SUMMARY KEYWORDS
vulnerability, intimacy, emotional intimacy, trust, physical intimacy, relationship, people, sexual intimacy, life, important, define, share, audience, laughter, partner, podcast, intellectual, sharing, vulnerable
SPEAKERS
Kathi, Daisy
Daisy 00:03
Bald and Blonde. Welcome to the Mindset Evolution podcast. Hear about tips, tricks, skills, tools, inspiration, mental hygiene, know what you want and how to create what you desire to achieve predictable results and create a content life wherever you are. And here are your hosts, Kathi Tait and Daisy Papp.
Kathi 00:29
And hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Bald and Blonde Mindset Evolution. I'm Kathi Tait, the baldwarrior, your host from Down Under and with me as always is Daisy Papp from Florida Keys. Hi, Daisy.
Daisy 00:46
Hey, Kathi. Hello to the world. Hello to so many countries. We are over 43 countries the past month, and we are waiting for the newest update and we are so excited to have you all listening to us. So what's the topic? Come on, baby? Come on.
Kathi 01:08
She's on the edge of her seat. Well, this week is actually a very special week for me because my only son is getting married. How about that?
Daisy 01:18
Oh, that is wonderful and you're a proud Mummy, I know that. And I know how it feels to be a proud mother because I'm very proud of my one and only child, my son as well.
Kathi 01:30
Yes. So in honor of the wedding, and in honor of my son and his lady, I would like to talk about intimacy today.
Daisy 01:39
Aha, one of the most important foundation building bricks of relationships, wonderful intimacy.
Kathi 01:48
Absolutely. Yes. And of course, it's not the first building block, but it's certainly one that will help a marriage thrive.
Daisy 01:56
Yeah. Well, there's a good saying that they say that similarities create the bonding, and the differences create the passion.
Kathi 02:06
Oh, that's cool,
Daisy 02:07
We can nevertheless have intimacy in both areas.
Kathi 02:10
Yeah.
Daisy 02:11
Because what does intimacy really mean? What does intimacy mean to you?
Kathi 02:15
Well, it means having the courage to show your vulnerability, I think.
Daisy 02:21
Yeah, I like to describe it in a grammatically incorrect way, into me see, showing people what's in here, what's here within me, because I agree with you, vulnerability is present. And we're all vulnerable to a degree, whether we show it,
Kathi 02:40
how you remind me all the time that we're vulnerable, regardless of whether we let it show or not.
Daisy 02:47
Mmm
Kathi 02:48
And I think that's a really important point, because a lot of us think if we hide it, then it's not there, (laughter), but that's not really the case.
Daisy 02:56
I remember, stories being told about me when I was a little girl, and we had a big sofa there in the living room, and it was half round, and there was a corner of the room. So I liked to hide behind that couch in that corner, so no one would see me, and truly there were times in my life where I truly believe that when I don't see them, I'm invisible. And I thought it was magic. I do believe that most of us when we were children had experiences that might be similar. Yes, it doesn't make them go away if I tried to hide them if I tried to cover them up if I tried to not speak about them, if I tried to overcompensate these vulnerabilities with other behaviors, doesn't make them go away. Nevertheless, in order to build intimacy, which is even more important, is trust. Because only then will I be comfortable sharing with you, what is here really deeply within me.
Kathi 03:53
Yes, and we did a whole episode on trust just a few weeks ago. So definitely go and tune in to that one guys, because I think that we get really deep into it in that episode. And I think it's a really helpful episode. But just to talk about vulnerability for another second, like this is a big thing for me in my life, I did believe that if I shoved my vulnerability down far enough to the back of me that it would mean I could become invulnerable. And of course that didn't really work. (Laughter). All it did was really suppress everything to a great degree, but I don't think I'm alone in that. So I want to talk about that for a minute. For me, it was around self-esteem and believing that I was a freak and these self-belief systems that I had grown within myself over the years. And so when it came to adulthood, and relationships, which is something that most of us do, as we go into adulthood, is have you know romantic relationships. I found that I was completely incapable of opening myself back up again, because I also had this deep-seated fear around exposing my vulnerability because I'd been hurt so many times in the past. So to listeners out there who might be experiencing the same thing, I want to talk this through, because I know that it was a huge deal for me to learn how to expose my vulnerability and be okay with that. And I have some very amazing girlfriends to thank for helping me teach that. But it wasn't until my later years that I started learning all of this and realizing it and putting it into practice. So for everybody out there, Daisy, who is struggling with how do I keep myself safe and show my vulnerability, what would you say to them?
