I was in a seminar once with 100 other people, and we were asked to name everything that is true for everyone about sex and intimacy.
We could not come up with even
one thing that was true for everyone in that room -- or even that was true for all men OR all women. Each person stood up and described what intimacy was, and all of us were astonished to hear the sheer variety of what the others had to say!
For me, intimacy means: listening generously to each other, so that I get what he's saying to me, the way he wants to have me get it, and vice-versa. That takes some effort, but it really makes us feel close (Danger Man and me, I mean.) It also means generating love in every single conversation, and THAT means accepting him exactly as he is and exactly as he is not; it means letting go when I find myself (or he finds me
) holding onto something that is not having us be in love -- like resentment or jealousy or control. And again, vice-versa. It means listening without judgement, and without anticipating what he is going to say, and not thinking about how I'm going to respond while he's talking. Phew! Intimacy is not easy, but it is the most rewarding thing I've ever been involved in.
Does
that sound ridiculous?