The Seven Levels of Intimacy: The Art of Loving and the Joy of Being Loved (2 page)

 

 

 

 

 

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ex is not intimacy. It can be a part of intimacy, no question. But sex doesn’t equal intimacy. It doesn’t come with a guarantee of intimacy. Sex isn’t absolutely necessary for intimacy. And yet, almost every reference to intimacy in modern popular culture is a reference to sex. If we are ever to truly experience intimacy, we must first move beyond the pubescent notion that sex and intimacy are synonymous.

Intimacy is the one thing that a person cannot live happily without. Think about it. Who are the happiest people you know, the people who are truly thriving? Do they just have sex, or do they have intimacy? They have intimacy, don’t they? They might have sex, too, but the foundation of their lives is an authentic experience of intimacy. They have people they can share their lives with. They have a genuine interest in the people around them. They have great relationships.

We can live happily without new cars and designer clothes; we can live and thrive without our dream homes; we can live without vacationing in all the right places—but we cannot live happily without intimacy. Intimacy is one of our legitimate needs and a prerequisite for happiness. You can survive without intimacy, but you cannot thrive without it.

Human beings yearn above all else for intimacy. We desire happiness, and sometimes we confuse this desire for happiness with a desire for pleasure and possessions. But once we have experienced the pleasure or attained the possessions, we are still left wanting. Wanting what? Intimacy. Our desire for happiness is ultimately a desire for intimacy. If we have intimacy we can go without an awful lot and still be happy. Without intimacy, all the riches of the world cannot satisfy our hungry hearts. Until we experience intimacy, our hearts remain restless, irritable, and discontented.

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ife is a self-revelation. It’s about revealing yourself. Every day, in a thousand ways, we reveal ourselves to the people around us and to the world. Everything we say and do reveals something about who we are. Even the things we don’t say and the things we don’t do tell others something about us. Life is about sharing ourselves with humanity at this moment in history.

Relationships are also a process of self-revelation. But far too often we spend our time and energy hiding our true selves from each other in relationships. This is where we encounter the great paradox that surrounds our struggle for intimacy. The entire human experience is a quest for harmony amid opposing forces, and our quest for intimacy is no different.

We yearn for intimacy, but we avoid it. We want it badly, but we run from it. At some deep level, we sense that we have a profound need for intimacy, but we are also afraid to go there. Why? We avoid intimacy because having intimacy means exposing our secrets. Being intimate means sharing the secrets of our hearts, minds, and souls with another fragile and imperfect human being. Intimacy requires that we allow another person to discover what moves us, what inspires us, what drives us, what eats at us, what we are running toward, what we are running from, what silent self-destructive enemies lie within us, and what wild and wonderful dreams we hold in our hearts.

To be truly intimate with another person is to share every aspect of your
self
with that person. We have to be willing to take off our masks and let down our guard, to set aside our pretenses and to share what is shaping us and directing our lives. This is the greatest gift we can give to another human being: to allow him or her to simply see us for who we are, with our strengths and weaknesses, faults, failings, flaws, defects, talents, abilities, achievements, and potential.

Intimacy requires that we allow another person into our heart, mind, body, and soul. In its purest form, it is a complete and unrestrained sharing of self. Not all relationships are worthy of such a complete intimacy, but our primary relationship should be.

What is intimacy? It is the process of mutual self-revelation that inspires us to give ourselves completely to another person in the mystery we call love.

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ou have a deep need to be known. Within each of us there is a story that wants to be told. Intimacy means sharing our story. Sharing our story helps us to remember who we are, where we have come from, and what matters most. Sharing our story keeps us sane.

Visit any mental institution and you will discover that most of the patients have forgotten their own story. They simply cannot put the yesterdays of their lives into any cohesive or structured memory. As a result they lose sight of the reference point that the past provides us in mapping our future. When we forget our story, we lose the thread of our lives, and we go mad. To varying degrees, we all forget our own stories, and to the extent that we do so we all go a little mad. Great relationships help us to remember our stories, who we are and where we have come from. And in some strange and mystical way, by remembering our stories we celebrate ourselves in a very healthy way. What’s your story? What’s your family’s story? What is the story of your relationship?

It fascinates me that if you ask a couple at their rehearsal dinner to tell their story—how and when they met, when and where the proposal took place, and so on—there is a passion and enthusiasm in the telling of the story. But as the years pass, the reply to the question “How did you meet?” becomes a three-word answer, “In the library,” “On a plane,” “At a bar.” This is a classic example of how, over time, we forget our story or become immune to its
power
.

Only by sharing our story with another will we ever feel uniquely known. Otherwise, and I assure you it happens every day, we can pass through this life and on to the next without anyone ever really knowing us. Imagine that. Imagine living your whole life and never being really known by anybody.

We also have a great need to share the story of our relationships. Just as a person who forgets his story goes insane, so does a couple who forget their story. They don’t go asylum mad, but both participants in the relationship start to do crazy things that ultimately can lead to the breakdown of the relationship. Unless they can rediscover the thread of their relationship, unless they can remember and cherish their story together again, the breakdown of their relationship inevitably leads to a breakup, or a life of quiet desperation within a relationship that has gone mad.