Daisy 05:55
Well, number one is choose wisely. It doesn't mean because I have vulnerabilities that now I carry it out in the world, doesn't make them go away. But I'm looking for my audience where I'm sharing my vulnerability with because if I share my vulnerability, and I may do that, but who's putting whom at risk? I do it myself. So I'm not the victim I'm the actor. Mm hmm hmm hmm. That is a big difference.
Kathi 06:20
That's important. Yeah, that's really important. So choosing to expose yourself is the first thing because it stops you being a victim.
Daisy 06:29
To assume, only because I'm vulnerable, and I may have the need to speak about it doesn't make the audience better. Now, let me go one step back, in order for me to show my vulnerability in a healthy way, not because it's healthy for me to share, but the audience being capable of receiving it in healthy ways. It's all about the quality of the audience. I'm not talking about an audience 1000s of people there in front of stage, I'm not talking about that. But an audience can also be your mother, or it can be your son, or your spouse, or your boss or your co-workers, your friends, your neighbors, your community. So without trust, I would not share my vulnerability openly. I would maybe test the waters. But why would I even speak about my vulnerability to an audience I cannot trust, unless I'm paid for because it happens to you and me. We're both speakers. People call us, yes speak about your vulnerability. But this is already an audience that signed up to listen to our vulnerability you see?
Kathi 07:29
Yeah, and I guess a big problem comes in here when you're with a partner, who is not your ideal audience. Because I know that certainly happened to me multiple times, and
Daisy 07:43
I hear you,
Kathi 07:44
then you've got to take a hard look at your relationship, and whether that person is in it with you. So who you expose your vulnerability to is completely up to us. And we need to be clever about that.
Daisy 07:58
Yes, yes, and caring about that, caring for ourselves. Now, vulnerability can have many phases and very different variations. And now here's the thing, not all relationships require the ability to share vulnerability with. I worked with Olympians, and they didn't share with other Olympians how vulnerable they were. Because then that would feed against themselves and grow the competition based on some information that could be then used against them. So why would they do that? Choose wisely the audience. Again, let me go back to trust. Trust is not a gift that we just give away. It's not free. It is earned, not earned with money earned with experience. It takes time to build trust, because I remember times when I was giving my trust away blindly, freely, because I thought, well, I'm such a good person and let me continue being a good person and I thought I'm even a better person. What a false concept I had back then. I believe when I give my trust away, then they will trust me too, very bad misconception here. No, no, no, no. So when I trust them, without them proving that they're trustworthy, I'm setting things up for disappointment, don't I? So again, it's not the victimhood, I do it.
Kathi 09:22
Hmm. Yeah. So I can see we need some standards in here too, don't we?
Daisy 09:26
Yes, of course, I agree with you. (Laughter) Yes, goes back to the standards. Now when I can accept that I as a human being am vulnerable in many aspects, physically, mentally, spiritually, sexually, then I can define more clearly what does it mean to me to share it with another person. Because when I believe that only because now I'm showing you my vulnerability, without knowing if I can trust you, I'm abusing myself, don't I?
Kathi 10:02
Yeah, that's a really great point of view, Daisy. And I can relate so well to that. And so this is really important, especially for me, because this would have been something that would have very much helped me when I was younger, was knowing about respecting yourself first, and having your standards to protect yourself first, before we just go and throw ourselves into the world, doing whatever it is we do, trusting people, jumping into relationships, sharing parts of yourself that are very private, and perhaps even secret. And I think that we put ourselves in these situations, but we don't always think first about what is best for ourselves in a way that respects ourselves, but also creates these standards where we are teaching other people how we want to be treated, aren't we?
