How Badly Do You Want Intimacy In Your Relationships? Susie and Otto Collins This week Susie was at a meeting of all women and one of the participants wistfully told them about the elk. According to this woman, the female elks live and raise their young in the company of other female elks. The male elks come around once a year, the females pick out the best males, mate, and then separate for the rest of the year. This woman was envious of this arrangement and suggested that humans might be better off to emulate the elk's ways. Because we're students of relationships, we couldn't help but make a few observations, hopefully providing food for thought for you. If we, as humans, emulated the elk, the people with whom we would have intimate relationships would be kept at a distance. In our opinion, emotional distance and intimacy cannot co-exist. To us, this is not an issue of gender or sexual preference but rather an issue of intimacy within relationship. We believe that intimate relationships, whether between sexual partners, close friends or family members, are opportunities for spiritual growth and personal healing. If we find that we are putting distance between ourselves and anyone we are intimate with, then one of two things may be happening: either fear of one kind or another is present or the dynamics are changing between the two of you and you begin growing in different directions, causing emotional separation. Everyday we receive email messages from people who talk about being in disconnected relationships and having disconnected sex. We've learned from our own lives and from other's lives that disconnected sex does not bring intimacy. It only provides a temporary mask which covers up the challenges within the relationship. Do you notice the number of ads for Viagra and the number of people using it? Now, we're not being judgmental here--just pointing out that many people are searching for that connection of the heart and soul-- that intimacy that is missing or has evaporated over many years of marriage. Intimacy is not something that you can fix with a drug. It takes two people truly interested and willing to work for a connection of the heart and soul. Gary Zukav, author of Seat of the Soul, talks about the new species of human that is being born today. We're no longer here for physical survival as our ancestors but rather for a spiritual awakening. We feel that this spiritual awakening is happening in great numbers because people are desiring to live more consciously and authentically in alignment with whom they really are. Intimate relationships or spiritual partnerships are helping people to do this. Most of us spend our whole lives, consciously or unconsciously, trying to find our connection with Spirit. We believe that this is the same connection that we feel in a deep union with another person. We've found that if there is distance between two people and they want an intimate connection, there's only one way-- and that is to tackle the core issues that they fear may destroy the relationship. Kenny Loggins, in his book The Unimaginable Life, asked the question that we'll ask you-- How badly do you want an intimate relationship? Do you want distance and separation like the elk or do you want a deep spiritual connection? The choice is up to you.