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5 Conditions Required for Intimacy
"Opening up to intimacy means accepting another in one’s territory without feeling captured or absorbed, and immersing oneself in that person without losing one’s own being.?
V. Pazzini
Intimacy is what we enter into a relationship for, which we seek, often experiencing pain and disappointment, but experiencing it no longer agree to less. Lack of intimacy devastates, makes relationships mechanistic, greatly impoverishes them.
On the way of experiencing intimacy, various obstacles may arise in the form of merging with a partner and organization of dependent relationships, mistakenly perceived as intimacy or, on the contrary, because of the fear of being absorbed, a person remains isolated due to the inability to open his boundaries to another. Including intimacy can be perceived as a way to avoid loneliness, such motivation is compensatory, then the need is not intimacy, but in finding a way to somehow overcome their own loneliness.
On the way to intimacy, I go to meet another person, present myself, facing my own imperfection, which can be accompanied by a sense of shame and fear of rejection, causing an internal conflict, the solution of which is a choice between two evils. Often in our culture, intimacy is understood as a normal sexual act, whereas intimacy includes not only the physical, but also the spiritual, intellectual and emotional aspects.
So what is intimacy and what do we often confuse it with? Why pay such a high price?
Loneliness
Loneliness is not the most pleasant experience, although I think that in the life of any person there are moments when he wants to be alone with himself, to reflect on some moments of his own life, to dream, fantasize, plan some things and it is rather a healthy story.
It is more difficult for those who are lonely, who always need to be near relatives or friends, or fill their time with business just to avoid being alone. This illusion can be maintained with the help of a constantly working TV, frequent telephone conversations, correspondence, or simply “sticking” in social networks, looking at photos or pages of your virtual friends, and thus only increase your loneliness.
Loneliness, according to existentialist philosophers, is a given that everyone faces and cannot be avoided. We are all alone, because the other person, even the closest one, will not be able to fully understand you, experience what you are experiencing, fully immerse yourself in your experience.
There are 3 types of loneliness:
1. Intrapersonal loneliness - I'm cut off from myself. Difficulty understanding your needs. I don't know who I am, what I want, etc. It is a loss of contact with yourself.
2. Interpersonal loneliness It is a lack of contact with other people. I have no one to share my feelings with, no one understands me. This kind of loneliness accompanies people, even in relationships, and subjectively causes a sense of disconnection from others.
3. Existential lonelinessPerhaps the most difficult experience of loneliness is when a person is cut off from himself, from friends or family members, from the whole world, he is alone in the whole universe.
This is a rather pessimistic, at first glance, position, but despite this, close relationships allow us to approach the other and / or bring the other closer to us as much as possible and, thus, share with him including our loneliness and reduce the intensity of this experience, filling the relationship with sincerity, trust, warmth, acceptance.
But at the same time, it is important to understand that loneliness does not go away and it cannot be replaced by a person, plugging the tormenting “hole” with the help of this person, getting into dependent or counterdependent relationships instead of intimacy, where intimacy does not smell, and internal conflict instead of being resolved only worsens. It is important to learn to be in touch with yourself and your partner.
Incompleteness
Imperfection is another existential reality that we face in our lives and have to put up with. No one is perfect in this imperfect world. Imperfection is often caused by a sense of shame, and it can be intensified in moments of approaching another, in moments when I show, present, entrust myself to another. And he sees me, he sees me with all my flaws and virtues. The experience of shame can also block the possibility of intimacy, because shame can be so intolerable that I can not even imagine that another person will see me like this. But at the same time, extreme shame, lived together with another, accepted by another without criticism, evaluation and censure, reduces its intensity and has a great chance of “cure”.
Dependence
The experience of intimacy does not imply a constant merger with a partner, because then a person loses himself - his boundaries, his integrity, his desires, needs, needs. When there are no boundaries, I have no contact with another, and then I either stick to him or want to absorb. While in the case of proximity, borders are flexible, they are able to let the other into their territory and experience a temporary unity, followed by a withdrawal – a return to themselves and the processing of the experience of intimacy. It is a cyclical process of closeness and departure, each new cycle of which is, ideally, a conscious choice to be intimacy. In the case of a merger with a partner, each departure can be subjectively experienced as a separation, and a separation as a “little death”, with the feeling that a part of you is being torn off, and this is very painful, very painful. And in that sense, staying in a long-term relationship doesn’t mean you’ve made a choice once and for all, it doesn’t, because it’s always changing — you’re changing, your partner is changing. Staying in a close relationship with a partner makes this choice every day, and maybe more often, and this is the freedom to be in a relationship.
Counterdependence
The polarity of the merger, where the boundaries are completely or partially blurred, is a situation where the boundaries are so rigid and inelastic that they cannot be opened at all, or it is impossible to adequately regulate the opening-closing phases of the borders, they are rigid. Counterdependent behavior is most often demonstrated by adolescents at the time of necessary separation from their parents, when their authority, rules and norms are questioned - the teenager rebels. Growing up is about being able to do what you want, even if your mother wants it. With this behavior, a person feels isolated and lonely, despite the fact that in life he can have a large number of diverse communication. Such people most often experience the so-called fear of intimacy, which, of course, can also be accompanied by other experiences, since we are all unique in our subjectivity. While intimacy allows you to share grief, sorrow, suffering, and increase joy, happiness, love.
