Your sexuality, your spirituality, and your intimacy journey are three of the most powerful ingredients of your life, but we’re not taught how to integrate them or how to deepen into each one in a healthy way. In this episode, I’m going to provide you with a map to integration with the power to change your future.

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Listen For

• 03:00 – Why is it important to integrate sexuality, spirituality, and intimacy?
• 14:31 – How do you go from disconnection to the gift zone?
• 20:04 – What is the zone of disconnection?
• 24:34 – What is the zone of protection?
• 28:11 – What is the gift zone?
• 31:15 – How do you honor yourself and receive guidance from the gift zone?

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REPLAY – Integrating Intimacy, Sexuality And Spirituality

Your sexuality, your spirituality, and your intimacy journey are three of the most powerful ingredients of your life, but we’re not taught how to integrate them or how to deepen into each one in a healthy way. In this episode, I’m going to provide you with a map that teaches you how to integrate your sexuality, spirituality, and your intimacy journey together. Stay tuned to this episode of the Deeper Dating® Podcast.

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Deeper Dating® Podcast. I’m Ken Page. I’m a psychotherapist. I’m the author of the bestselling book, Deeper Dating, your host in this podcast, and the creator of the Deeper Dating® Intensive. I’m so glad to be with you today to talk about something so important, which is how to integrate your sexuality, your spirituality, and your intimacy journey together. I’m going to be providing you with a map and a set of questions that will really give you guidelines for deepening and integrating every one of those aspects of your being, your sexuality, your spirituality, and your intimacy journey. I’m very excited about this.

I just actually taught a whole workshop on this for gay men in recovery this last weekend, and it was so beautiful. I’m very excited to share these ideas with you. First, let me just tell you that in this episode, and every episode, my commitment is to share with you the greatest skills and tools and insights that I know to help you find love; beautiful, healthy love, and keep it flourishing and heal your life in the process because the skills of intimacy are the skills of love and the skills of love are the greatest skills of all for a rich and meaningful life.

If you’re interested in this Deeper Dating® path to deeper love, just go to DeeperDatingPodcast.com. There are almost 200 episodes there, transcripts of every single one, tons of wonderful information. If you join my mailing list, you will get a beautiful eBook that describes some of the key points of this entire journey. You’ll get lots of other resources as well. I do hope you can go to DeeperDatingPodcast.com and join my mailing list and be part of this community of learning and growth.

The Importance Of Integrating Sexuality, Spirituality, And Intimacy

Let me jump in, and I just want to say, like this trifecta of spirituality, sexuality, and intimacy is like the grand trifecta. Yes, there’s work, there’s mission, there are other pieces too, but these are so essential and so important, and they drive and feed all the other aspects of our life when they’re in sync, when they’re nourishing, when they’re fulfilling, when we have that fabulous, fabulous, fabulous experience of, I am growing. I’m growing in my intimacy life. I feel it.

 

I’m growing in my spirituality, and I’m growing in my ability to be a loving, passionate, sexual human being. I just think that those are like the lasting joys. Those are the serious joys, the joys that come from our knowing that we’re growing. That’s what we’re to do in this episode is chart a really simple and well-traveled map to deepen and integrate all those parts of yourselves.

All Three Dimensions Are Rooted In Connection

For all of them, all of those three arenas, they’re all about the same thing. They’re all about connection. Of course, intimacy is about connection. Of course, sexuality is about connection. We’re talking about this dual rich experience of connection to self, connection to others, and spirituality is, of course, about connection. It’s about connection to the, as Paul Tillich said, the ground of our being, the best parts of ourselves; goodness, wisdom, meaning, insight, expansion, creativity, all the good stuff, all the really, really, really good stuff, and the goodness stuff.

They’re all about connection, and they’re all about heart. In a moment, I’m going to give you an interactive map that you can use to map that you can use to map your journey to deeper growth in each of these areas and integration in each of these areas. I love this map, and it’s really simple. For those of you who are watching on YouTube, you will get to see that map.

