There are two major components to feeling intimate. First there
is intimacy with ourselves: the personal intimacy that comes from
being familiar with our own inner truths, our dreams, beliefs,
feelings, thoughts, wishes, and desires. Second, there is intimacy
with our partner: the connection we cultivate when we bring this
personal process into our primary relationship. This model for
relationship intimacy includes emotional availability, empathy,
care-taking, tender responsiveness, and bearing ambivalence during
difficult times. How we are with ourselves and how we relate to our
partner is a critical part of the dance between our inner and outer
worlds, an interplay that can either enhance or inhibit our capacity
to be happy together.
Intimate activity can take many forms, from giving each other
the freedom to explore individual interests to developing mutual
values, hopes, and dreams. Intimacy that is created from an open
dialogue about our inner and outer worlds ultimately teaches us
about ourselves and who we are as people. As we develop a language
for our relationship by expressing our feelings and thoughts, we
meld our two separate worlds into one whole.
A loving relationship arises from attending to our own thoughts
and feelings and to those of our partner. From this process we
produce shared values, beliefs, feelings, and interests. To reveal our
true self in the presence of another in this way, if done with care,
can be enlivening, enlightening, and joyful. What could be more
satisfying than understanding with greater compassion because we
know someone better? But to achieve this kind of contentment both
in our relationship and within ourselves involves an evolution of
understanding. It is a process, not a short-term goal. We hear the
adage that it’s not the destination that counts, but the journey. There
is no point where we have “arrived,” but a real sense of moving up a very long stream. Harmony comes from shining insight into places along the way, and with that light removing obstructions
block our ability to love deeply and intimately.
Creating intimacy is a lot like building a house. We start with a solid
foundation of truth, acceptance, and reality; we lay out the rooms
of our desires, fantasies, wants, and needs; we frame the windows to
our soul, wire in our emotional connections, add the hardware of
values, joy, and sexuality, and join them all together to create a home.
The raw materials for our building are drawn from a dialogue about
what we want, need, and value about ourselves and our mate.
The dialogue of intimacy, as we’ve seen, is about knowing who
we are and what we want from life together and making agreements
based on realistic expectations and shared values.
The married are those who have taken the terrible risk of intimacy
and, having taken it, know life without intimacy to be impossible.
— Carolyn Heilbrun
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