The Seven Levels of Intimacy

Kelly demystifies the ways of human interaction and intimacy. I wish I had read this book prior as part of my wedding preparations, but as it is, this will help me form a meaningful and intimate relationship later in life.

I would recommend this book for everyone, singles and couples. Intimacy opens one to vulnerability. Having intimacy with respect, comfort, kindness, patience and understanding is loving. Matthew Kelly takes you through the levels of intimacy in such an easy understandable way that makes senses and explains a lot about relationships, all relationships. I wish I had read this book with my former partner, our relationship would have grown significantly.

This is an excellent book. It captures and documents key principles for effective leadership by wrapping those principles with profound insights on developing and maintaining good relationships. True leaders are masters at relationships, knowing how to be intimate without being intrusive. The author decoded this"mystery" most effectively.

But sometimes it takes seeing it in print to make it sink back in to your consciousness. I've dog-eared many pages and highlighted several sentences. This may be an older relationship book, but many of the point shouldn't be forgotten.

This book describes the various levels of friendship, whether it's between a parent & child, man & woman, boss & emloyee, co-workers, best-friends. If you discover you & your friend are at the 7th level and working on helping each other with legitimate needs plus always trying to help each other be the best that he/she can be, you are indeed very fortunate.

This book was recommended by a relationship coach I hired and I am really glad I read it. The book is full of practical, easy to digest “upgrades” to how you see relationships that it might even feel like this knowledge should be common sense.

The book was referred by a friend. I was surprised how helpful it was in determing what you want or should expect out of a relationship. I encourage all those seeking or involved in relationship to read it. It is even more powerful reading it together as a couple.

Padded with stories, examples, and too many repetitions. It is interesting to note that the publisher itself is not even interested enough in the book to ensure quality editing or conversion to Kindle. After awhile, the poor editing and spacing issues become so distracting that it is difficult to concentrate on the content. Kelly may be well-intentioned, but the book presents as a better lecture or workshop than an entire book.

Our world has become dangerously selfish. Matthew Kelly breaks down the levels of intimacy so we can better understand ourselves. We each have the power to fulfill our deep-rooted desires for loving, lasting relationships.

I think anything by Matthew Kelly is worth reading. If you want to live an enriched life with all your primary relationships, and if they are important enough to you to keep growing and connecting...then read this book

Easy read, very insightful, and great practical tips to apply to any relationship in your life. Thank you for all the great take aways that I have started to apply since I began reading your book. This book is very positive and encouraging.

Easy read, very insightful, and great practical tips to apply to any relationship in your life. Thank you for all the great take aways that I have started to apply since I began reading your book. This book is very positive and encouraging.

It was nice to read, however, not something I would keep in my library nor ask a friend to read. Though his message was a positive one, he was a bit disorganized and a little 'all over the place'. I hate to say this but sometimes I got the impression he likes the sound of his own voice. I know that sounds very critical and perhaps unfair, but that's what I think. At the end of the book there was a little background on the author. It made a lot of sense when I found out he is a 'Motivational Speaker. It's almost like he listened to his own tapes and put it in writing. What I did appreciate in the book was focusing my attention on what matters to me the most and being proactive about it. In other words, do something about putting what's more important to you first and purposely make steps to reach your goals (relationships/career/education). Secondly, surround yourself with people who will be supportive, inspiring, and who will hold you accountable. He also had some nice stories about the people he's come across. It felt like you were there in the room listening to the conversations. O.K., That's it. I hate to give such a review but it is what it is.

I found this book interesting, but some of the claims are obviously wrong. I will only point to one of them. To begin let me just state that 'you either love someone or you don't'; and yes there are many types of loves. If you don't love a person in a particular manner, you can't just tell yourself to love them in that manner. Yes, you can deceive yourself into thinking you love someone that you don't really love and that is a dangerous state of self-deception to live in.

This book claims that you can love a person by just telling yourself to love them. I read this book, in part as an attempt to understand a man who after being married for almost 30 years came out to his wife as a gay man. The man I speak of would emphasize behind his wife's back how physically repulsive he found her, and of how he had to playact being 'lovy dovy' with her in order to keep his home life 'happy', but that in reality he was repulsed by her so much that the thought of even hanging her picture in his office was simply distasteful to him, something he would say with an accompanying gesture of disgust painted on his face.

Obviously, the man mentioned above is an example of a person who can't just tell himself "just love your wife". He is a gay man, and by his own admission loves his wife only in a very special way having nothing to do with conjugal or romantic love. In the same way, you can't just tell yourself to fall in love romantically with a member of your own sex if you are straight, even if you find the person sweet and you like spending time with him/her. Thus this book's claim that you can just love someone by just telling yourself to love them is extremely flawed and very dangerous. There are times when to be happy you must move on, even if the person you are with satisfies some of your intimate needs.

This book makes some interesting points, but it should not be read indiscriminately as it pitches many rather contradictory statements that could cause serious harm rather than help a reader seeking wise counsel.

Matthew Kelly's done it again. He's provided readers with an honest, open, and attainable process for improving all of our relationships. In The Seven Levels of Intimacy: The Art of Loving and the Joy of Being Loved, he talks about the purpose of life being to become the best version of ourselves and encourage others to become the best version of themselves.

After having read his book A Call to Joy: Living in the Presence of God and listening to the Lighthouse CD by the same name as well as the CD entitled Becoming the Best Version of Yourself, I'd heard many of his basic principles of personal growth already.