For those of you who are looking at the transcript, you’ll get to see that map. For those of you who like listening while you’re walking, running, or driving, I can explain this map to you. Is so simple that you’re not going to have to worry about it. All of those things are possibilities, but let me just speak a little bit about each one of these dimensions. Spirituality is so infinitely laden with crusty, crusty “shoulds and shouldn’ts” and theology that holds us back.

There’s just so much of that laced into the beauty and the living fibers of every religion. It’s just such a mixed bag how certain aspects of most religions become hardened like that. We learn lessons that are not necessarily good because they’re culture-bound lessons, and they’re not truly spiritual. That homosexuality is evil or religions that believe that women do not have the same power, the same rights, the same place as men. Many different things we all know, and the sexual spiritual split that exists in so many religions.

This journey to create a sense of connection to the sacred that does not cripple you, that does not hold you back, that lets you expand, that is user friendly, that speaks to the very heart of your being, that feels like home that inspires you and calls you and asks you to do that scary, scary, scary thing of expanding and growing and becoming a better person and looking at your character defects and all these different aspects of growth that takes so much bravery, but not laden with shoulds and guilt. Instead, more like a living spring of a call to expansion, a call to goodness, a call to the deepest, most beautiful parts of our hearts.

That’s the spirituality we want. We can find that in the religion that we believe in, but it takes a little bit of work to separate the wheat from the chaff. That’s everybody’s task, is to come up with an understanding and a language of spirituality that is personal to them. This does not need to be theistic. It does not need to have something like a central personalized figure. It can be anything or everything that speaks to and calls to the deepest and best parts of your being.

I just really want to make that clear. The beauty, the beauty, the beauty, the beauty of spirituality is that it is a living call inside us to expansion, to beauty, to grace, to growth, to truth. That living call to me is the very essence of what spirituality is. Following that call, learning from that call, living that call, and growing around that call is really spirituality in action. My main point here is just to say that, however you view spirituality, that’s what I’m supporting you in. It means to you, whatever calls you to something bigger and greater and more good and more truthful is sacred.

The beauty of spirituality is that it is a living call within us to expansion, beauty, grace, growth, and truth. Share on X

That’s what I’m referring to when I talk about integrating that part of you into your journey. Intimacy. Intimacy is, of course, like, I think, the greatest suffering is loneliness. I think it’s just simply probably the greatest suffering that there can be. Closeness and intimacy that also allows freedom, developing those skills where we can have authenticity, plus closeness and having that richness in our life is, well, it’s what we need. It hurts so much when we do not have it. It feels so beautiful when we do.

Really, my life’s work in my own life and in all of the teaching that I do is helping to map that journey. I’m going to give you a map of that journey in a few minutes, but the truth is that we are not taught the skills of intimacy. We’re not taught how to hold intimacy and authenticity. We’re not taught how to hold intimacy and sexuality. There’s so much that we’re not taught. We’re not taught how to have conflict in a way that supports growth.

We’re taught math, we’re taught science, we’re taught all these different things, but it’s so secondary and tertiary, the lessons of intimacy, the lessons of EQ, which are really the lessons of happiness. Sexuality is the three of these, it’s the biggest problem child, because one thing about sexuality is that it is a force, it is a drive, and to some degree, our sexuality in some ways is an X-ray of our entire character structure, like who we are and how we behave sexually says so much about how we’re structured and how we’re built, but we’re taught such horrible information.

All of us, all of us, all of us are survivors of sexual trauma because we live in a traumatizing culture. What happens in the presence of trauma is we freeze, we lose intuition. We lose resilience, we become rigid, we become frightened, and we become like patterned and positioned in certain ways that we use to protect ourselves, which does not really help us in our sexual journey. There are in each of these arenas, it’s an act of bravery to say, “I am going to grow in each of these areas.” Thank God in the world at this time, there are so many resources for healing all of those different parts of ourselves.

