3 ways to master intimacy as a Manifestor
Let’s talk about intimacy as a Manifestor. As a specialist in Human Design Manifestors, I get asked about the topic of dealing intimacy fairly frequently. It seems to be a universal issue for the Manifestor community, and arguably, there are some obvious reasons why.
As Manifestors, our closed aura and struggles with social conditioning can make intimacy challenging. Add to that the layer of patriarchal conditioning as a female Manifestor who is designed to initiate intimacy, and you have a veritable whirlpool of emotions in an intimate experience. Understanding that you are a Manifestor may be the first step in really understanding why intimacy is possibly challenging for you.
This blog post is designed to help you recognize that as a Manifestor, you make your own rules, you do things differently, even in intimacy. Your aura is different to everybody else’s. Your aura is closed and everybody else is open. Even on that alone, we can immediately see that being a Manifestor means that we are going to experience things such as physical and emotional intimacy differently to everybody else because our energy lives behind an energetic brick wall.
For a Manifestor, intimacy must be a conscious choice. We have to make the decision to be intimate. We have to energetically remove some of the bricks in that brick wall aura to allow intimacy to even occur.
Rest assured, there are ways to help you do exactly this, which is the aim of this blog post!
Disclaimer: I am not a relationship, intimacy or sex expert by any means at all. It is not an area that I have done study or qualification in. But what I am going to share in this blog post is my personal journey, which is very much aligned for me within my own Human Design blueprint.
I personally think that in many ways, I’m ill-equipped to be the teacher of this. I have a sense that there are other Manifestors out there who are really being tasked and gifted with the ability specifically to speak to sexuality as Manifestors, and also to speak to relationships – in all the complexity and the dynamic depth that is for relationships.
However, sharing about intimacy as a Manifestor is an area I do want to share some insight on.
So, let’s dive in! Ready to learn 3 ways you can master intimacy as a Manifestor?
1. Understand What You Learned In Childhood
My journey with intimacy has been a very long, deep and slow journey. I came from a family where intimacy was not displayed. It wasn’t that the family environment was cold. It wasn’t that PDAs (public displays of affection) were not done. It’s simply that we were not an emotionally connected family. I came from a family where there was violence, there was anger, there was trauma. My father himself is a Manifestor and certainly in his younger years when I was a child, he was very much a Manifestor out of alignment. He was working very, very long hours. He had three young children. He was very much from the 1950s male archetype; he wanted to go to work, come home and have dinner on the table.
In retrospect, for a Manifestor that was very misaligned. He really struggled to understand how to navigate that, so he was angry frequently which was volatile and very unpredictable. That set the tone for the rest of the family.
As children, we develop our identity and value system from the ages of 3 to 7 and then again from 8 to 15. My understanding of intimacy, like all other people in the world, was created from that time period in my life. Intimacy for me seemed like an unsafe space and like this thing that you don’t receive. Therefore, it was normal to not want it, because if I wanted it and I didn’t get it, I was left heartbroken.
As an adult, I didn’t see intimacy as something that was valuable enough to desire. I saw it as almost utopian. Safety in intimacy was so far away from my experience of normal that I didn’t even think that it was possible.
I was also a child that came from significant sexual abuse. That intimacy felt very dangerous to me, so allowing myself to want it (even from a safe partner) seemed like a very, very dangerous move.
When I began my relationship with the man who is now my husband, I followed a trajectory for the first two years of our relationship – physical connection rather than emotional intimacy. There was no intimacy. It was all about sexuality. It was all about the thrill of the moment. It was all about the sexual tension.
But then we had our first child.
I very much struggled to connect sexually after having my child. Any mothers reading will absolutely understand the physical changes that your body goes through after birth. It is not merely a physical change, but also a change in your perspective of people touching your body and people being near your body. I breastfed all three of my children. I had very, very difficult physical pregnancies. I came out of pregnancy feeling like I didn’t have any sexual drive or desire. In fact, I didn’t want anybody touching my body because all of my capacity for physical space was now going to my child.
My years of learning about intimacy, through my family and my early teens, formed my belief system about what intimacy is, and how to receive it. It was a skewed perspective based on trauma. It has taken 10 years to uncover and heal.
The importance of making this the first way to master intimacy as a Manifestor, when it has nothing to do with being a Manifestor, is not accidental. We are humans, first and foremost. If you have a history of learning intimacy through an unhealthy perspective, you need to work on that before any of the Manifestor tips will help you.
