Creating Intimacy As Struggling Partners

Matthias Fiore
This text is written for people who may struggle to perform in relationships whether it's to love or to receive love. This has been experienced through my own mistakes.
Understanding
There are many ways people are being influenced nowadays with the uprising of social media and it gives false hope, standards and directions for people who find it difficult to open up to a person, creating intimacy and offering their all to someone whilst meeting their own needs in the same time. Emotional intelligence is found towards many different platforms, but with the constant differing emotions from friends, family and videos - People may find it hard to truly understand the true way in creating intimacy. Problems in relationships may arise as every person may suffer from their own trauma in childhood which is more common than not, leading to breakdowns in relationships which should not be the case. Finding the wrong people may be more common than not due to the lack of emotional intelligence learned towards basic intimacy. Certain relationships end up becoming one-sided due to miscommunication and mistrust or simply due to the loss of feelings.
Does one really losing feelings? The answer varies. Yes, a person can end up losing feelings from being the love of your life to then being nothing but a lost hope. However, it is possible to turn this into acknowledging that sometimes it is not necessarily losing feelings. The major reason towards break-ups is incompatibility or that the personalities do not match, Did you break up because you simply were incompatible? That is bullshit. Nowadays, we are simply not mature enough to take the awkwardness out of a situation and communicate properly. The key thing in a lasting relationship is patience and effort. If you look at your friends, do you really match personalities with them? No. Everyone is different, we only have similarities with people, and we put the effort and time into anything we want it to work.
Does this mean that you should stay in an abusive relationship? NO.
Whether a relationship may be falling apart, it is important to acknowledge whether your feelings are being taken care of, whether you are constantly being disrespected. A person may initially make mistakes in the relationship and so do you, but it is the way a person acts after making a mistake really shows what type of person they are.
Mature communication is important in a relationship, however a person must be competent enough. If a person may not match your desired goals, it is ideal to talk to them and let them know where to improve and possibly influence them to aim high, we are to aim high and reach goals to succeed in life. Some people can change and are not to be given up. If a person shows you great efforts, you are to acknowledge it, and talk things out calmly.
Patience is the capacity to accept or tolerate problems and attempting to calmly endure pain. This is quite important in any relationship as you will definitely find yourself in a situation where this will be needed.
Intimacy is the state of having a close, personal relationship or a romantical relationship with someone showing love and affection. This is achieved through the consensual sharing of deeply personal information with one person and another.
Attachment is the emotional bond between two individuals as a sense of security and stability. Particularly, this is a vital role in a monogamous relationship and is volatile to healthy and unhealthy relationships. Preferably, in a double-sided relationship, attachment is seen as a key element in producing a healthy relationship between two people. This is mostly seen between couples or family members including the relationship between a parent and a child alongside the relationship between a lover and the other.
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There are four different types of attachment:
1. Secure Attachment is the warm and loving bond where both parties feel loved and cared and this could be helpful to develop healthy relationships with other people in life, with the example of a child receiving secure attachment can lead to from relationships with other people in their secondary socialization being school and peers. Children or lovers who receive secure attachment tend to develop a sense of confidence in their interactions with other people. Those who receive this form of love can build long-term relationships in their adulthood without encountering issues or the fear of abandonment.
2. Anxious-Ambivalent Attachment refers to people who tend to disgust the idea of caregivers leading to the specific person to feel anxious rather than excitement in a relationship and tend to have a sense of worrying which excludes the fun out of one's life. These people constantly seek the approval of the caregiver and tend to continue to carry what they learned into adulthood. With the fear of abandonment, their constant angular observation of a partner can stem from feeling unloved by parents and finding it difficult to express their love, connections and emotions themselves with people whom they love. These types of people are usually emotionally dependent in adulthood.
3. Avoidant Attachment individuals have learned that their emotional needs are never to be met, and usually avoid relationships or situations where their emotions come into place. Their constant struggle in expressing their emotions whilst having it difficult to understand emotions may lead to an avoidance in intimate relationships.