The Nervous System As A Guide To Truth And Alignment

The last piece that I want to say about this is our nervous system usually knows what feels right in sex, what feels right in spirituality, and what feels right in intimacy. Now, of course, when we get into patterned or compulsive behaviors, those aren’t right, but they feel right. They’re like a scratch the itch right, but it’s a different feeling when our nervous system registers safety, expansion, space, self-love, and room for others. That’s an experience that our nervous system registers and knows. We’re not taught or trained in each of these arenas to listen to the cues of our nervous system.

 

As we listen to the cues of our nervous system more and more, we dive more deeply into the essence of who we are. I’m going to show you this map in a minute and explain it to you in a minute. First, I just want to say that at one point, I had a client who said something so beautiful and so wise to me. He was really deeply on a growth journey, and he came in one day, and he said, “Ken, I’ve realized that no matter what’s going on for me, no matter what crossroads I’m at, no matter what challenge I’m experiencing, the first step is always the same. It’s gratitude for how far I’ve come, for what I have already, and for what I’ve done already.”

From Disconnection To The Gift Zone: A Map To Your Authentic Self

I want to ask each one of you as we dive into these complex arenas where all of us have so much growth to do, to acknowledge the work and the care that you have put in to your spiritual growth, to your sexual healing, and to your intimacy journey, because you would not be here and not be listening if these things weren’t deeply, deeply important to you. Because of that, I feel so privileged to get to share these ideas with you.

I feel like I went on for a while about all these different things, and now I’m going to jump in and show you the map. While I do that, I’m going to explain it to everybody who is not looking at the map at the time. Good. Good. Good. Folks, here’s the map. It is simply a target with three circles. The inside circle, the bullseye circle. Just picture this. It’s not tiny like a bullseye. It’s like big, let’s say it takes up one third of the space, it’s your Gift Zone. That is the zone that you want to move toward.

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That is where you are in contact with your authenticity, with the beating heart of your humanity, and where you hold yourself and your truth with care and respect. That is the birthplace and the source of the sacred when we can do that. That’s where we want to be living in our sexual expression, in our spirituality, and in our intimacy journey. I’m going to talk about each one of these around sex, intimacy, and spirituality. First, I’m just going to tell you what they are. That’s the first one.

In the center of that is the source of self, because if you can somehow get to the center of the center of the center of your being, that is the portal to true spirituality, I believe. That is the original spring of the self. Somehow, every being that was created has an eye in the center of its universe. That eye in the center of the center of that eye is where we are all connected. It’s the collective eye. It’s the collective unconscious. It’s a sacred space.

What makes the Gift Zone is that, in this space, you hold whatever it is with compassion—which reflects human greatness and isn’t easy to do. That’s the journey. Share on X

That’s the inner circle. The next circle, the middle circle, I call the Zone of Protection. That is where you’re numbing yourself out, where you’re defending, where you’re protecting yourself. When it’s close to the Gift Zone, it’s just a little bit of numbing. As you get further out, the protection becomes more rigid. It becomes more and more defensive, more prickly, more like a wall than a door. It continues to get more and more that way as you separate from the warmth of your authentic self and burrow into defensive behaviors, protection, and isolation to protect yourself from hurt.

When you keep doing that, you hit a danger zone, which is that outer ring, which I call the Zone of Disconnection. That’s where addiction is. That’s where loneliness that hurts so badly that it’s unbearable is. It’s a hard, hard place because we are disconnected from self and others, which is the greatest suffering. We all know that place. We’ve all been there. The journey is, obviously we cannot go zip, “I’m going to be in my Gift Zone. I’m going be in my source of self. That’s like where I’m going to live,” because the further in you get to the center, the more you feel, the more you feel joy, pain, expansion, trauma, the more you feel your humanity.

What makes this the Gift Zone is that in this space, you’re holding whatever it is with compassion, which is like human greatness and not so easy to do. That’s the journey. The journey is to hold our authentic self with space and compassion, and the degree to which we can do that. God knows we cannot do that all the time, and all of us live in the Zone of Protection, and all of us also sometimes live in the Zone of Disconnection, or maybe a lot of time, and we like, zip around.

