The challenge of intimacy

"Others are mirrors in which we're constrained to see ourselves, not as we would like to be, but as we are.  Whenever we pull away, searching in one mirror after another for a more pleasing image, what we're really doing is avoiding the truth about ourselves...

... Hiding isn't what marriage partnership is about.  Marriage means being in the spotlight, being under the unceasing scrutiny of another person, just as we are all under the constant gaze of God.  Marriage is about nakedness, exposure, defenselessness and the very extremities of intimacy. 

It's about simple unadorned truth between two human beings, truth at all levels and at all costs and it doesn't care what pain or inconvenience must be endured in order for the habit of truth to take root, to be watered and to grow into full maturity...

Of course, only God can give people the strange desire to know the whole truth about themselves and the strength and courage to live life wide open, exposing their lives before one another.  And how does He do it?  How does He slip us this bitter pill, coated w/ intense desire and determination? 

The Concept of Intimacy
Rick Garlikov

In chapter 31 of The Meaning of Love  I explain that many people desire emotional intimacy and that it doesn’t always accompany sexual intimacy and may and in fact often does, occur in non-sexual circumstances. 

Sexual (or physical) intimacy and emotional intimacy aren’t the same thing and don’t necessarily occur at the same time (e.g., a medical exam may go beyond physical intimacy without being in any way emotionally intimate in so doing). 

I want to try to give a fuller characterization here of what emotional intimacy is.  Before I do that, I want to emphasize I’m not necessarily talking about sex and that many intimate moments can occur in daily life if people were open to them. 

Just as we can talk about intimate dinner parties or intimate social gatherings, any meeting between people offers the potential for intimacy of conversation or an intimate exchange of ideas or the sharing of a meaningful and intimate experience that has nothing to do with immodesty, with sex or with matters of normal privacy, sensitivity or potential embarrassment. 

While revealing private details of one's life may be an intimate experience, it’s only a special case of a far more general concept, that of sharing, in a sense given below, ideas, feelings or experiences that are personally important and deeply meaningful.

When sex isn't particularly meaningful it’s not emotionally intimate.

Since many things besides sex can be deeply meaningful or personally important, there are many more opportunities for emotional intimacy than might be generally thought.  And those opportunities don’t need to be preludes to attempts at sexual intimacy or a romantic relationship. 

While loving relationships may include intimacy, intimacy doesn’t need to include love or romance. Intimacy can be and I think in many cases should be, a part of simple ethical behavior toward others, whether inside or outside of a loving relationship.

Emotions and feelings can be divided in the following ways:

• Those which have a logical component attached to them
• Those which don’t, in the following sense. 

One might, i.e., feel giddy and excited or happy, but for no apparent reason. It’s not necessary that something in particular is on his or her mind, for one to feel happy or for one to feel giddy, or sad. 

"I just feel really good today; I don't know why; nothing particular has happened" is a perfectly common answer on occasion to the question why one seems so excited or happy or giddy. 

Similarly, one might say, "I don't know why I feel sad today; nothing bad has happened that I know of.  I just feel kind of blue."  Those emotions don’t require any particular state of affairs or other state of mind. 

They can exist, in a sense, by themselves. Similarly one might feel "edgy" or "anxious" or "on edge" without feeling anxious or on edge about anything in particular. 

Intimacy Requiring an Actual "Meeting of Minds"

Notice that sex is just one kind of activity in which this sort of thing can occur, as both people are focused on and appreciative of both their own and (generally) the other person's emotional and physical pleasure. 

It’s that successful attention and appreciation, rather than the mere physical pleasure itself (no matter how good that might be) that makes the experience an emotionally intimate, rather than just a physically pleasurable, one.

"One-sided" Intimacy

Now look at the case where someone says something like "I thought we were having a moment of intimacy but it was just intimate for me, not for him/her. His/her mind was elsewhere."

There are, I think, 2 possible, different meanings or conditions for intimacy when someone says something of this sort or considers it to be a reasonable kind of statement: 

(1) It can mean either that an experience is and remains intimate to a person when it seems or appears, at the time it occurs, to meet the above conditions even though that person is mistaken about the other person's other people's focus or senses of appreciation and even if the other person finds out about the mistake later, or it can mean 

(2) That an experience is intimate to and for, a person if and when she or he finds it personally meaningful, good and is appreciative of it and is grateful s/he shared that experience w/the other person(s) even though the other person(s) didn’t experience it in the same way w/her or him.

