Human beings are created for relationships, no matter who you are. We all want to feel that sense of love and belonging, whether in your marriage, family, or friendships. Most of the women in my space are sick of surface-level relationships and want in-depth and intimate relationships. But what is intimacy really?
In today's episode, I dive into my own journey with cultivating intimacy in my marriage and three mistakes I made in my quest to create it. I will define intimacy in a way that will give you a blueprint on how to create the intimacy you desire.
LAST CALL to join my upcoming workshop, Ignite Your Desire. In this workshop, you will learn what is getting in the way of you enjoying physical intimacy with your partner, and practical tools you can apply today to increase your desire! You can join here.
Let's Connect.
Free guide: 5 ways to find Calm: Get the guide here
Come find me on Instagram: @findherwildcoaching
Check out my website and my offerings here
Human beings are created for relationships, no matter who you are. We all want to feel that sense of love and belonging, whether in your marriage, family, or friendships. Most of the women in my space are sick of surface-level relationships and want in-depth and intimate relationships. But what is intimacy really?
In today's episode, I dive into my own journey with cultivating intimacy in my marriage and three mistakes I made in my quest to create it. I will define intimacy in a way that will give you a blueprint on how to create the intimacy you desire.
LAST CALL to join my upcoming workshop, Ignite Your Desire. In this workshop, you will learn what is getting in the way of you enjoying physical intimacy with your partner, and practical tools you can apply today to increase your desire! You can join here.
Let's Connect.
Free guide: 5 ways to find Calm: Get the guide here
Come find me on Instagram: @findherwildcoaching
Check out my website and my offerings here
Hi, my name is Bridget and this is my podcast, wake Up and Thrive. My intention for this space is to help women around the world live more awake, aligned and truly alive. I believe wholeheartedly that we are designed to live, feel and experience the full range that life has to offer, and in doing so, we can live fully turned on in all areas. My story began with sobriety and has since been an initiation into rediscovering parts of myself that I forgot about or had abandoned. Learning to reclaim all of who I am has been the greatest gift of living awake, and together we will go on a journey of helping you to do the same. You can expect to learn practical tools to help you connect deeper to yourself, your purpose and those in your life. All you need is an open heart and an open mind. So if you're ready, it's time. It's time to wake up and thrive. Good morning, welcome to Wake Up and Thrive. My name is Bridget and I am your host. If you are new here, I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad and honored and grateful that you're taking time out of your busy day to listen to this. I think it's going to be a really good one for you. Today we've been talking, I'm hosting a workshop coming up, a virtual workshop, called Ignite your Desire, and it's all about increasing your libido and your desire for physical intimacy. Naturally, I am a women's health nurse as well as a feminine embodiment and relationship coach, and so much of what I do within Find Her Wild Coaching is I help women live wildly turned on, and so that involves, obviously, in the bedroom, in your committed relationship, in your marriage, but it also involves outside of the bedroom, and I remember one time one of my mentors said and I've said this in a few of my posts and my emails but how you show up in the boardroom is how you show up in the bedroom, and what that's important to remember is just that if you are controlling and closed off out in the world, it's going to prevent you from having the experience that you and your partner want and that you deserve, and so this workshop is going to be a really fun, informative way to sort of help you get back into living from pleasure versus living from pressure and letting pleasure sort of dictate what you say yes to and what you say no to and how you show up Again, not just within your relationship, but in all areas. Living wildly turned on just means it means you're enjoying your life Right?
Speaker 1:I meet so many women that say I know I have a good life, I know I have lots to be grateful for, but I feel like I am running with like a chicken, with their head cut off. I just feel like I can't catch my breath. I feel like I'm swimming upstream, like I'm trying to do a million things with my hands tied behind my back, like these are all quotes out of women's mouths that I meet and the missing pieces. They say I just want to feel joy, I want to enjoy my life, I want to feel peace, I want to feel love and connection for my husband. Well, first of all, you're in the right spot. Secondly, you can't do it by just addressing the mind. You can't do it by just reading a book or listening to a podcast, or going to talk therapy or talking it out with your friends, or even talking it out with your partner. That's not how we create the feelings that we desire.
Speaker 1:And so in today's podcast, I really want to discuss intimacy. What does intimacy mean, what does it look like, and how can we cultivate that within our marriage? Okay, so the way this podcast is going to go. I'm going to define intimacy, but before I do that, I wanted to share kind of a personal story of you know my own journey with intimacy and where how I approached it in the beginning and now how I approach it and how I approach it now. Based on this new understanding of it and hopefully by learning from my experience, maybe you can resonate or relate to aspects of it. But the goal here is that you will walk away with a better understanding of how to create intimacy within your marriage, because I am a huge, huge, huge believer that your marriage can be the most healing relationship in your entire life if you let it, if you approach it gently, with an open heart, and you're willing to really do what it takes to create true and deep and everlasting intimacy.
