How to Build Deeper Emotional and Sexual Intimacy: The Eight Pillars of Intimacy™
When most people talk about their desire for intimacy and connection, they are speaking to the feeling states of being seen, heard, and valued. A sense of belonging: of both wanting and being wanted.
To even have the opportunity to feel seen, heard, valued, and to belong we need to be able to share ourselves. And we need to know what we want.
Over years of studying embodiment, trauma, sexuality, and consent, I began noticing that genuine intimacy wasn't built on chemistry or compatibility alone. It depended on a set of capacities that allow us to stay connected to ourselves while relating to another. I eventually began calling them The Eight Pillars of Intimacy.
The rest of this article tells the story of how I came to discover them, why they matter, and how you can begin practicing them.
Why So Many People Struggle With Intimacy
We are all born with an innate capacity for connection.
Think about a healthy baby. Who is responding to their environment moment-to-moment with their sense of sight, touch, smell, taste and touch. Moving around as they please, touching and tasting everything and anything. Crying one moment, smiling the next.
We are an interdependent species. In an ideal world, every human would receive attuned attention, care, and touch from their caregivers. From this, a healthy sense of self naturally emerges, along with the capacity to know our worth and connect deeply with ourselves and others.
Many people do not receive this necessary foundation.
At home they may experience neglect or violence. In most schools they are taught to conform rather than explore. They are prepared for a workforce that rewards overriding the body's needs in the name of success and productivity. Religious organizations embed shame. Media teaches them that they are not good enough as they are and need to buy the right products to belong. Many are introduced to sexuality through pornography, where performance, objectification, and disconnection often replace attunement, mutuality, and relationship.
It's no wonder so many people struggle with intimacy. Mainstream culture and institutions teach people to ignore their bodies, disconnect from their desires, prioritize performance and outcome over presence and enjoyment.
Most of us must embark on a long journey of re-inhabiting our bodies and desires and re-parenting ourselves in order to develop a secure sense of self that allows for the depth of intimacy and connection we so desire.
My Journey To The Eight Pillars of Intimacy™
I grew up in a family with emotional neglect. A father who was disconnected from his own emotional life, who didn't have the skills or capacity to be with mine. Whenever I would cry, he would get up and go into his study, leaving me with my mom. And my mother was chronically dysregulated. So while she was physically with me, with the intention of holding and loving me, she was not grounded and present. She had so much of her own unmetabolized grief, terror, and helplessness that she really didn’t have space within herself to be present with mine. The ghosts from her past were always in the room with us.
I learned early to restrict my own expression to regulate her. I learned to carefully track her, and everyone around me, to make sure they were okay, so I could get my needs met. My child brain made sense of what was happening with both my mom and dad by believing that my needs and desires don’t matter. That I don’t matter.
I then experienced sexual violence as a child, teenager, and young adult. Which deepened the belief that I don't matter, and left me encapsulated in shame. I believed I was bad in some way, and that's why bad things happened to me.
The child brain will do this. Make everything about them. They cannot yet hold the complex reality of relational dynamics. A child relies on their caregivers for survival. It is far safer for a child to believe, "Something is wrong with me," than to believe, "The people I depend on cannot protect or love me in the ways I need." Making it about them is a survival strategy.
For much of my life, intimacy was difficult for me because boundaries were very difficult for me. I was disconnected from my own body and desires and very busy tracking what the people around me need and want. I unintentionally affirmed my belief that my needs and desires don't matter every time I tracked another instead of myself. I was chronically abandoning myself and violating my own boundaries.
I had to learn to stay with myself. To inhabit my own body. And track what my needs and desires are. This is a continual practice that I will continue to deepen the rest of my life.
When I first started this journey, it was difficult. There was a good reason I learned to disassociate and leave my body, and re-inhabiting it meant feeling and metabolizing all the experiences that occurred in my body, to my body, that I did not want. And everything I needed that I did not receive. It meant feeling terror, helplessness, grief. The longing, the loneliness, the rage.
And it also allowed me to start opening to feeling connection, pleasure, and belonging. I have spent thousands of hours, over years, learning to stay with myself, touching myself.
Touching the wounds of violation and neglect. Listening to them, acknowledging and honoring them, and giving them what they needed and never got. I did this in my ceremony room, in community with nature and plants, and then later, in community with other humans.
