Intimacy Reworked and Updated

With all the changes going on in my life, I've learned some things about how others see the world, and as usual, perspective is often helpful. I was lamenting that intimacy suffers when the four pillars of intimacy are weaponized; transparency is seen as betrayal, vulnerability is judged, dialogue is nonexistent, and reciprocity is forced. While we'd all like these things to be easy and automatic, that simply isn't the case - both sides must work at them, often in baby steps, to get them viable on their own - at which point maintenance becomes paramount. This can be done through intermittent reevaluation, provided both sides are on board, and with the understanding reevaluation is going to require a little of each; transparency, vulnerability, dialog, and reciprocity. Some see this process as an omenic Catch-22. I see it as a self-perpetuating happiness machine. As long as one shares true intimacy, nothing can't be solved.

I've since learned more about transparency-as-betrayal, and how it can be misused for two different, nefarious purposes. One, is as an ultimatum, and the other, as deception. We can tackle the latter first, as it's the easiest. True transparency reveals intent. If one has ulterior motives hidden behind transparency, that's not transparency - and remember in order to stand up to scrutiny, these pillars of intimacy have to stand up both individually, and collectively. This simply means transparency may temporarily obfuscate intent, but when practiced in conjunction with vulnerability, honest dialogue, and reciprocity, intent will be revealed. The former misuse is more difficult to quantify, so I'll illustrate with an example: If one is transparent about controlling the actions of someone, "or else" that may be considered an ultimatum. If however, someone is transparent about refusing to be controlled, is that also an ultimatum? Denotatively, sure; connotatively, only one is being used to restrict, and I think we all agree we should never minimize ourselves to be loved by another as that is never sustainable.

When someone's trust is broken we usually think of the obvious ones - cheaters and liars. But the entire concept of vulnerability takes massive amounts of trust to establish and maintain, so while judging someone when they are vulnerable with you may not have the immediate devastation crimes of passion do, it still has teeth, and can negatively affect relationships built on trust.

Dialogue of course is how we establish and maintain all of these components, without which, there is nothing.

Which brings us to reciprocity. I had a long conversation about this today and this was probably the toughest. Every single one of us wants to be loved for who we are and to receive it in our own personal love language(s). We are all guilty of unstated expectation from time to time, but sometimes we either don't hear the other's explicit requests, or they don't hear ours, or some combination of the two. If we feel we have to beg for it, reciprocity loses its power, because it then it becomes transactional, and that can be disheartening.

Because we've seen some of the challenges in intimacy, I'd like to amened to the cornerstones - the foundations - two ancillary supports: Authenticity & Intent. If we can manage to incorporate these two things across four pillars, it might just help save us. Because we all need all the help we can get.