Speaker 1:So again for those of you that are new here, my husband and I, paul, we got pregnant when I, when we were 18, 19 years old, barely knew each other, and so, when my oldest son was three and a half, we ended up getting married and we have gone on to have three more kids. So we have a total of four kids and my marriage. I am not kidding you when I say, every single statistic was racked up against us. Every statistic says that we shouldn't A be married today, c A be married today, b have as strong of a relationship as we do. And I am telling you we are not special. It is 100% related to the work that I teach and the work that I now get to share right. All of it, all of the embodiment work, all of the nervous system regulation, the releasing emotions, understanding your old, your traumas and your triggers and your wounds, communicating in a nonviolent way, creating intimacy, right, polarity work all of this work I get to embody on a daily basis in my marriage and I will say it is the relationship I feel the most embodied in, I am the most present, I am the most at peace and it just it wasn't always that way.
Speaker 1:So where I want to start with is defining intimacy. My mentor wants to find it this way and maybe you've heard this definition, but for me, I had never heard it defined this way and I had never really. You know, and I was always somebody that craved intimate relationships, not just within my marriage, but even friendships. I've talked a lot about that on this podcast, but I was always somebody who struggled, struggled to create that I couldn't get out of my own way. So here I was. I was created for connection, but it was my biggest wound, my biggest struggle, and so when she defined intimacy this way, it was just like a huge light bulb moment. And so she said the word intimacy literally means into me, you see. Okay, let me say that again. Intimacy means into me, you see.
Speaker 1:And so let's unpack that, because I know for me, for the longest time I thought intimacy was created from the other person sharing, sharing their heart, sharing their emotions, going deep, right. So, specifically within my marriage, I had this recurrent story that Paul was just disconnected from his emotions, he didn't know how to be vulnerable. He was always joking Like that's why we're not intimate, that's why we're not close, and that's just not the full story. Because if intimacy means into me, you see, then I had to really ask myself am I being vulnerable? Am I showing my emotions, sharing my heart, speaking my needs and desires into existence Right? Am I letting all of me be witnessed, or am I hiding and muting aspects of that Right?
Speaker 1:And a little example of that is I think I've given this example before, but Paul is incredibly forgetful and would oftentimes forget to lock the doors, sometimes even lock the garage, and for me that was a really really. That was related and tied to a trauma in my life where I thought someone had come into my home and so it was a big, deep-rooted fear for me, and what I would show him or share with him was my anger, my frustration, my disappointment in how much he's lacking and he's not a man. He's not man enough to protect our house and protect our family and yadda, yadda, yadda. Right, that doesn't create intimacy. Even if he locked the doors, it still wouldn't really create intimacy.
Speaker 1:Where we started to really break through and create that intimate connection, where he actually made it a priority to start locking the doors again, was when I started to share what was underneath the anger, when I started to really let him see my heart, let him see this fear, let him see the tears, when I described what it feels like to me like I'm going to get teary-eyed now, what it feels like for me when I think someone is breaking in or I think someone could break in, how I can't sleep at night, how my mind just turns on and races and I can't calm my body down, and how knowing and trusting that you can lock the door is so important to me, babe, like, what can we do so that you can get better at this? And A he has become all of a sudden, overnight, very good at locking the doors. Right, we put stuff in place. But, more than anything, he understands me a lot better. It's not about his lack, it's about my fear, my trauma. What's underneath, and that is what created the intimacy for us.
Speaker 1:When I stopped making it about him and I started really showing up so, whatever my mind would go to, he's not doing this I had to pause and ask myself am I, am I being vulnerable, am I being open? Because the answer was no. And once I started to do that, we started to slowly, over time, feel the intimacy both of us did, and it invited him to start sharing as well, because that's not his comfort zone, that's not his default. So I had to be willing to go first, and that's not always the case in relationships, but if you want deep relationships, if you want your partner to be vulnerable with you, are you willing to do the same Right?
Speaker 1:So another mistake I made when it came to intimacy was I thought it was all about quantity. I thought we just don't feel connected because we're not spending enough time together. We need to create weekly dates or monthly getaways, right. All this, all these rules which, by the way, are so unsexy. But I was wrong. Like intimacy into me, you see, I can now have. I mean, right now we're in a season where, well, our season is kind of slowing down, which is such a gift, but we are generally in a season where we are constantly high-fiving each other and heading out and and doing this and doing that, and we're barely seeing each other.
Speaker 1:I feel more connected and close to my husband than I ever have, and it's because of the quality of time that we we spend together. And when I say quality, I mean I'm sharing things that that really light me up. I'm inviting him into my world. He's come to a marriage retreat with me. He's listened to a coaching podcast, a coaching workshop. He will read articles that I sent him. We've taken the love, the love language quiz together. He's gone hiking with me and kayaking. Like I really invited him into my world because, remember, intimacy is into me, you see again. So, if you want good quality time instead of, like, putting all of your focus on the amount of time you're together. Go to the quality like share, share a part of yourself in the time that you do have. That's the best way I can define quality quality. You're going to feel like it's good quality time If you are really participating in something that's important to him or you're sharing and inviting him into something that's important to you. That will feel like years and years of weekly dates. I promise you the last invitation here to create more intimacy Again, the mistake I made mistake number three is I used to think intimacy, deep relationship, was only created through serious conversation.
