Cycle of Intimacy

When we are without a partner but are hoping to find someone special in our lives it is a bit like walking around with a map or template in hand comparing the image on the paper with the people we meet. "Hmm, does she fit? Does he fit?" Of course, we are not doing this consciously. We may even have a conscious image of the sort of person we are looking for and then discover feelings of attraction to someone very different from whom we thought we wanted to be with.

When Joe met Jamie at that wedding reception [back in Chapter Two] he felt immediately drawn to her. She felt safe. She was someone he could talk to. He believed he could depend on her.

When we enter into relationships with others it is because of the things we have in common. We have to be in the same place--if only in the same chat room--and be speaking the same language. We have aspects of our life in common.

But we are also different. If we were just the same we probably wouldn't be so interested in each other. There are ways in which we are looking for others to be different from who we understand ourselves to be.

Joe knew that he was not good at naming and expressing his feelings. But Jamie seemed to know just what was going on with him and could help him understand and express himself.

There are aspects of who we are that we share--that we have in common--and there are ways in which we are different. Some of those differences are just the things which attract us to the other. But some of those differences are ones we don't like. They don't fit with our imago and they don't satisfy what we need.

When Joe and Jamie had been dating for several months and went to the wedding of some of her close friends, Jamie was so excited to reconnect with some of her old friends she neglected Joe. Joe was expecting her to be close to him and to assuage his anxiety of being out of place. Instead Jamie left him alone and he became more upset.

So there are differences we like and differences we don't like. The differences we like draw us toward the other while the differences we don't like tend to move us to greater distance. We get to decide for ourselves which differences we like or don't like and what we will do about them when they arise in our relationships.

A graphic depiction of this dynamic is what I call the Cycle of Intimacy. Starting from the top center we move into relationships because of having a setting in common but we stay or leave because of the differences we discover.

When we are attracted to those differences we take the risk of being open to the relationship. This is a risk because, while this is a difference to which we are attracted, it may well be a difference the other doesn't like. We may be setting ourselves up for rejection. Thus, we have to be vulnerable and discover that it is safe to do so if we are to build intimacy with the other. This experience of intimacy creates a new ground of commonality from which we discover new differences and the cycle repeats.

When, however, we discover a difference we don't like, we feel repulsed and find ourselves closing up and backing away. We toughen or harden our stance toward the other and we seek the safety of distance (we remove proximity) and become alienated.

This alienation may invite us to assert how we want things to be or how we want the other to be, or we may continue to move away and find ourselves alone.

I hope this map enables you see your own experience in a way that helps you to negotiate your circumstances better. For the purposes of our discussion here I just want to make two central points.

1. At its most basic a conflict is simply "a difference I don't like." Things are not as I want them to be. All relationships have conflict. The inherent momentum of conflict is that it moves us away from intimacy.

2. If we want to build intimacy we have to address these conflicts in a way that takes seriously our own vulnerability as well as that of our partner and creates safety for both of us. Whenever we act to compromise our own or the other's safety, we move to the left hand side of the cycle and, thus, toward alienation and aloneness.