WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Wherefore Art Thou, Romeo?: Intimacy in Dating

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Emily and Greg discuss the topic of intimacy prior to marriage and what that might look like. They also explore how certain modes of communication might enhance or inhibit that connection. 

Batman doesn't do ships, as in me. You complete. I'm George. George McFly. I'm your density. It is not about the nail. No matter when, no matter who, any man has a chance to sweep any woman off her feet. You're listening to Where For Art Thou, Romeo? The show that discusses how to navigate romantic relationships

and how to achieve a meme between the extremes of hookup culture and over-discerned dating. Here's your host, Emily Shudy. Welcome to Wherefore Art Thel Romeo, the show where we talk about how to follow your heart without losing your mind. My name is Emily Shuddy, and my co-host is licensed marriage therapist and also my dad, Greg Shuddy. We're all navigating relationships every day, but sometimes the most intimate are also the most challenging. Our goal is to help you get out of your own head when it comes to your or even your friend's relationship questions and concerns. So, Greg, it's so great to be back in the studio. and I am excited to talk to you about the question of intimacy and particularly how do we navigate it prior to marriage?

How does communication with especially texting the girl or guy you're interested in enhance or inhibit this, especially if you're not dating? And I also just want to tell our listeners to keep an ear out for later in the show to find out if you are pitching woo. Man, you're a heavy hitter here right after Christmas, man. You're going, you're going deep here. Okay. I'm sorry, it's what people have asked. I'm just going with the questions. Okay.

So you're listening to the people who are? Okay. I don't know if it was just a tough Christmas break for people or. Yeah. Well, it could be. That could be. No, it's a good question. And I think, you know, there probably is going to have to be a little bit of

defining some of this. Because when you're talking about intimacy, there's a lot of different ways to look at that. So you talked about that and texting. Where do you think we should start? So I think let's start with the topic of intimacy and nurturing that before marriage. I think that that might be a good way of developing like forms of communication because I think forms of communication can be a means of intimacy. And so I think, yeah, let's start with the intimacy.

I think what I'm kind of gleaning from this is that maybe there are two types of intimacy that you're particularly going to have prior to marriage, and those are physical intimacy and mental and emotional intimacy. And those are both types of intimacy that go into marriage, but maybe look a little different before you get married. Sure. Yeah. And that's a good way of putting it.

There's that emotional and then there's the physical. And I even like someone once said that intimacy is that into me, see. It's that going deeper into who the person is. And that's that's kind of that intimacy of where we're really, we're getting beyond the, you know, what's your favorite color and, you know, where do you like to go out to eat? And versus now we're talking about more of who you are, your fears, your struggles, those things that, that are deeper down where your, your share. sharing a part of yourself, which can be scary at times because you're going deeper with that. Yeah.

So I think it actually links back to when we talked about the RAM board and that the model of a relationship and how you have to kind of have those different elements that come before intimacy. So you have to like know someone more before you can grow closer to them and trust them more because trust is an element of intimacy because you have to trust somebody in order to share more with them and rely on them to actually hold your struggles or respect them

and walk with you in that. Yeah, it's going deep. Or even like the good things. Sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, that's good. Yeah, and I'm glad that you brought the ram board back into it because it is. I mean, when we first start build friendships,

we'd start with just getting to know. And the more we get to know somebody and we really like who they are, we have similar things that we share, then we start to want to spend more time with them. But, you know, that trust is something that we've got to be careful to throw too quickly into a situation. Because, again, people can tell you all kinds of things. And I think that that's what's gotten a lot of people in trouble in relationships

or they jump too quick to trust because, you know, I'm really attracted and they're really nice and they're telling me things about myself. I haven't heard someone say. And that's where, again, that time is important in that. So I guess what I'm trying to say with this is how you navigate it is you've got to go slow. Yeah. You've got to go slow with giving away kind of that deeper part. And it's got to be one of those where,

I know in the whole RAM model, John Van App talks about you give a little and you get a little. And if you feel like you're always giving and not getting, then there's an imbalance. Or if you feel like you're not ready to give a lot and the other person is giving you a whole bunch, that can be overwhelming too. So I think it's one of those where we've got to go slow with it. And it's a give and take. but it's also, we've got to be careful of not giving too much too quick, because that's something that can overwhelm or really scare someone off. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I definitely have seen this happen for myself, just in conversations with people. There are certain topics that are important to discuss with someone, especially if you're interested in becoming closer to them and starting a relationship with them. But early, especially early on in that relationship, there are things that can really scare you off. Like when someone starts asking you how many kids you want, because even if you want kids, that's still not necessarily a topic to discuss on the first date because it's really kind of uncomfortable.