Daisy 11:05
Yes, well but when I'm giving mixed messages, then how am I teaching people to really know how to treat me because when I sent out that mixed message, eh, you know what, honey, I'm giving you my trust, here it is. You didn't earn it, but I give it to you anyways, what am I teaching them? It's a mixed message, when I share with you some details out of my private life without knowing that you are capable of handling that properly, maybe by keeping it to yourself, or maybe by not starting laughing out loud. Or maybe by not judging me or condemning me for some thoughts or concepts that I'm considering or pondering on. Who is it who is doing it to themselves? It's always us. And here's the misleading point, I think that's an additional point where we can very much mislead our audience, when I have the urge to share something with someone, because then it would maybe fulfill my need of closeness, so I can feel closer to them, and therefore I share it without testing the waters, are they trustworthy? I'm setting myself up for catastrophe. Can you see that?
Kathi 12:16
Yes.
Daisy 12:16
So again, I tried to fix a symptom instead of looking at the root cause. My need to feel connected should be addressed first, before I'm sharing something that I may or may not, then be connected with you, not even knowing if you're trustworthy or not. Now back to intimacy. So several levels of intimacy, not only several levels of intimacy, but several sorts of intimacy, there's the intellectual intimacy, which I personally find extremely attractive, then there's an emotional intimacy, then there's physical intimacy, spiritual intimacy. So when we look at people who are engaged, because let's speak about your son, and there are millions of people being engaged right now. And I wonder if they really have looked at the level of intimacy, because I know from my practice that many people just jump into a relationship, as you mentioned before that can happen to people for various reasons, without looking hey can I trust this person, what do I know about this person, are the values in alignment? Do we have a similarly adjusted moral compass? And then we jump into give our trust away may even share our vulnerability and then at the end of the world, the end of the day, it only feels as if it was the end of the world, then we blame them for being so mean to us, although we set it up. So intimacy actually starts within, because when we go back to my falsely grammatically, falsely phrased sentence, into me see, I mean, it can be exciting when you and I discover something within me together. But I think it is a good idea to go on my own little road journey and have a look into this inside world of mine and have a look what's in there, into me see, and then accept it.
Kathi 14:18
I just realized that our podcast is like the companion show for exactly that.
Daisy 14:25
Well,
Kathi 14:26
starting from within,
Daisy 14:27
absolutely. Everything starts from within, our friendship started from within, but you did not look at the tip of the iceberg, you were afterwards underneath the surface. (Laughter) And then you got this gigantic iceberg.
Kathi 14:45
Got to love icebergs. (Laughter)
Daisy 14:49
Yeah, so intimacy has in our lives, different aspects of intimacy, and I do believe the sexual intimacy is very important. Nevertheless, when I don't accept my preference then how will I ever be able to share it with my partner? Oops. So the same with my intellectual intimacy, when I have some really interesting ideas, fantasies, maybe inventions in the making, I'm only going to share it when I feel okay with having them. I remember a night in a studio, we worked through the night. Well, musicians do that in the past, well they still do it, but I'm not that musician anymore. And we were sitting there and the sound engineer, his name is Jones, by the way, and quite a genius kid at the time, and now genius man. And he had interesting dreams. And when we then met again, at the beginning of the session at 6pm, in the evening, until 6am, that he would share them with me. And they said, Yes, and you know, what, then I had this idea and then I realized that this is really possible doing. So he took out a piece of paper and was drawing it down. And you know, he allowed me to see into him, because he trusted me. And now these are memories. We just reconnected with one another a few weeks ago. And I mentioned that to him. And he says, Oh, do you remember that? Because had he mentioned that to other sound engineers working in the same studio, or maybe to other musicians, they might have laughed at him. So when we choose to share our intimacy, wrong places, wrong people, wrong time, we are risking killing of ideas, of talent.