Five conditions necessary for intimacy
First conditionA desire or intention to enter into a close relationship. It’s a choice that I’ll have to take responsibility for, sometimes it’s hard to realize, and then it’s easier to be offended or blame the other for not being close for some reason.
Second conditionThis is the courage necessary to take such a risky step and present yourself. Every time we get close, we take risks. We risk rejection, we risk pain, because we become vulnerable or defenseless: “My poor hedgehog has shed all the needles – he is completely handy.” And that courage commands me a lot of respect.
Third condition- trust. It is my intention to trust this person with everything that is. Sometimes it seems to us incredibly terrible, more often it is the human that is in almost everyone because of our imperfect nature. At times, trust is a very fragile substance, especially if there is a “negative” experience of being betrayed. This could happen in any format of relationships: child-parent, friendly, romantic. This is what is often called betrayal. This is not about a fact, but about entrusting oneself to another. So heavy feelings and their various combinations can be born: fear, shame, fear of shame, shame. Then a lot of work needs to be done, for example, in therapy, to step by step, very slowly in the process of therapeutic relationships, to restore this amazing opportunity and gift of trust.
Fourth condition.Respect for otherness or recognition of another’s right to be different. This is what is called acceptance. It's about the other person not having to live up to my expectations. In the same way, intimacy requires nothing in return, for intimacy may not be reciprocal. Accepting the other is not an easy story, and I think it’s almost 100% unattainable unless you’re enlightened. It is rather about intention, about the possibility of dialogue and the ability to negotiate in difficult moments.
The sneaker story
Rights and non-duties: You always have a choice!
Fifth condition.- mindfulness. It is awareness that allows you to “feel” your own boundaries and regulate their permeability. Mindfulness allows you to decide who and how close I let. There is no need to be open-minded with everyone, engaging in soulful striptease, it is reasonable to share different levels of intimacy and distance with different people.
Thus, when confronted with questions of intimacy, one inevitably encounters existential experiences of loneliness, imperfection, responsibility, freedom, and choice. And this allows us to hope that a person is able to create his own life, making conscious choices and taking responsibility for them.
Author: Aksiatov Marat
P.S. And remember, just changing our consumption – together we change the world!
Source: mongus.space/en/2016/05/04/pyat-uslovii-blizosti/
V. Pazzini
Intimacy is what we enter into a relationship for, which we seek, often experiencing pain and disappointment, but experiencing it no longer agree to less. Lack of intimacy devastates, makes relationships mechanistic, greatly impoverishes them.
On the way of experiencing intimacy, various obstacles may arise in the form of merging with a partner and organization of dependent relationships, mistakenly perceived as intimacy or, on the contrary, because of the fear of being absorbed, a person remains isolated due to the inability to open his boundaries to another. Including intimacy can be perceived as a way to avoid loneliness, such motivation is compensatory, then the need is not intimacy, but in finding a way to somehow overcome their own loneliness.
On the way to intimacy, I go to meet another person, present myself, facing my own imperfection, which can be accompanied by a sense of shame and fear of rejection, causing an internal conflict, the solution of which is a choice between two evils. Often in our culture, intimacy is understood as a normal sexual act, whereas intimacy includes not only the physical, but also the spiritual, intellectual and emotional aspects.
So what is intimacy and what do we often confuse it with? Why pay such a high price?
Loneliness
Loneliness is not the most pleasant experience, although I think that in the life of any person there are moments when he wants to be alone with himself, to reflect on some moments of his own life, to dream, fantasize, plan some things and it is rather a healthy story.
It is more difficult for those who are lonely, who always need to be near relatives or friends, or fill their time with business just to avoid being alone. This illusion can be maintained with the help of a constantly working TV, frequent telephone conversations, correspondence, or simply “sticking” in social networks, looking at photos or pages of your virtual friends, and thus only increase your loneliness.
Loneliness, according to existentialist philosophers, is a given that everyone faces and cannot be avoided. We are all alone, because the other person, even the closest one, will not be able to fully understand you, experience what you are experiencing, fully immerse yourself in your experience.
There are 3 types of loneliness:
1. Intrapersonal loneliness - I'm cut off from myself. Difficulty understanding your needs. I don't know who I am, what I want, etc. It is a loss of contact with yourself.
2. Interpersonal loneliness It is a lack of contact with other people. I have no one to share my feelings with, no one understands me. This kind of loneliness accompanies people, even in relationships, and subjectively causes a sense of disconnection from others.
3. Existential lonelinessPerhaps the most difficult experience of loneliness is when a person is cut off from himself, from friends or family members, from the whole world, he is alone in the whole universe.
