Intimacy

The Rev. Roger Fritts

November 24, 1996

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church

Bethesda, Maryland

Thanksgiving is not far off. We are entering a season of the year, the holiday season, that may have a noticeable impact on our spirits and moods. Hardly anyone is left untouched by the holidays.

Sometimes I feel thoroughly turned on by the Thanksgiving celebration, feeling a sense of exuberance, warmth, and vitality. Other times I feel disappointed, as though I have not achieved the intimacy I expected between family and friends. I waver back and forth feeling both closeness and distance this season of the year. Based on the conversations I have had over nearly twenty years as a minister, I believe I am not alone in this. I suspect this mixed experience of closeness and distance is common during the holiday we call Thanksgiving. I think one reason I am sometimes disappointed is because I have an unrealistic expectation of what intimacy and closeness really is. In my mind I sometimes believe that intimacy is the opening of ourselves to another person so that we can share all the wonderful qualities we have that we keep hidden from most other people. Certainly intimacy is this. However it also involves getting close enough to another person that they can see not only my hidden strengths, but also my hidden faults and weaknesses. Authentic closeness between friends and family, involves stepping out of our roles and being ourselves, with both our faults and our virtues.

I have learned this repeatedly in my own life, particularly my married life. Almost sixteen years ago Leslie and I married. At the time, Leslie was on the staff of the Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston. She was editing adult education programs with names such as "Building Your Own Theology," The "Couple Enrichment Program," and "Cakes for the Queen of Heaven." In her role as Minister of Women and Religion, she traveled across the United States and Canada speaking at churches and district gatherings of Unitarian Universalists. Her name appeared monthly in the magazine The Unitarian Universalist World.

On the other hand, I was, "between churches." I had a four-month gap between the end of a ministry in Kentucky and the beginning of a ministry in Massachusetts. During this time Leslie proposed to me and I had the wisdom to accept.

I must confess that I had mixed feelings about making a commitment. I enjoyed the freedom and independence that came with living alone. I like to arrange my own furniture, set up my own kitchen, and hang pictures on the wall without the bother of consulting anyone else. Like many people, my skills at living with another human being were limited. In many ways it was easier for me to live alone.

However, a big part of me needed to live in a stable relationship with another person. Not everyone has this need, but it was strong within me. It became clearest to me around this time of year, around Thanksgiving. As a student and later as a minister, I would gather with friends for holiday events. Those were good times, happy celebrations. Nevertheless, something important was missing.

If our normal relationships with people are like the experience of driving on Beach Drive through Rock Creek Park, intimacy is like stopping the car, opening the door, taking off our shoes, and walking in the grass, feeling the cold wetness of the ground against our skin. Intimacy with friends and family is like smelling the earth, tasting its fruits, and seeing the colors of blue, green and brown. I wanted to share that touch and taste and smell with another person over a long time. To meet this need, I was willing to make a vow of commitment.

Of course walking barefoot in the park and getting married are not without their hazards. The summer after our wedding, Leslie and I spent a three-week honeymoon in England.

• I remember the day we bought two round-trip train tickets. By the time we walked the thirty yards from the ticket booth to the train platform, I had somehow managed to lose mine. "Don't you realize how much they cost?" said Leslie, glaring at her new husband.
• I remember the day we rented the car. I tried to learn to drive on the left side of the road. As we approached Stonehenge, my eyes were drawn to a group of attractive young women riding bicycles. Leslie shouted, "WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING!" as the car drifted over to the right side of the road.
• We survived our trip to England, but the process of learning to live together continued. For example, during our first Thanksgiving together, I attempted to cook the turkey. I have since discovered that I am not alone. Many young people who are learning to cook a turkey do not know they should remove the plastic bag before stuffing the bird.

Learning to live with another person is a lifetime project. Although some parts are easy, fun, and joyful, many parts are difficult. Much learning goes on in our relationships, and out of that learning intimacy arises.

In a book called Escape From Intimacy, Anne Wilson Schaef talks about how Americans live in a society where achieving intimacy is difficult.

She says that many of us in America are addicted to romance in the same way an alcoholic is addicted to alcohol. The romantic experience can become a "high" like the high a person might get from a drug. The melodramatic fantasies played out in novels and soap operas can distort our expectations of reality. Moving from one new relationship to another can create a craving as we get high from novelty and newness. Such compulsion can ruin our lives.

Anne Schaef asks a series of questions that define romance addiction.

