ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author opens the Secret Language of Intimacy workshop with an exercise that gives participants a felt sense of the hidden dynamics that can plague couples, mysteriously turning potentially heartfelt, loving, connective interactions into nightmares of frustration, pain and disconnection. For the people that come to the workshop as a couple to learn together about and to enrich their relationship, which of course many do, the author still asks them to find someone other than their own partner for this exercise. After participants pair off into dyads, the author tells them to imagine that they are in a primary relationship with their dyadic partner. After they have had a few moments to become grounded in what they imagine is problematic with this relationship, he tells them they must turn to their partner and get this problem resolved. The experience of shame is the experience that our yearning is unacceptable.
