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By Stuart Altschuler: Intimacy is not necessarily
about having a mate as much as it as about
speaking the truth in all your relationships
so as to eliminate any barriers to love and
understanding. To “tell the truth, faster”
to yourself, God (or whatever you define as
your higher power), and to another person,
when appropriate, is the quickest way I know
to achieve intimacy in our lives.
I define intimacy as “an
expression of our natural desire for
connection”. This is the working definition
I use in an intensive seminar I lead on
intimacy. The key words in this definition
are “natural” and “connection”. The most
natural and intimate connection any of us
have ever had was when we were connected to
our mothers through our umbilical cord, in
the womb. From the moment this was cut, we
spend the rest of our lives searching for
that connection again. At the same time we
are forced to deal with the guilt and the
shame we have been taught to feel about our
desire for that much connection. Emotional
traumas, abuse and our perception of
abandonment and loss, all help us build
protective barriers that only serve to keep
us disconnected. Our fear of connection
(intimacy) creates a constant sense of
separation that becomes very familiar.
Familiarity tricks us into thinking that we
are safe when separate or disconnected, so
we create patterns in behaviors and
relationships that keep us “safe” but very
alone and often unhappy and unfulfilled.
Always coupled with this
developed fear of intimacy is a problem of
low self-esteem. How many of us have thought
at one time or another, “if only I had a
hard body, or looked better, I would be more
desirable and have no problems finding a
mate?” As a therapist, I have worked with
bodybuilders, actors and models who did not
see their physical beauty when they looked
in the mirror. The health clubs are filled
with “gorgeous” women and men who are there,
not to enhance their health and well-being
but to fix what they think is wrong with
their life. When they, or any of us look in
the mirror, many of us hear messages we were
taught to believe; that we are not good
enough or that we are not wanted. If we find
someone that wants us, our low self-esteem
makes us think that there might be something
wrong with them for finding us attractive or
we don’t trust their honesty. The frequent
answers to this problem, in our
dysfunctional mind is to push them away or
to find as many partners as possible to try
to convince ourselves that we might be
desirable. Or we create a pattern of
relationships with partners who support our
thought of not being good enough or partners
that give us the abuse outwardly we impose
on ourselves inwardly.
The epidemic of low
self-esteem has been eating away at the
internal organs of people in this country
for a long time. It is easy to blame
parents, religions, governments and almost
anything outside us. But blame is not the
answer. This victim consciousness is as
destructive a form of abuse as any abusive
mate or partner we choose to stay with. A
person who learns to treat themselves with
love, compassion, and respect, will, I
believe, create a position in society that
will invite the same treatment from others
and give us the confidence to remove
ourselves from situations that do not allow
intimacy.
Sex is word that catches
most people’s attention. It is a drive or
desire that consumes a great deal of
emotional and mental energy for most of us,
and it is an activity most of us wish we
participated in more often. Perhaps, for
some of us, it is an activity that already
consumes too much of our time and energy.
Even for the emotionally healthy among us,
and in the healthiest of relationships, it
is often the most difficult area of our
lives to discuss, negotiate and forgive.
Sex is something many of us
use to create a sense of separation. Despite
the feeling of physical connection, it can
be an uncommunicative focus on the body or
orgasm and it is only momentarily nurturing
or fulfilling, if anything at all.
Sex can also be an
expression of our natural desire for
connection (intimacy). For many it means
that our fears of intimacy need to be
identified and healed and the patterns we
have developed to avoid intimacy need to be
eliminated, and new healthier ones
reinforced.
Sex as an expression of
intimacy, may or may not involve orgasm.
Touching, holding, exploring each others (or
our own) body, talking before during and
after, learning how to relax and be playful,
healing our own judgments about our own
body, are all concepts and practices to be
incorporated into a healthy sex life.
Other methods of
disconnecting or separating are things like
judging, anger, illness, self-criticism,
alcohol, drugs, eating and or any other
compulsive behaviors.
In the “Age of AIDS”, all
conscious human beings are being forced to
examine their thoughts, feelings and
behavioral patterns about relationships and
sex. Most people I know, when they finally
start exploring these areas, find at least a
sense of dissatisfaction, if not total
disgust, in themselves and their sexual and
relationship history. For many it seems
easier to deny these problems and to
continue to seeking bodies for sex and
unfulfilling relationships. For these
individuals, the answer truly may be
eroticizing “safer sex” and condemn use to
at least save their lives and the lives of
their partners. To only focus on the
mechanics of sexual activity, however, is a
crime against all of society and an
opportunistic infection worse than
Pneumocystis.
To me, more than anything,
the most important factor in expressing a
higher level of intimacy is “learning to
tell the truth faster.” Moving through the
fears, angers and discomfort by realizing
them quickly, is a tool that keeps us clear
and more in present time and always
connected. What I have described is beyond
sex. It is making love. Expressing our
natural desire for connection, making love
in any form creates a sense of union instead
of separation.
When a person is willing to
see it as such, this moving towards a deeper
state of intimacy or union in one’s life,
allows for a deeper spiritual connection. It
brings a deeper since of peace, a more
profound sense of safety and returns us to a
familiar time of innocence- -a time when we
were newly born, before the fearful adults
around us had time to impose their limits on
a child’s natural connection with spirit. We
have never lost this and it is not so hard
to reconnect with it. It only takes
willingness to start the learning process.
--- 1990
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