The Seven Levels of Intimacy: The Art of Loving and the Joy of Being Loved (13 page)

What we love intrigues our hearts and captures our imagination. We spend our days thinking about what we love. Thought determines action, actions determine habits, habits determine character, and your character is your destiny. What we love consumes us. It should. Love should be an obsession, but let us remember that we have the power to choose what we become obsessed with.

What are you in love with?

What fascinates you?

What intrigues you and captures your imagination?

Nothing will affect your life more than whom and what you choose to love. Pedro Arrupe explained it in this way. “What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”

Love changes us. It should. The very nature of love is transformative. Love is the most powerful agent of change in the universe. We shouldn’t fall in love; we should rise in love. Love shouldn’t cause us to be some-lesser-version-of-ourselves; love should inspire and challenge us to become the-best-version-of-ourselves. Life is about love, and what we choose to love can transform us for better or for worse.

“I love you just the way you are”: these words have echoed around the world for more than twenty-five years in Billy Joel’s hit song. And how often people in the midst of an argument say, “Why can’t you love me for who I am?”

Should we love people for who they are? Yes. Absolutely. But if we truly love people, we also want them to change.

If you love your wife, you should love and accept her for who she is today, but you should also want her to change and grow, and become the-best-version-of-herself. You should love and accept your children for who they are, but it is natural that you would also want them to continue to grow and change, and explore the range of their potential. You should love and accept your friends for who they are, but you should also be willing to challenge them to change and pursue their essential purpose.

A loving wife says to her husband, “I think you are drinking too much beer and eating too many potato chips while you watch football every Sunday; can I get you something healthier this week when I am at the store?”

“I thought your love was unconditional,” the husband replies.

“It’s true, I do love you unconditionally,” the wife says. “And because I love you, I want you be healthy.”

“Why are you trying to change me?” her husband asks. “I thought you loved me just the way I am. Wasn’t that our wedding song?”

This dialogue is a constant part of many, many relationships. Conversations like it take place between boyfriends and girlfriends, between husbands and wives, and of course between parents and children. And they always result in a standoff. It may be helpful to ask, What causes the standoff? The answer is that this type of dialogue and standoff are caused when two people don’t have a mutual commitment to their essential purpose.

In the example, the wife is trying to help her husband become the-best-version-of-himself, but he is clearly not interested in doing so, at least not in this way. He complains that she is nagging him, and she spends her days wondering how she can ignite his enthusiasm for their relationship again. Their ability to relate is massively hindered because they don’t have a mutual commitment to a common purpose.

Love is transformative. Relationships should challenge us to change. They should change the way we see ourselves, the way we see others, and the way we look at the world. But in order for the people we love to feel comfortable with us challenging them to change and grow, we must first agree to make our essential purpose our priority and to pursue it together.

When we explore the seven levels of intimacy in part two of this book, you will discover that it is impossible to achieve this dynamic unless two people can move beyond the third level of intimacy. Intimacy is the key to dynamic change.

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en and women hurry about their daily lives, busying themselves with a million things, and in the midst of all this it is easy to overlook what matters most. Love is the pinnacle of the human experience. The giving and receiving of love is the highest calling of the human person. At first it may seem that the giving of love is the difficult part, but for many of us, opening our hearts to receive the love of others can be the greater challenge.

We should busy ourselves with giving and receiving love. And as we can only control the giving, and not the receiving, we should order our lives so that we are preoccupied with giving love wherever we go and to whomever we meet.

Certainly we must work and pay our bills and study and pass our exams. All these things we do in order to survive, but love is what we survive for.

What’s important to you?

What matters most?

How are you spending your one short life?

When your time is done, who do you want to remember you?

How do you want to be remembered?

If your life were over tomorrow, what would be left undone? Unsaid?

What is life really all about?

Life is not about what sort of shoes you wear. Life isn’t about whether or not you live on the right street, or whether you live in a big, fancy house. Life’s not about what sort of car you drive. It’s not about what football team you cheer for. It’s not about whether your football team wins. It’s not about whether you made the football team, or might make the football team, or what position you might have on the football team. Life’s not about what college you went to, or might go to, or what college your kids might go to. Life is not about these things.

Life’s not about money. Life is not about what sort of position or what sort of power you have. It’s not about whether you’re famous. It’s not about whether or not you vacation in all the right places every year. Life’s not about what sort of clothes you wear and whether they have fancy labels that massively increase their price. Life is not about these things.

Life’s not about who you’ve dated or who you’re dating. Life’s not about who your parents are or whom you know. Life’s not even about what sort of grades you get in school; your parents and your teachers don’t want me to tell you that, but it’s true. Life is not about these things.