Once I began practicing with other humans, one of the practices I found most useful was the Wheel of Consent, a framework developed by Dr. Betty Martin that explores the dynamics of giving, receiving, taking, and allowing.
The framework centers around touch, but it really applies to all human relating. What I found so helpful about this framework is it helped me get really clear about when I am giving from a genuine desire vs giving from a sense of obligation or fear of losing a connection.
It helped me track where I endure and tolerate. Where I don't speak up from my own limits and boundaries. It helped me learn to ask for what I want, and negotiate. And begin to see a “no” as a doorway into deeper connection, as a guide into where we both want to mutually connect, rather than an end of a connection.
It supported me in taking right-responsibility. This is a pattern many people experience, though it is especially common after trauma: We often swing between taking too much responsibility and too little, collapsing into helplessness or becoming so afraid of causing harm that we don't fully own the power we do have.
What I discovered as I worked with the Wheel of Consent in my own life, and in my practice holding other humans, is that there were certain skills that one had to develop to be able to be able to track themselves. To be able to feel their desire moment to moment and communicate it. To be able to receive someone else's desire and “no” without fear or collapse. To be able to feel safe enough to receive what they desire from another human. And to be able to meaningfully practice the Wheel of Consent.
Discovering What Makes Intimacy Possible
I began to name these skills, and teach them in my practice space before diving into the Wheel of Consent with my clients.
They are the skills and capacities that are required to be in consent with oneself, and another being. They are necessary to rebuild a healthy foundation and sense of self. A blueprint for self reclamation and developing a felt sense of safety. A path out of chronic self-judgement, criticism, and self-abandonment.
They are The Eight Pillars of Intimacy.
They make genuine connection possible. And they are the framework that guides every Eros Alchemy session and the capacities that, once developed, naturally extend into every relationship in your life.
They are living capacities that deepen over a lifetime. Each strengthens the others, creating an ongoing spiral of greater presence, trust, intimacy, and aliveness.
What Are The Eight Pillars of Intimacy ™
Slow Down. When we move too quickly, we miss the signals our own body is sending. Slowing down is not passive. It is the first act of listening.
I practice slowing down when I wash my hair. Can I take the time to lather my shampoo in a way that feels good to my scalp? When I touch my own body, or my lovers, can I move at half the speed, and notice how that changes the sensation, and my presence? Can I walk a little slower, taking the extra time to greet and admire the flowers and trees that I pass?
Pause. A sacred pause creates spaciousness. Room to feel into what is actually true before the habitual script takes over. And the practice of saying pause when something shifts, when the body needs a moment to catch up.
I practice saying Pause when my lover is inside of me, and sensation goes flat. When i notice myself getting lost in my head, no longer present in our lovemaking. I practice a pause when a friend or colleagues makes a request from me. Giving myself the space to feel into whether I have both the desire and capacity to say yes.
Notice. Turning awareness inward. What sensations are present? What emotions? Noticing is the foundation of self-advocacy. You cannot ask for what you need or want if you cannot feel what is true.
I am in a continual practice of asking myself What do I need? What do I want? When I first started this practice I didn’t know the answer. I kept showing up and asking and listening and eventually started hearing my truth.
Accept. Acknowledging what is present without suppressing it, pushing it away, or fighting with it, even when you don't like it. And extending that same acceptance to whoever you are in connection with.
I notice the parts of me that want to push. “I should be ready.” The parts that want to justify. “I'm not ready because he isn't doing it right.” The parts that want to explain. “I'm not ready because of my trauma.” I gently come back to acceptance that what is true is true, without it needing to mean anything at all.
Trust. Surrendering to what is true and staying present with it, even when you can't see where it leads.
I trust that my body's “no” today is not the end of intimacy. I trust that slowing down will reveal more than pushing forward ever could. I trust that all I need to do in this moment, is stay with reality, and the present moment, and the rest will reveal itself to me. I trust that I can say “yes” and enjoy what is happening, without jumping ahead to what it might all mean, what might happen next.
Value. Your truth, your needs, your desires are worth taking up space. Give yourself permission to follow your impulses. Your capacity to value them is inseparable from your sense of worthiness.
I practice taking action on my reality. My body told me I needed rest. So I value myself by cancelling my dinner plans. My body told me I wanted more touch. So I value myself by asking for it.
Attune. A moment-to-moment awareness that follows what is true as it shifts and changes, listening and responding to your whole self and the ever-changing inner landscape.