Kathi 16:29
Yes, that's true.
Daisy 16:30
Of closeness.
Kathi 16:32
Yeah.
Daisy 16:32
So we kill it in the beginning. So therefore, once we step back, take our power back and have a look. Okay, let me take an inventory. The people I'm really close with, on a level from zero to 10, how much do I trust them? Based on what? Do I trust them because I always trusted them? I would say look a little deeper, make some better inventory, because it could be a trap. If you trust them, because their behavior is in alignment with your values, is in alignment with your spiritual values, intellectual values, emotional values, sexual values, human values, then chances are, okay, so they have similar values. Now, how consistent are they in their behavior, and only then show them your vulnerability, because then it's still a lottery. Because someone could be in a bad mood, although you know them 50 years, you were able to trust them 49 years and 364 days, and then comes that one bad day, and they just woke up with the wrong mental idea in their brains, or they got out on the wrong side of the bed or stepped the first footstep with the wrong leg. It's possible, but chances are quite rare. Would you agree?
Kathi 17:45
Yeah. Yeah, I think after 50 years, you would have built up a very special kind of intimacy after such. I can't
even fathom 50 years, to be honest.
Daisy 17:59
Depends on the quality of the relationship. So now when you have a level of intimacy, look, you and I we share a deep level of intimacy, emotional and intellectual intimacy.
Kathi 18:10
Yeah, we do.
Daisy 18:11
So therefore, 390 days, 400 days, we know one another, I don't know. 600, 500 days? I don't know. I don't know how many days it is. Well, January 2020. We can go back and count back there. There were no surprises over almost a year and a half. There's a consistency both ways.
Kathi 18:31
Yeah.
Daisy 18:31
So of course, I feel comfortable sharing with you my vulnerability. And therefore, it's building our intimacy. It's a consequence.
Kathi 18:40
Yeah,
Daisy 18:41
The intimacy is the fruit.
Kathi 18:43
Yes,
Daisy 18:44
of trust first, then sharing my vulnerability, testing the waters.
Kathi 18:49
Yeah,
Daisy 18:50
proving it? Yes, you can trust me. Yes, I can trust you, then it blossoms and then we can pick the fruit. And that's the intimacy. Like that picture?
Kathi 18:59
Yeah, I do. I like that picture a lot.
Daisy 19:02
I think it's cute.
Kathi 19:05
Yeah, I certainly think that you're right about it being a fruit of the other efforts that you put into your relationship. And we're not always just talking about partnership, as in romantic partners. When we talk about relationships, we're talking about anybody in your life that you're close to, could be a parent, sibling, a best friend,
Daisy 19:25
business relationship.
Kathi 19:26
Yeah, business relationship. It could be a podcast partner like us. It could be anything. But I think that every single relationship deserves a certain amount of respect and trust so that it can be genuine and authentic.
Daisy 19:42
That's the basics, because what are we doing otherwise?
Kathi 19:45
Exactly? Why would you have someone in your life if you couldn't have these deeper connections with them? And that was something that I in my 20s and 30s didn't even really think about, didn't even realize.
Daisy 19:58
Because you didn't know it existed.
Kathi 20:00
No, I had no idea.
Daisy 20:02
Let me wrap it up from the other end.
Kathi 20:03
Yeah.