Or like, I don't know, this is kind of an extreme example, but it's really not a good idea to perhaps if you, if this is something you're struggling with, sharing your pornography addiction because I definitely I knew someone who did this and it was really, it was just very heavy for someone to carry. That's just, it's not very healthy. And I know that for myself, when someone starts dumping those things on me, I want to be able to help them, but I don't have any sort of relationship with them to actually provide that. Right. And I think that that's one of those things that's a slippery slope because it's one of those

where I think a lot of people, they start getting into a relationship. And at the college level, you're thinking ahead. They're thinking, you know, eventual marriage. They're thinking that I want to move in a direction. And I think sometimes there is a point where, yeah, you want to find some things out early on because you don't want to spend a lot of time only to find out, you know, a year later that there's all these big, heavy things that you've missed. But I think sometimes people want to, okay, let's get that all out of the way. the first date here so I know whether I want to spend more time with you.

And I again, I get it, but I think that that's something you got to be careful of that you're not rushing that way. And again, it goes back to this whole idea is, are we building that friendship first and slowly getting to, you know, understand some things and watch things played out versus, you know, jumping into figuring it all out one time so I know whether I can go forward. But yeah, at some point, I think it's also important to define where you are. And so both people know, because that's the other thing that I think is hard, is when one person, when you're trying to figure it out, but you're doing it all in your head, because I've seen people do this, where one is not wanting to go too fast, the other one's

really like, okay, my biological time is ticking here. Let's move this along. But you've got to understand where the other person is and are we walking this together. So that intimacy of how we share and we've got to talk about it. Because if not, then you're playing these things out in your head. Yeah. Yeah. And that can be very... Like you said, I think that time element becomes really important here because if there are heavy things that you need to share, those aren't bad things that you do need to start talking about those. You don't want to scare someone off at the beginning, especially if you let yourself have that time to get to know each other, then the other person can watch you. Like you said, there's an observation time where you spend time together.

And you can kind of see, even if they had struggles or have struggles, you see how they're working on them. You see how they are trying to be better or not be better. And so that I feel like is a better way to help your struggles or your strengths not necessarily be what defines you in the eyes of that person. Right. And I don't want to, it's hard to paint this perfect picture of, you know, wait this long before you share some deeper things. But, you know, you bring up one that's a real heavy issue.

And I'll try and touch on it a little bit here, but the whole pornography or let's just say any type of addiction. I think we've got to be careful running into a relationship if we're not dealing with that on our own. Because I think sometimes people use a relationship in order to cope with it or figure that's going to help them because if I'm in a relationship, I won't be drawn to this. That's not the case. You have to be dealing with it. You have to be working on it. but if people are trying to use a relationship to deal with it or to get past that, then yeah, I mean, it's, at some point we're going to have to talk about that, especially if we get to a point where we define, okay, I would like to consider this for marriage. And at this point, now we're opening the door to saying, I want to go deeper into that intimacy with you. Now I'm looking towards a future. And I don't want to, um, I don't want to say waste time because that sounds a little harsh.

Before that, it's building a friendship. And even if we're spending more time with one person, it's that friendship. But even that, I know, can be confusing for a lot of people in college. It's like, they're spending time with me. This must be. Yeah. Yeah. You start misreading signs and that's not fair to anybody.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that intimacy, you know, over the life of a, of a relationship. again, has to grow together. We have to not, one rushing it, one pulling back without that communication. But here's the other difficulty is, you know, I've talked to people who want to get into a relationship right away in college. And me and your mom, we talked about that where we got, you know, connected her freshman year, my sophomore,

year and then what we found is the difficulty when you're dating a long time and you're going to wait until you're done with college before you get married there's that can become a difficult issue because that that intimacy if you continue down that then it starts to move into the physical because there's this natural progression yeah and that can get very complicated and i and that's you know that's the other part about this is physical intimacy can really destroy a relationship when that's that's entered into before we've really committed to each other. Yeah. Yeah.

