Enemy of Intimacy

Appropriate intimacy is a significant component of all interpersonal relationships. Defining "appropriate" can be a challenge, but typically only when one person wants to increase the degree of intimacy while the other prefers to keep things as they are. Different cultures also express degrees of intimacy through different symbolic expressions and gestures, adding a layer of complexity. For the sake of this brief exploration, we’ll limit ourselves to the middle-class Western social context.

In romantic relationships, especially after marriage, increased intimacy is an implicit and explicit goal. Physical and sexual intimacies are only part of the story. What really binds a couple together is emotional and spiritual intimacy. As relationships develop, stories are shared, more and more of the past is laid bare, preferences, values, and aspirations for the future are set out. When two people experience a lot of overlap in these areas, a strong bond grows between them.

Intimacy produces trust as character traits are disclosed. Stated values become evident in everyday life. It is one thing to value the truth, it is another to tell the truth even when it is to one’s own disadvantage. As trust grows, intimacy is enhanced. It is a delightful sensation (a deliberately chosen word from the physical realm) when we get to the point with another human being where there are no secrets, where all of the "important stuff" is expressed and embraced, accepted or forgiven as warranted.

Every good argument requires the definition of terms, so we’ll take a look at intimacy first. Dictionaries are remarkably terse, as in "The state of being intimate, confidential friendship, close association." With all due respect to lexicographers, because intimacy is such an emotionally laden concept, it’s tough to go there with mere words. Simply put, intimacy is about self revelation. Whatever motivates it, from passion to politics, it is a cry of "Know me!" from one heart to another.

This is not always welcomed. Sometimes the desire for intimacy is inappropriate, even illicit, violating previously made promises on which others are depending. So sometimes the cry may be legitimately disregarded.

It may also not be welcomed where there is a clear expectation of reciprocation which would be inappropriate or not sustainable. People in grief, deprived of the one with whom they have been most intimate, sometimes latch onto someone else emotionally. This isn’t necessarily bad, and may be an important step in the grieving process, but if it comes with an expectation that the other will reciprocate, it may have to be rebuffed.

However, there are times and circumstances where the cry is welcomed and reciprocated at a similar level and intensity. When that happens, intimacy is born, initiating closeness, vulnerability, familiarity, and comfort. As the layers of self revelation are pealed back four responses are likely to elicited.

The revelation "I have to tell you, I love country music," could elicit:

• "That’s wonderful, let’s go back to my place and watch my ‘Garth Brooks in Concert’ video."

• "That’s OK, we all have our weaknesses. Personally, I’m a metallica fan."

• "You’re making it difficult for me. I’ve always thought of country music as _________ (fill in the blank: crude, low-class, unsophisticated, beneath me, other), but I’ll forgive you for that.

• "This is a deal breaker. I can’t keep seeing you. Hank Snow probably has a song about how you’re feeling right now.

That revelation didn’t make you too vulnerable. After all, how could you share your life with someone who did know who George Strait is. But how about: "I feel I have to tell you something that I’m really ashamed of now. I was very promiscuous when I was a teenager. You seem like such a decent person, I thought you should know this before we get too involved emotionally." This could draw out something like:

• "Oh, don’t worry. I have things in my past that I’m not proud of either. I believe when God forgives us, we’re forgiven."

• "I’ll confess to you, that this news bothers me. But I’m not trying to build a relationship with the person you were as a teenager. I want to know who you are now.

• "That kinda took me off guard. I’m not sure if you’re asking for my forgiveness, but I think I can offer you that if you give me some time to process this little news flash.

• "How could you! I trusted you. I thought I knew you. I really can’t go on with this relationship. I just can’t imagine..."

No matter how many revelations you make, you’re likely to get a response from one of these categories:

• Celebration – The other embraces the revelation enthusiastically.

• Acceptance – The other accepts the revelation as a neutral fact.

• Forgiveness – The other rejects the behaviour, but commits to moving forward with you.

• Rejection – The other simply can’t deal with the revelation and the relationship takes a step toward disintegration, perhaps to the point of dissolving.

As long as you stay in the positive 75% of celebration, acceptance and forgiveness, intimacy can keep growing. Rejection, however, is a threat to any relationship regardless of the stage it’s in. When it becomes the pattern, the threat escalates. However, even with the threat that rejection brings to a relationship, you have more constructive tools than destructive ones. Rejection is most likely to show up in the early stages of a relationship while the participants are still in the "getting to know you" phase. Once a relationship has been established, it is quite remarkable how resilient it can be, even in the face of quite serious betrayal.