This is a rather pessimistic, at first glance, position, but despite this, close relationships allow us to approach the other and / or bring the other closer to us as much as possible and, thus, share with him including our loneliness and reduce the intensity of this experience, filling the relationship with sincerity, trust, warmth, acceptance.
But at the same time, it is important to understand that loneliness does not go away and it cannot be replaced by a person, plugging the tormenting “hole” with the help of this person, getting into dependent or counterdependent relationships instead of intimacy, where intimacy does not smell, and internal conflict instead of being resolved only worsens. It is important to learn to be in touch with yourself and your partner.
Incompleteness
Imperfection is another existential reality that we face in our lives and have to put up with. No one is perfect in this imperfect world. Imperfection is often caused by a sense of shame, and it can be intensified in moments of approaching another, in moments when I show, present, entrust myself to another. And he sees me, he sees me with all my flaws and virtues. The experience of shame can also block the possibility of intimacy, because shame can be so intolerable that I can not even imagine that another person will see me like this. But at the same time, extreme shame, lived together with another, accepted by another without criticism, evaluation and censure, reduces its intensity and has a great chance of “cure”.
Dependence
The experience of intimacy does not imply a constant merger with a partner, because then a person loses himself - his boundaries, his integrity, his desires, needs, needs. When there are no boundaries, I have no contact with another, and then I either stick to him or want to absorb. While in the case of proximity, borders are flexible, they are able to let the other into their territory and experience a temporary unity, followed by a withdrawal – a return to themselves and the processing of the experience of intimacy. It is a cyclical process of closeness and departure, each new cycle of which is, ideally, a conscious choice to be intimacy. In the case of a merger with a partner, each departure can be subjectively experienced as a separation, and a separation as a “little death”, with the feeling that a part of you is being torn off, and this is very painful, very painful. And in that sense, staying in a long-term relationship doesn’t mean you’ve made a choice once and for all, it doesn’t, because it’s always changing — you’re changing, your partner is changing. Staying in a close relationship with a partner makes this choice every day, and maybe more often, and this is the freedom to be in a relationship.
Counterdependence
The polarity of the merger, where the boundaries are completely or partially blurred, is a situation where the boundaries are so rigid and inelastic that they cannot be opened at all, or it is impossible to adequately regulate the opening-closing phases of the borders, they are rigid. Counterdependent behavior is most often demonstrated by adolescents at the time of necessary separation from their parents, when their authority, rules and norms are questioned - the teenager rebels. Growing up is about being able to do what you want, even if your mother wants it. With this behavior, a person feels isolated and lonely, despite the fact that in life he can have a large number of diverse communication. Such people most often experience the so-called fear of intimacy, which, of course, can also be accompanied by other experiences, since we are all unique in our subjectivity. While intimacy allows you to share grief, sorrow, suffering, and increase joy, happiness, love.
Five conditions necessary for intimacy
First conditionA desire or intention to enter into a close relationship. It’s a choice that I’ll have to take responsibility for, sometimes it’s hard to realize, and then it’s easier to be offended or blame the other for not being close for some reason.
Second conditionThis is the courage necessary to take such a risky step and present yourself. Every time we get close, we take risks. We risk rejection, we risk pain, because we become vulnerable or defenseless: “My poor hedgehog has shed all the needles – he is completely handy.” And that courage commands me a lot of respect.
Third condition- trust. It is my intention to trust this person with everything that is. Sometimes it seems to us incredibly terrible, more often it is the human that is in almost everyone because of our imperfect nature. At times, trust is a very fragile substance, especially if there is a “negative” experience of being betrayed. This could happen in any format of relationships: child-parent, friendly, romantic. This is what is often called betrayal. This is not about a fact, but about entrusting oneself to another. So heavy feelings and their various combinations can be born: fear, shame, fear of shame, shame. Then a lot of work needs to be done, for example, in therapy, to step by step, very slowly in the process of therapeutic relationships, to restore this amazing opportunity and gift of trust.
Fourth condition.Respect for otherness or recognition of another’s right to be different. This is what is called acceptance. It's about the other person not having to live up to my expectations. In the same way, intimacy requires nothing in return, for intimacy may not be reciprocal. Accepting the other is not an easy story, and I think it’s almost 100% unattainable unless you’re enlightened. It is rather about intention, about the possibility of dialogue and the ability to negotiate in difficult moments.
The sneaker story
Rights and non-duties: You always have a choice!
Fifth condition.- mindfulness. It is awareness that allows you to “feel” your own boundaries and regulate their permeability. Mindfulness allows you to decide who and how close I let. There is no need to be open-minded with everyone, engaging in soulful striptease, it is reasonable to share different levels of intimacy and distance with different people.
Thus, when confronted with questions of intimacy, one inevitably encounters existential experiences of loneliness, imperfection, responsibility, freedom, and choice. And this allows us to hope that a person is able to create his own life, making conscious choices and taking responsibility for them.
Author: Aksiatov Marat
P.S. And remember, just changing our consumption – together we change the world!
Source: mongus.space/en/2016/05/04/pyat-uslovii-blizosti/
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