Love is the physical, emotional, sexual, intellectual, or social affection one person holds for another. Intimacy is achieved when we become close to someone else and are reassured that we are loved and accepted for who we are.
Children usually develop intimacy with parents and peers. As adults, we seek intimacy in close relationships with other adults, friends, family, and with a partner. Intimacy is a close relationship where mutual acceptance, nurturance, and trust are shared at some level.
Alexandra Kreis invited me to her podcast Outer Travel - Inner Journey to talk about love and intimacy.
I love talking to young people and open their feelings about love and intimacy. My heart's calling is to raise awareness on the necessary conversations about sexuality between parents and their children. And to establish deep trust, openness, and vulnerability between parents and their offspring.
In this podcast, I also discuss feminism, masculinity, authentic feelings, and parents’ role to their children about what love and sexuality are or can be.
When you encourage conversations about feelings, friendships, and family relationships, it can help your child feel confident to talk about teenage relationships in general. If your child knows what respectful relationships look like in general, they can relate this directly to romantic relationships.
Conversations like this hope to make your child feel more comfortable sharing feelings with parents even as they start to get romantically interested in others.
And there’s a lot more direction than this can go: treating other people kindly, breaking up kindly, and respecting other people’s boundaries.