This is just a reminder that you're listening to Wherefore Arthel Romeo, where we are discussing the question of intimacy. I'm your host, Emily Shuddy, and my co-host is licensed to marriage therapist, Greg Shuddy, here on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Before we get back, into the conversation on intimacy, let's take a moment to ask, how long has it been since you've attempted to romance someone? I have here with me my somehow successfully married big brother, Joshua,

for this segment of Pitchin Wu, pick up lines for all your romantic endeavors. Welcome to Wherefore art thou Romeo, Joshua? That's a pleasure to be here. So, Joshua, what are some of your best lines? If I had a nickel for every time I saw someone as beautiful as you, I'd have five cents. I'd like to take you to the movies,

but they don't allow you to bring your own snacks. Are you Australian? Because you meet all my qualifications. Your middle name must be Gillette, because you're the best a man can get. You look super familiar. Didn't we have a class together? I could have sworn we had chemistry. Okay, so Greg, we've been talking about intimacy,

and I want to kind of pull into this question of the texting, if we aren't dating. And I think I want to, before we talk specifically about that, mention a couple things about like physical and mental emotional intimacy. So I think for for pre-marriage, like when you're still dating, intimacy can look like holding hands or hugging or kissing. Emotional intimacy can can be grown through through that physical intimacy, but it can also be grown through things like long. conversations or texting or even writing letters or those phone calls. So there are different ways

to grow that emotional connection besides the physical. Do you have anything to add to that or like correct me in any way? Like I said, you had a big one here. I feel like we've only like scratched a little bit of the surface here because this, there's so much to this whole intimacy thing. And I think the biggest thing I want to, I want the listeners to walk away with is the importance of really having a good communication with the person that, that you are talking about moving forward in a relationship with. I think the hardest part is getting to that for a lot of people because this whole idea of, you know, is he interested in me? We're spending a lot of time. We're talking about these things or we we haven't I'm not even dating the person and they're asking me all these

intimate questions and I think at that point we have to we have to guard our hearts because I think we want to throw that out there to try and build that connection but I think we also have to respect one another that if I'm not going into considering this um a relationship that I want to get into deeper then I think you have to be careful of the intimate questions that you have. ask. Yeah. Does that make sense? And I can't define all that.

But with that said, is that in a relationship, you have to have good communication because the thing that will bite you in the rear end every time is when you're spending more time trying to predict the other person. You're trying to guess what they want. You're trying to figure out what they're thinking. You're second guessing everything versus being very okay. and honest with each other. Yes.

I am considering this for for marriage. Okay. So then, okay, how are we going to do this? And in that is also, are you building boundaries? Because intimacy has to have boundaries too. If you are not moving towards marriage, in my opinion, there has to be a boundary that the physical is kept at a minute. And to me, sex should not be outside of marriage.

And that even comes not just from a faith perspective, but just the fact that when you have that sex, when you have 20 seconds or more of intimate hugging, your brain starts to release neurochemicals. These start to build this neurological bonding. But when you have sex, it floods the brain and it creates this deep bonding with another person. And so to jump to that deep of intimacy without having, you know, those steps all along the way, then just starts to confuse things. And this is where it gets people in so much trouble because it's this bonding and breaking and bonding and breaking. And so, yeah, it's one of those where back to the RAM model, are we pacing it? Are we talking with each other? Have we built in boundaries?

And do we respect those boundaries? Because if a person doesn't respect the boundaries, then that intimacy is, you know, you get that chance of breaking your heart or being, breaking someone else's heart. So I guess like in the case of the texting someone, maybe you don't have as much interaction with them, but you still want to keep in touch. Maybe if it's totally platonic, I don't know, I feel like that might be fine. You're probably not even going to text each other that much if it's totally platonic. I missed that, didn't I? I forgot. That's okay.

I started going and it's like, wait a minute. She did say something about texting. You're good. I still think that's really relevant, though. I feel like maybe with what you're talking about, the issue becomes more of like if you were involved or you're interested in being involved. I feel like the texting can kind of be maybe more of a struggle. Well, here's my rule of thumb and, you know, people might totally disagree with me on this.

I truly believe texting is not the avenue for building a depth of a relationship. It's not a place for working out deep issues. It's not a place for building intimacy. texting. Texting should be just a tool of I need to convey something quick. If we're going to talk and build intimacy, it should

be face to face. It should not be over text. That's my opinion. Yeah, I think that's totally fair. This has been a really great conversation. I know that's super deep and there's so much more we could probably say about it, but we are just about out of time here. So I just wanted to remind

you all that relationships are a process. It takes time and effort and we just want to help you balance your head and your heart. This is your friendly reminder to not be discouraged. If you haven't found your Romeo or Juliet, just remember, SpaceX will soon be exploring Mars. If you have questions that you would like us to address, please email them to E-Shoddy, E-S-C-H-U-T-E at Hillsdale.edu, and we will discuss them in future shows. That's all for Wherefore Art thou Romeo. I'm Emily Shodi. And I'm Greg Shuddy on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.