• Do we establish "instant" intimacy in a new relationship?
• Have we learned how to move in and take care of the other person quickly?
• Do we compromise our values, ethics, and morality for the relationship?
• Do we instantly share secrets and pour out our life stories?
• Do we fit the other person into our romantic fantasies?
• Are we skilled at establishing immediate intensity or emotional highs?
• Do we feel as though the relationship has taken over our life and do we give ourselves to that feeling?
• Do we define everything in our life in terms of the relationship?
• Do we ignore aspects of the person that we do not trust or like?
• Have we developed the skills of seduction and flirtation to a fine art?
• Do we lose our boundaries in a relationship?⁽¹⁾

The titillation on television encourages us to develop the skills of pseudo-intimacy. Public sexual repression, often encouraged by religion, reinforces such sexual obsessions.

An alternative exists. The prerequisite for healthy intimacy is self understanding. To be able to move into relationship with others, it helps me to know who I am, what I feel, what I think, what my values are, and what is important to me.

To know who I am, I must notice when I am tired. I must notice when I am hungry. I must notice when I like something or do not like something. I must notice when I am hurt, angry, afraid, lonely, needy, happy or at ease. Intimacy is being aware of myself and then being able to bring that awareness into relationship with others. I must know who I am, and I must live for some goal outside myself.

The affirmation of my own life is necessary for me to be able to move into intimate relationships others. As I develop a self-identity, and self-understanding, I can move into relationships with others who also have a healthy self-identity.

Intimacy with another person is a combination of individual identity and mutual sharing. Both are necessary. If I only have independence, only freedom, only individualism I have no intimacy. On the other hand if I merge with another person such that I am totally dependent on them for a sense of who I am, I also have no intimacy. In a healthy intimacy, two individuals move into relationship with each other, sharing common obligations without losing their separate identities.

Anne Schaef has written a list that points to what a healthy intimacy is like.

• To be honest when we are not interested or cannot listen.
• To know the relationship is only one important aspect of our total life.
• To be unwilling to accept physical, emotional or spiritual battering.
• To be able to share worlds while maintaining our own.⁽²⁾

A series of questions by Robert Kimball gives some sense of the delicate balance between individuality and intimacy.

• How do you laugh together?
• Do you enjoy doing things together?
• Can you do things apart? Do you have your own excitements that you like to share?
• Do you respect each other? Are you proud of each other?
• Do you like yourself in the presence of the other?
• What sort of fights do you have? Are they big with style, or do you belittle each other?
• Are you candid about your own needs?
• Do you meet and touch in silence?
• Is it like a good deep breath at times when you're near one another?⁽³⁾

These lists of descriptions and questions about healthy intimacy could be longer. They are not lists on which I score myself. They simply encourage me to explore the potentiality in relationships.

In my own life the exploration continues. Friday night Leslie and I were late for a dinner engagement at the home of our friends Jack Young and his wife. The car was out of gas. I stopped at a self-serve pump, filled the tank, jumped back in the car, handed my credit card, the receipt and the wallet to Leslie. I would put it back in my pocket when I had a chance to take my coat off. Several hours later as we were leaving Jack's house, I suddenly realized that I did not have my wallet. I looked at Leslie, who said, "You tossed it in my lap and I forgot all about it." I walked back to the place on the street where Leslie had gotten out of the car. On the street in plain sight was my wallet. I picked it up, and walked back to the car.

Later that night I lay in the dark feeling the presence of my family sleeping in the house and of the world beyond. My mind wandered to this sermon, which I had been working on during the day. I thought of the events of times past like the lost ticket, the struggles with driving, the failed turkey dinner, and the nearly-lost wallet. Somehow we survived.

T.S. Eliot says that "the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

Intimacy involves getting so close to another person that they can see not only our hidden assets, but also our hidden faults and weaknesses. Authentic closeness between friends and family involves stepping out of our roles and being ourselves, with both our flaws and our virtues. This Thanksgiving, my wish for each of you is that you are able to step out of your roles for a time and be yourselves. May others accept you for all your imperfections and all your strengths.

1. Schaef, Anne Wilson, Escape From Intimacy--Untangling the "Love" Addictions: Sex, Romance, Relationships, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1989, page 105.

2. Schaef, Anne Wilson, Escape From Intimacy--Untangling the "Love" Addictions: Sex, Romance, Relationships, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1989, page 141.

3. Kimball, Robert, Restless is the Heart; a Perspective on Love and Violence and Their Intricate Relationship, Wyndham Hall Press, PO Box 877, Bristol, IN, 46507, pages 68-69.

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