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Relationships
Intimacy is Honesty -- Up-Close and Personal
What are the unspoken promises between intimate partners?
Posted February 13, 2017
When you find yourself falling for a romantic partner, it’s normal to feel your priorities begin to shift and it’s likely that your worldview will alter as you find yourself moving from a place of staunch independence into mutual interdependence. When you’re single, you probably operate from a position in which you order your world to suit your own needs. This makes sense, of course. However, once you begin deepening a romantic relationship, you move to a place where you become willing — if not always eager — to flex your world to accommodate the needs of another.
As relationships deepen and greater amounts of time are spent together, the barriers separating one person from another begin to grow more fluid.
Unspoken Promises that should be Honored
When you think about the risks and rewards of joining another in an intimate relationship, what comes to mind? What are the fears and what are the hopes? These are the tender spots to which you must attend when you move into the intimate boundaries of a partner. Being trusted to uncover another’s hidden layers is both the reward and the price that intimate relationships require. Following is a list of 7 promises that are inherent to healthy and mature intimate relationships:
- I will be trustworthy for my partner. I will keep safe the intimate information that is shared within the relationship.
- I will, in return, to place trust in my partner even when it is scary for me to risk trust.
- I will allow my partner to explore who I am, where I came from, and where I want to go. I will let the façade of protection be breached to allow another to know me as I am.
- I will honor the “we” that is created through our relationship and will recognize that what is right for “us” may not always be what is “easy” for me.
- I will be present for my partner in ways that confirm to my partner that it is safe to risk exposure and vulnerability with me.
- I will be loyal to the relationship and to my partner and will behave in ways that earn my partner’s loyalty in return.
- I will recognize that the shared identity we create is a complex blend of our individual identities and it should be a reflection of the ideal that we would like to strive to become — not just a mirror of the mundane.
The Intimacy Bellwether
Perhaps one of the most important milestones that occurs as a relationship grows more stable and a couple grows closer is the first time you hear your partner use the word “we” aloud to a person outside the relationship. Like when he’s on the phone with a pal and he says something like, “I’m not sure what we’re doing next week, let me check and I’ll get back to you” or “I know, Mom, you want to see us, but we need to see what we’ve got going on that day.” It can send a tingle down your spine and light up a smile when you realize that your partner is beginning to recognize and describe the two of you as a couple. This breathes a strong sense of sturdiness or “realness” into the connection and the walls between the two of you drop a little further.
Risk as a Factor in Intimacy
Intimate relationships allow us the opportunity to know someone in ways that most relationships and interactions with other just cannot allow. The word "intimacy" comes from the Latin words intimatus, which means to make known, announce, impress, and intimus, which means inmost, innermost, and deepest. Thus, becoming intimate with another requires that we allow that person access to the parts of ourselves that we may usually prefer to keep hidden from others.
The risk in letting in someone so close lies in the fear of rejection and in the fear of being found inadequate in some essential way. You also might fear the risk of having another person know you more honestly than you know yourself. When many individuals seeking counseling arrive in the therapists office for the first time, they often fear that their therapists will “read their minds” or see more than the client wants to allow to be seen. Intimate romantic relationships can generate the same fear — by opening up to another, you are putting yourself at risk of having another person see qualities and vulnerabilities you possess that you have been unaware of for a lifetime — or spent a lifetime trying to hide! Unfortunately, risk is a mandatory component of activities that encourage us to grow and stretch beyond existing limits. Without moving into the unknown, we are confined to what is, not what could be.
Trust as a Factor in Intimacy
One of the biggest pay-offs from intimate relationships is learning just what it means to fully trust another — with what is known and not known about you, your partner, and the shared identity you create as a couple. However, not every casual partner would necessarily be worthy of trust, nor should you allow every potential partner to intimately know you. It may take time to develop the skill of being able to discern between those with whom you only want to be sexual from those with whom you want to be truly intimate.
There is a mystical and complex relationship between the layers of discovery that arise through the layer-by-layer uncovering of your true self. As each protective layer is peeled away, another layer of depth is added to the bond between intimate partners. With each new discovery of what lies beneath, the shared identity the couple creates grows richer and more complete.
Relationships are more than You & Me
A healthy intimate relationship exists beyond the identity boundaries of either partner. It exists both as separate from and a part of two individuals who are able to relate to one another in such a way that a new identity is created and a new future is imagined into the realms of possibility.
In essence, it is within the relationship — an entity in itself — that lies the true promise, and the risk worth taking, of intimacy.
