Into-Me-See: Love Requires That We Open Our Heart-Petals

Everyone desires intimacy and yet most everyone is afraid to be vulnerable before others. We want intimacy, but we don’t want into-me-see. Trouble is, you can’t authentically have one without the other. We have to be willing to open our heart-petals if we want people to see our true inner-beauty, and vice-versa.

Building a good relationship with ourselves is the necessary foundation for building a good relationship with others. Once we are willing to honestly look inside ourselves we begin the process of into-me-see; and once we become comfortable with our “perfectly imperfect” true selves, we will gradually become more comfortable with opening up and allowing others to see inside of us.

No one can become intimate with us unless we invite them in to know us. We have to allow them to see into the true us. This means we have to be secure enough in ourselves to open up our heart-petals and to be vulnerable before those persons who are important to our lives. In complete nakedness, we must bear our souls, personalities, likes and dislikes, beliefs, and every detail about ourselves as is necessary.

In Step One of building good relationships, are focus has been on befriending our own brokenness, accepting our imperfections and developing a comfortable intimacy with ourselves. This is the necessary first step toward building good relationships with others. The Second Step is, admittedly, equally as difficult. It requires that we open ourselves completely to the scrutiny of someone that we truly want to be in a lasting relationship with.

Many people have problems with opening up completely to others and those problems often revolve around the human need for approval. Everyone has a need for approval or for belonging. We need others in our lives, but we don’t need everyone’s approval. In fact we only need approval from two individuals: The first is God, who has already given us His stamp of approval through creating and bringing us into this world. The second is our own. Once we approve of ourselves, we don’t need anyone else’s approval, though we can certainly appreciate the approval of those who honestly love us.

As Dr. Suess once said “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” If we come to understand that those people who withhold their approval of us don’t matter in our lives, we can let go of any false need we have had of their approval. In the same way, once we realize that the people who really love us may not always agree with us and may not always offer us their approval, they will never deny us their love no matter what we say or do, or what they may learn about us.

In the film Eat, Pray, Love, the protagonist-- Liz-- learns to know, appreciate and build true intimacy with herself and God. In doing so, she begins to build authentic friendships in her life for the first time. When she is faced with building her first authentic romantic relationship, however, she is terrified to allow Felipe to see into her. She is also afraid if falling back into all of her old enmeshment patterns of behavior with a man. But in order to have lasting happiness, she is forced to open up her heart-petals and to allow Felipe to see inside of her. He has already chosen to be vulnerable before her. He has taken the risk, but no relationship can be complete and healthy until both persons are willing to take the risk. This is the necessary second step.