"The groom are those who took the terrible risk of intimacy and then can not know life without intimacy." - Carolyn Heilbrun
For most of us, the intimate word conjures up romantic images of candlelit dinners, dances and long slow passionate kisses. Romantic gestures are definitely a dominant theme of intimacy, but there is more. Privacy in the real world is the result of expressing our feelings, our personal secrets and our deepest truths another. Arises when we feel cared, accepted and loved for our own good, with all faults.
The word comes from the intimate privacy Latin word which means "inside" or "more inside." Thomas Patrick Malone wrote in The Art of Intimacy, "The exceptional quality of the intimate experience is the feeling of being in touch with our true selves. We allowed a new awareness of who, what, and how we are."
Ideally, privacy is a mixture of emotional closeness, spiritual connectivity and an open heart and mind. Its origin lies in the collaboration and intellectual knowledge, especially with another culture and interests. It may also consist in sharing religious or philosophical convictions. Finally, privacy can be an emotional response to meet someone far below the shared experiences. When we think of intimate word we see both the word and the word partner. It works a bit like being inside another person in a way that feels as if they mate with him psychologically and thus become intimate.
When we share information about our lives that normally remain hidden, we connect in an intimate way. The extent to which we can reveal private feelings and deep personal experiences is proportional to how we felt safe, security is a requirement for privacy too. Of course, privacy means different things to different people, and its meaning for us, can even change over time. Can be related to sexual near, but not necessarily; innermost feelings are shared moments of emotional connection and sexual encounters. Whatever its specific nature, privacy is the work product of the relationship and result to feel emotionally connected to our beloved. This is the operating principle for the creation of love.
As Thomas Patrick Malone makes eloquently clear, privacy is not only about the other, is what we are. And the most powerful and profound awareness of who we are comes when we open our hearts to others, if you want to touch our deepest sensibility. In the act of risking our tender inner world, we become who we are because we are affected in a pristine place.
Intimacy requires courage, because we have to take the risk of expressing our deepest sense of self to create. We may be apprehensive about opening our hearts and minds to another, for fear of being judged or rejected. But the rewards are immense. This is the antidote to the painful loneliness. Hand on our hearts with the love that satisfies our need for emotional nourishment gets. Our ability to establish and maintain intimate relationships food is not only rewarding, that feeds us and ultimately helps keep us sane. Our survival as a species requires that we seek connections with others and open our own inner world for them. Intimacy break our isolation and intertwined our souls and, if done with tenderness and care, creates secure attachments. This ability to intimately connect with others is the backbone of civilization. Intimacy is what makes us human.
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