Intimacy

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“I woke up one morning, looked over at him and thought, ‘Who the hell is this guy’?” 

The stranger in Sheila’s bed was her husband. She recognized him by appearance, but in the deeper sense in which people know one another, he suddenly possessed all the familiarity of a blind date.   

“How can you not truly know someone you’ve lived with for over eight years?” she asked. 

“What’s missing?” I inquired. 

“Who he is deep down, how he really feels, the way he sees me and us, and what makes him tick in his heart and soul. That’s a lot.” 

Sometimes we conclude we don’t really know a person when they behave in a shocking or out of character way but, on occasion, this unsettling realization erupts for no apparent reason. 

“It’s like I just woke up and realized I’ve been kidding myself about understanding who this guy is,” Sheila concluded. “I don’t truly know him.” 

Can We Ever Know?

What we call “knowing” another person can occur at many levels, some very cursory and superficial while others profoundly heartfelt and intimate. Just because people are married, family, or call each other friends does not mean they fathom one another in an emotional or spiritual sense. It is common to merely scratch the surface of another person’s being. 

Many of us mistake familiarity or shared personal history for intimacy. So, the abrupt recognition that one is only tangentially connected with another person who is socially designated as close, such as a spouse, child, parent, sibling, or friend can come as a shock or at least a disappointment. 

What stops us from truly knowing others we consider loved ones? 

• Fear: Being close requires emotional vulnerability. If someone truly knows you in all the nooks and crannies, they possess the power, in a moment of malice or impulse, to gravely wound you. Having been previously burned in this manner, some of us don’t want to assume this risk again, so we keep the shields up.
• Pretense: Some couples, family, and friends merely play at being close. Unwittingly, they conduct a charade for the benefit of their viewing public, so to speak, or to protect their own self-image. The “happy couple” masquerade is all too common.
• Deceit: There are people who know full well they are hiding their true nature and do so for some manipulative advantage. They are, as Scott Peck called them, “people of the lie.” Avoid at all costs.
• Change: Sometimes we really do know someone closely, but then they change dramatically, or we do, and whoever did the changing forgets to tell the other person. We are not psychological statues. Personality and behaviors are not fixed. They transform over time and experience. 

For Sheila, the problem was pretense. She and hubby were playing a game of closeness, but their relationship never penetrated deeper than their emotional skins. Everyone considered them “such a great couple,” so it was reinforcing to stay the course. 

However, they proved lucky. With couples therapy, some interactive homework, and time they managed to peel each other’s psychological onions enough to grow close. Fortunately, they both liked what they discovered in each other.  

One of life’s greatest gifts is to deeply know and be known by another person. And one of its greater disappointments is to discover that a loved one is actually a mere acquaintance, or that you have been for them.  

As author Taylor Jenkins Reid wrote: “Intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is 'you're safe with me’—that's intimacy.” 

For more, visit philipchard.com.