Of course, there is bad news and the bad news is that intimacy can be lost, just as it can be gained. This is rarely intentional, but can be. More on that later. Usually unintentionally, the enemy of intimacy weakens more and more significant aspects of the relationship structure until the whole thing collapses in a pile of rubble, crushing those who are trapped inside.

This enemy is subtle, entering unnoticed into the superficial layers of the relationship first, destroying as he goes to its very heart. Carefully working each side against the other, he goes undetected as each blames the other for the problems, ignoring or misidentifying him. This only delays exposing him. Now, unlike a good mystery story where the villain is revealed in the last paragraph or so, we must uncover the rascal before we can discuss his dastardly work.

The enemy of intimacy is "Injustice." Working equally in the psyche of victim and perpetrator, Injustice often serves as a double agent, so that both parties are both victims and perpetrators.

In speaking about intimacy, I’m not referring to sexual excitement, or pseudo-intimacy. I’m talking about the real thing - genuine self-revelation. You only have to consume a fragment of contemporary media to learn that sex with strangers is not so strange or that what passes for self-revelation is carefully spun to appeal to build political support.

It’s possible for a couple to be sexually active and appear quite "lovey-dovey" in public and still have nothing approaching real intimacy. Physical attraction and a reputation to uphold can be powerful things in themselves. Remember that intimacy is the desire to be known. It’s about self-revelation, about making oneself vulnerable, about sharing a common life. This, by the way, is not about one party consuming the other, but about both voluntarily bringing their lives together to live as one. The sad fact is that there are many more weddings than marriages!

So let’s consider a relationship with time-tested intimacy, self-disclosure, vulnerability, openness, honesty - a real marriage. One day, Netty is on lunch break and goes shopping with a friend from work. She and Jeb have carefully constructed a budget which will allow them to meet their common goals for themselves and their family. But on a whim, Netty decides to buy a certain "thing" and keep it a secret. She knows Jeb wouldn’t approve, but after all, we’re only talking a couple of hundred dollars and this is something that would please her. Doesn’t Jeb say all the time that he wants to please her. This would please her so...

Injustice has just taken a little something from the relationship. Netty knows that Jeb would certainly forgive her if she told him how she caved in to this whim. He’d probably even accept it. There’s a remote possibility that he’d embrace it. But Netty isn’t going to make room for any of those responses. She has begun to harden her heart on this one and is not going to tell him. She charged it on a card he never uses. It will be her little secret.

Netty can’t be intimate with Jeb now, because she knows she has played him false. Once she’s started dabbling in injustice, the only way to be intimate is to confess that, which she’s not about to do. So she fakes it with a lot of talk about this and that, her car, her workmates, things she’d like to see done around the house. It starts to feel normal. No big deal. Oh! Except for wondering about how he’d really react if he knew.

And then he does know. Through a fluke of timing, he arrives home first, gets the mail, opens the unusual statement (which is in both their names, because they share everything). He asks her about it. She gets defensive. He presses, reminding her of their shared goals. She says that maybe she’s changed and other things are important to her now. He wants to know what she means by that. She stonewalls him.

Now Jeb doesn’t want to be intimate with Netty because he feels taken advantage of. He wonders what else she keeping from him. He withdraws to protect himself. He thinks that maybe he’ll start eating lunch out with his colleagues at work more often, instead of always brown-bagging it at his desk. After all, we’re only talking $50 a week. Of course, he’s not going to tell Netty. She’d just do something crazy to get even. And Injustice has undermined another chunk of their relationship.

Small injustices are often overlooked at first. To draw attention to them seems petty. Besides, love often winks at what it sees as nothing more than lapses. Jeb and Netty try to keep the score even with a tit for tat approach, but that doesn’t help. Injustice keeps chipping away like a vandal at the cenotaph. At first, the little symbols of intimacy remain: the "good night, honeys," the good-bye pecks on the cheeks, the good natured teasing, the "can I get something for yous." Then they go. A chilly politeness envelops them like an early spring fog.