One client in my intensive said something wonderful. She said, “My safe space,” a very amazing, woman. She said, “My safe space is one foot in the Gift Zone, one foot in the Zone of Protection.” I think that’s pretty wonderful because baby, if you’ve got one foot in the Gift Zone, you’re luminous on some level. Even if you’re hurting, even if you’re sad, you are lit from within by the beauty of your own humanity.

Zone Of Disconnection: When We Lose Connection To Self, Love, And Support

Let’s talk about each one of these zones when it comes to each of these three arenas. We’re going to start with the Zone of Disconnection. The Zone of Disconnection in intimacy is when you’re in that terrible place of loneliness. When you have made an existential decision not to trust, but to be isolated, or you have defensive patterns that do not let love in, or if you have serious psychiatric conditions that are unstabilized, or if you have a serious, serious amount of trauma, or if you have any active addiction, you’re going to be in that Zone of Disconnection, which is a hard place to be.

What it means is that in some very profound ways, you’re going to push away the very love that you need to survive and heal. It’s a conundrum because in that space, the thing you need most is the scariest thing of all. What’s the solution? The solution is to get help. If this is an addiction, it’s to join a twelve-step program. It’s to get sober. You do not have to join a twelve-step program, but in my experience, twelve-step programs are just one of the most magnificent and free sources of healing that exist on the planet today.

If it’s a psychiatric condition, please, please, please get help to get that stabilized. If you’ve just built in isolation, I would encourage you to follow some supportive process to help you reacquaint with humanity, with healthy humanity. I will say that the work that I teach is a map on how to do that. You can learn more about that in so many ways, from listening to the podcast, to reading the book, to taking my online course.

For those people who want to go really deeply, there’s a six-month intensive, which, if you’re on my mailing list, you will hear about, and we are now filling our 22nd cohort of that. It’s just a magnificent experience. If that interests you, you can learn more by joining my mailing list, and you’ll get to hear all about that, or you can go to DeeperDatingIntensive.com to find out more.

That Zone of Disconnection in sex is sex that is harming to yourself or others. It’s addictive sex. It’s compulsive sex. It’s sex that doesn’t bring you closer, but has a compulsive quality. Some people are asexual in a way that’s really right for them. For those people who are sexual beings, but really have frozen up around that, that’s another disconnection. In spirituality. The Zone of Disconnection is, I guess, it’s a sense that there’s no help.

Zone Of Protection: How We Push Away Closeness Through Habit And Defense

There’s no help out there. There’s no deeper self to support you. There’s no wisdom that you can lean on. You’re all alone in this world. The Zone of Protection probably should be designed as the biggest zone because we all spend a lot of time there. That zone, when it comes to intimacy, is living on your phone. It’s pushing closeness away. It’s when you feel like you want to push closeness away with your old patterns, because we all have these patterns of protection, be it anger or numbing or not sharing our feelings or turning things into fights or, as the Gottmans say, “Not knowing how to fight right and fighting in ways that cause more conflict.”

That Zone of Protection is a space that we all fall into. In intimacy, it keeps us locked. In an intimate relationship, the degree to which we’re living in the Zone of Protection is the degree to which the quality of that relationship is going to deteriorate over time in almost all cases. Let me just say for each of you, think about this, like what’s your Zone of Disconnection with sex? What’s your Zone of Disconnection with spirituality? What’s your Zone of Disconnection with intimacy?

Now, here in this Zone of Protection, what’s your Zone of Protection? What are the things that you do to push away that deeper, richer intimacy? These are hard questions, but they’re glorious questions because when you rest in the truth of how you’re doing that, you organically are going to start to want to change. How do you live in the Zone of Protection and sex?

 

Perhaps you do not integrate love into sex. You do pattern sex. Maybe you do not look at your partner. Maybe you do not move into those deeper states of dependency. Maybe there’s a million things that you do not say that you could say that would help your partner understand what would move you more, what would touch you more.

There are three great questions in this arena of sexuality to help you move from the Zone of Disconnection and Protection to the Gift Zone. Those three questions are. What makes you feel safe in sex? What opens your heart in sex and makes you feel moved, and what turns you on sexually? When you can have all of those flowing together, well, that’s a really, really happy, glorious, wonderful place. Those three questions can help you get there.