No Need to Choose Between Mutual and One-sided Intimacy

If someone finds out that a wonderful experience they mistakenly thought was mutual actually was not mutual, as long as it isn’t a case involving deception, they shouldn’t abandon their wonder or appreciation for the experience just because they found out it wasn’t intimate for both of them. 

Mutually intimate experiences are better generally, but that doesn’t mean one-sided intimate experiences are necessarily bad, as long as no intentional deception is involved.

The other important thing is to understand what sorts of behaviors and feelings are appropriate to intimacies of each kind.  For example, college students often become enamored of a teacher because the teacher may address a topic or issue that’s important to the student in a way that’s enlightening and particularly meaningful to that student. 

The student may take that as a sign of intellectual intimacy, a kind of meeting of the minds. This is often a case of one-sided feeling of intimacy and the student needs to be aware of that before s/he does something embarrassing or compromising.

The teacher, being supposedly older and wiser, should also be aware of what may be the belief of the student and not take advantage of someone's mistaking one-sided intimacy or a feeling of (mutual) intimacy for actual mutual intimacy. 

Moreover, each should know that a meeting of the minds doesn’t then mean that a meeting of bodies is necessarily appropriate, that intellectual intimacy isn’t the same as and doesn’t necessarily justify, other forms of intimacy. 

Just because a meaningful meeting of the minds is today somewhat rare (in American society, for example), it doesn’t need to be confused with love or infatuation. It need not be an aphrodisiac just because it’s desirable and exciting.

I do wedding photography and weddings are situations that can be fraught with anxiety for brides, grooms, families and there are 2 kinds of wedding photographers; those who keep their distance and just take pictures of whatever is in front of their camera at the appropriate times and those who, as one photographer one time put it, not only take pictures but "become for a few hours on her wedding day the best friend a bride has."

The person who understands and appreciates her state of mind, her varying needs for guidance, focus, relaxation, distraction, perspective and attentiveness to the interests of all her guests, not just those who happen to engage her attention at any one time. This is true, though sometimes to a lesser extent for one's relationship with the groom, with the bride's mother and father and even, in some cases with the parents of the groom, who often aren’t sure what their proper role or amount of visibility ought to be.

If you can help everyone have a good time meeting each other’s needs and interests and those of their guests, they’ll be most appreciative and one will get heartfelt expressions of gratitude before the film is developed and the pictures seen. It’s not uncommon to hear helpful photographers praised as "great photographers" at the wedding reception itself even though there will be no visible evidence of their photography skills for at least a couple of days. 

Even in the studio, many people would prefer to have a root canal than to get their picture taken. To understand that and to overcome that feeling by showing you understand it and by being able to make them feel comfortable in front of the camera is, I think, an opportunity for intimacy, however short-lived it might be. 

Similarly, teaching school even in a large lecture hall, or conducting a business meeting, affords opportunities for teachers to foster intimacy with their students and bosses with their staff. Good actors and entertainers can establish intimacy with their patrons in certain theaters. 

A theater that seats 300 to 500 people may be quite intimate, when the production is really good and somehow tuned to satisfying the audiences needs and people will come from the performance exclaiming what an intimate theater or intimate performance or intimate experience it was.

Many doctors, nurses and medical assistants can be intimate on one level while remaining properly professionally detached on another. I had to have a barium enema and set of X-rays one time and it was not the most comfortable of circumstances in which to be, between the potential humiliation and the concern for the outcome. 

The med tech made it much easier for me from the very outset when she put on her rubber gloves and said to me w/a twinkle in her eyes as she looked into mine, while I sat on the X-ray table in my hospital gown, "For the next half hour I’m going to become your new best friend." 

Of course, a statement like that might not be helpful at all for a male tech to say to a female patient, but when she said it, she was saying in essence, with a good touch of humor, that she knows this is scary, embarrassing and uncomfortable but she’s going to do her best not to let it be that way and she’s giving confidence that she’ll be successful in that endeavor. 