That’s all right, they read somewhere that some couples live parallel lives, sharing the same space, headed roughly in the same direction, just very independent. (Netty has come to see this as quite healthy.) The fact is, somewhere along the line, someone jumped the track. These are not parallel lives. They are lives going in distinctly different directions. The original plan has been abandoned. Values have changed. Confusion reigns. Intimacy is lost. Either one or both are feeling as trapped beneath the rubble of the relationship as earthquake victims under the sheet metal and cinder blocks of what used to be their homes.

The Jebs and Netties of the world are now set up for the big betrayal. So little intimacy remains that nothing much is left at stake. If one of them left, how much difference would it make to the other? Little, they think. There may or may not be another person who provides the opportunity for Injustice to show up with AK47s and blast everything of value that’s left of the relationship. It might be a career opportunity, trouble with a child, a crisis with an elderly parent. Something comes along and opens the door. When it slams shut, the sound echoes in the emptiness.

While it’s sad when all of this happens unintentionally, it is tragic when it happens intentionally. This is where the "big betrayal" happens much earlier, but one hides it from the other. Perhaps one person’s values shift. To live the new dream, he or she must disconnect from the other to be free from the old one. In this case, the Netty character intentionally looks for injustice, real or imagined, to justify her own acts of injustice.

If Jeb, the wide-eyed innocent, tries to adjust and keep going, the relationship becomes ridiculous. The more Netty mistreats him, the more Jeb accommodates and tries to keep the relationship going. He totally misses the fact that he’s doing artificial respiration on a corpse. Looking on from outside the relationship, Netty develops nothing but contempt for the hapless fellow who insists on making a fool of himself trying to do what he thinks is right when the battle has already been lost.

Intimacy cannot survive in an environment poisoned with injustice. A relationship cannot survive without some mutually acceptable level of intimacy. There has to be some point of common contact, some self-revelation, some knowing of the other. When one consciously holds out on the other, keeping secrets, hiding the true self, there’s little hope. It helps if one sticks with the course, regardless of how contemptible he or she is to the other. At least, there’s only half the work to do to get the relationship back on track.

Let me go in another direction for a moment. Spiritually, this is where we all are. God, by His nature, is just. Throughout the Bible, He publishes grand invitations to intimacy. It is only our hard hearts that keep that from being a reality. Look at the following:

Isaiah 55:1-2 "Ho! Everyone who thirsts, Come to the waters; And you who have no money, Come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk Without money and without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in abundance."

Matthew 11:28-29 "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

John 7:37-38 "On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’"

Re 22:17 "And the Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely."

Can there be any doubt of God’s interest in drawing us into ever more intimacy with Himself? God’s heart cry is "Know me!" To know Him is to live. Though the revelation of Jesus in His Word, through the Spirit, through the circumstances of life, He reveals Himself. Some, of course, want no part of intimacy with the Divine. At the same time, some respond, attempting to come clean about themselves and appealing for forgiveness.

I mention this because, having an intimate relationship with God is the first step toward getting our human relationships in order. I dare to suggest that intimacy with God is a prerequisite to intimacy with other people. If we refuse to own who we really are before God, what chance is there that we would do that before another human being.

Obviously, long, happy relationships exist between people who reject even the idea of God, let alone who have a relationship of any kind with Him. However satisfying such relationships may be to the people involved, I suggest that they do not change God’s standard. In our world of humanistic values, elevating human examples as norms to which we should aspire is common. Sadly, Christians have capitulated to the culture to such a degree that they are often indistinguishable from people who hold to any other philosophy, religious or not.

What I have to offer here is that even as Injustice gradually weakens intimacy, we need not allow it to dominate us. A cursory word study reveals a strong link between the Bible words for justice and righteousness, though we tend to routinely distinguish between them in English. It would be entirely fair to say that when we resort to injustice to even the score when injustice has been perpetrated against us, we are, in fact, resorting to unrighteousness.

Fairness (justice) is a great concept which is indispensable in intimate relationships. However, the lack of fairness does not grant permission to the follower of Jesus to seek redress through unrighteous behaviour of his or her own. If the one with whom we’ve enjoyed intimacy chooses to "change the rules" we may find ourselves deprived of a relationship we valued, but we can still hold onto our primary relationship, the one we have with God, as we continue to walk in righteousness.

The LORD sets prisoners free,
The LORD gives sight to the blind,
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down,
The LORD loves the righteous.
The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow.
Psalm 146:7b-9a