Sex, Love and Intimacy

This was the title of a talk By Marty Klein at the first Canadian Men's Health Conference here in Victoria. Dr. Marty Klein, a terapist and marriage counsellor, was a very humourous and thoughful speaker. It provided me with a great deal to reflect upon not only in my own marriage and life but also in the relationships that surround all adults.

He started out simply by talking about each of the terms and how our interpretation of their meanings can be different from person to person. With love he talked about the importance of trust and caring. If those two ingredients are not included then does love really exist. On intimacy he spoke of taking risks—opening yourself up to another person— being somewhat vulnerable and letting the other person know you even if it's hard. With intimacy there is also the focus of a connection between two people. With sex, he said that what people are really looking for is pleasure and closeness. Although there is a connection between these three terms, they are certainly not interchangeable.

One of the tings that I took away was the importance of communication between partners. Here we go again. Relationships thrive and survive on communication. How important it is for couples to be able to communicate their thoughts and feelings about sex, love, and intimacy no matter how difficult it is at the time. Letting the other person know what you like or don't like with respect to things sexual; showing your care and concern and trust with respect to love; and becoming more intimate by opening up and even letting the other person know what you may not like about yourself.

What I found truly inspirational about his speech is how all of these thoughts on trust, caring, love and intimacy (and even sex) relates in many ways not just to our most personal relationships but our wider circle relationships with family, friends and beyond.

Next time, I'm going to reflect on some thoughts of Dr. Klein with respect to agreements.