The sculpture above is entitled
Friendship by Miguel Guía. This week while reading a chapter on intimacy for one of my classes, I read this section I wanted to share with yall.
Most people don't realize that relationship success also creates systemic pressures that make balancing closeness and intimacy difficult. The more valued the relationship, the more there is to lose. We feel more anxiety in being intimate in the sense of being honestly and fully ourselves. Yet if we want passion, we need the spark and invigoration of intimacy. One of the central dilemmas of [relationships] is that the more important a relationship becomes, the more difficult it is to sustain passion. This is so because the tension between closeness and intimacy becomes increasingly profound. The paradox of closeness and intimacy is that the only way to really have either is to be willing at times to sacrifice closeness for the sake of intimacy. In other words, to be liked we have to be willing to risk not being liked, for the sake of being known accurately.
The above paragraph was written with romantic couples in mind, but I think the points presented are readily applicable to all types of relationships. Does this paragraph resonate with yall at all? The line that keeps coming back to me is
'[we must be] willing at times to sacrifice closeness for the sake of intimacy.'
The sculpture above is entitled Friendship by Miguel Guía. This week while reading a chapter on intimacy for one of my classes, I read this section I wanted to share with yall.
4 comments:
I'm actually struggling to follow it. I'm ok until I get here:
One of the central dilemmas of [relationships] is that the more important a relationship becomes, the more difficult it is to sustain passion.
The example indicates that in order to be liked, we need to show our uniqueness. Will you connect those for me?
The way that I understand it is thus: (Disclaimer: I'm going to run on here for a bit. You can read it, or just skip down to the paragraph break and read the short version) In the early going of a relationship, it's fairly easy to just spend time close to each other and feel 'the passion.' Whether that's butterflies or warm fuzzy or goofiness w/ a new friend, whatever. You're close with the person, but not truly intimate with them because they don't really appreciate your uniqueness yet. They know that you're enjoyable and that yall have fun together, but they don't know that you actually like black jelly beans, get your hair cut by a personal stylist, think that marajuana should be leaglized, etc. So, the more time you spend with someone, there is a natural pressure to increasingly disclose those more intimate details. That's all well and good until you work your way through all the funny and happy details and gets harder when you've known someone a long time and they still don't know that you're addicted to pornography or your dad beat you when you were a kid, or whatever. Yet, without the disclosing of the more difficult details the 'passion' of that relationship fades because of myriad reasons.
The short answer: passionate involvement in any relationship is largely a function of intimate disclosure which gets more and more difficult the deeper and darker the details become. Does that make sense?
Sorry about the simultaneous serious-natured blog posts :/
It's resonating. I'm not sure what to say about it, but it's brewing.
Good post, Micah. I agree that often when friendships are budding you're careful abotu what details you let out. And afraid that by disclosing too much you'll lose the person.
But then I think once a relationship/friendship has progressed for a substantial period of time the test is about what to say when its all been said. The challenge is the proverbial silence over the breakfast table.
-M.
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