{"id":128430,"date":"2022-05-11T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2022-05-11T15:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/?p=128430"},"modified":"2025-06-18T14:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T18:57:07","slug":"emotional-intimacy-grasping-the-full-spectrum-of-feeling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/articles\/topics\/marriage\/staying-married\/communication\/emotional-intimacy-grasping-the-full-spectrum-of-feeling\/","title":{"rendered":"Emotional Intimacy: Grasping the Full Spectrum of Feeling"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When my mom gifted me a shirt that \u201cgoes great with your brown pants,\u201d I was confused. I didn\u2019t own brown pants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou mean my green ones?\u201d I responded. It was her turn to look confused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the moment I discovered I\u2019m colorblind. I have a mild red-green deficiency. That\u2019s why no one noticed, including me, until my 20s. I guess most people just chalked it up to my having a \u201cunique\u201d fashion sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to emotional intimacy, I\u2019ve found myself similarly limited, struggling to identify and understand my emotions. When my wife asks, \u201cHow are you feeling?\u201d I almost never reply with an actual emotion word. My sentence might start with \u201cI feel\u201d but usually end with \u201c…like taking a nap,\u201d \u201c…like eating Taco Bell,\u201d or \u201c…like punching the wall.\u201d Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride<\/em> would tell me, \u201cYou keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We crave intimacy, don\u2019t we? A close connection forged through shared experiences and information. Before I met my wife, I dated in the hopes of finding someone to \u201cunlock the vault\u201d and share my life with\u2014all the spiritual, emotional, and physical depths<\/a>. I witnessed married couples share a knowing look or crack up with their own private joke, and I wanted that. Yet once I married, my own journey toward emotional intimacy with my wife proved more of a challenge than I imagined.<\/p>\n\n\n

Understanding emotional intimacy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n

Emotions serve as signposts pointing to deeper realities within us. Proverbs 20:5 advises, \u200b\u200b\u201cThe purpose in a man\u2019s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.\u201d I really need to work on that understanding<\/em> part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding and communicating the realities beneath my behaviors\u2014that\u2019s the key to cultivating emotional intimacy. But my emotional colorblindness built a barrier, since I seemed to be the last to realize\u2014or at least to admit\u2014I\u2019ve got all the feels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like when I\u2019m mad as I wash dishes, muttering about how dirty our kitchen is and clanking plates at earsplitting levels. Sara knows I\u2019m angry (the neighbors must know, too). When she asks, \u201cWhat are you mad about?\u201d she\u2019s creating an opportunity for emotional intimacy by exploring the reason behind my anger and processing it. Usually, though, I\u2019ll respond with \u201cI\u2019m not angry,\u201d spoken through clenched teeth in my best Clint Eastwood impression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some level, I know I\u2019m angry but don\u2019t want to admit it. I\u2019ve got two reasons for dissembling: I want to numb my feelings, or I want to paper over it with some kind of quick fix. Neither reaction works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since emotions are signposts, I need to see through my feelings to what caused them and go from there. James 1:20<\/a> says, \u201cthe anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.\u201d It produces quite the opposite, causing stress and turmoil from the kitchen to the bedroom and everywhere in between<\/a>. Acting on my anger won\u2019t solve anything. Neither will numbing it\u2014once the Novocain wears off the pain comes back.<\/p>\n\n\n

An emotional equation<\/h2>\n\n\n

Once you\u2019re ready to take the blue pill and wriggle down the rabbit hole of emotions, use the ABCs: A<\/strong>ctivating event + B<\/strong>elief system = C<\/strong>onsequence (emotion).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The consequence, our emotion, is usually the starting point. For example, I find myself weeping during Taken<\/em>, a movie I\u2019ve seen a thousand times. The activating event\u2014what<\/em> made me cry? In this case, it was the movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why<\/em> did this movie make me cry (belief system)? Once I became a dad, I started crying during all three of the Taken<\/em> movies\u2014a marathon of emotion. A daughter of my own lent a sobering reality to Liam Neeson\u2019s \u201cparticular set of skills\u201d display. I believed something terrible could happen to my daughter, which filled me with dread and sorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s an ABC I\u2019m still dealing with. Like I mentioned, dirty dishes are an activating event that yields a consequence of anger in me. Why, though? It\u2019s not like everyone reacts this way (I\u2019ve asked around). Dirty dishes + (something I believe) = anger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I pause to process, dirty dishes accuse me of failure. If you were a better man,<\/em> their crumbs shout, we\u2019d be clean by now. Why didn\u2019t you wake up earlier, or stay up later, to get these done? <\/em>A dirty kitchen makes me feel like I don\u2019t measure up, and I\u2019m filled with anger at myself.<\/p>\n\n\n

Find out why over 1.5 million couples have attended FamilyLife\u2019s Weekend to Remember.<\/i><\/span> <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>\n

The key to emotional intimacy<\/h2>\n\n\n

Examining the belief underneath my anger, especially alongside my wife, has been so helpful. She doesn\u2019t judge me by how quickly our plates are cleaned, and she reminds me God doesn\u2019t either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I need to figure out why I react this way, but as GI Joe told me when I was a kid, knowing is half the battle. And in the process, I\u2019m able to forge connection with my wife as I allow her to see the deeper issues in my life and give her carte blanche to speak into them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While we can\u2019t always change A or C, B is the key to both growth and emotional intimacy. Sometimes we can replace the lie we believe with truth through the help of the Holy Spirit and our spouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesus experienced a full range of emotions: anger, grief, even fear. Our spouse\u2019s emotions should compel us to lean in, dig down, to understand what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of us dream of deeper emotional intimacy with our spouse but have no idea how to achieve it. Instead, we numb or fix. When I\u2019m confronted with my spouse\u2019s feelings of anger, sadness, or fear, I default to these methods like a bullfighter. I wave my distracting cape around to evade the emotion\u2019s assault, then skewer it as quickly as possible. How often have you heard the phrases, \u201cDon\u2019t worry!\u201d Or \u201cDon\u2019t cry!\u201d? We use these as comforting words, but they\u2019re really intended to do is to cut our feelings off at the source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next time you\u2019re confronted with your emotions (or your spouse\u2019s), take a breath before you numb or fix. Emotional intimacy is knocking at your door. The feels are your friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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