4. Ability to attempt to experiment freely with new or unfamiliar sexual techniques or acts but not insisting that the sex act conform exactly to your preferences. 5. Ability to talk about your true feelings about these agreed upon sexual activities before, during, and after the sex act with candor and without making your partner feel guilty or inferior. 6. Ability to negotiate compromises with respect to sexual activities.
Copyright 9-2002 Edwin L Young, PhD
Level 7: UNIVERSALISM
(CONT.)
Maturity in Intimate Relationships EXERCISES RELATED TO MATURITY IN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS When you finish this presentation, you will be asked to write and discuss the following items: 1.If you feel your attitudes toward both or either genders have changed as a result of studying this lesson, describe that change and explain what caused the change. 2.Imagine you, with current goals and life style, are suddenly in the body of the opposite gender: now, being the opposite gender, what about the way the opposite sex relates to you would you find unacceptable and want to change? Does this change your comprehension of the way the genders interact? 3.Ask yourself if you are now in a better position to serve as a healthy model of how to relate to both genders and to coach youth with respect to gender relations. 4.Taking the topics under the five sections just covered into consideration, if a youth had a concern related to one of these topics about gender and sexual relations, how would you coach him/her with respect to that topic? 5.Describe whether and how you are now better prepared to coach a youth with respect to an intimate relationship. Give hypothetical examples of coaching a youth with respect to their intimate relationship.
1. Ability to share, sensitively and diplomatically, with your mate your deepest and most secret sexual desires, fantasies, and criteria for fulfillment. 2. Ability to let your mate share with you their deepest and most secret sexual desires, fantasies, and criteria for fulfillment.
Copyright 9-2002 Edwin L Young, PhD
Level 7: UNIVERSALISM (CONT.)
Maturity in Intimate Relationships 1. INTIMACY: SELECTING, ENTERING, AND EXITING RELATIONSHIPS 1. Ability to enter close personal relationships, be mutually facilitating, respect each other’s freedom without having to either maintain distance or possess 2. Aware of your criteria for selecting an intimate partner and ability to change when criteria seem unhealthy 3. Restricting choices for intimate partners to those having symmetrical assets and/or characteristics 4. Ability to proceed with caution and wisdom before revising the status of a relationship to a deeper or more intimate or committed level 5. Willing to honestly state one’s intentions with respect to relationships and let chips fall where they may 6. Ability and willingness to inform the other when your criteria has changed and be receptive if and when they may do the same 7. Ability to gracefully accept the loss of a desired or the unavailability of a coveted relationship 8. Able to be free to let go of a relationship when it is no longer tenable
Copyright 9-2002 Edwin L Young, PhD
Level 7: UNIVERSALISM (CONT.)
Maturity in Intimate Relationships 3. NEGOTIATING SEXUAL INTIMACY 1. Ability to unicate your deeper feelings of love for your mate before, during, and after having sex without expecting them to reciprocate or mirror exactly your expressions and showing appreciation for their expression of such feelings for you. 2. Communicating openly with your mate, in a genuine give and take, when you are ready for sex and what you want and feel during sex. 3. Without being threatened, becoming jealous, insecure, or feeling guilt of shame:
Copyright 9-2002 Edwin L Young, PhD
Level 7: UNIVERSALISM (CONT.)
Maturity in Intimate Relationships 2. NEGOTIATING AN EQUITABLE RELATIONSHIP 1. Lack of envy, jealousy, resentment, or denigration toward those having entered into a coveted relationship 2. Unwilling to: relate to another person as an object; relate on the basis of ulterior motives; choose a friend or intimate partner on the basis of what they can do for you, or how they could make you look or affect your status 3. When a relationship has become intimate, unwilling to let family or in-laws or other third parties cause conflict or polarize the relationship 4. Ability to clarify and stand by one’s position that the foundation the relationship should unequivocally based on is adhering to positive reciprocity with respect to choices, distribution of responsibilities, and resources and negative actions should be dealt with using problem solving and constructive correction and not negative reciprocity 5. Ability to act with charity toward the partner when they become disadvantaged or when they lose in some manner and ability to have humility when one has the advantage or won