It’s not what you think! It’s about sharing vulnerabilities.
(01) Transactional vs. Intimate relationships
Most of our relationships are transactional, namely, the exchange of goods and services (e.g., relationships with our boss, coworkers, a merchant or customer). These involve sharing our strengths, that at which we are good.
Intimate relationships, on the other hand, involve both the exchange of our strengths as well as the sharing of our vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities include our emotions, feelings, deepest values, and the fact that the only thing we all share is our solitude. These are subjective experiences that would be inappropriate to entrust to people with whom we are in exclusively transactional relationships.
(02) Sharing Vulnerabilities
This is the simplest definition of intimacy I know.
(03) Loving the Distance Between Us
This is perhaps the most beautiful quotation about intimacy I have heard:
“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite
distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up,
if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for
each to see each other whole against the sky.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~
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