Dear Miriam,
I love my new self! Spring, dreams, relationships – everything is different. It has meaning I never knew.
Yours,
April

Dear April,

We dream, we all do. There are dreams we know we can realize, there are some we are quite sure we cannot. And … there are dreams that await us in the space and time beyond our consciousness. These are dreams that cannot be conceived ahead of time. These are dreams that meet us on “the path with the heart”, on our road of self-discovery, of becoming the selves we are born to be – the realization of our identity.

Some of the most cherished dreams in our culture are relationships, marriage and family.  

The relational aspects receive a lot of attention: What we want and seek is intimacy. We seek intimacy… and we often find ourselves in troubled relationships. . . Intimacy is a process, but we expect it right away. We want “instant intimacy”. Sex becomes “instant gratification” for intimacy hunger. Sex, courtship, infatuation “romantic love”, all have elements of intimacy… But they are not intimacy (yet!).

The joy of shared intimacy begins with and builds on our identity, the dream we never knew we had – the self-concept that based on self acceptance, self esteem and self awareness. Many of us get in troubled relationships by seeking intimacy before identity. These are two “common struggles” in our culture: identity (who am l?) and intimacy (with whom am I sharing the journey of life?).

Often we try to find our identity through our intimacy…

Well, the problem is: We reverse the order. Identity is the foundation for intimacy, intimacy is built on identity. What are women taught about being women? Women are taught that meaning of their lives comes through their husbands and children. Women are taught that love is romance. The fairy tales – Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Beauty and The Beast – tell us wait for our Prince Charming; “sleep”, don’t act, and when (and if!) you’ll wake up, you’ll find yourself riding off into the sunrise taken by your Prince … (maybe to live with his mother?). We are taught to be beauty objects and sex symbols.

Men are taught very different about being men. They are taught to be warriors, protectors, providers and taking it to the extreme: the power objects and economic symbols. Men are taught that intimacy is sex: you work hard and be a success and “it” will find you. Men become addicted to success, work, money, sex. Women become romance and love addicts. We often become addicted to men who are addicted to work, money, sex, alcohol and drugs. We closed the circle – this is how we live together in our insane world.

I believe we all (women and men) desire and seek intimacy. We are just unsure what it is. In our search of intimacy first (and before identity) we often did things that kept us from getting it.

It is all a part of the journey: dreams of failing in love, finding that significant other and living happily ever after. The one thing I wish we would all do in this journey: find ourselves and love what we find.

Love

Miriam