[W]hat is true intimacy?

Question

You can love each other but can still be intimacy deficient or have an intimacy disorder. So don’t use love to cover what true intimacy is. Dig deep in your answers please. What defines having a relationship where both are very intimate with each other.

Answer 1

My experience with intimacy with my fiancee led me to see that it was about learning to accept myself for who I am. A friend of mine once suggested that inimacy really stands for "Into me you see", because true intimacy only comes when all barriers have been removed, and all the "faces" that we put on the world have been taken off. The person sees ALL of you.

It has been a frighteningly difficult and incredibly rewarding experience for me, as my fiancee loves me dearly and essentially sees through all my bull$#&* anyway, so I have had to learn to let it all go.

And yes, you can still love someone and have an intimacy disorder, though I wouldn't call it a disorder. It is just that you have to be willing, and have courage to let someone see ALL of you. The good, the bad, and the ugly. In marriage they say, "For better or for worse", and true intimacy means loving someone's worse as well.

Ultimately when it came down to it, I had to face the fact that though I am very outgoing and social and very likable... deep down I thought I was a worthless piece of $&%#, so how could anyone really want to know me... Therefore, the time I could say true intimacy began with my girlfriend (now fiancee), was when I was crying on my bed in my room, afraid of failing. Instead of doing this alone, as I had done in the past... she was there with me, just holding and loving me. I let her in in a way I had never let anyone in before.

It was as if she was the first person I had ever let into my "cave". You know, that place where you hold those pieces of yourself that NOBODY can EVER see, or the world will fall apart. Well, I can tell you that letting her in that way birthed an intimacy the likes of which I have never seen before.

That was 6 months ago, and it continues to this day. We continue to have a deepening level of intimacy. This has taken a lot of courage and perserverance on my part. My belief is that love is what gives you the courage to pursue intimacy.

Blessings to you for your wonderful and insightful question.

Answer 2

To me is being able to connect in every level. The love making is one thing. I tell my when on ocassion my husband asks me why I love him I say "I don't love you because I need you, I need you, because I LOVE YOU".
Is being able to be your own person when apart from each other but become one as soon as you are together. is talking about the smallest thing or detail of your day. Sharing it all, I mean everyone does have secrets but sharing each others pain and glory and hurting and rejoicing with them.
Is waking up and realizing that he has been awake for a while and watching you and see yourself in those eyes and realize everyday, that he feels the same as you do.

Answer 3

confident, you have actual love without genuine intimacy yet very hardly any different way around. Love is extra of an action that a feeling. the place as intimacy is being susceptible and letting your actual self show and function the means to share with one yet another without worry of being harm...you have genuine intimacy by using prayer in spite of if with a chum, companion or with God....and frequently you have actual like to be prepared to be that susceptible.

Answer 4

What is intimacy? It is one`s innate desire to open one`s heart a little more. All of us donot open ourselves completely to others. We keep a small part of our innerselves , closely guarded. In that part are tucked a lot of our pain, our suffereing, our complexes, our disappointments. We live with them for fear of our inability to open up for want of trust and empathy.

In true intimacy we tend to open up , little by little these corners of our heart, with the hope that whoever we are sharing with will keep them to himself and will share our feelings with concern..

Love tends to ease our opening up bit by bit. We want to see at each step that we are comfortable sharing this feeling without being rediculed , laughed at. This is invariably a slow process. and it has to work both ways.

Both should also accept the fact however intimate they are there still be a corner totally for oneself. That cannot be pried open.

Answer 5

Intimacy is being able to tell someone everything you're feeling without any discomfort. It's being able to cry about anything, even the smallest thing, with your partner comforting you, and not feel ashamed in any way. It's being able to embrace them and look into their eyes for minutes, without feeling nervous, afraid, or confronted. It's about having compassion for them whenever they're upset, for whatever reason they may be feeling that way. It's being able to apologize for anything you did to hurt them, even if it was unintentional. Just a few things I thought of :)

Answer 6

It's being truly honest with each other, it's being able to know what the other is thinking or feeling without being told, it's being able to finish each other's sentances, it's being able to spend the whole day in the same room saying nothing at all or being in the same room just laying in each other's arms.

Answer 7

being intimate with someone can mean more than a physical thing like a romp in the hay... it's a mental/emotional connection, a trusting of the other person with your soul, its something that is hard to explain...