As the title suggests, this book focuses on the varying levels of intimacy we have in relationships. Kelly includes a number of questions he invites readers to journal on as part of envisioning and creating concrete goals to improve our relationships, particularly with those most vital in our lives.

I am hoping my husband will read the book as well. The two of us have sat down and discussed dreams and goals in the past, but it's been inspiring to have such a wonderful reminder of how important it is to continue making goals, sharing our dreams as individuals and as a married couple seeking to glorify the Lord through our covenant.

Much of what Kelly has written I've read or heard elsewhere, but the lessons are such fundamental ones for bringing about personal growth and strengthening relationships that we often glaze over them for more complex ideas and techniques.

This book serves as a good reminder of why we need to simplify our lives, reevaluate our purpose in life, and the priority we give to our relationships.

From a literary point of view, this isn't a lyrical prose masterpiece. The language is plain, simple, and frequently repetitive. At times, it made me think of the Gospel of John or Gertrude Stein. From an English major/copy editor perspective, there's much more that could be done to make this book grammatically and typographically the best version of itself.

I'd recommend reading this book. It's a good refresher of the basics and invites the reader to take time to learn about and from past and present relationships, then dream and consider for a bit what your ideal would be. Put that ideal on paper along with the small, attainable, measurable goals you will discipline yourself to do in order to improve your relationships and become the best version of yourself.

I turned 50 this year and finding myself single and dating for the first time in 25 years I did not know what to expect. After reading Mathews Rhythm of Life book I wanted to read more of his work. Mathew has a way of writing that reaches you on a real level like a life long friend. He presents the material in a way that I can relate to my life very simply. Beginning a new relationship I did not want to make the same mistakes. I wanted to find out how to keep the energy of a new relationship alive and lasting. In reading the "Seven Levels of Intimacy" he explains how and why Intimacy grows as we open up and share more of ourselves. He also explains the risks we take when we do so yet the great depth of relationship you gain by taking that risk. As Mathew explains each person we meet there is a level of Intimacy that is appropriate for that relationship. Only a few would you open up to level 7. As my new relationship develops I am more aware of how the relationship is growing and developing relative to levels of intimacy. The greatest value I have gained is it has made me more aware of my behavior and how my partner is responding in a positive way. This has allowed me to be consciously aware of why we are doing well and thus I make mental notes to keep practicing those behaviors that help us grow in intimacy. Reading his book has opened my eyes to a deeper understanding of the cause and affect of how we treat each other. So many couples feel their partner has taken them for granite and have quit showing appreciation. Mathew helps you understand the importance of the levels of intimacy and how much you have to gain by safely and respectfully sharing it with your partner and by doing so we appreciate each others uniqueness. I highly recommend this book to anyone in a new relationship or wanting to grow their current relationship to a deeper and richer level. Another book I read that I feel is a great companion to this one is "His Needs Her Needs" by Willard F Harley Jr.

I was expecting great things from this book given all the five star reviews but upon reading it myself I still struggle to work out why it scores so highly. I didn't find the content bad, amoral or offensive, which is nice given the sometimes licentious nature of other books on this topic, but it is very clear when a book is written by a public speaker, and even more so when a book is written by a motivational public speaker. What you get is a volume full of cliches, simple feel-good one-liners, and an utterly irritating overuse of hyphenation to create what the author calls, "The-best-version-of-yourself." I cringe even to write it down, lest the best version of myself ends up reduced to a marketing slogan, as we all were in the book.

What I didn't realise was that the book is in two halves. If I had gone straight to the second half I would have saved myself a lot of time wading through the fluff trying to find the meat amongst it all. The first half was painful, but the second half was actually about the seven levels, which is all I wanted. I'll save you the trouble and paste the following straight from the blurb: the seven levels of intimacy are clichés; facts; opinions; hopes and dreams; feelings; faults, fears and failures; and legitimate needs. Just have a quick think about how talking about the weather differs from talking about your feelings, as does expressing your needs, and you're done.

If you're after something "easy to read" as a lot of the other reviews have said, then this is for you. For me, I was looking for something more writerly and it left me wanting much, much more given the high expectations that I had based on the other reviews here.

We are all involved in relationships. But most do not achieve real meaningful ones. Our relationships don't turn sour, we just become indifferent.

We have been bombarded by messages that promise fun, excitment, pleasure and possessions are the answer to our emotional needs. But those are all feelings. And feelings change. They are not permanent. So no matter how much fun and excitement we pursue, it will not satisfy the basic need for intimacy. Our wants - material possessions - cannot fulfill our need for intimacy.

Matthew does and excellent job of exploring what intimacy is and what it is not. Most people have a misconception of what intimacy is.

The book is filled with very valuable information about the various types of intimacy - physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. Matthew also provides the basis for a strong relationship. If you read and accept his premise, you will change the way you look at your relationships. You will understand that most relationships are self-centered and therefore almost always doomed to fail.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part defines intimacy, the second part discusses the seven levels of intimacy and the last part discusses the 10 reasons why people do not have a great relationship and how to design a great relationship.

Your primary relationship will have a huge impact on your quality of life. This is very valuable information and should be read by everyone who has not commited to living as a hermit.

Some good food for thought. It helps to understand at which level a relationship might be breaking down. It felt like a book that might be more useful for younger people - as someone on 'the other side of the hill' I felt a little talked down to in some parts, and in a few others like his ideas were a bit over-simplified in the context of real life. The one aspect I didn't understand is the 7th level of meeting 'legitimate needs.' It seems to me that is, rather, something that should be incorporated into all the other levels rather than a level itself.