Plan for a Good Foundation
Five Steps to Healthy Intimacy

• 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

• 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

• 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

1. Unconditional love
2. Total giving
3. Total acceptance
4. "One flesh"
5. Forever
6. 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

• 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…"