The Zone of Protection around spirituality is like being too busy to let yourself sink into, steep into the sacred, whatever the sacred is for you. Busyness is a huge protection around that. Not doing processes that help connect you with your deepest, richest, most beautiful self. Not having a daily practice, which I recommend so highly for everybody. So important, I think, at the center of my days is my spiritual practice.

Gift Zone: Living In Deep Connection, Compassion, And Authentic Self

The center of my days. Yeah, in intimacy, in sexuality, in spirituality, what are your Zone of Protection behaviors? Once you know them, you can begin to shift them. Now, finally, let’s go to the Gift Zone. Let’s think about this. When in your life have you felt really spiritually connected, like touching the sacred, touching something so beautiful and so good and so right and so vast, or anything like that, maybe not something so grand, but something simpler, maybe something simpler, but filled with goodness.

Take a moment to think about when you have been in your Gift Zone with your spirituality and what that’s like, when you have been in your Gift Zone in intimacy, how that feels. I would ask you to remember relationships that didn’t end in betrayal. Maybe the relationships aren’t going on anymore, but it’s too hard to think of the Gift Zone when you think of a relationship where you ultimately felt really betrayed by the person.

I want you to think about times that you were in an intimacy space. It doesn’t have to be romantic. It could be with a pet. It could be with a grandparent that you felt you were in the Gift Zone with intimacy. Maybe you’ve been in the Gift Zone with sexuality where there’s that fabulous mixture of sexual excitement, goodness, safety, heart opening, and turn on, all at once that magical, magical space.

In that Gift Zone, we can live with all of those parts of ourselves. This map, you could just think right now, you could just say, “Outer line, outer circles, the Zone of Disconnection, middle circles, Zone of Protection, inner circle gift zone.” If you took a pushpin and you were going to place it right where you are these days in your life around sexuality, where would you put it? What could you do to move it closer into the Gift Zone or deeper into the Gift Zone or closer to the Gift Zone or just in that direction, even in the smallest way?

Around intimacy and the intimacy in your life overall, where would you place that pin, and how could you move it closer? Around your spirituality, I think I did sexuality, did I do sexuality? Around your sexuality, sorry about that, folks. What is that Gift Zone place? What is it in spirituality? That place where you are connected in that way. What has it been in intimacy? I think I’ve mentioned all of those now, probably a few times for the Gift Zone. This map is your journey because the more you live in the Gift Zone, which is where you can hold the beating heart of your humanity, your feelings, your heart with compassion and with care, you are in your integrated self.

Honoring Your Future Self And Receiving Guidance From The Gift Zone

I just want to ask you to take a moment and honor yourself for the work that you have done in each of those arenas to move closer to the center. I’d like you to picture the you that you will become as you live more and more in your Gift Zone. Picture what your eyes look like, what your eyes reflect, like who you would be with wings unfolded, like really living in that space, and you do not have to earn it. I just want you to imagine it. Imagine this you, living in that space in your sexuality, your intimacy, and your spirituality.

That’s the glorious you. Just take a moment to stand in that you. Imagine you just jump into that you and you do not have to earn it. You do not have to be it. It is fantasy because you’re not there yet, but it’s also not fantasy because you know that you. That’s you. Just imagine standing in that. Now I’d like you to call out guidance to the you of today from this beautiful place. Take a minute. Pause the recording if you want, because this guidance is going to be good. I encourage you to follow that guidance as your meditation for the day, your insight for the day.

I encourage you even more to do that little practice where you picture living in the Gift Zone in each of these arenas or in any one of them. Step into that you and from the heart of that space call out guidance. It will be awesome. It will surprise you. It will elevate you. It will soothe you, and it’ll give you your next steps. It’s so simple and so organic, just as this map is really simple and really organic. I thank all of you for listening, and I hope you join my mailing list if this work interests you and you’d like to learn more at DeeperDatingPodcast.com. Please feel free to subscribe and leave me a review. I always really, really appreciate that. Thank you all.

 

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