Work Intimacy: At the End of the Day

People in therapy use expletives to describe their days at work or at school. Some therapists work on self-relaxation with them, others, problem solving. And many of us encourage venting to friends, parents, and spouses, partners.

When the day isn't all that good, it feels good to dump it, source the stress, purge. Others just want to forget about it. And when it is good, we might want to share that, too, brag, ramble on about the good things that happened, right away. Yet others sit and wait to be asked, and if the question never happens, well, they don't share.

It doesn't matter what we do during those waking hours. We could sell cars, drill teeth, study bugs or bring them home, whatever a person does with time, many people, even kids, like to talk at the end of the day. Then there are those of us who don't want to utter word one.

If we're lucky and our verbal skills get better and better as life gets more and more complicated,, some of us want to talk more and more. Maybe not everyone, but enough of us get into this, I can't wait to tell you place. It becomes such a drive that we resent when the other won't let us get a word in edgewise. In couple's therapy it can look like this.

YOU WON'T LET ME GET A WORD IN EDGEWISE, THAT'S WHY I DON'T TALK

another variation of Why does it always have to be all about you?

Maybe it's a basic human need to want to talk about our day, especially if it was a particularly good or bad day. I should think especially with the bad ones.

Why? When a person talks about something bad, it disappears, or at least loses some of it's drama, importance, maybe just a tiny piece, maybe all of it. You drop it off, you give it to the person you've told it to. It's a gift, of sorts.  This is the psychological equivalent of procrastinating an obsessive negative thought, or worry. It loses a bit in the process, and we need to do that, lose the negative.

Sometimes I thank people for sharing in therapy, and get funny looks sometimes, but mean it. It isn't a THANKS FOR SHARING sarcastic.  I feel it is a gift when someone trusts me enough to tell me personal things, even if one of the covert rules of the relationship is that they're paying me to listen.

When we're in a relationship—that can be any relationship—friendship, sibship, parent-child, spouse-spouse, lover-lover—boss-employee-if we have that talky-sharing thing going, if it is on-site, we're really lucky. There is another person who ostensibly is willing to listen to us (for free, even).

So if you're in a relationship, then there shouldn't be a problem. The willing ear is built in.

Take an adult married, or domestic partner situations.

A person comes home, someone's already there. One of the two begins to talk and the other is trapped.

Now, this other might have something important to say, too, or might want NO WORDS AT ALL at that moment is still working on something else, using the brain or the body in some way and can't defocus. Pretty soon they're either fighting a covert fight over who gets to talk or one of them isn't listening and wishes the noise would kindly end.

There's a lot to be said for winding down differently at the end of the day. If one of us needs to change clothes, work out, watch TV or eat in silence, then there's something to be said for that. Finding the balance, obviously, is the ticket.  But we're talking about the importance of intimacy, work intimacy, to be precise, talking about our day at the end of the day.

The key, when getting our psychological space, is not allowing so much that one of us is alone in a relationship, or absolutely wanting.  This happens in the workplace, too, between supervisors and employees. The mentoring process can be too distant, but we all have our jobs to do. Yet job satisfaction often hinges upon that relationship. Both the supervisor and the supervisee need to make time for one another.

But that isn't about feeling lonely (although a sense of abandonment might follow). That is about the yin yang of work relationships-- talking to people, yet getting the job done and doing it well.

Certainly being lonely when we're supposedly in an intimate relationship, when we're living with someone else, the whole emotional unavailability issue comes up. My cousin, the psychologist and rabbi, Peter Rosenzweig, wrote a book, Married and Alone.  Not the best feeling.

But all we're talking about here is waiting an hour before the sharing begins at the end of the day, before the discussion of what happened that day begins, what we're calling real work intimacy.  That availability generalizes to on the job intimacy, sharing work issues with those that can solve them at work. It astounds me, when a patient is discussing a work problem, when it has never been brought to the attention of people on the job who can help.

The relationship lesson your mother never taught you: Try to be second in a relationship when it comes to dialogue. It's probably impossible, of course, to always completely sublimate our need to communicate, to let a partner or friend's need to talk come first, but it is a virtual guarantee that the other will be grateful and more willing to listen to us a bit later. At some point it is worth discussing to see if the dominant position can be switched up a bit.

In a mature dyad (any two people), there is a point where it becomes a polite power struggle about who HAS to go first.

There's an old joke about social workers and why they never get home from a conference. They're all in a meeting room and there's one door, and they're all ready to file through. But the people closest to the door are arguing:

YOU FIRST.
NO, YOU FIRST
NO YOU FIRST.

