Some thoughts on intimacy

Intimacy presupposes mutuality, sharing, both giving to and receiving from the other.  At its height, intimacy is a kind of complete and total motion of offering/receiving -- emptying oneself in love while receiving the gift of the other, in love… as a way of life.

To move from theory and ideal to practice, we have to start with basic human realities like needs.  To begin to understand the practical work of intimacy, I will have to understand that - as a human being - I am limited.  I need things like air, water, food, shelter, covering… And more to the point of intimacy in relationship, I need comfort, affirmation, to belong; I need support, understanding, to be known and accepted.  When I invite the other into my needfulness, I initiate the motion of intimacy.  When we enter into the reality of each other’s needs -- sharing, seeing, understanding, and making room for the needs of the other in our shared life, we are doing the work of intimacy.  This, of course, is a vulnerable process.  There is always a risk involved when I am putting my weakness, my pain, my insufficiency within reach of another.  I am hoping that the other will be kind and patient and gentle with the parts of myself that need something to find completion.  And, in turn, I extend my own kindness, my own understanding, empathy and compassion to the other, in her place of needful vulnerability, and we are doing the dance of intimacy.

Sex is often confused/conflated with intimacy.  There is a good reason for this, I think.  Based on what we’ve said above, sex - in its fullest sense - is a kind of metaphor and symbol of the reality of intimacy in marriage. It is, of course, a facet of intimacy, and it is a kind of descriptive image of it as well.  We make ourselves completely naked (uncovered, exposed, seen, vulnerable) before the other, and we give only what we have (in the most raw and basic sense), hoping to receive the same from the other.  We find that we are more together.  We find our incompleteness completed in the other.

Now, imagine that this can also happen at the level of soul and mind and strength, as well as at the level of body.  

We have been made for intimacy with God.  Intimacy within marriage propels us toward and is a revelation of what intimacy with God can be.