Hi All, I was just catching up on my FDS podcast episodes and I wanted to make a point about the act of sharing past traumas to build intimacy in relationships.

We’ve all done it. Told a guy we were dating something super personal and then if he didn’t reject us outright we assumed we’d made it. Yes, we’re so connected!

I’m here to tell you why this isn’t really building intimacy for women in relationships.

Think about the social stigmas around women vs men. If a man opens up about some trauma that occurred to him in the past (on social media or wherever) he receives shoulder pats and hugs all around. “Oh he’s so brave!” “Wow! How strong of him!” If a women does the same thing some women might be impressed, but most men will skip it, cringe, or bash them. Why is this?

Because of the way men and women are judged differently. Men are stereotyped as strong, silent, unemotional, and always in control (even if this is far from true), so when a man exposes himself emotionally he is being “very brave”.

Women on the other hand are stereotyped as emotional, needy, crazy, and out of control. So when we open up about bad things that have happened to them men rarely see this as a strength. We’re just following typecast.

Whether we’re aware of it or not the same thing occurs privately when you tell a guy on a third date about your PTSD. He doesn’t feel like you’re being vulnerable or like he’s building a deeper connection, he feels like you’re playing a stereotypical woman and now he’s going to pile you in his mind where he throws all his other strong opinions about women.

So how do women build intimacy with men. Simple- By saying no. By having boundaries. By never doing anything you don’t want to. That is how we act vulnerably, by stepping outside the typecast of how we’re expected to behave and only doing what we want. Then, if you are not rejected because of this, you’re going to feel a deeper sense of intimacy with that man, and even more importantly you’re going to feel safe with that man because being able to say no without fear is one of the greatest forms of intimacy. And that’s something they didn’t teach us in Disney movies.

TLDR- Men build intimacy by expressing their emotions. Women build intimacy by expressing their boundaries.