It's funny, and it's about being co-dependent (some say) but it's really a nice way to be co-dependent.  Sublimating that desire to talk first is the best way to build one of the five kinds of intimacy, work or school intimacy.

How does the relationship at home matter in the work place?  Many of us assume that we are capable of close relationships, even though these are best left at home, and in many work places it is preferred, no friendships on the job.  But we are judged if we don't know about the significant people in our lives. When we're asked, maybe even on a job interview, So what does you spouse/partner/significant other/brother/sister/father/mother do/study?  We probably need to do better than I don't know.

Copyright 2006, TherapyDoc

Recreational Intimacy

The 5 Types of Intimacy. People tend to have very fixed ideas on the subject of intimacy, but there are at least five types. It’s not all touchy feely, which is good, because many people are very uncomfortable with direct, romantic expressions of love.

But because there are five kinds, relationships that are light on one, two, or perhaps even more of these varieties suffer. You sort of have to have it all, to have it all. Lacking any one of them can be the reason a committed relationship dissolves. And unfortunately, it's not at all easy to have them all.

We'll start with recreational intimacy. Counselors sometimes suggest that couples go out and find something they like to do together. Not bad advice, but it's not good, either. It's like saying, You guys go out and find a movie you both like.  There may not be such a thing.  And the process of finding one might be more trouble than it is worth, a prelude to an argument.

But the doc says, Do this.  So you choose one, but by the time you make the decision you are late for the  7:45 and didn't get tickets online. You fight the crowds, get frustrated and bored. You can do it, maybe, but why?

What these counselors should suggest is that you work less at finding something you both want to do and more at doing something together. Anything. The catch is having fun. The rule on an assignment like that is to keep it light, try to make it fun. You can still go to a depressing movie, but only if it’s good and one of you can do an imitation later.

I tell people not to worry about both of you liking an activity. Whatever you choose to do, it can be something one of you likes and the other totally hates, as long as it's not morally objectionable, disgusting or distasteful.

Games, sports, or the arts work nicely. Even pinball at a bowling alley. This is a personal bias, I'm going to admit. It could be that I'm showing my age, but video games don't seem to be as interactive as pinball used to be. Pinball was a whole body experience (a little more sexy, I think), the visual field more expansive. You had a whole machine to work. 

Regardless of the game, the partner who doesn't like the activity still has to have fun for a couple of hours, make himself have fun. Two hours is plenty of fun. It won't kill you.

Another misconception about intimacy is that you have to spend a lot of time at it. It isn’t a quantitative thing. Spending six hours trying to enjoy a Saturday night might be less worthwhile than a half an hour a night every night during the week. We really are talking quality time.

But you hate Gin Rummy? Too bad. You have to either make it fun somehow or pretend to be having fun. Pretending is one of life's most unselfish challenges. Don’t think of it as being someone you're not. Think of it as becoming someone you want to be. If it’s okay for your spouse, it’s okay for you. Of course if it's morally objectionable, then it's not okay for either of you.

Pretend you're Gerry of Ricky and Gerry (gender nonspecific). Ricky has picked an activity that Gerry hates, golf. Gerry has the hard part-- not-- bursting Ricky's bubble.

Gerry has to think, Ricky wants me to do this. Ricky wants us to have fun together doing this. How can I make it happen? The answer is:

By not complaining. By laughing as much as possible. By letting go of thinking how dumb you look when you miss the ball. By thinking of how funny you look—it's good to laugh at yourself! Try to remember how happy Ricky is that you are there, just chasing after a little ball. Complement Ricky on how well he plays. Let Ricky teach you and don’t get defensive.

Ricky, has a big responsibility here, too. Ricky can't make you feel like a clod. Ricky has to ingratiate him/herself because Gerry is doing what Ricky wants. Gerry is sucking it up, and Ricky will have to do that next time. Sorry, Rick.

Thinking like this is a challenge, no doubt. But it is just this sort of (1) empathy and (2) fake it 'til you make it that is the key to intimacy. It's hard to be happy doing something that doesn't naturally make us happy. It's unnatural by definition and yet. the pay back is amazing.

Recreational intimacy can be hard even when you're doing something you both love to do, too, primarily because the other types of intimacy interfere with the process of your interactions with one another.

That’s why all five plates, all five types of intimacy, have to be twirling at the same time..

Copyright 2006, TherapyDoc