Yet you know, like I get that I see how I can show up differently with my, differently with my children and my grandchildren right now, in this moment. That is beautiful, that I probably would not have done when their parents were, when the kids were younger.

Speaker 1: 31:22

What I hear you saying is you've not experienced beautiful connection, emotional connection, with me yet.

Speaker 2: 31:28

Is that what you're saying? No, I'm not saying that. Scratch that from the record. Um, it's like, like sometimes sitting here I'm working with uh, what do you call those little, those people in the court that type the whole, type every word out. That's sometimes what I'm living with, um, so, yeah, no, it's not that at all, it's just I'm. I think what I'm experiencing is that the connection and the emotional connection with myself is, is messy, that's still, that's yet to be uncovered or exposed, or, you know, moving into um restorative or moving into just a transformational.

Speaker 1: 32:09

Aliveness, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:11

So that's, I mean, the emotional connection between you and I. I feel is, yeah, it's still a work in progress and I still mess up and you still mess up, and you know I think we have grace, we get to go again, but I think we have created opportunities where we can create that space to have those moments. It's not like right out of the blue you're saying, hey, let's have an emotional conversation, Cause I might scare a lot of guys off.

Speaker 1: 32:44

Well, yeah, and it's like you said, it is a work in progress. So we're, we've wrecked, we've come to terms with there's no end, like that was one of the things that I think excited us about our sexual intimacy is we realized there was no end to the possibilities of what we could experience together. But for some reason, emotional intimacy felt more like it was an, an object, like a thing like you've got you've got emotional intimacy or you don't have emotional intimacy. But I think something has opened up in the development for it to be considered a development like we are developing it and we're never going to get to the end of possible development in this. We can keep growing our ability to go to deeper levels of emotional intimacy, and I think that was another belief shift for me in that I didn't realize I held it as a thing rather than an opportunity, that's endless possibilities to it.

Speaker 2: 33:40

Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1: 33:43

So we've as a part of the development. For me, one of the things that's important in development is like you know if you're gonna remodel your, your house, if you're going to keep developing the way your house looks, you have a plan and you know that on this weekend we're going to, you know, work on the plumbing and on the next weekend we're going to work on, you know, laying the tile and you can see the development happening. And often it happens much slower than you'd like, but you see the development. So for me, when we're discussing developing emotional intimacy, it's important for me to see that the development is happening. And I don't know if that's a human everybody feels that way or it's just my personality but there's something for me that it's easy for it to move out of sight, out of mind, and then months later the complaint comes back that we just don't have the emotional intimacy that I want. So one of the things I found is that if I can put in some rituals I would call them connection rituals that allow me to see that weekly we are working on the development. My heart is much more at peace, and so one of the things that we have put in as a connection ritual is a weekly conversation.

Speaker 1: 35:02

Jeff and I actually have more than just a weekly conversation because so let me I have another train of thought, sorry, if you guys are working with me, if you are listening and you're working with me, you're probably very familiar with couples connections. So chat time is a part of the couples connections. There's chat time and there's play time, and so chat time was the weekly ritual that we have. However, for Jeff and I, we have sauna time. So three to four weeks, or three to four days out of the week, we have sauna time, and we started turning that into our chat time and when we looked at how to do the emotional connection develop the emotional connection, emotional connection developed the emotional connection, we decided we agreed that each sauna time would be led by a different one of us. So on Monday I lead it, on Tuesday he leads it, so on and so forth, and so in that time of consistently weekly for 20 minutes, we're working on developing this. We're learning what works and what doesn't for us, and one of the things that we've learned is you know, jeff led it one day and he said what was your high, low and unexpected, which is a conversation that we've been having for 15 years. We do it with our kids, we do it with each other, and so we each shared you know what's your high, low and unexpected.

Speaker 1: 36:37

And then we were done and I was really disappointed and so I asked Jeff. I said would you be open to giving ourselves feedback and looking at you? Know you sharing what number of emotional connection you felt in that conversation? And what level I felt and that's the conversation Jeff was referring to earlier. When I said I feel like a two, he said, well, I feel like seven or eight.

Speaker 1: 37:03

I feel pretty grateful with that conversation and I'm like it took him a while to ask me what I felt.

Speaker 1: 37:08

And I said like a two or a three. And he was like what, how did you feel? A two or three? And I said because one, the question is old to me and two, it allowed us to stay on the surface and while I appreciated what you shared, it felt like it was a surface conversation and so we started exploring like what other questions could we ask? And so far we found two that seem to create much deeper levels of emotional connection, and the one is when one of us will ask what's on your heart? You know what's on your heart, that seems to help us go much deeper. And then another one that we've started realizing works well for us as well is like what have you been processing today, and it really opens up the space to share more vulner that we can ask that help open up or hold the space for sharing vulnerably with each other what we're thinking, what we're feeling, and you know what's coming up for us, so anything else you would share that you think has been a part of our developing this emotional intimacy.

Speaker 2: 38:31

I do feel like there are like it's like a golfer and just to be clear, I am not a golfer, but I know enough about golf to know that there's a, there's a a bunch of clubs, right and there's a nine iron and there's a three wood, or whatever all that jazz is, and each, each one is like it's there's a strategy.