4. Disorganized Attachment is a combination of avoidant and anxious attachment and children who fit in this type of group often experience intense anger and rage leading to difficult relationships with caregivers. With the avoidance of intimate relationships, as adults these people have trouble controlling their emotions and very easily explode into anger.
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Creating Intimacy with partners who share struggling attachment styles
If your partner seems to struggle with certain key elements of the negative attachment styles, it is very important to not give up or move on and meet the same error in the future. Avoidant partners tend to create distance and have serious trouble with mature communication in relationships. Despite a relationship requiring a lot of persistence and effort to work, an avoidant person may result in a challenging outcome, but one should never let go of this. People show avoidance behaviours relating to the early relationship dynamic and tend to constantly date back to how their partner acts initially.
Mistakes are common in relationships, and it's the competence which counts. Your mistakes don't define who you are, but it is rather what a person does after the errors that makes the difference.
Avoidant attachment may stem from strict standards which a person may develop from past emotionally neglecting experiences, which leads to a person's rise of expectations in a relationship with the connection of not putting effort, this leads to a person having trouble with physical and emotional intimacy. Avoidant partners may not always find it difficult to open and many share different characteristics. With some understanding, it is possible to understand an anxious person or someone who shows anger all the time and there are countless ways to do so.
How?
Patience : Change does not happen overnight and an avoidant person may understand that being avoidant is necessary for survival. It is important to give a person time to express themselves in ways where they were never able to do so in their past.
Make them feel safe : When a person may find it hard to accept someone for who they are, it is important to make sure that a person feels safe opening up to you. When a person feels safe enough to be themselves with you, the intimacy will skyrocket.
Love language: Words of affirmation, gifts, quality time and physical touch are a key to a person's heart and to make them feel at peace.
Understanding their views and needs : Some avoidant partners may have learned as children to act as "less needy" to keep a caregiver around. This may lead to your partner struggling to speak out their needs and what they wish for in a relationship as a way to seem as if they don't require help or need you but in general this kills off any form of intimacy.
Avoid controlling their behaviours: Although it is frustrating when you do not feel validated, supported. The temptations to try to control their behaviours or simply trying to win them back to get your own needs met, it may backfire and lead to an emotional outburst between both parties. Avoidant partners may be sensitive towards trying to be controlled by others due to them being used to independence
Healthy boundaries: If possible, try offering your partner some alone time. Your partner may feel more accepted if you give them alone time, it is important to make them feel validated for their own solitary learnings. Avoidant partners, may have spent their childhood alone so they may get lost in their own work, projects or even hobbies therefore giving a transition period from being alone to being social can be quite important. If possible, try avoiding pushing your partner into activities they do not feel comfortable doing. Offering a choice to participate but also give them the chance to leave if they get uncomfortable.
Clarify your desires about physical touch: Physical affection and sex may be completely different with an avoidant person. Some people are sensitive to physical touch or feel unsure about physical contact. It is important to clarify and let them know that you understand as you may never know whether a person feels uncomfortable in their own skin or physically insecure. Communicating sexual needs through an avoidant person may differ as they have a specific sex drive, their loss of interest and their spending of time alone may be helped by talking to your partner about your own preferences around sex so that you can understand one another better.
Try not to take rejection personally: There may be times when your partner may not be physically, sexually or emotionally available and it is not because of you. Taking their tendencies personally and accusing them of not caring about you may lead them to feel shame and completely distance from you.
Don't accuse: Try to state how you feel without accusing them as it will emotionally trigger the person. When you take ownership of how you're feeling, it takes the blame away from your partner. It is very important to talk when you're calm.
An example of an I statement would be "I felt hurt and unimportant when I didn't receive a response," compared with "you hurt me and made me feel unimportant when you didn't respond."
You must validate their feelings, you must ask how they feel as they may not ask due to the fear of looking needy, it is important to compromise and if they check out you may continue the conversation later.
If we date, it's actually loyalty over love. I'm not leaving over an argument. I'm not leaving because you still have unhealed wounds. I'm not leaving because you messed up. I'm not leaving because sometimes you said the wrong things. I'm not leaving because no one showed you how to properly communicate.
"We learn together. Just always be honest with me. That's all I ask
Matthias Fiore