Intimacy's Extraordinary Ability to Reveal Who We Are

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Who knows you best? Who knows you better than anyone else and sometimes even better than you know yourself?

The answer to these attention-grabbing questions should come quickly and unequivocally: Doubtless, it's our intimate partners who "read us like a book," as the saying goes. The close, even sometimes confining, physical and emotional quarters we share with our partners fling wide open the doors of who we are—or, more graphically, like a scalpel in the hands of a skilled surgeon, our "emotional entrails" are laid out plainly and conspicuously.

The Great Revealer

The intimate relationship guarantees never-ending up-close-and-personal encounters of virtually every conceivable kind. Within this entangled, rigorous context, we are revealed in glorious and inglorious detail. More specifically, our strengths, weaknesses, and everything in between are on unedited display, at times manifesting themselves subtly and at other times, glaringly. But they're inevitably laid bare: There's nowhere to hide in the intimate relationship; who we are is constantly being mirrored. And, while our personal attributes may bubble to the surface within any relationship, none other rises to the same level of competency in bearing expert witness to the person we are in the same consistent, in-depth, or comprehensive way. Surely, intimacy is in a league of its own.

Two Essential Relationships

So, what exactly is revealed? Sam Keen wrote in his book, The Passionate Life: The Stages of Loving, "No one escapes childhood unscathed." Keen's observation is persuasive, if not commonsense. None of us is fortunate enough to have had a perfect upbringing or ideal parenting, nor is there consensual scientific agreement on what that may be. Nonetheless, our first relationship with our primary caregivers is formative or prototypical and impacts us in a "genetic-like" way, touching every aspect of our early development, especially emotional development. And so, our developmental defects and personal glitches can reveal past parental mal-attunement that leapfrogs into the "next round of intimacy" with our current partners like a debilitating and protracted "hangover."

The Revealed Relationship Illustrated

Here's an example: From a young, vulnerable age, Stephanie's parents argued bitterly and frequently. To Stephanie, these were seismic, earth-shaking crises that profoundly scared her, forcing her to emotionally withdraw from her parents in desperate self-preservation. Expectedly, her protective retreat significantly damaged the development of trust in her parents and herself.

Now, in her current intimate relationship, she vigilantly and agilely dodges even the slightest inkling of upset, argument, or conflict. Her defenses deploy the regrettable tactics of submissiveness, over-conformity, and inordinate people pleasing, all of which are designed to keep the interpersonal boat from rocking, Even to the point of self-forfeiture, Stephanie downplays, and even ignores, her needs to keep the interactional waters smooth and unperturbed. Her intimate relationship, more keenly than any other, reveals these developmental deficiencies—the crippling gaps in her emotional maturity. The ghosts of Stephanie's past actively haunt her.

So, what should Stephanie do with this self-revealing trove of personal information? Clearly, her best option is to use it to her advantage. As a child, she was the innocent, passive victim of her parent's immaturity, and, for very understandable reasons, she had limited, or little, internal coping strategies or resources available to her. Now, as an adult, however, it is incumbent upon her to assume responsibility for what has been revealed and go about the important business of furthering her emotional development by providing herself with what her parents couldn't.

A Towering Personal Mandate

Stephanie's tall personal "mandate" is to fully shoulder the mantle of an ideal or optimal parent. In brief, she must "re-parent" herself. This is no small undertaking; again, it can be Herculean, but she should take it on nevertheless because it's overwhelmingly preferred to the backward-leaning alternative of preserving the status quo with its personally stultifying and regressive pull of her past. Specifically, she should discipline herself to purposefully and assertively identify her needs, especially those related to her intimate partner, with whom she faces the continuous threat of "invisibility." By taking on this arduous task, she "constructs" a stronger self-definition, a reinforced sense of who she is, or, simply, a healthy identity.

As Stephanie learns to reconstruct herself from the ground up—need by need—her next step is to grow an actionable confidence in the fundamental legitimacy of those needs. For example, her basic needs to be respectfully and sensitively understood by her intimate partner are, without question, valid. Given their basic legitimacy, her needs cry out for active management—doing so further burnishes Stephanie's growing and positive sense of herself. She is gradually but increasingly coming into sharper focus; she's becoming a "presence" in her relationships, one that merits and rightfully expects to be a part of the decision-making, compromises, and day-to-day bargaining—in short, the normal give-and-take that characterizes quality relationships.

Our Fullest Emotional Maturity

By whatever conceptual or theoretical criteria we define emotional maturity, arguably, without the unique advantages conferred through our "membership" in an intimate relationship, our fullest emotional maturity may lie beyond our reach. Like membership in an exclusive club, it isn't always easy to maintain, and the "dues" can be hefty when considering we're rendered emotionally naked and, worse, underprotected by our usual defenses.

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A Metaphorical MRI

Like a high-tech scan of our psyche, the intimate relationship uncannily vets us to our emotional core, leaving us opened up and exposed. Once revealed, these personalized psychodiagnostics lay out a flowing blueprint, a clear treatment plan for self-repair and further emotional development. These "customized details" aren't revealed in our less-complicated relationships in quite the same way, which, again, points up intimacy's unique abilities and advantages.

Now, the upbeat news: We can take advantage of what life with our intimate other reveals about us and put the much-needed finishing touches to our incompletely developed self and, thus, exploit the remarkable resources of the intimate relationship as our best vehicle for change and growth.