Speaker 2: 38:52

You know how long is that? Does he need to drive the ball, or she needs to drive the ball. So I think with us is we have a the high, low and unexpected is a easy way to start, kind of a fun way to start a conversation like that, which is what I felt in that moment. But then there's also questions like it goes like, if you're going to jump off the deep end, it's what's on your heart? Another question we we kind of always ask is what are we processing today? Or what are we processing today, um, or what are you processing today?

Speaker 2: 39:28

So I think it was like you can have like a, an arsenal, I guess, of questions that you can pull from, and that's what those that you know, those prompts, do, help kind of create. Um, and I'm always speaking for myself, being raised by a man of few words, it would be helpful for him to have these like on a cheat sheet to kind of help, because it does ease you in and can make it a little bit, for you know, I'm one that it's ADHD, so like I need visuals or I need to have fun, I need to have something going on that keeps me engaged visuals or I need to have fun.

Speaker 2: 40:02

I need to have something going on that keeps me engaged and so having those questions in my pocket, I guess for poor taste of wording, but nonetheless it gives me an opportunity to pull the club out of the bag. I'm going to go long with this one, so we're going to go write what's on your heart, but I'm in the short game. I want to do like hey, what's your high, low and unexpected, and those can create more conversations.

Speaker 1: 40:27

Yeah, I think it's a really good point because technically, you and I have been working on developing emotional intimacy for the last 15 years. I would just I used to call it deeper conversations, and so I think there is the things like sundown, and you know so in the comments if you are listening, and this is all new to you, and you do need to start with things like what's your high, low and unexpected, and that would feel like an emotional, emotionally connecting conversation for you. In the show notes you will find a link to what's called 100 Deeper Connection Prompts and Ideas and it'll give you 50 ideas for playtime ideas, which is always a great way to start.

Speaker 2: 41:13

Yeah, because we've combined it. And, just to be upfront, people are like wondering sauna time, like we literally have a barrel sauna. It's literally at 200 degrees and we sit in it for 20 minutes at a time and then we jump into an ice barrel for three minutes at a time as part of our health and fitness commitments and being intentional in our health. So it's like a like. It's like a 23 minute process which we do for three rounds, and I can be up front and say I probably wouldn't recommend to do this in a sauna at first, because after about 10 minutes I usually tell Julia in a loving way I can't talk, you know, because there's literally so much energy being exerted. But we continue the conversation when we're in the ice barrel or, you know, it's like it's not just in that sauna time that the conversation's over. Per se.

Speaker 2: 42:02

But just to give context, when you say sauna time, people are like wondering what the heck is sauna time? It's literally we are in a sauna sweating profusely for 20, for 20 minutes and about at about five minutes we're like zapped and so we have to. You know, we, we, we, we find it fascinating how, even when you're exerting energy by just sitting and sweating, how much talking exerts more and thinking exerts even more energy. So there's sometimes where we just kind of like, ok, let's put a pin in this.

Speaker 1: 42:35

Yeah, sometimes it's only a five or ten minute conversation. Let's put a pin in this for right now and go back.

Speaker 1: 42:40

Yeah, so technically the sauna time could be considered a playtime for Jeff and I. But I think in the beginning, when we were trying, when I kept complaining that I wanted to have deep conversations, we thought that the only way you could have deep conversations was to sit and look at each other. And that actually is a big, big hindrance to emotional connection, especially for men. Men open up much more emotionally when they're shoulder to shoulder. So a drive in a car, sitting in a booth next to each other at a restaurant or a coffee shop doing something of activity which is another big piece of what we set Breakthrough the workshop up to be a lot of shoulder to shoulder activity type conversations to create a much safer space. So if you want that 100 deeper connection prompts and ideas, you can find the link in the show note and that would be a great place to get started if you're listening and would like to begin to deepen the emotional intimacy in your marriage. So as we end out this conversation, I hope Jeff and I's meandering conversation has been helpful for you in some way and if it has, I would love to know that. If you want to direct message me on Instagram or email me at hello at beautiful outcome dot com, and I think, ultimately, the biggest thing that I want to leave you with is just the beauty of breaking through to deeper levels of connection.

Speaker 1: 44:17

I think the biggest breakthrough for Jeff and I in this has been realizing that we spent 30 plus years of our marriage thinking, talking, fighting about sexual intimacy. It was highly important to Jeff and it was important for me to work with him to develop it, and it was really me giving up my voice and my desires in that we really only spent time talking, or we really only spent time fighting about emotional intimacy, and it wasn't until I began to take a stand for the emotional connection that I wanted that it meant I was willing to move out of my complaining and into development and realizing that we needed to think more about it, we needed to talk more about it, and how could we use the fights that we had about my longing for emotional intimacy to actually move us more towards it? And so, as we've increased our talking and our thinking about emotional intimacy, it is significantly increasing. So if you are longing for more emotional intimacy in your marriage, I invite you to start by looking at your stand.

Speaker 1: 45:31

What is the stand that you're taking, I recognized I was far more positioned on believing that the depth of emotional intimacy I wanted wasn't available, and as long as I was positioned on being right, I was not taking a stand for what I longed for and what I desired. And as I shifted over and took a stand, creativity, new possibilities, new ideas, a new bravery to have conversations I hadn't been willing to have before began to emerge, and what's happening is I'm experiencing a lot of growth in emotional intimacy in our marriage in beautiful ways, and that's it's powerful and meaningful, and I would love for you to get to experience that as well, and so I invite you to think about what it is you really long for and take a stand for. Thanks for joining us today. We look forward to seeing you in the next episode.