She was doing the difficult job of essentially establishing an emotional intimacy that overrode and put into a minor perspective the physical intimacy that was the nature of her professional task that morning. 

The fact that an hour later she’d have another patient and would have totally forgotten about me didn’t matter to me. It was her attention and concern for me at the time and the effort she made to succeed with me at the time that mattered and that personalized the experience in a good way.

It may be thought that people who can do that well under trying circumstances have a gift, but the first part of having such a gift is recognizing the need for it and being willing to take the risk of making oneself vulnerable to an unkind or cold response, in order to try to help a sensitive fellow human being thru a difficult time. 

It requires the same gift to help people in what may start out seeming to be normal circumstances. But it’s a gift that can be cultivated. Every contact affords the potential opportunity to bond with another in a personal and intimate way, without necessarily jeopardizing professional distance, integrity and competency. 

But for many people it’s difficult to initiate intimacy because they try to hide their own vulnerability and isolation and their most private thoughts they mistakenly believe are theirs alone and too unique or strange to express. Often they’re afraid of meeting a rebuff to any overture to meaningful conversation.

And some people are indeed resistant to comments that try to get "through to them".  Unfortunately they also sometimes, or temporarily, ruin opportunities not only for themselves, but for the next person as they make the initiator feel they’re doing something wrong and hesitant to try with the next person. 

The trick is to realize that for the most part, if you’ve thought up something or are troubled by something, others will have entertained the same ideas or be receptive to it, but you have to bring it up. 

i.e., at weddings, while everyone else is saying affectedly polite, saccharine things about the couple's getting married, if you say instead that you think weddings are appropriate for young people because they’re too naive to know better, you’ll be surprised at how much smiling agreement you get and what a torrent of confirming comments will follow. 

At a grocery store one time, two women were standing for a long time in front of the canned tuna shelf and I walked up and said, "What, are you guys standing here so long because you’re trying to find a dented can to serve to your husbands?"  And they both looked at me and said with a laugh "You know, there have been times I've thought about that."  The odds were good.

One time I thought I'd really overstepped my bounds and I said something I immediately had regretted until it turned out later to have been for the best. Like the med tech mentioned above, it seems to me generally best to address with humor what’s likely bothering people than to try to pretend there’s nothing wrong and let people just suffer in silence and maintain either a distant or strained atmosphere. 

But the minute I said what I did, I felt I’d gone too far. 

While he was standing in the group, not responding to my most recent normal attempt to get him to smile, I stopped and said for all to hear, "I just don't understand it; I’d have thought that being here in the same room at the same time with all the women you have ever been married to would’ve made you really happy." 

His children roared with laughter and when they stopped laughing he smiled at me and said "Where’s your car parked?"  And I said "If you only hurt my car, I’ll consider myself lucky." After that he was great in the pictures and later at the reception he came up to me and put his arm on my shoulder and thanked me for helping him oosen up and enjoy the wedding.  He said he really appreciated it.

It doesn’t always require humor. In photographing people who’re nervous, it often makes them feel more comfortable if you say that you or they need to move a bit because you don't have a flattering angle, or that they need to change position or clothes because in two dimensions the angle or that outfit will make them look fat even though it’s not that way in real life.

By being honest with them about what doesn't look good and why, people seem to have more confidence that you know what you’re doing and they get really pleased when you do say "that looks great now" because they know you sincerely think so. If you only say good things from the beginning, no matter what they do, most people are suspicious and become even more self-conscious.

In teaching philosophy at a black college, I often challenged my students' ideas, even about racism (though I am white and have always lived in suburbs and they were primarily from an inner city).  Whenever I disagreed with students about anything, I asked them to justify their position and I argued with them when I thought they were making reasoning errors. 

And I'd almost never let any disagreement drop until we had resolved it. There were a few things we couldn't resolve, but I had made clear to them and they knew I meant it, that their grades didn’t depend on their agreeing with me, so they were free to maintain their position unless I could honestly convince them otherwise. Usually I could; sometimes I couldn't.  What was interesting to me was that they really appreciated that I tried. 

One class said this was the first time for them in school that any teacher ever cared what they thought and cared enough to disagree with them. Another time, we were talking about racism in America, near the end of the term, and in the midst of the arguments and explanations, one of the girls said "But you don't understand. 

