Finding intimacy
*This newsletter is intended to offer information only and recognizes that individual issues may differ from those broad guidelines. Personal issues should be addressed within a therapeutic context with a professional familiar with the details of the problem. Copyright 2018 Simmonds Publications: 550 La Jolla Blvd., 306, La Jolla, CA 92037
Many people search for that special intimacy in their relationship. Some of us search our entire lives for a feeling of oneness with another person. It’s hard to describe, really, what we search for, but we know it when we finally achieve it. Maybe we’re tired of that dark feeling of being ultimately alone as we struggle through life. If only there was someone else here, we say to ourselves, who could understand and share these burdens. Then it wouldn’t be so lonely. It wouldn’t be so hard. Or perhaps, in our more positive moments, we want to share, not just the burdens, but our pleasures too, our strength and beauty. We want the powerful impact of our internal experience to have an impression on someone else, as if to say that we count, we are whole, and we want to impart this feeling to another person.
Humans are social beings. Is that why we search for intimacy with others? Is a quest for intimacy the reason we commit ourselves to another person in marriage or some other public declaration of loyalty? In trying to find intimacy are we simply searching again for the ultimate feeling of bonding that we felt toward a parent during our infancy? The search for intimacy may be one reason we formed social groups, and it may explain why we request for spiritual fulfillment in our lives.
Many people in contemporary society feel lonely. For all the benefits we derive from living in a highly technological world, seemingly instant and complete communication with others, we still may find it difficult to discover ways to form intimate relationships. In fact, our high-tech society seems to fragment our social connections, to drive us away from other people. For example, email seems to make connecting with other people much easier, but in truth or messages are usually just flashes of ideas, briefly written, briefly read, and instantaneously deleted, and they barely fulfill our desire for more complete relationships based on our inner experiences. In our modern society, we lack ways to see, hear, or touch other people, not in person, and not to the extent that humans have in the past. What our high-tech world has brought us is an abundance of stress. And stress and intimacy are hardly compatible bed fellows.
To form an intimate connection with another person requires first we have access to our own personal emotions and ideas. We cannot expect to be intimate with another when we are out of touch with our own internal experiences. Our intimate experiences may involve our emotional, cognitive, social, physical, sexual, and spiritual lives. Two people, each of whom is in touch with his or her own internal experiences, may be able to share an intimate relationship on any one of these levels. True intimacy is one of the ultimate expressions of the human experience. And that may be why we strive so hard to find it.
We must explore and become familiar with our own personal thoughts and feelings before we can share them with someone else.