Speaker 1:Right, I thought it was only created when, whatever we could have like a half an hour of uninterrupted, deep heart to heart. I used to call him that all the time like let's have a heart to heart. I need to have a heart to heart. Intimacy can be created, and some of the most magical intimate moments we've had has been when we are playing and laughing and light and so understanding that again, intimacy is into me. You see, when is the last time you let your hair down and you just danced, unstructured, like nobody was watching. You didn't even care and you just played. You played with your kids, you played with your partner. You twirl around in the kitchen, you sang off the top of your lungs like that is a huge aspect of creating intimacy.
Speaker 1:And so if you are approaching intimacy like, like you have a manual and you're like we have to, we have to do this and we have to do that and we have to spend this amount of time together, you're missing it. You're missing. You're missing the beauty of intimacy. Intimacy is your heart. It's allowing all of your heart to come online. It's allowing it to be witnessed. It's allowing your guard to be put down. It's allowing you to let go of control and just truly enjoy the moment. Enjoy the whether it's a lot or a little bit of time that you have with your partner during the week, during the month, during the day. Enjoy it. What can you do to make this enjoyable, can you Okay?
Speaker 1:So just to kind of sum this up, if you are wanting more intimacy in your relationship, three practical ways that you can go about doing that is to first take the focus that you are throwing at your partner and turn it back to yourself. So, if you're wanting him to be more emotional or vulnerable or open, ask yourself am I being vulnerable? I'm I being open, being willing to share and show all of your heart, especially the messy parts, right. That is how you are going to create that feeling of deep connection and intimacy. And again, I know that this is layered and nuanced. I really recognize that some of you listening have experienced a lot of betrayal and trauma within your marriage, and so I know it's not that easy. And yet it's that simple. When you can be willing to show your pain, show your sadness, instead of just staying in the comfort of your anger right, or your frustration, but really go deeper into your heart and then share it, you will be surprised at how much they step up, first of all, but you'll also be surprised at how connected you will feel because you are the creator of your feelings. Okay, so that's the first part.
Speaker 1:Second part is, instead of focusing or stressing or putting pressure on the quantity of time you have together, make it really good quality time, and that involves understanding what lights you up, what your own passions are, and being willing to participate in theirs, getting really curious about their own right. That one quality date is going to make up for a hundred weekly superficial going to dinner because you want to check it off the list of like we had our weekly dates. So do something that lights you up. Invite your partner into your world and just watch, watch how you start to feel oh my gosh, I didn't know he would enjoy this. I've been hiding this part of my life, no, no, no. Invite him in, invite him into those quality moments together. And then third, intimacy does not have to be created just by serious talks, deep talks. It can be created.
Speaker 1:Some of my most, my best and biggest, most profound intimate moments have been when we are on the floor laughing we I have one memory of us laying down and trying to foot wrestle and just like both of us literally just belly laughing. It was so funny. Or dancing in my kitchen. Or me singing in the car and him making fun of my voice. But allowing play and laughter and lightness to infuse your relationship again will create that intimacy. So I hope that this was really helpful. And, yeah, this is just. This is a big passion of mine, because I know how important it is. I know how important it was in my own journey to feel that connection and I also know how much in my life improved when I had the intimacy within my marriage. Like it's, it's, it's kind of crazy, like when we're good, life is really good, and so, yeah, I hope some of this sort of will spark some conversations or at least a different way for you to look at what you're creating within your marriage, because you do have that power to create whatever experience it is that you want. And I want to end with just inviting you guys one more time.
Speaker 1:Next Monday, november 20th, at 7 30pm Eastern Standard Time, I am having a virtual girls night. It is a virtual workshop. It's called Ignite your Desire. We're going to talk all about what kind of gets in the way of our desire and our libido, and I know last week's episode we sort of talked about some really common reasons. But again, I hope you enjoyed this episode and again I want you guys to be witnessed. I want you to be seen, I want you to come and share what's really on your heart and what's really been a struggle for you, because being in community with other women who are experiencing the same thing is going to help you remove so much of the shame and the weight and actually be able to let it go, be able to move through it. So I want you to come.
Speaker 1:I'm also going to be teaching you guys some real practical tools to increase your pleasure, to increase the experience, because if it's pleasurable and it's something that you actually enjoy, instead of it being just another to do, you're going to want to engage in it more Like that's just a math problem. So I really want to be able to be able to share these tools. I'm excited to share these tools, but you have to be willing to take that step. So click the link below in the show notes. Come and join us. It's going to be a really fun night and, yeah, I'm just really excited there's so much more to come. On relationships, on marriage, I have my marriage group that will be launching here soon. I'm excited to share that. That's kind of been revamped and, yeah, just lots more to come, and I promise you I am on a mission to help more women feel the love and the connection that I know they so desperately want. So stick around and I will see you guys next week.