Plan for a Good Foundation
Five Steps to Healthy Intimacy
Joe & Cinda DeVet
Café Catholica
July 31, 2000
1. Transparency
- Openness – letting people "see right through us"
- Sharing thoughts, feelings, dreams, hopes, fears, opinions
- Being willing to risk vulnerability
- Being pro-active – taking the lead in sharing – inviting a response
- All for a reason – intimate relationship – letting our spirits touch
2. Reverence for the Other
- Honoring and respecting the other person – a prerequisite to intimacy
- Listening with attention – letting the other "invade" my heart – setting myself aside to listen while they talk
- Using reverent language – to communicate our positive regard
- Avoiding pejorative language – to avoid putting up barriers
- Avoiding humor at intimate times – it violates the sacredness of the personal encounter
3. Keeping Sex in Its Place
- Chastity – the art of using our sexual capacity appropriately to our state in life The language of the body, in the sex act – communicates the marriage vows
- Unconditional love
- Total giving
- Total acceptance
- "One flesh"
- Forever
- Sacred - sign of God's love within the Trinity, and Jesus' love for Church
- Marriage vows, whether in word or in sexual embrace, belong only in matrimony
- Contraception puts up barriers; distorts the communication of sex
- Natural Family Planning keeps the sex act true in what it says
4. Prayer
- Our Creator knows us intimately – better than we know ourselves
- In prayer, we are naked before God
- Prayer opens up deepest dreams, hopes, feelings, fears, desires of the heart
- Prayer with another invites them into the most personal part of us
5. Forgiveness
- Between intimates hurts happen – intentionally or not
- Intimacy destroyed by hurts or betrayal – restored by forgivenenss
- Two key skills – to seek forgiveness and to grant forgiveness
- Being Christlike – "Father, forgive them…"
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