Daisy 20:04
So let's say two people jump into the sheets, share physical intimacy without knowing anything about one another. And let's say, it's a made-up story. Let's say she feels so connected to him, because the sheets were so soft, and the kisses were so sweet, and so forth. And then she starts sharing with him, ah yeah, you know this and then mmm, and you know, when I grew up, and you know, my big dream is that, oh, have you ever thought of maybe one day we will have children? And he's just escaping! Because he's escaping not because what she says, because maybe he was just looking for a 10- minute intimacy, physical intimacy, or two hours or maybe 10 hours of intimacy. So they both signed up for a lottery. I don't know how many of you have won the lottery, it's possible to win, it's possible to. (Laughter) So wouldn't it be smarter then, to first have a look? So what is it that I really would like to experience in my life? Am I interested in physical intimacy only, then go for it, but share with the other person that you're sharing that special moment with, or hours or minutes or whatever. Share with them that's what you're going for and ask them if they agree to these standards, if it's at all possible to call that a standard, I don't know. So make it clear. But so now in the other version, let's say I first think about it, okay, so I like deep conversations. So intellectual intimacy is important to me. I like emotional intimacy as well, because I like to express my feelings, I like to listen to other people's feelings, I like to speak about the possibilities of the exchange of feelings. So then I already have kind of a roadmap, what to look for, the jumping into the sheets is not going to fulfill my intellectual intimacy need and my emotional intimacy need, therefore I can actually save my heart from breaking into pieces. Oh, well, you know, Kathi, honestly, had I known you and I 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Oh, wow. Well,
Kathi 22:22
Yeah, I'm going to own something here that I used to do and I am fairly confident that a large percentage of people out there still do. And that is I used to confuse emotional intimacy with sexual intimacy.
Daisy 22:39
Exactly. That's the trap set up for disappointment. We need to clarify it,
Kathi 22:45
Yeah
Daisy 22:45
But how can we clarify it? We need to define it first. When I'm not able to define it, I can give you a very sweet example. One of my super lights that I have here, when I take photographs or do videos of sorts, then I have these lamps. And one of these lamps stopped working. So I realized, oh, there's a fuse. So I took out the fuse, I went to the store to the autopart. They didn't have it. They said, Oh, well, it's really special. And it's not really used. But maybe you can get it in one of the marine supplies, because they use that for marine electronics. So I asked him, can you tell me what type of fuse it is, maybe I can find it online, because it's quite limited, the shopping spree here and the Keys is not very specialized, unless you want to buy a boat or get some fish or fishing rod or fins or snorkels. He wrote out for me the exact number and type of fuse that I needed. Now, I can only go and get it when I know what I'm looking for. So without defining what I need, my chances for getting it are quite limited. Same with relationships, only when I know how to define it, whatever it is, my chances tremendously, tremendously grow to get what I want.
Kathi 24:09
I love this. So that's I think homework for everybody is to define for yourself, what is emotional intimacy, what is a physical intimacy, what is intellectual intimacy, and what is sexual intimacy and what is spiritual intimacy for you? That's the first step is to define those things for yourself, and then go which one of them or are all of them? How important are they to me to have in my life? And now look at your life and go do I have them?
Daisy 24:45
Mmm. Not only do I have them, but did I make it clear to my partner that actually that's what I'm looking for? Because for a partner, when I send out the mixed message and I say actually Honey, I'm only looking physical intimacy but actually I'm lacking emotional intimacy and I'm longing for intellectual intimacy and then you, my partner disappoints me.
Kathi 25:11
Mmm, yeah.
Daisy 25:12
So it's a disappointment then for everyone involved. Now it's great idea to define it for yourself, what is it that is really important to you and on a scale from zero to 10 zero is not important to you at all, which of the intimacy starts off, which type of intimacy is important to you on a scale from zero to 10.
Kathi 25:33
And then I would even say go and ask your partner the same thing.
Daisy 25:36
Well, that could be risky though because the questioner, if they're emotionally charged it could lead to an explosion so I think it starts from within I would go for my own first and then define it
Kathi 25:49
Oh, first for sure but at some point, you want to check if you've got these things in your relationship that is so important to you right? This is important, like if I decide that emotional intimacy is my number 1, 10 out of 10 I've got to have and I look around I find myself in a relationship with someone who only wants physical intimacy I've got a huge mismatch.
Daisy 26:13
I'm not saying that cannot be bridged.