Life is about love. It’s about whom you love and whom you hurt. Life’s about how you love yourself and how you hurt yourself. Life’s about how you love and hurt the people close to you. Life is about how you love and hurt the people who just cross your path for a moment.

Life is about love.

 

 

 

 

 

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here are some things we want just because we want them, and there are some things we want because we need them. Intimacy is a need. You cannot live long without food to eat and water to drink, and it would all be over in a matter of minutes without air to breathe. Food to eat, water to drink, and air to breathe are legitimate needs. So is intimacy. You can survive without it. But you cannot thrive and become the-best-version-of-yourself.

There is a restlessness within each of us that wants to be calmed, tamed. This restlessness is our heart’s yearning for intimacy. In our efforts to feel complete, worthy, fulfilled, and contented, we often chase pleasure, possessions, and achievement. We convince ourselves that if we can experience the right type of pleasure, amass enough possessions, or attain certain accomplishments, the restlessness will be overcome and we will finally have a sense of fulfillment and contentment. But while each encounter with pleasure, possessions, and achievement can be very satisfying for the brief moment they are experienced in, the aftermath of these experiences leaves us yearning for something more.

So we chase more intense pleasures, larger piles of possessions, and grander achievements, mistakenly believing that this time we will find fulfillment. But we don’t, and in the absence of another path, we repeat the process over and over and over again, until we die. We remain restless until the end. We continue to subscribe to the myth that pleasure, possessions, and achievement will fulfill us. Yet after each encounter we are left with the same dissatisfied aftertaste.

Why?

You simply never can get enough of what you don’t really need.

What is it that we really need?

We don’t need more money, faster cars, bigger houses, or grander promotions. The human person needs one thing above all else: intimacy.

We continue to chase our illegitimate wants and neglect our legitimate needs. The result is that we live in restless discontent. Contentment is to be found only by creating a lifestyle that tends to our legitimate needs, physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Intimacy is one of our real and legitimate needs, and all the pleasures, possessions, and achievements on the planet will not satisfy you as the fulfillment of your legitimate needs will. The mutual fulfilling of legitimate needs is the pinnacle of relationships. This is what it means to be soul mates.

Do you ever get the feeling that something is wrong, or that something is missing in your life? Do you ever get the sense that there must be more to life?

Something is wrong.

Something is missing.

There is more.

Intimacy.

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he seven levels of intimacy will change the way you look at relationships every day. Each level will help you to recognize certain signs in your relationships and empower you to embrace intimacy.

The first level of intimacy is the level of clichés.

The second level of intimacy is the level of facts.

The third level of intimacy is the level of opinions.

The fourth level of intimacy is the level of hopes and dreams.

The fifth level of intimacy is the level of feelings.

The sixth level of intimacy is the level of faults, fears, and failures.

The seventh level of intimacy is the level of legitimate needs.

The journey through the seven levels is a journey from the shallow to the deep, from the irrelevant to the relevant, from illegitimate desires to legitimate needs, from judgment to acceptance, from fear to courage, from false self to true self, from loneliness to profound companionship, and from isolation to unity.

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he seven levels of intimacy is a model. The model doesn’t live and breathe, as you and the people you love do. It’s a model, and models are imperfect. But models are also brilliant, powerful, and deeply meaningful. A bit like people, I suppose.

Models are powerful because they simplify the most complex situations that we encounter in our lives and allow us to see them with clarity, so that they can be understood.

The seven levels of intimacy is a model. It is not perfect, but it is powerful and deeply meaningful, and it will change forever the way you view your relationships. There are a handful of models that have changed the way we see the world or various aspects of our lives. The supply-and-demand model changed the way we view economics. Before anyone believed that the world was round, someone had to present a model. Powerful models have been changing the way we see the world and live our lives from the beginning, and I feel certain that the seven levels of intimacy will change forever the way you view the world of relationships.

Effective models are simple and practical, and their accuracy can be corroborated through our everyday experience of the subject presented in the model. In this case the subject is relationships, in particular intimacy, and you will be able to see the model at work in your relationships daily. If a model is to be effective and useful, you must know and understand the rules that govern it. The second part of this book is dedicated to learning about the model of the seven levels of intimacy.

These are the rules and guidelines that govern the model.