Whenever black and white people are together in this country, it’s in a white area of town and the blacks are outnumbered, which is intimidating. You never see white people in a black area of town where they’re the minority." The other students all concurred. For a minute I thought she had a point and then I remembered I was a white person sitting there in a black college in a classroom in the midst of only black students. 

I held up the backs of my hands to her and said, "What about this? All of you are black and I'm still white, aren't I? And I’m here." The other students looked surprised, but the girl who’d made the comment looked the most surprised, as her mouth just dropped open and her eyes widened. 

Then she said what was one of the most touching things I’d ever heard: "But you aren't white; you’re just Rick!"  The others nodded in agreement.  And I said it was precisely my point about them. that they too were persons first and should see themselves that way and expect other people to see them that way too and that most white people by and large then often would. 

Some instances mix humor with poignancy. I was talking one time with a young lady I was photographing, who was in my studio with her mother. Somehow the conversation turned to a point where I mentioned that in Homewood (an adjacent suburb) there’d been a long time, highly effective and revered mayor who was one of the nicest guys in the world and who adored his wife and his twin daughters. 

But often in social situations when he was introduced to someone new whom he found out was not married, he would ask with mock sincerity "Then what do you do for aggravation?"  It was an "ice-breaker" for him and it always worked because he was obviously such a loving person and a proud, doting husband and father.  When I finished my story about him and mentioned his name, the girl said "He was my grandfather."  And the mother said she was one of the twins. I hadn't known that.  It was a nice moment.

Interestingly, these lasting marriages challenge several ideas put forth by professionals.

Maintaining intimacy throughout marriage

John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth developed the theory that attachment to another person is our primary motive in life. Between 6 months and one year of age, human infants who are "securely attached" to mommy (or a caretaker) begin to explore the world in brief excursions, starting the process of gaining self-confidence and independence.

If a child of that age is taken away from his/her mom, however, they usually respond with crying, reaching out and other protests. When mom is brought back, they want to be close; they hug, cling, look at her with hurt eyes and then they turn on the charm, cooing and smiling.

The point? We need attachments (intimacy). We don't all respond that way to detachment, however.

• About 40% of infants are very upset when separated but when re-united with mom, they approach and reject her, presumable because she's sometimes attentive and affectionate and sometimes not.

They're considered "insecurely attached" and have trouble exploring the world. These attachment styles supposedly last a lifetime.

• So, perhaps 40% of us adults respond with anger when we feel rejected.

Marriage therapists (Johnson, 1994), following the attachment theory, consider anger expressed by a spouse to be an effort to restore closeness and intimacy to the relationship (although the attacked spouse is likely to see it & feel it as tearing the marriage apart).

Anger is considered a natural protest to loosing security or love. So, if both partners can re-interpret or "reframe" the spouse's anger into being a cry for regaining lost love and attachment, then the angry partner can become aware of the loneliness behind the anger and the criticized partner can be more sympathetic, a better listener and more open about his/her own insecurities.

Thus, the cycle of attack, building resentment and counter-attack is broken. If both spouses can disclose their tender underlying feelings, such as the fear behind silent withdrawal, the couple is well on the way to a "secure attachment" and a good marriage.

There are lots of detachments in life. In a mobile society, we often leave our families of origin at 18, never to return. With marriage, we often lose contact with our college and casual friends. We never get over our need for intimacy, however and in today's culture, we seem to be looking more than ever for continuing intimacy with our spouse.

Ordinarily lots of disclosing occurs early in a relationship, but within a few years it fades away. In the past, there were many barriers to intimacy in marriage: gender inequality (e.g., men more educated), false or unreasonable expectations of the opposite sex, dependent ties with families of origin, "unfinished business" from family or previous relationships, women involved with children, men obsessed with work, few examples of intimate parents, etc.

Several of these barriers are declining and as that happens, the emphasis on obtaining true intimacy in marriage is increasing (Gordon & Frandsen, 1993; Young-Eisendrath, 1993; Barbach & Geisinger, 1992; Campbell, 1980, 1984; Emmons & Alberti, 1991).