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elationships keep us honest. They provide the mirrors necessary to see and know ourselves. Isolated and alone, we can convince ourselves of all sorts of crazy things, but other people keep it real for us by drawing us out of our own imaginary worlds. They don’t allow us to deceive ourselves. Other people keep us honest. Relationships help to move us out of our illusions and into reality.

I see this all the time with my seven brothers. Once a month they have something they call brothers’ night. No girlfriends, no wives, no children, and no friends—just the brothers. A restaurant is selected and e-mails fly around cyberspace confirming attendance. It is the one night each month I most miss being away from my hometown of Sydney, Australia. But when I am there, I always marvel at the dynamic: my seven brothers and I sit around a table, talking about the comings and goings of our lives—situations at work, our relationships, family issues, and our dreams and plans.

In that forum, we offer one another the brutal honesty we all need from time to time. My brothers and I may not always get it right, but there is a sharing of ideas and opinions, and a general outspokenness that is both healthy and helpful. Now that kind of brutal honesty can become tiring on a day-to-day basis, but once a month it helps us to question ourselves in a way that is very constructive. It keeps us honest with ourselves, by casting our illusions or self-deceptions out into the light. It is that brutal honesty that draws us out of our imaginary worlds and shatters our false and sanitized visions of ourselves. And while it can be uncomfortable, it creates the dynamic environment that is necessary for growth.

It is in this way that intimacy is a mirror to the real self. Conversing and interacting with a variety of people in our everyday lives brings out into the light the illusions we often create and believe about ourselves. Alone and isolated, we have an incredible ability to deceive ourselves and create images of ourselves that are one-dimensional at best. Intimacy rescues us from our make-believe worlds. This is one of the reasons we avoid intimacy. Often we would rather live in our fantasies than in the real world. Other people force us out of our imaginary worlds and provide the mirrors necessary to know ourselves.

Next time you notice that someone is doing something that particularly annoys you, step back from the situation and look a little deeper. Chances are you see something of yourself in that person. Is what annoys you something that you yourself do from time to time? Do you wish you were doing what the other person is doing? Did you use to do it? Similarly, next time you really feel the warmth of admiration rise up within you, examine yourself. Is what you admire in that person a quality that you also possess, to some greater or lesser extent? Do you wish you could celebrate that quality within yourself more?

People introduce us to ourselves. Sharing ourselves with others helps us to understand ourselves; in the process we reveal ourselves to others, but we also help them to discover themselves. Most people tend to think of themselves as fiercely independent, as if to be dependent were some great weakness and reason for shame. The reality is that we are interdependent and much more connected than most of us realize. In the twentieth century, humanity seemed preoccupied with the quest for independence. The twenty-first century will be a century of interdependence or one of tremendous human suffering. The great truth that must come into focus is that we are all in this together. Both in our individual relationships and in relations between nations, this is the idea that can most advance humanity. We are all in this together.

It is too easy to convince ourselves that we can live our lives and fulfill our destinies without the cooperation of others. In many ways, our destinies are not in our own hands—at least, not entirely. In many ways, we are not independent; we are interdependent. Independence is just one example of the illusions that prevent us from entering deeply into relationships.

Dynamic and vibrant relationships help us to surrender our illusions in favor of the often less perfect but always more fulfilling reality.

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FRAID
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he problem is, we are afraid. We are afraid to reveal ourselves, afraid to share ourselves, afraid to allow others into our hearts, minds, and souls. We are afraid to be ourselves.
We are afraid that if people really knew us they wouldn’t love us.
That is the deepest of all human fears, lurking in the heart of every person. Consciously and subconsciously, we are always asking ourselves, “If they really knew me, would they still love me? Employ me? Want to hang out with me?” We desperately want to love and be loved. But we want to be loved for who we are, warts and all. And although we are afraid to reveal ourselves because of the possibility of rejection, it is only by revealing ourselves that we will ever open the possibility of truly being loved. With this fear begins the great deception. This fear gives birth to the unending pretense. We are all flawed and we all have faults. None of us is perfect. Yet all of us go about putting our best foot forward, hiding the brokenness, pretending that we have everything under control and that all is well.

Think about it. When you first meet someone, or are in the early stages of dating; at a job interview, or when you are being introduced to your partner’s friends, you put your best foot forward and they put their best foot forward. Then we each wait for the real person to be revealed—revealed by life, by experiences, by the process of intimacy.

We can’t be loved for who we are if we won’t reveal ourselves. Unrevealed, we never experience intimacy. Unwilling to reveal ourselves, we remain always alone.

You will experience intimacy only to the extent that you are prepared to reveal yourself. We want to be loved, but we hold back thinking that our faults will be judged and used as an excuse to oust us. But if we don’t reveal ourselves, in the back of our minds will always be the thought: “If he really knew me…” or “What would she think if she knew…”

We hide because we think people will love us less if they truly know us, but the opposite is true in most cases. If we are willing to take the risk and reveal ourselves for who we are, we discover that most people are relieved to know that we are human. Why? Because they are human, too, and are filled with the same fear as you. In most cases, you will find that the things you thought would cause people to stop loving you actually lead them to love you more. There is something glorious about our humanity. Strong and weak, the human person is amazing. Our humanity is glorious and should be celebrated. When we reveal our struggles, we give others the courage to do the same.