Kathi 26:16
Sure okay. Well no I'm not saying that either I'm not saying turn around if you don't have 10 out of 10, that's it, you dump, I am definitely not saying that. What I'm saying is that it's really important not only to assess it for yourself but also to look around you and see what's in your life right now and is what's in your life right now fulfilling you.
Daisy 26:39
Mmm
Kathi 26:39
Because at the end of the day we keep saying this, that everything is a choice, everything is a decision and it's up to you to accept it and build on it or whatever way that you want to go but it does start with ourselves and I wish that I had this knowledge in my 20s. I wish that I had realized what the hell intimacy was and the different forms of it
Daisy 27:05
Yeah
Kathi 27:05
Because like I said emotional and sexual intimacy for me were intertwined, I didn't understand the difference, I wasn't capable of, with the knowledge I had at the time, of separating those two and I think that's a really common thing.
Daisy 27:20
Yes, but you didn't know that it's important to define it first.
Kathi 27:24
No I had no idea I didn't even really think there was a difference perhaps. Those things really impact you and your relationships
Daisy 27:34
Here's what I would do. I would have a look, okay which type of intimacy is important to me and then I would look around, okay where can I get that fulfilled and then I can also allow my partner to not fulfill each and every single of them. For example if I'm living in a happy marriage and I may have physical and sexual intimacy and I may even have emotional intimacy, but we have a lack of intellectual intimacy then that doesn't make it a bad marriage. I know this woman she's in a wheelchair after an accident, she cannot have sexual intimacy with her husband anymore, but they very much have physical intimacy with one another and emotional intimacy with one another so that doesn't mean that they break up their marriage, you see. So depends on what value you give to each of them.
Kathi 28:26
Yeah
Daisy 28:26
And I think that is very important
Kathi 28:28
Definitely
Daisy 28:29
And then when I learn that my partner for example, is not so interested in emotional intelligence then I can find out so where does that come from what does emotional intelligence mean to my partner because maybe to them their definition is completely something else than it would mean to me and then we can create understanding which then in turn grows intimacy again, you see?
Kathi 28:54
Yeah, I think that's a really good way to look at it. I would encourage you all out there to have a look at the different types of intimacy and see what they mean to you, see how important they are to you because it's always best to look inside first.
Daisy 29:09
Yes, because that's where it really starts.
Kathi 29:12
Yeah
Daisy 29:13
I agree
Kathi 29:13
Today has been helpful, talking about intimacy has made you think about it in maybe a slightly different way, it certainly has for me. I didn't really think too hard about the different types, but I can see now that the perfect relationship doesn't need to have all of those things, sometimes we need to get parts of our intimacy from different people in our lives.
Daisy 29:36
The perfect relationship, by the way on a side note, does not exist but we can make it work perfectly well.
Kathi 29:44
Yeah, good point, good point. So that's it from us today, dear listeners. Thank you as always for your time and your support. Thank you, those of you out there supporting us on Patreon, we really appreciate that. It allows us to keep our podcasts ad free for you guys, which I know that as a listener myself, I don't like ads, so we don't want to put them in our podcast. So thank you for supporting us. We love you and we appreciate you and we hope as always that you've got some value from today's episode.
Daisy 30:18
And let us know what you really appreciate. And if you have any ideas, what topic you would like us to make a podcast episode about then we're more than happy to take it on. So send it over to us you can reach us on Instagram, baldandblonde.live or you can find us on our website www.boldandblonde.live. Let's talk soon.
Kathi 30:42
Yep, see you all for another episode real soon.
Kathi 30:46
We are Bald and Blonde
Daisy 30:47
Mindset Evolution.
Daisy 30:50
Thank you for tuning in to the Bald and Blonde Mindset Evolution podcast. If you love what you're hearing, please subscribe to our podcast. In our show notes, you'll find the link to our Facebook group where you can personally connect with Daisy and Kathi and the link to our website where you can find all of our previous episodes and much more of goodies so you can get more value. Please leave us a review on Apple podcasts, or Podchaser, that really helps out the show and helps us to get some powerful feedback from you. Talk to you soon.