Slowing down, pausing, noticing, accepting, trusting, valuing…they all lead to my ability to attune to myself and another human being. Consent with myself, and with another, is really a practice of attunement. When I am attuned to myself, I feel seen, heard, acknowledged, and loved. I feel confident and safe enough to receive from another human.
Communicate. Using your voice and your body to express needs and desires. Making the adjustments that bring you into alignment with your authentic truth.
I give all the different parts of me the opportunity to communicate with me: my mind, my body, my energy field, my soul, my inner child. I talk to the various parts of me. I use my voice to express my desires, my limits, or even my lack of clarity to the humans I am in relationship with so that the depth of intimacy I desire is possible.
Consent Is Attunement
Most conversations about consent focus on yes and no.
But before I can honestly say yes, before I can honestly say no, I have to be able to feel myself. Consent begins with attunement to self.
It begins with slowing down enough to notice what is true, accepting what I find, trusting it, valuing it, and communicating it.
Consent is not simply a conversation about permission. It is a lifelong practice of staying in relationship with ourselves and one another.
(If you'd like to explore this more deeply, I've written an entire article on Consent as Attunement.)
When One Pillar Is Missing In Relationship
You don’t ask for what you want. Maybe you're not even sure what it is that you want. Sex becomes a performance or a chore, something you do instead of feel. Boundaries feel like walls instead of doorways into connection. One or both of you stops feeling seen.
When intimacy begins to break down, it is almost always because one or more of the pillars has weakened.
We lose ourselves, and in losing ourselves, we lose each other. Strengthen the foundation, and intimacy will begin to grow again naturally.
Why These Capacities Matter
These eight capacities are a blueprint for knowing what you feel, what you want, and how to ask for it. Without collapsing into silence. Without forcing yourself past your own limits to grasp onto connection.
So many people are walking through their lives numb to their own feelings and desires. Hiding and holding back the truth. The moment your experience, your desires, and your needs are allowed to be seen by yourself and another, intimacy becomes possible. This is how we come to feel met. And how we learn to truly meet another.
You don't have to have every single one of your needs and desires fulfilled by another to feel met, loved or a sense of belonging. But your needs and desires need to be known. They need to be seen, acknowledged, honored and respected. First and foremost by yourself.
This is the foundation of satisfying healthy relationships where each human can arrive with dignity and their whole selves.
How To Practice Them
The Eight Pillars of Intimacy™ are capacities that anyone can develop. Most of us weren't taught these skills growing up. Instead we learned adaptations that helped us survive. Freezing. Fawning. People-pleasing. Disconnecting from our bodies. Moving too quickly. Silencing our needs before we even knew we had them.
The pillars offer another way, and they meet you wherever you are.
For one person, the practice might simply be noticing they feel numb. For another, it might be noticing the subtle shift in sensation as breath moves through the diaphragm. One person is learning to pause before saying yes. Another is learning to trust the quiet knowing that was already there. Another is learning to value their experience enough to express their desire.
Every pillar strengthens the others. We simply begin by practicing whichever capacity is least available in the moment.
This is why I invite people to practice the Eight Pillars inside a relational, embodied container. New ways of relating are impossible to build in isolation. They grow through experience, in relationships. With two bodies, nervous systems, and souls meeting one another. With two sets of varying desires and needs.
Together, we slow down enough to notice what is happening. We practice speaking what is true, setting limits, receiving care, and staying connected through the discomfort that often comes with doing something new.
For many people, in my Eros Alchemy sessions, this is the first time their bodies get to truly trust that saying no, or receiving a no, doesn't end the relationship. That asking for what they want can bring them closer. That they can be fully seen without needing to perform. That having the desire honored and celebrated, rather than every single desire fulfilled, is the medicine.
You get to have a new experience of relating to yourself, in relationship to another. It teaches the body that it is indeed safe to be seen, to express, to receive. And the conditioned patterns of freezing, fawning, performing, and self-abandonment begin to soften. We give the body a new experience to organize around.
Over time, what once required conscious effort becomes the way you naturally move through intimacy and relationship in every area of your life.
The 8 Pillars of Intimacy is a framework for being fully alive in relationship, with yourself and with others.
What’s Next?
Work with me in Eros Alchemy sessions, where the Eight Pillars are a living practice, not a concept.
Not ready for sessions?
Continue the conversation with me at the Erotic Frontier on Substack, where I publish ongoing essays on sexuality, intimacy, embodiment, relationships, and healing.