2. Be Okay With Being The Initiator
We can’t talk about intimacy as Manifestors and not cover ‘Initiation’. This is the first port of call because the whole energetic archetype of Manifestors is that we are designed to initiate. Yes, that includes initiating intimacy and initiating sexual intimacy.
You are designed to initiate intimacy as a Manifestor. Yes, every time.
We are always here to go first. That is how you are energetically wired and designed. You go first, Manifestor, you set the rules. You determine the reality. You set the tone for the experience not only that you have, but that everybody else has. So of course, in a relationship and in experiences of sexual intimacy, you don’t take that hat off. You are the initiator. You are here to be the person that says ‘I’m going to create how this experience is going to go. I’m going to lead it. I’m going to go first.’
That does mean initiating sexual experiences. It does mean you doing sexual advances. You create the moment. You say, ‘Hey, this is what I want. I want this intimacy.’
So what’s the problem? For both genders, it is the issue of getting worn down. We get tired of always being the ones to initiate. We get tired of always being the ones to go first. Sometimes we just don’t want to. Sometimes we just want to say, ‘Look, can somebody else take the reins? Can somebody else just be the leader? Can someone else just be the one who creates this situation and who initiates this and who manifests this and who holds the energy here? I’m tired and I just want to hang my hat up at the end of the day. I just want to rest.’
And in a relationship, in particular where we’re regularly sharing this intimacy with each other, we can very easily create a relationship dynamic where your partner becomes very used to you being the person who always initiates. That is the natural response to the Manifestor energy.
So as a Manifestor, if you want to have times of not initiating, you need to inform. You need to open your mouth. You need to speak out loud. (More on that in the next point).
I would be skirting a major issue here if I didn’t cover the differences between female and male Manifestors in the experience of initiating intimacy. We have starkly different experiences.
As female Manifestors, we are still designed to initiate. We are designed to take the lead. But depending on the psychology and value system of your partner, that could create some real role issues. A female initiating intimacy is not playing by the expected patriarchal social structure for a woman.
When it comes to physical intimacy, this is where women struggle to understand our own experiences. As Manifestors, we look at everyone else and we play a comparison game. We say “Well for them, intimacy is easy and it’s kind of warm and it’s nurturing. And it brings them closer together. But for me, intimacy feels like a chore. Intimacy feels like not only is this the greatest gift that I could give somebody, but I have to. I have to make a conscious effort to do this”
All female Manifestors need to be aware of this and consider addressing it within their relationship. Understanding the impact of our natural role and our natural energy on the dynamics of a relationship may provide insight into the cause of disconnection, conflict, confrontation and tension.
3. Inform Your Way Through Intimacy
Informing – we all hate it. Yet we all need to know how to do it as Manifestors, and actually put it into practice. Intimacy is not an area that is excluded from the need to inform.
Informing, opening up your voice, speaking out loud, not just thinking it, not just journaling it, but actually speaking it out loud, says to your partner, “I’m choosing to be here, but these are the terms that I need. This is what I need for this to feel safe for me. This is what I want for this to be a desirable and pleasurable experience for me”
Informing will change the whole experience of intimacy for you. Your partner is energetically wired to respond to your informing. If they choose not to? You need to look deeper into what other issues are at play in your relationship. But in a setting of love and safety, informing helps your partner to know what you need and how to provide it.
Informing in intimacy can cover anything. I want music.
I want a candle.
I don’t like it when you touch me there.
I do like it when you touch me there. I don’t like to do it this way.
I do like to do it this way.
This is what I need.
This is what I want.
When you inform, what you are energetically doing is manifesting that reality. We know that when we inform, we are clearing obstacles and roadblocks in front of us, but also what you are experiencing is the deeper level of intimacy of allowing your partner access into your aura.
Informing opens that brick wall so that they can feel intimately connected to you on a whole different level, because they are allowed into your energy in ways that they are not usually allowed in. A partner can’t naturally get into your energy like that. When you inform, you offer that gift. So the more vulnerable, open and honest you can be in your informing with your partner, the greater the intimacy you are allowing them to have with you.
Remember, you are here to initiate intimate experiences. It is safe for you to do that. It is safe for you to experience intimacy, and it is also safe for you as a Manifestor to initiate intimacy.
What are your insights into intimacy as a Manifestor?