Young-Eisendrath (1993) sees old gender stereotypes as engendering false expectations of the opposite sex. She feels a spouse can find out what the other is really like by talking. Research by Bradbury & Fincham (1990) supports this notion, except they say that it is the way we have learned to explain our spouse's behavior that must be changed first.

As discussed above, unhappy spouses see their spouse as having bad intentions, selfishness and permanent negative traits that cause problems. With this attitude, it's hard to give any praise or to be nice. In fact, faking it by "talking" and feigning being "understanding" or pretending to make efforts to reconcile usually make things worse, until in your own mind your views of the spouse's motivations become more positive.

This cognitive aspect - viewing the partner positively - is part of all these efforts to increase intimacy. Barbach & Geisinger (1992) concentrate on understanding how our previous relationships, such as an absent father or a critical former wife, influence our current love.

They emphasize friendship, respect, trust and sexual satisfaction.

Firestone and Catlett (1999) operate on a very different theory, namely, that the fear of intimacy stems from early childhood when we develop a primitive "fantasy bond" with Mom as a defense against separation anxiety.

The parent's negative qualities or anything seen as rejection are responded to with anger, fear and maybe guilt. Later on, with the idea of death, the child strengthens the fantasy bond (for safety), the idealization of one or both parents, the withdrawal of feelings from the world and the depreciation of his/her own self.

In the ongoing attempt to defend ourselves from hurts, we develop an internal "voice" that talks to us mostly about grave dangers and painful feelings. It's our earliest self-concept; it tells us what we should do and controls us with criticism, commands and warnings. The result is a lot of fear and guilt.

Later in life, after we fall in love, the voice is still very alive - telling us we're unlovable, inadequate, stupid, etc. and often trying to get our partner to treat us like our parent(s) did. To further defend ourselves we become insensitive, numbed and withdrawn.

Firestone's "Voice Therapy" helps you become aware of the cruel, nasty, intense things the voice says about you, your partner and others. Awareness of the voice sometimes brings back memories of childhood that explain our current feelings. The task then is to plan ways to change one's harmful behavior, expectations, fears and prejudices, so the relationship can grow positively.

It's not an easy therapy and may require a therapist but the book is easily read and understood.

Lori Gordon (Gordon & Frandsen, 1993) has developed a 120-hour class for teaching intimacy skills to people who haven't gotten what they wanted from marriage and subsequently, stopped confiding, walled themselves off, found other ways to spend their time, etc.

The course has been shown to reduce anxiety and anger, increase marital satisfaction and improve self-esteem. Her approach is to encourage confiding to each other and from this comes self-understanding, insight into the history of the expectancies or emotional baggage we bring into a marriage, mellowing of one's negative feelings towards the partner, feelings of security and intimacy.

The course teaches the skills of open, honest communication, listening, empathy and forgiveness. Much of the confiding is about their personality and emotional development in the context of their family's emotional history, i.e., what were we taught about ourselves, love, sex, morals, unspoken family rules, confiding, trust, intimacy, etc.

Eventually, we find that the source of our marital misunderstandings and negative expectations is our history, not our spouse. Here are some exercises Gordon recommends:

1.      Daily Temperature Reading: at the same time every day, hold hands and

• (a) express appreciation for something your spouse has done
• (b) share some information about your mood or activities
• (c) ask about something you don't understand ("Wonder why I got so upset about the phone bill?" or "Why were you quiet last night?")
• (d) request some change without blaming the spouse ("Please call if you won't be home by 5" or "Please don't wear the pants w/the rip in the crotch any more")
• (e) express some hope ("I hope we can go hiking this weekend").

2. Bonding exercise: when you're upset with your spouse, ask for some bonding.

• (a) Lie down and hold each other.
• (b) Describe what's bothering you (your partner just listens), be specific.
• (c) Share your memories of the past that seem connected with your emotional reaction to the spouse ("Your having lunch with ____. made me think of my first wife's/husband's affair...")
• (d) Tell your spouse what you needed to have happen in your history that would have reduced your being upset now. (Maybe your spouse can say or do, at this time, what you needed long ago.)
• (e) Discuss how the past -  the inner child, old hurts, Papa's rules, unfinished business, etc. - has a powerful effect on you today.
• (f) Plan ways both of you can help avoid the unwanted emotional reaction in the future.