 

1. Relationships are rarely confined to any single level. For example, it is a mistake to identify a relationship as a fifth-level relationship or a third-level relationship. Your relationships will experience many of the seven levels every day. The only exceptions to this rule are casual secondary relationships, such as the relationship you may have with a grocery store clerk or a bank teller. It is possible for such a relationship to be confined to the first level of intimacy. We will discuss this in detail in the next chapter—in fact, all of these rules will make much more sense to you once you have read the chapter relating to each of the levels of intimacy. With that in mind, you may wish to come back and reread these rules and guidelines after you have finished chapter thirteen.

 

2. The seven levels of intimacy are not a task to be completed and graduate from. You don’t gaze into each other’s eyes one day and say, “Hey, we’re in the seventh level.” You may experience the seventh level, and I hope you do, but that doesn’t mean the job is done and you can fall back into the lethargy, distraction, and indifference that destroy most relationships. We move in and out of the different levels of intimacy in our relationships everyday. Nor do you sit up one day and say, “We reached the fourth level yesterday; let’s do the fifth level today.” The seven levels are not necessarily experienced in order. This will also make more sense once you learn about the seven levels in the coming chapters. But it is important for you to be aware of these dynamics before we embark on our exploration of the seven levels.

 

3. It is also important to know that not all relationships deserve to experience all seven levels of intimacy, nor are they meant to. Some relationships belong in the first level of intimacy, and only the first level of intimacy. Other relationships may be worthy of all seven levels of intimacy, but to varying degrees. There may be some things that are appropriate to share with your sister that are not appropriate to share with a colleague at work. There may be intimacies that belong in a relationship between a husband and a wife, but not in a relationship between a parent and a child. But our primary relationship should be a place where we can experience the depths of intimacy. There should be no limits to what we are willing to explore here, unless of course it will hurt the other person in a way that will not help him or her to become the-best-version-of-himself (or herself).

 

4. You cannot rush intimacy. You cannot force the seven levels; these things don’t happen on a timetable, nor are they rigid. The process is liquid and ever changing. Certainly, intimacy requires effort, but the attainment of intimacy is a little like geology, the study of time and pressure. In this case, the gentle pressure is the effort of you and your partner.

 

Models have rules. That’s what makes them work. These are the few and simple rules necessary to understand the seven levels of intimacy.

The best way to learn something is to teach it. So, as you move through the seven levels, discuss them with your partner, your friends, your family, and your colleagues. Discussing them (and certainly explaining them to others) will increase your understanding of each level and of the model in general.

Know the model, share the model, and it will transform your relationships.

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ne very significant piece of feedback that I have received when I have presented the seven levels of intimacy as part of my seminars and retreats is that every level tends to bring to mind particular relationships. This is very natural and normal, but in order to get the most out of your first reading of the seven levels, I encourage you to identify between one to three relationships that you would like to focus on for the next seven chapters.

The reason is that some of us have a tendency to focus on the positive and some of us have a tendency to focus on the negative. This being the case, it is very easy for us to focus on a different relationship for each of the seven levels (from either a positive or a negative point of view) and never really take a good, long, hard, honest look at any single relationship.

Take a few moments now to identify which relationships you would most like to look at in relation to the seven levels. You may wish to focus entirely on your primary relationship the first time you read through the seven levels, and that is fine. Or you may wish to look at a variety of relationships. If you have a primary relationship, include it as one of your three, even if you consider it your best relationship and it is thriving. Don’t choose more than three relationships to focus on during your first reading of the seven levels; doing so defeats the purpose and will dilute the effectiveness. And choose different types of relationships. For example, if your wife has just died and you don’t have a significant other at this point in your life, don’t choose three of your children, even if your relationships with them are the three that you most want to work on. Choose one of your children and a sibling or a friend. Similarly, if you are young and single, don’t choose three of your sisters. A variety of relationships will help you to understand the breadth and depth of the seven levels of intimacy, and perhaps more important, will help you to understand yourself and the way you relate in a much more comprehensive way. So choose three relationships to focus on and write your choices down now; then, at the end of the section about each level, evaluate each of the relationships you have chosen in terms of that level of intimacy.

In time, you may wish to go through the seven levels again with another relationship or relationships in mind. You may also wish to reread the seven levels with the same relationships in mind; this will show you how much certain relationships have changed and grown since you first read this book. For this reason, I encourage you to take some notes as you move through the seven levels. That way, the next time you read through you will be able to compare your notes and assess where your relationships have grown.

The seven levels of intimacy will revolutionize the way you experience relationships. The model empowers us, gives us a map, shows us where we are and where we are going. The seven levels of intimacy model will give you the courage to rise above your fears, by showing you why we act in certain ways and what the rewards of facing our relationship fears are. Educated and empowered, you will then be willing to explore the deep places of intimacy with the people you love and want to love more.