The art of creating emotional intimacy: How to connect deeply with others
The art of creating emotional intimacy: How to connect deeply with others
Imagine you and I are new friends. Imagine we’re meeting for coffee after a few weeks of not seeing one another. Say you’ve been super caught up in a project at work, or a creative project you’ve been working on outside work. Say I’ve been to New York, where I traveled for business and brought along my family for pleasure.
Being the kind, curious person you are, you ask me how my trip was.
There are different ways I could answer your question.
For example, I could say something along the lines of, “Oh, it was great! We went to the natural history museum and went on the carousel and took the ferry to Staten Island—so fun! And the food! I don’t think we had a bad meal while we were there.”
Or I could say something like: “Going to New York was so amazing for me. I was born in New York, and my mom raised me there until I was 3, so it was beautiful to watch her connect to my son in this place that was so sentimental for her.”
Which response makes you feel more connected to me? The one where I list all the things I did? Or the one where I share what I experienced emotionally?
I’m guessing it’s much more interesting to hear what I experienced emotionally than listen to a laundry list of things I did.
Why? When I share my emotional experience, it gives you a sense of who I am. It also opens the door for you to tell me more about who you are and what you care about.
That’s great, Jesse, you might be thinking. So how do I get comfortable sharing my emotional experience? And how do I know when it’s safe?
Why we (sometimes) resist being real with one another
It’s okay to feel some resistance around sharing your emotional experience—and it’s perfectly natural, too. Not so long ago, we were part of tribes. In our tribes, it was all about making sure we had the highest standing possible and hoarded as many resources as we could. Not only that, but we had to make sure to present as strong, confident, useful, attractive, and hard-working as possible. We did all this in order to survive.
Though our way of life has changed dramatically since our tribal days, our psychology has not. Our survival minds still have a huge influence on how we think and interact with others.
When our survival minds are running the show, they compel us to act like everything is fabulous, like we’ve got it all figured out. This can keep us from making meaningful connections with people.
To create emotional intimacy, we want to be in a true self state. We want to go out and connect on a real level, with all our vulnerabilities and imperfections. We want to communicate honestly, sharing the highs as well as the lows.
There are different ways to practice connecting with others from your true self. Here are three ways that have worked for me and my clients:
Having conversations with emotional depth
Being vulnerable (vs. being negative or over-sharing)
Balancing listening to others and sharing about yourself
Have conversations with emotional depth. As I wrote at the top of the blog when I was telling you about my trip to New York, getting real about your emotional experience is key to creating meaningful connections with people. When you communicate on an emotional level instead of posturing, you give your relationships a chance to go deeper, be more honest, and feel more fulfilling.
Am I telling you to have an emotionally deep conversation with everyone you meet? No. But sharing your emotional experience can lead to the most interesting conversations you can have. It can also be a litmus test. If your conversation partner isn’t interested in relating on an emotional level and you are, you might not end up being the best of friends. On the other hand, if you’re opening the door to emotional depth and your conversation partner walks through it, chances are you can have a fulfilling connection with this person.
Practice being vulnerable. If you want to connect with people on a deep level, it’s important to be able to show your vulnerability. But how do you know when you’re being vulnerable vs. being negative or over-sharing?
Let me give you an example. When I was in the middle of postpartum depression, I could have told everyone I met that I felt horrible, that I was crying all the time and afraid I’d feel this way forever.
Or I could have said something like, “I’m crying all the time and it’s super intense. But the truth is I’ve never been in touch with this much emotion since I was a teenager. I’m scared, but I’m also feeling like something good could emerge from this.”
In this second statement, I’m being honest about my experience, but I’m balancing it with perspective and possibility. This is what keeps it from tipping over into negativity.
What about being vulnerable vs. oversharing? My way of making sure I don’t overshare with people I’m not super close to is making sure I only share things I’ve already worked through.
Going back to my postpartum depression example, I didn’t tell strangers I was crying all the time while I was still in the middle of it. If I had, they might have felt like they couldn’t help, or that they would have to take care of me. That’s not what I wanted.
But three months after I stopped crying, I told just about everyone I met how much I cried postpartum, and how intense it was. By then it didn’t matter how they reacted or what they did because I’d already been through it. I didn’t need them to take care of me because I wasn’t asking for anything—and they could sense that.
Balance listening to others and sharing your own stuff. When it comes to creating emotional intimacy with others, you want to strive for an equal measure of listening and sharing.
If you’re spending most or all of the time listening, the other person might feel understood and seen, but they won’t feel more connected to you.
If you’re doing most or all of the talking, the person might feel like they got to know you, but they won’t feel like you knew or saw them.
How do you find the right balance between listening and talking? First, ask yourself which one you’re generally more comfortable doing.
If your default is to listen and you tend to keep your story to yourself, practice thinking about your current emotional experiences before you have an interaction with someone. This way, whether it’s a party or a date or a coffee with a friend, you lay the groundwork to connect on a deeper level. Instead of saying “Good, how are you?” when someone asks how you’re doing, you can say something like, “This week I finally started getting back into cooking, and it’s really helping me put more pleasure into my days.”
If you tend to do most of the talking in social situations, try tapping into your natural curiosity. Take some time before you meet up to think about the person or the group of people you’re about to encounter. What questions could you ask them? For example, if you’re getting together with someone who loves to eat, ask them what food they’d rather go out to eat than cook. If you’re going to a running meetup, ask people what they listen to to get their energy levels up.
It’s not a cheat to go into a social situation with pre-planned questions. When you ask questions with genuine curiosity, you increase your chances of having fulfilling interactions and making meaningful connections.
Ultimately, every time you walk into a social situation, you affect the energy of that situation. You either lift it or bring it down—it never stays neutral.
If you set an intention to enter into your interactions and lift the energy, you benefit—and so do others. You also open up more possibilities for intimacy and genuine connections.
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